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But early city topography has some epic works; the great view of Venice of 1500; or Antonio Tempesta's sinuous and energetic description of Rome in 1593, where jubilant angels blowing trumpets, coast like superheroes, high above a mannerist Gotham. But Rome was a problem. What do with the old buildings, very, very old buildings, so old, venerable and impressive that they might eclipse the latest Papal projects? Certainly Rome in the Middle Ages must have seen itself as dwarfed by the monuments of a greater civilisation. Sixteenth century plans of Rome often gave more attention to the Roman monuments of the modern city, in some cases actually 'restoring' Roman buildings to pristine condition, reinventing buildings in their plans even. It was only later, in the seventeenth century and in the context of the growing civic power and a new monumentalism of Papal projects that the ruins are allowed to appear ruinous. (Later their actual ruin became a virtue, became picturesque or sublime in the work of Panini, Ricci or later Piranesi.)

Works such as the Venice view (full of civic triumphalism) or sixteenth century views of Rome are unimaginable for the London of the same date. There seems to have been no official project for the delineation of London, even for maps of it, until 1682. It seems as if that unique reluctance to be urban that is especially English was already well entrenched, five hundred years ago. When, from 1550, views were made they were by Van den Wyngaerde, Braun and Hogenberg, Visscher, Hollar; the names speak for themselves.

But gradually we get pictures of London; and it is good that many are amateur, straggly, above all literal-minded (not always the same as accurate); many are hybrids, really, half map, half view; and sometimes of such a finicky enumeration of (apparently) each and every house that actually you doubt that it can be reliable. Artists were dealing with a new problem; representing an expanse of built environment. How do you fit it all in? And if you can't, how do you reduce it? Prominence is obviously given to major buildings; churches, palaces etc. with the bits in between expressed by means of a standardised, letraset-style 'rooftop' rendering fading into the distance.

But what is 'major' in a city differs from age to age. City walls, castles, palaces in the sixteenth century; churches in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Nineteenth century views and panoramas give prominence to docks, courts, workshops, shipyards, all the detail that we get in Dickens; the corporate business skyline, actual or projected, of the present day.

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