Ansicht von Sevilla mit Widmung an Nicolaes Malpaert

Travel guides should be based on first-hand experience,

although that was decidedly a challenge in the

sixteenth century, given the rigors of international

travel. To produce their six-volume compendium

of city views, Civitates Orbis Terrarvm, publishers

Georg Braun (1541–1622) and Frans Hogenberg

(1538/40–1590) met this challenge by commissioning

travelling artists as contributors, among the most

reliable of whom was Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600).

Hoefnagel made the present view of Seville

(“Hispalis”) as a design for a print. It was published

in the fifth volume of Civitates (fig. 1), where it was

oriented in the same direction, including the key

and dedication. The sheet shows some pentimenti,

in the figures and the cartouche. It does not bear

traces of any transfer method, suggesting that

intermediary work was done to translate the image

onto the plate.

When he created the drawing in 1593, Hoefnagel

was living in Frankfurt am Main, following

several decades of a peripatetic existence. He must

have kept the sketches and notes he made when

journeying through Spain (1563–67), using them as

source material for the present sheet.1 His travels

were business-oriented: as the son and junior

partner of an Antwerp luxury-goods merchant, the

young Hoefnagel had to visit his partners in trade.

Seville was an important seat of Netherlandish

commercial enterprise, and the artist highlighted

its role as a storage port for goods imported from the

New World.2 His merchant background is also visible

in the dedication to his “old friend and jolly companion”

(amico veteri et congerroni), the “very charming”

(lepidissimi) Nicolaes Malpaert (c. 1542–1625), a

fellow merchant involved in the founding of the

Frankfurt Stock Exchange.3

Although an admirer of Jan van Stinemolen

(1518–1589), whose works also accentuate swelling

forms as seen in the foreground,4 Hoefnagel

employed a fundamentally different approach to

the rendering of a city. His take is chorographic,

highlighting the particularities of a place such as its

customs and costumes (see Peters’s introduction).

His figures do not merely indicate distance and

space but have stories to tell. Most conspicuous

in the Albertina’s sheet are the women to the left

wearing small, round hats, their faces partially

covered. From Hoefnagel’s inscriptions we know

that they are Moriscos, descendants of the Islamic

Moors. Moriscos were forced into baptism—indicated

by both women’s ostentatiously worn crosses and

rosaries—but retained their ancient customs. In 1571,

after revolting against King Philip II (r. 1556–98), the

Moriscos were forced to leave Spain. The drawing

thus documents a world already lost by 1600.5

Other scenes qualify Hoefnagel as a forerunner

to European ethnology.6 We see a procuress

(alcaguetta) being punished: seated bare breasted

on a mule, her torso is smeared with honey and

surrounded by bees. Some bystanders throw debris

at her, and even the mule is defecating. Beside her,

a cuckold is forced to parade on a mule as well, his

head adorned with a set of antlers, portraying a

ritual ridicule that Hoefnagel had illustrated in an

earlier drawing.7 Marked T and S, respectively, these

scenes even made it into the legend. Other details,

such as washerwomen at a canal, bulls hunted by

men next to the slaughterhouse (el mattadero, K),

and men pouring liquids over animal skeletons at

Seville’s waste heap (muladar, R), serve to prove

the drawing’s motto: “Those who did not see Seville

have never seen wonders” (Qui non ha visto Sevilla

non ha visto maravilla).8

 

1. Vignau-Wilberg in Metzger and Schröder 2013, 176;

Vignau-Wilberg 2017, 235, 376, referring to Hoefnagel’s profile

view of the city as seen from the west, published in 1572.

2. In the explanatory text to the print that was largely based on

Hoefnagel’s notes; see Vignau-Wilberg 2017, 379.

3. Vignau-Wilberg in Metzger and Schröder 2013, 176.

4. Vignau-Wilberg 2017, 28.

5. Vignau-Wilberg 2017, 329.

6. Vignau-Wilberg 2017, 15.

7. As “Patient Cuckold” (Patiente Cornudo), in a series of

drawings titled Patientia; Vignau-Wilberg 2017, 23r, no. E2.

8. Vignau-Wilberg in Metzger and Schröder 2013, 176.

The phrase was, however, a common trope in travel guides

of the period.

 

Emily J. Peters, Laura M. Ritter (Hg.), AK Tales of the City. Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel, Cleveland Museum of Art 9.10.2022 - 8.1.2023, New Haven 2022, Kat. Nr. 8