The True Description of Cairo is a remarkable 2 meter by 1 meter woodcut attributed to Matheo Pagano and printed in 1549. The view focuses on the dense residential center of Cairo, with narrow streets and little room between buildings. Surrounding the city itself, Pagano portrays historical events through vignette illustrations, as well as key pieces of the landscape such as the Nile, the Sphinx, and the Pyramids of Giza. Key pieces to note in the city itself are the numerous mosques throughout the city, with detailed depictions of the different types of domes on these mosques. Urban lakes supplied with water from the Great Canal of Cairo are shown. No interiors of buildings nor courtyards within building complexes are portrayed, suggesting that someone like Pagano did not go into many buildings and thus could not accurately depict what they would look like. Beginning just outside the city limits to the northeast, the Nile flows out of the large mountains depicted along the east edge of the view. Emphasis is placed on the Nile and the various ways people interacted with the Nile. Vignettes abound throughout the map, and along the Nile, we see people bathing, washing clothes, collecting water, and even defecating into the river. Ships are also shown throughout the river, suggesting the key role the Nile played in transportation and trade. Amidst the mountains to the east of the city are the Pyramids of Giza. The sculpture of the Sphinx is also shown a bit further south. This Sphinx appears to be female, which was the common opinion among Europeans, while it was always considered to be male by Muslims. The extensive Venetian trade network could explain the numerous city views produced in the 15th and 16th centuries. A view like this one would have been used by merchants, geographers, humanist scholars, and aristocrats to learn something about the landscape of Cairo, the people who lived there, or the things to be traded for. The accompanying text was written by the French humanist and cosmographer, Guillaume Postel.
Matheo Pagano, La vera descritio ne dela gran cita del Caiero. London, Arcadian Library.
Pagano, Matheo, and Guillaume Postel. The True Description of Cairo: a Sixteenth-Century Venetian View, edited by Nicholas Warner. Oxford: Arcadian Library in association with Oxford University Press, 2006.
Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN
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"La vera descritione de la grand cita del Caiero" (ca. 1549) from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kuperstichkabinett
Special Collections (Map, Rolled) DT144.P34 2006 Special Collections (Books, Quarto) DT144 .P34 2006