Guidalotto’s reasons for embarking on the project were the Turkish attack on Crete, the ill-treatment of foreign diplomats including the Venetians and his own harsh experience of imprisonment. Using allegory, complex iconography and quotations from the Bible, he accused the Turks of turning Constantine’s city from the New Rome into the New Babylon and called on the Pope and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to join the Venetians in their struggle against the Turks. The manuscript is inscribed: Pesaro 1662.

The artist was ordained in 1636 and received a doctorate in theology. He was then a missionary in Wallachia and later became a friar at Mondavio. He achieved a reputation as a cartographer and in 1646 dedicated a manuscript atlas of the Mediterranean (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana) to Giovanni Soranzo the Venetian Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Arriving in Constantinople in 1647, where he was to remain until 1655 when he returned to Italy, Guidalotto was attached to the Venetian embassy and was its chaplain. In 1659 he retired to the Friary of Mondavio, in the province of Pesaro. His reputation as an artist is entirely that of a cartographer and draughtsman. His masterpiece is the work catalogued here.

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