Isola del Giappone e Penisola di Corea

Beautiful map of Japan and Korea, elegantly drawn by Vincenzo Coronelli.

The title is contained in a floral cartouche with a dedication to Fontaine.

Coronelli's map of Japan is among the most distinctive maps produced in the 17th century. It introduces unique new cartographic knowledge derived from the most up-to-date Jesuit sources. Coronelli had access to Dutch maritime charts, which he supplemented with material from the French Jesuits, with whom he maintained strong ties-note the Jesuit seal in the dedicatory cartouche. The Jesuits were the only Europeans who had access to first-hand knowledge about Japan, so any cartographer who wanted to produce a credible chart had to acknowledge their work. The coastlines are drawn based on Martini's 1655 map of China. A magnificent rowing galley-attributed to the Japanese, but actually Korean- plies the sea between Japan and the mainland. An interesting note, placed under a rowing vessel called Tayfena, describes how this vessel was able to cover the distance between Osaka and Nagasaki (220 French miles) in 12 days.

The map is taken from Corso geografico universale, o sia la terra divisa nelle sue parti e subdistinta ne' suoi gran regni. Esposta in tavole geografiche ricorrette et accresciute di tutte le nuove scoperte, ad uso dell'Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti dal Padre Maestro Vincenzo Coronelli M. C. Cosmografo della Serenissima Republica di Venetia. Dedicata alla Santità di Nostro Signore Innocenzo XII. P. I. In Venetia, a spese dell'autore. MDCXCII.

Coronelli lived a period of extraordinary editorial fecundity starting from 1689, when he had the chair of geography at the University at the Procuratie, with the publication, in 1690, of the first volume of the Atlante Veneto. Under the name of Atlante Veneto goes the entire collection of thirteen works composed over the next decade, from the Isolario to the Specchio del mare. In reality, only some of these works can be defined as atlas, and are of very unequal value, since we go from original and fundamental works such as those mentioned or the Corso Geografico to works of compilation or simple collections of views. The Corso Geografico came out in several editions with different numbers of maps - sixty-eight maps in 1689-92; one hundred and seventy-three maps in 1692; two hundred and sixty maps in 1694-97 - which were also sold separately, at the rate of six a month for two years. The maps were alle engraved between 1688 and 1692 in the well-equipped cartographic workshop of the Frari convent, where foreign engravers also worked. 

“Father Vincenzo Coronelli (1650-1718) was a prolific Venetian map and globe maker who became cosmographer to the Republic of Venice in 1685. Working in Paris in 1681 to 1683, Coronelli produced a pair of globes with a diameter of 3.85 metres for King Louis XIV; the pair survives (restored) still.

Valerio (1999) writes that "... (based on) the bulk of his cartographic output, Coronelli could be compared to Blaeu, Janssonius, Homann or Sanson Likewise, Coronelli's statement, in the frontispiece of the first volume of the Isolario, that he has carried out the work 'for better clarification and use in navigation and supplementary to the 14 volumes of Blaeu'."

In a biography published in Rome in 1951, the authors summarized Coronelli's life work as follows:

...attività febbrile e immensa produzione, di storia, di scienzia e di cultura - per lo più bene aggiornata e non superficiale - fu quella di Coronelli, con molte doti di valore scientifico, di genialità, e di utilità pubblica. In un trentennio di effetiva e più intensa attività literaria, tolti pochi anni di sosta o de minore applicazione, egli potè comporre e stampare, o anche progettare lasciando numerosi manoscritti, un complesso di circa 150 opere divise in oltre 300 volumi, con 65,000 pagine di testo e circa 11,000 tavole illustrative.

[Coronelli's life was (characterized by his) feverish activity and enormous historical, scientific and cultural output, on the whole updated and thorough. (He had) genius, many talents of value to science and for the benefit of mankind. In three decades of intense literary activity, with hardly a slowdown or break he was able to write and have printed, a sum of 150 works divided into 300 volumes totalling 65,000 pages of text and nearly 11,000 illustrations, as well as having left a number of manuscripts.].

This map was first included in the Corso Geografico Universale (1692 to 1694) in 1692.

The map is found equally with, or without, text on verso and was re-published in the Epitome Cosmografica... 1693; Isolario Descrittione Geografico... 1696 as well as in the second volume of the Atlante Veneto, 1696.“ (Hubbard "Japoniae Insulae – The Mapping of Japan", p. 257).

Copper engraving in perfect condition.

Bibliografia:

Hubbard "Japoniae Insulae – The Mapping of Japan", pp. 257-258, n. 57; Cortazzi “Isles of Gold”, p. 48. pl. 75; Campbell, #33; Walter “Japan a Cartographic vision” 191.