View of Livorno 

Angelo Uggeri made this drawing, View of Livorno, using pen and brown ink with brown wash, during a time when the city was a thriving port, a hub of both trade and cultural exchange. Here, Uggeri offers us a snapshot of daily life, but it is a carefully mediated one. Consider who is absent from this view: the working class, the sailors, and the merchants who drove Livorno’s economy. Instead, we see the architecture of power. Its high walls and imposing gates were meant to defend and control, to separate those within from those without. What does it mean to aestheticize a space that was as much about exclusion as it was about exchange? Is this a celebration of Livorno's prosperity, or a subtle commentary on its social divisions? Perhaps it’s both. Uggeri’s Livorno invites us to consider the complex relationship between place, power, and representation.