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Description

Fine example of the second edition Johann Baptiste Nolin and Vincenzo Maria Coronelli's important map of North America.

With the agreement of Coronelli (who receives credit in the title), Nolin issued this single sheet map of North America. While it is drawn from Coronelli's 2 sheet map of North America dated 1688, Coronelli's map did not appear in his Atlante Veneto until 1691. Cartographically, the depcition of the Great Lakes is the most advanced to date, drawing on information from the explorations of Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette. The Mississippi basin reflects the French discoveries of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle on his first expedition of 1679-82. This map depicts La Salle's misplacement of the mouth of the Mississippi, which he located some 600 miles to the west of its true location.

In the West, the map contributes a significant amount of new information, drawn mostly from the manuscript map drawn by Diego Dionisio de Peñalosa Briceño y Berdugo, which included numerous previously unrecorded place names and divided the Rio Grande into the Rio Norte and the Rio Bravo in the south. The manuscript map was prepared by Peñalosa between 1671 and 1687, as part of his attempts to interest the French King Louis XIV in a military expedition against New Spain. The most prominent geographical detail of the map is California's appearance as a massive island, this map being one of the best renderings of this beloved misconception.

Nolin's map is not an exact copy of Coronelli's map, these changes are most noteworthy in the Hudson's Bay region, where new place names have been added. Offered here in the second state (c1690), with the additional credit to Jean Nicolas de Tralage, Sieur Tillemon. The example offered here includes an extrarodinary original color cartouche, a very unusual feature with Nolin's maps. The first two states (pre-1704) of the map are quite rare, with no examples appearing in dealer catalogues since 1993 (Suarez).

Condition Description
Cartouche in full original color
Reference
Burden 656 (State 2).
Vincenzo Maria Coronelli Biography

Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718) was one of the most influential Italian mapmakers and was known especially for his globes and atlases. The son of a tailor, Vincenzo was apprenticed to a xylographer (a wood block engraver) at a young age. At fifteen he became a novice in a Franciscan monastery. At sixteen he published his first book, the first of 140 publications he would write in his lifetime. The order recognized his intellectual ability and saw him educated in Venice and Rome. He earned a doctorate in theology, but also studied astronomy. By the late 1670s, he was working on geography and was commissioned to create a set of globes for the Duke of Parma. These globes were five feet in diameter. The Parma globes led to Coronelli being named theologian to the Duke and receiving a bigger commission, this one from Louis XIV of France. Coronelli moved to Paris for two years to construct the King’s huge globes, which are 12.5 feet in diameter and weigh 2 tons.

The globes for the French King led to a craze for Coronelli’s work and he traveled Europe making globes for the ultra-elite. By 1705, he had returned to Venice. There, he founded the first geographical society, the Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti and was named Cosmographer of the Republic of Venice. He died in 1718.

Jean-Baptiste Nolin Biography

Jean-Baptiste Nolin (ca. 1657-1708) was a French engraver who worked at the turn of the eighteenth century. Initially trained by Francois de Poilly, his artistic skills caught the eye of Vincenzo Coronelli when the latter was working in France. Coronelli encouraged the young Nolin to engrave his own maps, which he began to do. 

Whereas Nolin was a skilled engraver, he was not an original geographer. He also had a flair for business, adopting monikers like the Geographer to the Duke of Orelans and Engerver to King XIV. He, like many of his contemporaries, borrowed liberally from existing maps. In Nolin’s case, he depended especially on the works of Coronelli and Jean-Nicholas de Tralage, the Sieur de Tillemon. This practice eventually caught Nolin in one of the largest geography scandals of the eighteenth century.

In 1700, Nolin published a large world map which was seen by Claude Delisle, father of the premier mapmaker of his age, Guillaume Delisle. Claude recognized Nolin’s map as being based in part on his son’s work. Guillaume had been working on a manuscript globe for Louis Boucherat, the chancellor of France, with exclusive information about the shape of California and the mouth of the Mississippi River. This information was printed on Nolin’s map. The court ruled in the Delisles’ favor after six years. Nolin had to stop producing that map, but he continued to make others.

Calling Nolin a plagiarist is unfair, as he was engaged in a practice that practically every geographer adopted at the time. Sources were few and copyright laws weak or nonexistent. Nolin’s maps are engraved with considerable skill and are aesthetically engaging.

Nolin’s son, also Jean-Baptiste (1686-1762), continued his father’s business.