Nuova California (Stati Uniti dell'America Settentrionale)

This is the scarce 1851 Benedetto Marzolla map of the American West highlighting the gold-producing region of California. It was drawn to capitalize on global fascination with the American West that exploded with the news of the Gold Rush - which this map was calculated to address and amplify.

Marzolla's map is derived from the 1850 map of Hypolite Ferry, a Parisian geographer who produced the first gold-rush description of California published in France. Ferry based his map on the maps of Duflot Du Mofras and General Fremont, adding contemporary Gold Rush era cartographic details. Ferry's original edition of the map was relatively sparse, with Marzolla adding substantial notes and an inset of the Monterey & San Francisco Bay area. The map is surrounded on two sides by extensive text in Italian. The map lists Indian Tribes, exploration notes, early roads, towns, rivers, mountain, gold regions, forts, etc. A French Colony is noted north of the Umpqua River.

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, 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. This very scarce and attractive map, issued quite remarkably in Naples, provides clear evidence of how international a phenomenon the California Gold Rush was. Wheat states: "The map... extends east as far as Santa Fe and north as far as the French Canadian Colony on the Willamette River." The inset map "Carta particolare delle baie di Monterey e di San Francisco...” shows the bay regions of San Francisco and Monterey. There is descriptive and historical text at left side and bottom of map. "This map is based largely on 1850-Ferry, and contains considerable textual matter under the following heads: Notizie fisiche e prodotti naturali; Abitanti naturali del paese; Divisione amministrative e città principali; Cenno storico; Popolazione" -

Bibliografia

V. Valerio, Benedetto Marzolla Brindisino, Geografo e Cartografo dell’800 Europeo (2008).; Wheat. C. Maps of the California Gold Region, n. 191; Wheat, C. Transmississippi West n. 714.