(Globo Terrestre)

An engraving, by the renowned Venetian cartographer and globe maker Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, depicting members of the nobility studying astronomy before a huge globe mounted on a Baroque stand supported by three turbaned Atlas-like monopod term figures. The details of the actual globe surface are not depicted; instead the globe is depicted schematically with lines indicating the ecliptic, equator, tropics, and polar circles suggesting either a celestial or terrestrial globe. On the pedestal beneath globe is a Latin motto: “Fictus, Aloysi, Tibi Sistitur Orbis Ab Art, Verus At Ante Pedes, Mars, Iubente, Cadet.”

The globe shown in the engraving apparently represents the celebrated Marly Globes — a pair of gigantic and elaborate terrestrial and celestial globes commissioned from Coronelli to be presented to King Louis XIV of France. Indeed, the engraving has two elaborate Baroque cartouches in French above the scene containing dedications by Coronelli to Louis XIV. One refers to the celestial globe “where all the stars of the firmament and the planets are themselves placed, where they were at the birth of this glorious monarch.” The other refers to the terrestrial globe that would “pay a continual tribute to his glory, and to his heroic virtues, by showing the countries, or a thousand great actions [that] were executed” by him. A third elaborate Baroque cartouche — in Italian — has additional dedications to Coronelli’s patron Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, Viceroy of Aragon and Naples, with reference to Cardinal César Duke d’Estrée, the French ambassador to Rome who paid Coronelli to make the Marly globes.

Example taken form Corenelli’s Atlante Veneto, Nel quale si contiene la Descrittione Geografica, Storica, Sacra, Profana e Politica degli Imperi, Regni, Provincie, e Santi dell’Universo […] In Venetia MDCXC.

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.

The work was intended as an extension of Blaeu’s Atlas Maior. It is no mere collection of maps, but rather “a compendium of geographical, cosmographical, and scientific information... on contemporary Italian science and geography” (Scammell). As well as maps, the first volume includes several of Coronelli’s celebrated naval plates, many with the separately-printed “Farnese” borders especially commissioned by Coronelli’s patron, Ranuccio II Farnese, Duke of Parma.

Copperplate, with full margins, very good condition. Very rare.

Literature

Ermanno Armao, Vincenzo Coronelli (Florence, 1944), no.59, no.60 and p.237.