ITALIAN, 17TH CENTURY

Details

A RARE 19-INCH DIAMETER TERRESTRIAL LIBRARY GLOBE
Italian, 17th Century
Ill.ⁿo et Excellent.ⁿo Principi D. IACOBO BONCAMPAGNO SORE ARCISQ DUCI, MARCHIONI VIGNOLÉ AQVINI COMITI Dno suo colend.ⁿo Matthæus Greuter humill. obseq. ergo D.D., in a decorative cartouche surmounted by two putti bearing a shield with a crown and a dragon, a wind face and two hanging garlands of fruit beneath, three further cartouches with text in Latin, one further signed Matthæus Greuter Auctor ANNO MDC XXXII, the lightly-constructed hollow sphere laid with two sets of twelve engraved half-gores and two polar calottes, the equatorial graduated in degrees, the colures at 170°E and 10°W also graduated in degrees, the prime meridian running through Fero, the ecliptic graduated in days of the houses of the Zodiac, the oceans with various wind roses and depictions of ships and sea beasts including an old bearded man playing a lyre and wearing a cloak sitting atop a whale, the continents showing rivers and desert routes, with towns and cities, mountains, forests and the Great Wall of China all shown in pictorial relief, Australia not shown, New Guinea shown as a long straight stretch of northern coastline, a long stretch of unmarked curving coastline across the southern Indian and Pacific Oceans, North America and Canada with little detail but showing some notes and a large cartouche with text in Latin, Greenland with no northern coastline, Antarctica not shown
the carved fruitwood stand with octagonal horizon, the engraved paper circle graduated in days of the houses of the Zodiac with sigils and pictures, days of the month with saint's days, and wind directions in Italian and Latin, the decorated corners each with a wind face, the horizon raised on four curved quadrant supports to a baluster-turned column with bulbous sections and a flat stepped tripod foot with three decorative scroll supports and three (of four) bun feet, repairs to the stand
44½in. (113cm) high

Literature

van der KROGT, P., Old Globes In The Netherlands (Utrecht, 1984), Gre 4-7
STEVENSON, E.L., Terrestrial and Celestial Globes, vol II (New Haven, 1921) pp.55-58

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

A very rare example of Greuter's largest terrestrial library globe. Stevenson's census in 1921 recorded 26 pairs and 15 single examples of the 19in. globes, all of which were located in Italy, except for a pair in Frankfurt and single globes in Munich, Rotterdam and two in New York. Van der Krogt's census of globes in the Netherlands adds other examples in the Rijksmuseum and two more in the Maritime Museum, Rotterdam. Stevenson, in describing the terrestrial example in the Hispanic Society of America, New York, notes that the papier-mâché ball is of very light construction (the accompanying celestial, which was made four years later, had a heavier construction) as is the case here.
Matthew Greuter was born in Strasbourg in 1566, learning engraving in that city and continuing his craft in Lyon and Avignon, and finally settled in Rome in around 1610. He began making maps and globes; for this globe he copied the terrestrial information from Bleau (for the celestial, published in 1636, he copied the work of Van den Keere and Plancius). In addition to the 49cm globes, Greuter made a smaller 26½cm diameter pair in 1638. His globes sold widely and successfully in Italy, and were republished by Rossi after 1638 and again by 1695 in Rome. In Stevenson's learned opinion "so well did he perform his work that he is entitled to rank with the leading globe makers of the Netherlands".

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