1747 Gianfrancesco Pivati view of Damascus, Syria

This is an attractive, scarce example of Gianfrancesco Pivati's view of the Syrian city of Damascus, printed in 1747 for inclusion in Pivati's Nuovo Dizionario Scientifico E Curioso Sacro-Profano. The view is intended to portray the contemporaneous Muslim walled city. Its mosques are prominent, recognizable by the crescent atop towers and minarets. Spare trees and barren hillsides loom in the background. Smaller towns appear in the foreground along the road to Damascus. While it does not resemble the prior views of the city produced by 'Braun and Hogenberg' and 'Olfert Dapper,' it shares in common with these the reality that Pivati did not visit the places depicted in his dictionary. So, the depiction of the city relies on a combination of travelers' reports and imagination. It nonetheless remains one of the few acquirable, early views of Damascus.

Publication History and Census

This view appeared in the 1747 sixth volume of Pivati's Nuovo Dizionario Scientifico E Curioso Sacro-Profano . The ten-volume set is listed in OCLC by about 20 institutional collections. The separate view is not cataloged and we see no market record.