Granada Platform

Vico Platform.004 Colored engraving:

Also called Plataforma de Granada, it is a map of Granada drawn and drawn by the architect Ambrosio de Vico in the last decade of the sixteenth century and recorded by Francisco Heylan around 1613 and by Félix Prieto in 1795. It is the first representation that describes the city of Granada in a detailed, complete and faithful way, moving forward in many years to layouts of the same type of other prominent cities, such as Madrid, whose plane of Texeira was not completed until 1662. The Vico platform continued to maintain its usefulness until the end of the eighteenth century, when the new cartographic currents derived from the Enlightenment, postponed its use, although without exceeding its aesthetic value.

El Plano was commissioned by Archbishop Pedro de Castro, within the counter-reformist current and the series of finds between 1588 and 1599 in the Turpiana Tower and on Mount Valparaiso that culminated in the founding of the Abbey of Sacromonte. Ambrosio de Vico was trusted by Archbishop Castro and the person of Granada best prepared for such a task, both for his technical knowledge and for the artistic capacity he possessed.

The Granada Platform was engraved by Heylan around 1613 on two 490 x 303 mm copper plates each. In 1795 it was re-recorded in Salamanca by Félix Prieto on a single 612 x 450 mm plate, using the etching technique. The new engraving differs from the primitive only in the ornamentation of the gusset and in the locations of the title and the names of the cartoonist and engraver, which Prieto placed at the foot of the print, outside the drawing.