Above, the Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel viewed Naples quite properly from the sea-the medium that gave it sustenance and connection to the world. In this painting of the 1560s, depicting the seaport city' s def ense against attack by a Turkish fleet, the fa cing-outward of the city toward the sea is marvellously evident. Brueghel changed the
angular breakwater sheltering the harbor into a curving arm that literally embraces the sea and draws ships to the heart ofthe city. No cities on earth matched Lhese Italian seaport cities, which continued 10 grow in prosperity and power f or a century after Columbus set out on his voyaging.
Below, ships in their varying sizes and profu se varieties properly dominate the calm waters of Venice , the Most Serene , in this view drawn by Jacopo de' Barbari in 1500, while Columbus still had his last voyage to make . The sea god in mid-harbor can well afford to smile ,for the ships he conveys to andfrom the port have made it a city (here substantially complete as it is today) that continues to awe and astound the most casual visitor. The ships are exaggerated in size, from the fishin g smack in the foreground (of a type common in these waters until our day ) to the full -bellied deepwatermen riding light in
the roadstead. Well, why not? Wi1hout them nolhing else in this picture would exist. Not jusl the luxuries of life or the refin ements of communicalion come to this city by sea, but the very grain to make bread. Founded on inaccessible sandbars during the troubled times that fo llowed the fall of Rome and the ra vaging of the Italian peninsula by primitive intruders, Venice had become by 1500 not only the most serene, but Lhe most accessible city. The sea, which had earlier sheltered it from Lhe world, had by this time become its avenue to Lhe world.
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