[Valvassore, Giovanni Andrea.] La cita di Rodi christia[n]isima col asedio del gra[n] turco, 1522. [Venice: Valvassore, ca. 1522-3.]

[Valvassore, Giovanni Andrea.] La cita di Rodi christia[n]isima col asedio del gra[n] turco, 1522. [Venice: Valvassore, ca. 1522-3.]

ONE OF TWO KNOWN EXAMPLES — A CONTEMPORANEOUS VIEW OF THE OTTOMAN SIEGE OF RHODES

Single sheet (11 11/16” x 16 5/8”, 297mm x 422mm). Woodcut map, with Northwest at the top. Preserved deckle to the left-hand side. Blank verso.

Small closed tear to the lower edge. Else fine. The fall of the Roman Empire — or, its eastern half — begins properly with the sack of Constantinople by Mehmed II in 1453. This inaugurated centuries of conflicts between the Ottomans and various European powers, ending only with the 1718 Treaty of Passarowitz. Crucial for its strategic position and its long history as the chivalric outpost of crusaders, Rhodes was a ripe target for Mehmed’s successors. In 1480 (Mehmed II’s sultanate), Mesih Pasha — nephew of the last Roman emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos — attempted to dispel the Knights Hospitaller, whose head, Pierre d’Aubusson, staved off three major attempts over nearly three months to besiege the city. The death of Mehmed in the following year granted the Knights a reprieve, but in June of 1522 some 400 ships came again to Rhodes, and in July the sultan himself, Suleiman “the magnificent” — the “Gran Turco” — came to superintend the effort. For nearly six months the Ottomans came land, sea and air: naval divisions marked by one, two or three crescents, vast detachments of soldiers on foot and horseback, as well as a host of siege engines — cannon all around, bombardment towers and catapults prominently depicted. At last, the Knights Hospitaller surrendered, marching out with their banners flying on the 1st of January 1523, and sailed to Crete. Crete being a Venetian possession, tales and depictions of the massive siege disseminated through Europe through the small presses of Venice. Giovanni Andrea Valvassore (Zoan or Zuan Andrea in Venetian, alternately Valvassori, Vavassore, Vavassori, Vavasori) was likely born in the last decade of the XVc, and was dead by May of 1572. Although he did not sign this woodcut (whose title translates to “the most Christian city of Rhodes, with the siege of the Great Turk, 1522”), there is a rather larger (568mm x 775mm) woodcut composed of four blocks with West at the top that is signed (“Vadagnino di Vavasori;” in his printed work he is “detto Guadagnino”), extant in a sole example in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (though its inventory number is not recorded). The present item is the second known print of this block that survives, the first being at the Vatican Library (Chig.G.II.39, ff.156-157), which also attributes the work to Valvassore. A smaller version with the same orientation as the Berlin print was included in Valvassore’s El lachrimoso lamento che fa el gran maestro de Rodi ([Venice:] per Giouanni Andrea Vauassore[, ca. 1530]; f. 1r ). The iconography of the siege is highly stylized. The city — crescentshaped as though already Ottomanized — is Rhodes, the city at the extreme northeast of the island of Rhodes. Just above the western watchtower is the fortress of Saint Nicholas, labeled “S Nicolo,” which is still visible in the harbor. Valvassore has drastically collapsed the island itself into a mere vestige; his aim was to show the completeness of the naval blockade. The corpses stacked around the walls indicate the deadliness of the siege. The largest figure is “el·gran·tvrcho,” Suleiman himself, commanding his vast forces at the left-hand side of the image. Acquired at Sotheby’s London, 13 November 2018, lot 149. Urbini, S. Atlante delle xilografie italiane del Rinascimento: ALU.0278.1