Jan van Stinemolen's Naples: A Panoramic Experience

Miguel Fernández · 2026-02-21

Let's talk about a different way of looking at an old city. Most people study historical maps to understand a place. They look for accuracy, for every street and building in its proper place. But what if a drawing wasn't meant to be a map at all? What if it was meant to make you *feel* something? That's the fascinating idea behind Jan van Stinemolen's 16th-century view of Naples. For years, scholars compared it to precise maps like the ones by Du Perac/Lafréry (1566) and Baratta (1627). They pointed out its "mistakes"—missing streets, duplicated buildings. But maybe we've been missing the point. ### Seeing Naples as a Panorama Stinemolen's work isn't a topographical guide. Think of it more like a visual device. Its goal wasn't to chart the city for navigation. It was to evoke the breathtaking experience of seeing Naples from the northern hills. It's the difference between reading a technical manual and reading a poem about a place. When you look at it this way, those so-called distortions start to make sense. The absence of the upper Decumanus? The shifted landmarks? They weren't errors. They were artistic choices meant to pull you into the scene. He was creating a unified portrait from multiple plausible viewpoints, not a single, privileged snapshot. ### The City as a Living Theatre This connects deeply with how people wrote about Naples in the 1500s and 1600s. Published descriptions of the city often used a powerful metaphor: Naples as a theatre. Stinemolen's drawing brings that metaphor to life. From the hills, the city unfolds like a stage, full of drama and life. His visual rhetoric asks you, the viewer, to do more than just look. It asks you to step in. To wander those streets in your imagination. It’s an invitation to engagement, not just observation. Here’s what this perspective changes: - We stop judging the work by cartographic standards. - We start appreciating its purpose: to convey an *experience*. - We see its connection to the literary culture of its time. It’s a reminder that sometimes, to truly understand a piece of art, you have to let go of what you think it *should* be and see it for what it is. Stinemolen wasn't giving us a map. He was giving us a feeling—the awe of standing on a hill, looking out over one of the world's great cities, and taking it all in. That’s a kind of truth that a simple map could never capture.