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Sea of Korea named.
An uncommon Italian map of Asia, engraved in Venice by Giovanni Valerio Pasquali in 1807.. Though nominally updated by “new astronomical observations,” the map reflects the lingering conservatism of Venetian cartography in the early 19th century, long past the city’s golden age of geographic innovation.
Much of the interior geography—particularly in Siberia, Mongolia, and Tibet, remains derivative of 18th-century sources, with speculative features such as the “Deserto di Coby” and vaguely defined ranges in “Tartaria Russiense.” In contrast to contemporary French and British maps of the period, which were increasingly based on naval surveys and colonial exploration, Pasquali’s work lingers in the decorative and schematic tradition of earlier Enlightenment atlases.
Of particular note is the body of water east of the Korean peninsula, here labeled M. di Corea (Sea of Korea) rather than the more familiar Sea of Japan.
The overall effect is one of an atlas map caught between scientific aspiration and stylistic inertia. Venice, once a center of cartographic excellence during the age of Ramusio and Gastaldi, appears here as a publisher of derivative and somewhat outdated work, attractive in execution but increasingly peripheral to the great mapping enterprises of Napoleonic and imperial Europe.
![(Mercator-Hondius Asia) A Leaf from the Mercator-Hondius World Atlas Edition of 1619 with an Essay by Norman J. W. Thrower [with map:] Asia ex magna orbis terre description Gerardi Mercatoris desumpta studio et industria G.M. Iunioris.](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/101528.jpg)
