This is a ‘View of Bilbao’ by an anonymous 17th-century artist, and I do rather like old city views. They are part artwork, part map, part civic boast and part “we had better record this before someone builds something inconvenient” although the whole arrangement is relatively unrecognisable today. This one is especially interesting as it is described as the earliest known pictorial depiction of the city, which makes it rather more useful than my usual approach of photographing a railway station sign and hoping that counts as documentation.
The angel at the top of the painting adds a further note of drama, because clearly a normal cityscape was not enough and Bilbao required airborne supervision. I respect that. If I were producing the earliest known view of a city, it seems sensible to include a celestial endorsement, just in case future generations questioned whether the municipal layout had been properly authorised. Although the artist isn’t known, records do note that it was commissioned by the trader John Seale and it was painted in the Miribilla district.
There’s a load of detail packed into this as well. There are boats on the river, little figures on the quayside, buildings lined up with a pleasing sense of order and the surrounding landscape pressing in behind the city. It shows Bilbao as a compact river city, long before the modern version of galleries, tramlines, bridges and tourists attempting to identify pintxos without looking too foolish, but it clearly has the river at the heart of the whole arrangement.
As I’m not a student of Spanish history, I’m not entirely sure what all these buildings are by the river, they look more like warehouses than residential. It all feels like a working city and the museum is very pleased at this artwork and they’ve just had it restored.