View of a fortified island with mooring galleons and galleys

In his seminal 1969 article on the artist, Jaap Bolten defined Gherardo Cibo (still known at the time under the fictional name of Ulisse Severino da Cingoli) ‘a Bypath in the History of Art’¹. Gherardo stands out, in fact, as one of the most autonomous and original draughtsmen of the 16th century, closer, in his botanical and alchemical interests, to Northern Europe than to the brilliant Italian Renaissance world to which he belonged ².

Born in 1512 to a Genoese aristocratic family related to Pope Innocenzo VIII (1483-1492), Gherardo was educated as a gentleman, first in Rome and them during the long diplomatic missions that took him to Germany, France and Flanders. Around 1540 he decided to retire in the bucolic village of Rocca Contrada (today Arcevia), in the Marche region, not far from Ancona, and to devote himself entirely to his greatest passions: botany, geology, music and drawing.

His most notable achievements are the composition of the first-known herbarium (Rome, Biblioteca Angelica) and the illustration of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s De Re Medica after Dioscorides (London, British Library), considered as one of the most interesting and beautiful works of the history of botany and scientific illustration.

Gherardo’s vast production of drawings is intimately connected with his scientific research and with his early contacts with northern Europe. Alongside his studies of rocks, plants, clouds and real landscapes, a small but significant segment of his production is devoted to fantasy landscapes executed for his own pleasure and accurately refined with bright colours.

The tiny drawing discussed here represents a fortified island with, all around, some moored galleons and galleys. A similar subject can be found in a page of Mattioli’s De Re Medica (a transfigured view of the fortress of San Marino, near Rimini), on the ‘Fishing trip’ preserved in the Biblioteca Passionei in Fossombrone, and in a sketch of a ‘Natural port’ in a private collection ³. Furthermore, the interest for representing the poetic purple colour that characterizes the dawn on the Adriatic coast (where the sun comes out of the horizon line into the sea) can be found in a View of a Fortified Headland in the Morgan Library (fig. 1).

Even if the general composition of our View stems from the imagination, the presence of the recognizable shape of a Venetian galley attests that the drawing is based on first-hand observations, as is typical of Cibo’ s brilliant scientific gaze.