December 2, 2009, 12:45 pm
Visualize Italy
by Henry Woodbury
Filed under: Books and Articles, Visual Explanation
In Tim Parks lyrical and learned history, Medici Money, he provides this description of Italy:
Let us dispense with the “boot” image and imagine a cylinder topped by an inverted equilateral triangle. The cylinder is surrounded by the sea and mostly mountainous, the triangle is generally flat but shut off to the north by the Alps. (p. 66)
It is an interesting gambit, this delineation of a visual idea with prose, yet the result is quite odd. The cylinder is a three dimensional volume; the triangle is a two dimensional plane. Parks creates this juxtaposition intentionally, to drive home the geographic difference between the mountainous south and the flatter north. The poor fit of the two shapes also evokes the political and cultural disagreement between the north and south of Italy throughout its history.
It is a visual explanation, but one that exists best in a mental space. Made graphic, it adds little to the map.
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