Il vero disegno de forti fatti intorno ad Ostia…

Description

One of the Earliest Printed Views of Ostia.

This exceptional map by Paolo Forlani, published by Fernando Berteli in Venice in 1566, is one of the earliest printed views of Ostia and the mouth of the Tiber, showing the river from Rome to the Gulf of Tuscany and the fortifications built by both sides during the Carafa War (1556–57) — the last of the Italian Wars. The combatants were Pope Paul IV and Philip II of Spain, who held the title King of England through his marriage to Mary I and whose forces are labeled on this map as the army of the Re de Inghilterra. The map records a specific strategic reality at a specific moment: the papal strongpoints commanding the Tiber approach to Rome, and the imperial positions — one of them already abandoned — that had threatened it. Published a decade after the events it depicts, in Giulio Ballino’s landmark atlas of city views printed by Bolognino Zaltieri in Venice, it belongs to one of the rarest town-atlas publications of the sixteenth century, produced in editions so small that only one or a handful of copies of each are known to survive.

The Map in Detail

Rome appears in the upper left, its skyline sketched in profile, the city close enough to the action to feel the weight of it. The Tiber (Tevere F.) winds southward through the composition past Magliana — the papal hunting lodge between Rome and the coast — before reaching the sea. At the river mouth, the ancient site of Ostia is labeled, with the note Di qui si basse Ostia marking the location of the ancient city. To the left, the twin imperial harbors are shown: Porto di Adriano (Portus Traiani) and Porto di Claudio (Portus Claudii), the great installations of the first and second centuries now re-entering service as tactical positions in a Renaissance war. The island (Isola) formed by the Tiber’s branching channels anchors the center of the composition. Throughout, Forte del papa appears at multiple positions commanding the river, the island, and the coastal approaches; Forte de imperiali and Forte abandonato da imperiali mark the opposing positions, the abandoned imperial fort recording a tactical withdrawal in a single phrase. Cannons are shown at each fortification, their barrels aimed outward. Dotted lines trace the connecting roads. In the lower right, a sea monster surfaces from the Mare Toscano. The address Fernando Berteli exc. Ano 1566 appears on the plate.

Historical Context

The Carafa War (1556–57) was the last of the Italian Wars and, in many respects, the most personally driven conflict of the century. Pope Paul IV — the eighty-year-old Pietro Carafa, elected 1555 — hated Spain with a ferocity that alarmed his own cardinals. He allied with France, picked a fight with Philip II, and watched as the Duke of Alba led a Spanish army through the Papal States in the autumn of 1556, cutting supply lines and maneuvering toward Rome itself. The fortifications shown on this map were the papal response to that threat: strongpoints at Ostia and the Tiber mouth designed to deny the Spanish a river approach to the city. Philip’s forces — labeled here as the army of the Re de Inghilterra, one of Philip’s several titles through his marriage to Mary I of England — built their own counter-positions. The standoff ended not in a sack but in a humiliating negotiated peace in 1557, with Paul IV forced to capitulate publicly. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) ended the Italian Wars altogether, cementing Spanish dominance of the peninsula. Forlani’s map, published in 1566, appeared seven years into that new order — a retrospective document of the last time a pope took the field against a Habsburg king.

Publication History and Census

Paolo Forlani (active 1561–1577), engraver; Fernando Berteli, excudit; Venice, 1566. Published in Giulio Ballino, Civitatum Aliquot Insigniorum, et locorum, magis munitorum exacta delineatio / Disegni di alcune piu illustri citta, et fortezze del mondo, printed by Bolognino Zaltieri, Venice, 1568. The principal engraver throughout the volume was Forlani, with additional plates by Domenico Zenoi and Girolamo Olgiato. The Civitatum Aliquot Insigniorum was issued in three editions between 1567 and 1569, all differing from one another; only one or a handful of copies of each edition are recorded. Several plates from the publication were subsequently adopted by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg for their Civitates Orbis Terrarum, testimony to the quality and authority of Forlani’s work. Phillips 5387, though with the caveat that page numbers on known copies do not always correspond to the numbers on the versos of individual plates. Extremely rare.