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A finely executed late eighteenth-century map depicting the eastern portion of the Venetian Republic’s dominions, encompassing its Terraferma holdings and Adriatic maritime possessions on the eve of their collapse. Extending from the Brenta River in the west to Fiume (Rijeka) and the Dalmatian hinterlands in the east, and from the Tyrolean and Carinthian Alps in the north to the Po delta in the south, the map centers visually and politically on the Golfo di Venezia.
The Venetian heartland, including Venice, Padua, Treviso, and Vicenza, is shown in close relation to the contested borderlands of Friuli, the County of Gorizia, and the Istrian Peninsula. Cities such as Trieste underscore the importance of Venetian maritime control in the northern Adriatic. The depiction includes roads, fortifications, and port towns. Relief is shown pictorially.
The martial-themed title cartouche in the upper right, featuring halberds, drums, and cuirasses, reflects the Republic’s centuries-long emphasis on military readiness and naval supremacy. The inscription records that the map was published in Venice in 1794 "Presso Pazzini Carti", and the engraving is credited in the lower right to "Gio. Carti d’Alibrandi inc.", a little-known but competent hand active in the final decades of the Settecento.
Published just three years before the fall of the Venetian Republic to Napoleon and the cession of its mainland and Adriatic territories to Austria, this map captures the final configuration of Venetian territorial authority, an empire at the brink of dissolution.
Provenance
This example has manuscript notation that may be related to the military events of the Napoleonic War that followed the map's publication. However, we have not determined if that is actually the case or if they are simply related to a personal itinerary or some more mundane purpose.
![Venezia Tridentina [and] Venezia Giulia](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/97892.jpg)
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