CORONELLI, Father Vincenzo, Venice & Paris, 1688/1693

Details

CORONELLI, Father Vincenzo, Venice & Paris, 1688/1693
A magnificent pair of 33-inch (84cm.) diameter facsimile library globes, signed on the meridian G & T, LONDON, after the celebrated 43-inch (110cm.) diameter pair of 1688/1693 by Vincenzo Coronelli, the terrestrial with numerous decorative cartouches including IL GENIO della virtù raccomandò all'Eternità Il Nome de CESARE, Cardinale Eminentissimo D'ESTREES Duca, e Pari di Francia, mentrefece elaborare Per LODOVICO IL MAGNO, Dal P. Coronelli Due Gran Globi, l'Idea dè quali hà poi epilogato in quefti Per L'ACCADEMIA COFMOGRAFICA DEGLI ARGONAUTI, l'Anno MDCLXXXVIII in Venezia, a further cartouche reading ALLA SERENISSIMA REPUBLICA E SERENISSIMA PRENCIPE FRENCESCO MOROSINI, DOGE DI VENETIA, Capitan Gen: de Mare, &c. F. Vincenzo Coronelli M.C. Suddito Cofmografo, è Lettore Publico, made up of two sets of twelve hand water-coloured printed gores and two polar calottes, the equatorial, tropic and polar circles and PRIMO MERIDIANO graduated in degrees, this latter running through Iceland, the ecliptic graduated in days and showing symbols and names for the houses of the Zodiac, the Pacific Ocean with two wind roses with the names of thirty-two winds in Italian, the oceans with descriptive notes, some within decorative cartouches, with historical and geographical information, numerous decorative depictions of ships and boats and marine flora and fauna, the tracks of the Viaggio di Giacomo le Maire negl'anno 1616 è 1617, col qual'hà scoper un nuouo passagiò dal Mare del Sud al Mare del Nort nicin'allo Stretto di Magaglianes in 2.anni, è 18.Giorni, and of the Viaggio fatto da Brest à Siam l'anno 1685, col Vascello da Guerra, detto l'Oiseau, di S.M. Chriftianissima marked at close intervals with daily positions, with further notes and dates, and an explanatory cartouche in the southern Indian Ocean, a cartouche in the southern Pacific Ocean entitled Delli Due Tropici detailing the findings for the demarcations of the Tropics by various famous personages including Copernicus and Regiomontanus, various sandbanks also shown, including IL GRAN BANCO off Nova Scotia, with explanatory note, the North Pole labelled POLO SETTENTRIONALE, ò BOREALE, ET ARTICO with extensive notes, the Antarctic circle labelled LA TERRA MAGELLANICA AUSTRALI, ò MERIDIONALE, et INCOGNITA, detta dalli Spagnuoli with large decorative cartouche entitled DEL STRETTO DI MAGAGLIANES and an extensive note entitled Del Sito, Distanza, Divisione, et Differenti Habitatori della Terra with one third of the projected coastline shown and various further notes, New Zealand with partial coastline shown and a note reading Scoperta dagli Medeni l'anno 1654, Tasmania with southern coastline shown and labelled TERRA D'ANTONIO DIEMENS Scoperta li 24.novembre del 1642. da Abel Tazman Holland, Madagascar labelled I DI MADAGASCAR, ò DI MADAGASE, Inc:, MEMOUTHIAS Ptol. and detta dalli Francesi, ISLE DAUPHIN Scoperta dalli Portughesi, l'anno 1506, the Maldives with ocean currents shown, various other islands with notes, the continents with numerous geographical and historical notes and details such as towns and cities, some marked to denote abbeys or cathedrals, national boundaries shown in dotted outline, rivers marked, mountains shown in pictorial relief, forests and jungles shown by groups of green trees, China showing the Great Wall, labelled Muraglia della China longa 300 leghe alta 30 Cubiti larga 12., all landmasses save Europe with numerous depictions of inhabitants, habitations and wildlife, Africa with large decorative cartouche entitled DEL FIOME NILO engraved by P. Coronelli, the Caspian Sea, shown misshapen, with note reading MARE CASPIO GUALENSKOI da Mosc. CULZUM DEGHIZ, et GHILAN DEGHIZ da Jure TEBERISTAN, ò CHOUAREZAN, et MAZABDERAN da Persiani, the North Pacific with partly projected coastline of a landmass labelled TERRE DE IESSO, ò IECO, YEDCO, ESSO, et SESSO Scoperta dagli Hollandesi, l'anno 1643 and a note entitled Della Nuoua Albione, North America with no north-west coastline, a large decorative descriptive cartouche near the North Polar circle entitled DELLO STRETTO D'ANIAN, California shown as an island with descriptive cartouche to the south-west, Australia with no eastern coastline, shown joined to New Guinea, and with various notes;
the celestial ORBISCOELESTIS TYPUS Opus a P. CORONELLI Min. Conventli. Serenissimfque Reipub Venetf Cosmogrpho Inchoatum. SOCIETATIS. GALLICÆ SUMPTIBUS Absolutum LVTETIÆ PARISORVM ANNO R.S. MDCXCIII. Delin. Arnoldus Deuvez Regiæ Acad. Pictor. Sculp. I.B. Nolin Reg. Chr. Calcographus, made up of two sets of twelve hand water-coloured printed gores and two polar calottes laid to the celestial poles, the equatorial, tropic and polar circles, equinoctial and solstitial colures all graduated in degrees, the ecliptic graduated in degrees, three further cartouches in the southern celestial hemisphere, one concerning the stellar cartography, one outlining the seven orders of magnitude of the stars and showing symbols for Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury, and for the Sun and Moon, the third cartouche entitled DE EPOCA containing an address to the reader partly concerning the cartography of the sphere and explaining that the positions of the stars are fixed for the year 1700, the constellations depicted by superlative engravings of mythical beasts, figures and objects and labelled in varying combinations of Italian, French, Latin, Arabic and Greek, some outlining the details of the major stars therein, the FIUME ERIDANO, ò PO and the FIUME GIORDANO depicted as wide green rivers with bankside flora, the stars variously labelled with Arabic numerals and/or Greek letters, with further details such as Cometa osservata à Danzica dà Hevelio dalli 20 Dece. Del 1652. Sino li 7 Gen. Del 1653. and other notes regarding comets; both spheres with brass hour dial graduated I-XII twice, with arrow pointer, the brass meridian circle engraved on one side and divided in four quadrants of 0 - 90°, the octagonal oak horizon with hand water-coloured printed paper ring in eight sections, showing altitude and azimuth, days of the houses of the Zodiac with symbols, names and decorative pictorial representations, the Gregorian and Ecclesiastical calendars shown, with dominical letters, every day with a historical note in Italian and the appropriate year, many of cartographical interest, also showing the old and new names of sixteen winds, the eight corners with a picture of two putti holding a sash in the mouth of a goat-like figure, raised on four curved barley-twist gilt wrought-iron quadrant supports to a tapering hexagonal section red-painted wrought-iron stand with extensive moulded gilt decoration in the form of bearded faces blowing gusts of wind, with six elaborate gilt lion's paw feet -- 55in.
(139.7cm.) high

