Provincia di Terra di Bari

The Descrizione del Regno delle Due Sicilie, first published in 1854, is a cartographic update to the previous production of the cartographer himself.

Nonetheless, even more important in the atlas are orography, administrative division and read and train network.

The 24 maps that form the collection are therefore the most important document on Southern regions, right before Italy was unified. Eight maps depict Sicily, divided in seven provinces.

Benedetto Marzolla was draftsman topographer and lithographer, geographer and cartographer. Character of great importance in the Neapolitan and Italian cartography of the nineteenth century, Marzolla obtained during his life public recognition and certificates for the production of high quality cartography. His notoriety slowly faded after his death; it should be noted, however, that only the lack of a strong political involvement in the sense of the Risorgimento and of a literary value in his work did not make him as famous as his contemporaries Francesco Costantino Marmocchi (1805-1858) and Attilio Zuccagni-Orlandini (1783-1872), with whom he can certainly compare himself. Marzolla's cultural, didactic and editorial projects were, and remain, extraordinarily modern; he invented a new way of understanding and drawing maps, providing an absolutely original vision of the communication of geographical data through the combination of text and image. With this operation, he was able to merge in a single work, history, geography, economics, statistics and cartography, achieving a graphic balance of rare effectiveness.

Litograph with original outline colour, very good condition.

Bibliografia

Valerio, Benedetto Marzolla. Brindisino, Geografo e Cartografo dell’800 Europeo, pag. 62, n. 106; Tooley,s Dictionary, p. 216.