On the third visit Pratt recreates himself even just starting with the title of the story: the Fable of Venice or Sirat al Bunduqyyiah, or A. Once the sailor fell asleep while reading the Thomas More Utopia by December 34 he will not visit the city until two years later, in 1920, when accidentally lands at the headquarters of a Masonic lodge.

Specifically in a courtyard door that actually exists and even today can be located, though, I imagine Pratt changes prudently portal number for the year when action started: 1918. In the second story, Corto Maltese in Siberia, the first board starts in the Venice Ghetto. The vignettes where the Dogana point, the Basilica of San Marco and the Ducal Palace appears are perfectly drawn decals of the real subject. Today no gondolier would accept rowing for any tourist or anyone from San Francesco dil Deserto up to Malamocco where by the other hand is perfectly portrayed the restaurant where Corto enjoyed a sea bream fished in the waters of the lagoon.

They are simply the setting for his stories. Pratt uses the landscapes of the Venetian Laguna as he wishes, accurate tracing the details, vague in its location. The first, The Angel of the East Window, belonging to volume The Celts, places him in 1917, against the background of the First World War, where the sailor and other adventurers seek information on the whereabouts of the seventh golden cities of Alto Marañón: the mythical Eldorado. Pratt recreated Corto Maltese's visits in three of their comic books. Not accidentally has been Venice where I stayed more than once trying to step on his shadow almost evanescent. Sometimes I must admit I have been in the same cities purposely looking for the same scenes, I walked the same streets looking for similar frames but identical to those set by the artist in his stories of the Maltese. Images that have ended almost matching from a file to a cartoon frame. Neither has been, at the beginning, intentional searches, but casual encounters I've finished realizing after years. Others I think I've been more precise and I managed to stumble upon one of the milestones of the route sailed by the character born from the pen of Hugo Pratt. Impossible in time, perhaps plausible in space. To track the shadow of Valletta’s marine isn’t easy.

Corto maltese