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The French Turn Their Eyes to Southeast Asia.
Vincenzo Maria Coronelli’s striking sea chart of 1687 traces the outward and return voyages of the first French embassy to Siam, dispatched under Louis XIV and led by Chevalier de Chaumont. The delegation sailed from Brest in March 1685, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Indian Ocean, and passed through the Sunda Strait before returning the following spring. Engraved by the Paris-based Dutchman Harmanus van Loon and printed by Jean-Baptiste Nolin, the chart merges Coronelli’s Venetian artistry with empirical data gathered by six Jesuit mathematicians who accompanied the mission.
The map’s visual scope extends from the Caribbean to the shores of New Holland, with the Indian Ocean serving as its intellectual focus. That region is framed by the Mascarenes, the Maldives, and a densely annotated Southeast Asian coastline. Along the western coast of Australia, Coronelli records early Dutch landfalls including Dirk Hartog (1616), Leeuwin (1622), de Wit (1628), and the wreck of the Batavia (1629). These notations reflect growing European knowledge of the southern hemisphere and mark the dangerous coastlines along the “Brouwer Route,” the direct sailing path from the Cape of Good Hope to Java adopted by VOC ships bound for Asia.
The embassy’s course is plotted in regular numbered segments, accompanied by dates, observational remarks, and comments on local phenomena. One entry notes, “on vit un Loup Marin” (“a sea wolf was seen”), likely a seal or sea lion, likely intended as a sign of nearby land in the remote southern ocean. The chart is among the earliest printed works to integrate magnetic declination and oceanic currents into a single navigational field. It foreshadows the methodical hydrography of the Dépôt de la Marine while preserving the theatrical flair of Baroque cartography.
The Embassy
Louis XIV dispatched the mission in pursuit of a commercial and diplomatic foothold in Southeast Asia, hoping to counter Dutch and English influence in the region. The Jesuits who accompanied the embassy were charged not only with spiritual counsel but with conducting systematic astronomical and navigational observations throughout the voyage and during their stay at Ayutthaya. Coronelli used the fathers’ daily logs, dead reckonings, and compass-variation readings to chart the route in precise detail.
Cartouche and Insets
A richly ornamented title cartouche crowns the sheet, adorned with tropical fruit and grain and flanked by allegorical cherubs. Below it are inset plans of Siam, Louvo (Lopburi), and Batavia. At the center of the African continent, Coronelli adds a trompe-l'œil tapestry bearing a view of Table Mountain and a harbor plan of Table Bay. This decorative device is surrounded by a symbolic menagerie—lion, ostrich, monkey, elephant, and gryphon—celebrating the Cape as both a pivotal station in the voyage and a storehouse of natural marvels.
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 (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.
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