Atlante Trevigiano

The Vianello Bote Collection, recently acquired by the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, covers a period of five centuries and includes examples of the work of the Dutch, French, German, English and Italian map publishers who produced the most important commercially available atlases between the XV and XIX centuries. As well as exploring the close and complex social relations which ensured that the way printers, publishers, geographers, humanists, technicians and artists at both local and international levels depicted places kept pace with the morimportant developments in publishing in Europe, the exhibition and its catalogue also offers consideration of the ways in which collections of antique prints are assembled. The result of decades spent cultivating dealers and combing antique fair stalls is often the product of the defilement of original books, many of which came from public libraries. Maps and views of cities and regions are cut or torn from atlases or geography books, decontextualized and mounted in passe-partouts, in turn to be sealed in frames and hung on walls for effect.
Through Atlante Trevigiano we also attempted to reflect on the ways maps are made, now as in the past mirrors of cultural context and social ability to interpret and depict territory. The exhibition Atlante Trevigiano created frameworks for dialogue between antique maps and their modern counterparts, between an early XIX century view and what one sees from the same viewing point today. All with a single underlying purpose: to continue to foster a critical vision of the world on the basis of documented research, an activity that remains an absolute pre-requisite for any discussion of or planning for our future.