Piano Topografico di Sebastopoli e Suoi Contorni

Topographic map of Sevastopol during the Russo-Turkish War of 1855. Sevastopol founded in 1784 on the initiative of Prince G.A. Potëmkin on the site of the Tatar village of Achiar, near ancient Chersoneso Taurica. Fortified, it was a base of the Russian Black Sea Navy and, after 1808 and until 1890, a trading port. During the Crimean War, the city, in Russian hands, was besieged by the Anglo-French, who, despite suffering heavy losses due to a cholera epidemic and the poor conduct of operations, managed to enter it on September 11 and 12, 1855, after 340 days of siege, costing both armies very heavy losses.

Map taken from the Atlante geografico. Corredato di notizie relative alla geografia fisica politica, ed in generale alla statistica delle varie regioni del Globo. Compilato ed eseguito in litografia per cura e sotto la direzione di Benedetto Marzolla published in Naples in 1856.

“Marzolla showed a marked attention to international politico-military events and in particular to the question of the East and the Russo-Turkish war, aware of the importance of that conflict for European diplomacies as well as for the armies and new territorial arrangements that would be created. Between 1854 and 1855, he published no less than five maps relating to the Crimea and a view of the Sevastopol fortress. First, he printed a small map of the peninsula, which was followed by La città ed il porto di Sebastopoli and a splendid bird's-eye view of the city and its inlet, the latter two attached to a 29-page pamphlet entitled Notizie su Sebastopoli published in September 1854 by the Tipografia del Re al Ministero dell’Interno. Also appearing in 1855 a map showing the Accampamenti, trinceramenti, ed operazioni di assedio... nella parte sud di Sebastopoli, the Piano topografico di Sebastopoli e suoi contorni and a Crimea o Penisola Taurica to serve for his Atlante Geografico. No other country, which was not directly involved in military action in the Russo-Turkish War, paid as much attention as the Kingdom of Naples to that political and military event, through Marzolla's information activity, which was interrupted only when Ferdinand II, annoyed by the coalition's victorious intervention on the Crimean front, ordered that anyone who spoke or wrote about the victories of the Western Allies over the Russians be imprisoned” (cfr. Valerio, Benedetto Marzolla Brindisino, Geografo e Cartografo dell’800 Europeo, p. 35).

Marzolla, author of important atlases on the provinces of the Kingdom of Naples, is also the author of several maps on the Ecclesiastical Circumscriptions in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, published posthumously in the same year of his death (1858) in Naples in the Stabilimento Geografico directed by Luigi Manzella.

Benedetto Marzolla was draftsman topographer and lithographer, geographer and cartographer. Personality 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.

Benedetto Marzolla is famous for being among the most important cartographers of the XIX century, for being the one to print geographic maps using high quality lithographies.

His Atlante Geografico, made of 58 maps, presents finely sketched works. Six maps depict North America, among them famous map of gold diggers in California, deriving from Hippolite Ferry. Extremely relevant are also the maps of Antarctic, South Africa with the plan of Cape Town and those about Australia.

Though the maps are dated between 1843 and 1856, this 1858 edition, printed in Naples at the Stabilimento Geografico Strada San Carlo (founded by Marzolla himself), represents the final version of his atlas, the last one before his death. A posthumous edition will be published in 1865.

The atlas is pretty rare, is not actually listed in Phillips, British Library e OCLC. 

Beautiful specimen with contemporary outline coloring, in excellent condition.

Bibliografia

V. Valerio, Benedetto Marzolla Brindisino, Geografo e Cartografo dell’800 Europeo (2008), p. 206, n. 127.