Imago et descriptio: narrating Sicily in Modern Period”, en Anna Boroffka (ed.), Between Encyclopedia and Chorography: Defining the Agency of “Cultural Encyclopedias” from a Transcultural Perspective

Abstract

During the early modern age, the predominantly graphic language of manuscript atlases of the kingdom of Sicily was increasingly accompanied by the narrative language of chorographic description. This chapter looks at the chorographic descriptions that accompany the atlases of Tiburzio Spannocchi (1596), Camillo Camilliani (1584), Francesco Negro, Carlo Maria Ventimiglia Ruiz (1640) and Gabriele Merelli (1677), and the intricate relationship between city and island that is set up by highlighting the urbs against the background of the island, using regional and peninsular historiography (in particular, Tommaso Fazello’s work of 1558) to evoke and portray its history and monuments, and permeating the descriptions with the authors’ first-hand visual experience of the territory.