Nunzio Galizia and the Perspective View of Milan “liberata dalla peste” (1578)

Abstract

The essay discusses the perspective view of Milan by Nunzio Galizia, dedicated to Giuliano Gosellini (secretary of the Consiglio Segreto dello Stato of Milan) for the end of the plague in 1578. The etching (mm 462 x 644) is held in a single copy in the print collection Achille Bertarelli in Milan (Civica Raccolta delle Stampe di Milano, Castello Sforzesco). Even if Galizia follows the image composition proposed by the preceding view by Antoine Lafrèry in 1573, the plan shows an unconventional devotional representation of Milan after the plague of 1576–77, when Carlo Borromeo was its archbishop. We see the occasional hospitals located into the six boroughs out of the city gates, fires which burn infected objects and clothes, the huts built for sick people according to the chronicles, the fopponi (occasional cemeteries) and the votive crosses. Behind the city, Galizia illustrates the empyreus (God, Christ and the Virgin, with the saints Ambrogio, Rocco, Sebastian, Christopher), that overlooks and saves the city, surrounded by clouds of light and angels.