On the Collection History of the View's Matrices

Chapter 8 traces the collection history of the six original matrices of the View preserved in the Correr Museum. After the first successful print run in Venice at the start of the sixteenth century, the six blocks of pearwood were passed to unknown and undocumented printers, resulting in two additional states. Given that the portrait of the city visibly changed over time, especially with select sixteenth-century sites, the matrices and their first-state prints became precious relics worthy of patrician Wunderkammer collections. The collected life of the wooden blocks, however, lacks certainty until 1720, when they are documented in the collection of Count Baron Leopoldo de Tassis. Most likely between late 1700 and early 1800, Teodoro Correr acquired the blocks due to their value as precious material objects of Venice. Correr’s varied collection was donated to the city as the founding nucleus of the Civic Museums of Venice in 1830.