The Great Siege of 1565 has been much in mind lately, having been to a conference on it recently. Amongst other things the siege produced a huge number of illustrated maps - news sheet produced in Italy and beyond day after day updating the progress of the contest - almost the earliest forms of printed war reportage. Whilst thinking about this my friend Allan Langdale sent me some pictures of Malta siege maps from the painted gallery of maps in the Vatican - they're beautiful renderings of the event. Allan runs a great photographic blog on travel, art and architecture at:
https://allansartworlds.sites.ucsc.edu/
Thanks, Allan!
 |
The Ottoman fleet in harbour on the left, and their troops attacking the isolated fort of St Elmo on the tip of the peninsula that is now Valletta (inset bottom left). The other two fortifications of the Knights of Malta are under siege on the right.
|
 |
Here's a close up
And the gallery also has a wonderful birds-eye view of the clashing of the Christian and Ottoman fleets at the battle of Lepanto in 1571:
|
I would reccomend limiting your images to medium or small size, it would make for better reading. Once you are in the editor, left click on the image and go to the picture icon, there you can modify its size.
ReplyDelete