See Colour Illustration and Details

Literature

DEKKER, Elly, and van der KROGT, Peter, Globes from the Western World (London, 1993)
van der KROGT, Peter, Old Globes from the Netherlands (Utrecht, 1984)
van der KROGT, Peter, Globi Neerlandici (Utrecht, 1993)
SCHMIDT, Professor Rudolf, Globe Labels: an addition to the Catalogue "The World In Your Hands" (Vienna, 1995)
WALLIS, Helen, ed., V. Coronelli Libro dei Globi 1693 (1701) (Amsterdam, 1969)
ZÖGNER, Lother, Die Welt In Händen (Berlin, 1989)

Lot Essay

Vincenzo Coronelli (1650-1718) was born in Venice, apprenticed in the art of wood-cutting, joined the Franciscan order of Conventional Friars Minor in 1665, and in 1671 entered the convent of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Friari in Venice. Around 1680 he made his first pair of 390cm. diameter manuscript globes for the library of Duke Ranuccio Farnese de Palma. These were noticed by the ambassador to the French King in the Cardinal César d'Estrées, through whose offices Coronelli was commissioned to make a similar pair of globes for Louis XIV. He remained in Paris from 1681 until 1683 to complete the pair - the famous 'Marly' globes, named for the place in which they now reside - which were an enormous 385cm. in diameter and garnered him a reputation of international renown, not only as a globe-maker of no small skill and elegance, but also as the first major manufacturer outside the Netherlands to achieve any sort of success.

It was this experience which persuaded Coronelli to set up as a manufacturer and publisher of globes and maps in a serious way. However, it took him some years to raise the necessary capital and to establish a workshop: in 1684 he founded the first geographical society in the form of the Accademia Cosmographica degli Argonauti, which was funded by subscriptions from the nobility and ecclesiastical, political and scientific elite all over Europe. These patrons were expected to subscribe to all the works Coronelli produced via the Accademia, and the organisation was managed by several offices for collection and distribution scattered throughout the continent. Coronelli then set up his workshop in the convent in 1686, and started work on his first pair of printed globes, the 110cm. diameter pair of which the pair offered here are a scaled down facsimile. A further problem which beset Coronelli, aside from the initial lack of funds and means, was the scarcity of qualified engravers in Venice. In response to this problem, Coronelli enlisted the aid of Jean-Baptiste Nolin (1657-1725), engraver to the French King, whose work on the celestial gores was at that time, and for many years subsequently, unparalleled. Italian engravers worked on the terrestrial gores in Venice, while the celestial gores were fashioned in Paris after drawings produced by Arnold Deuvez. These globes proved extremely popular and inspired Leiden professor Isaac Vossius to write to a friend in 1688: "There is a Venetian monk in Paris who makes very handsome globes out of wood, measuring three feet in diameter and this at a reasonable price, the pair for sixteen pistols. However the proportions of the lands and the seas do not correspond at all to the true size" (van der Krogt, 1993, p.301). It is certainly true that the outlines and proportions of the continents at times veer widely from our modern-day cartography, but it seems as though, in a late seventeenth-century context, that Vossius' judgement is a little harsh; in comparison with this, Helen Wallis writes of the terrestrial sphere in her introduction to the British Museum's facsimile edition of Coronelli's Libro dei Globi: "As a record of knowledge in 1688 it was remarkably authoritative. By 1707 it could hardly claim to be still the most perfect of its day" (Wallis, 1969, p.XIII). This catalogue was a further innovation of Coronelli's for the purpose of raising revenue for his globe production. First published in 1697, with subsequent revisions and further editions, it contained engraved gores, calottes and horizons for all the globe pairs - aside form the enormous 'Marly' pair - that Coronelli produced, of diameters 5, 8.5, 15, 47 and 110 cm.