Platee

The Platee are a type of administrative documentation produced between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the reverend factory of the Assumption. The examples of this type of documentary were originally called "Cabreo", while "Platea" is the term widely used in southern Italy. These are registers that could have various dimensions within which was listed the complex of real estate belonging to an ecclesiastical body, with the relative income. In some cases, such as those of Altamura, a certain aesthetic taste was not extraneous to their compilation, which was practiced above all in decorating the first papers with illustrations usually performed in ink and watercolour. Both Platee are handwritten on heavy paper, in bad condition and partly not-paginated. The smallest one does not have a heading: the first card, out of number, has noted down only the date of 1688. The Platea of 1731 has the typical leather binding with cardboard plates and it contains plans, descriptions, borders and extensions of Land property, it is rich of numerous illustrations, also in watercolour, even inside; these illustrations allow to have paintings and snapshots not only of rural environments, but also of very detailed scenes of agro-pastoral life. The artistic ability of the compiler is already evident in the first papers where, in addition to the header, we find respectively, painted in watercolour, the portrait of the Rev. D. Tommaso Gramegna, attorney of the year preceding that of the construction of the Platea; that of Rev. D. Sergio Sallicano, in charge; a representation of the assumption of Mary in heaven; the prelate's coat of arms of the archpriest De Rinaldis, prelate of Altamura; a glimpse of the city surrounded by walls.