GLOBO CELESTE Calcolato per il corrente anno sulle Osservazioni de’ Sigg. Flamsteed, e de la Caille. ROMA presso la Calc.a

- FIRST EDITION, CONTEMPORARY OUTLINE COLOUR -

Giovanni Maria Cassini (1745 – 1824) was an Italian globe maker, geographer, engraver and cartographer. His main cartographic work was the Nuovo Atlante Geografico Universale of 1792-1801. In 1790, the Calcografia Camerale of Rome published his twelve terrestrial globe gores that updated the world cartography after the three voyages of Captain James Cook around the globe.

The twelve celestial globe gores were published in 1792. The celestial globe is based on the astronomical observations of Flamsteed and Lacaille, and represents all the constellations then known with stars of variable magnitude according to their magnitude. The plates reproduce the twelve segments of 30 degrees A. R. amplitude which, once cut out and glued onto a sphere of wood and papier-mâché with a diameter of 35 cm, make up the entire celestial globe.

In the scroll at the center of one of the segments, between Boote and Mount Menalo, one reads "CELESTIAL GLOBE Calculated for the current year on the Observations of Messrs. Flamsteed and de la Caille. ROME at the Calc.a Cam.le 1792".

Four of the five plates are intended to represent the constellations, these are the same that we find in the two planispheres, named in the Italian language of the time, but drawn from behind in convex projection, ready to be pasted on a sphere of about thirty-five centimeters in diameter. The non-Ptolemaic constellations are in considerable number: Antinoo, Berenice's Hair, the Giraffe, the Lyocorn, the Fly, the Heart of Charles II, Mount Menalo, the Reindeer, the Cerberus, the Goose, the Fox, the Greyhounds, the Lynx, the Lesser Lion, the Lesser Triangle, the Lucerta, the Dove, the Cross, with the term the Cloud the two clouds of Magellan, the Liocorn, the Sextant, the Shield of Sobieski, the twelve constellations of Bayer-Keyser-Houtman, the fourteen (fifteen if you credit the Musca) of Lacaille and the Solitarius of Le Monnier called in Italian the Lonely Sparrow. The reference grid is reduced to a minimum presenting only the Polar Circles, the Circles of the Tropics, the Ecliptic, the Equator. Lacking the grid for the reading of declination and right ascension, the Equator and the Ecliptic show a scale graduated in notches of one degree progressively numbered from ten to ten, the numbering of the Ecliptic starts over every 30 degrees to respect the boundaries of the zodiacal constellations. (see F. Stoppa, Atlas Colestis)

Cassini was geographer and cartographer but he was also good at engraving architectural items and perspectives – he was one of the best disciples Giovanni Battista Piranesi had. Moreover, Cassini was one of the last artists to engrave spheres in the XVIII century and his globes were quite famous and widespread, and realized the most important Italian Atlas of the XVIII century; his maps always bear a cartouche, extremely rich in colours and details.

Copperplate with fine original hand colour, some foxing, otherwise in very good condition.

The Cassini's Atlas was reprinted by the Calcografia Camerale in the first quarter of XIXth century (before 1839). Only the first edition of the atlas is printed on contemporary laid paper, while the late issue are on XIXth century paper and often without colour.

Bibliografia

M. Fiorini (1899), Sfere terrestri e celesti, pp. 442/443; Schmidt R., Sfere del cielo sfere della terra, globi celesti e terrestri dal XVI al XX secolo (catalogo della mostra), p. 49, scheda VII.69; Dekker, p. 66; Dahl & Gauvin, Sphaerae Mundi early globes at the Stewart Museum, p.131-134.