Giovanni Antonio Magini (1555–1617), a Bolognese mathematician and astronomer, is remembered today for producing the first printed atlas devoted entirely to Italy. He began work in 1594, assembling the best available regional surveys and correcting them with the aid of local knowledge and patronage. Financing the project required years of persistence: Magini taught the son of the Duke of Mantua and secured contributions from the peninsula’s ruling families, who were eager to see their territories mapped with precision.
The atlas plates were engraved primarily in Bologna, first by the Arnoldi brothers and later, after their departure, by the English engraver Benjamin Wright, who completed eleven sheets. Although Magini died before publication, his son, Fabio, oversaw the final stages, and the completed atlas appeared in 1620 under the title Italia, printed by Sebastiano Bononi. It includes a general map of Italy followed by sixty detailed copper-engraved maps covering the provinces from Piedmont to Sicily, with an extraordinary density of toponyms.
Magini’s Italia marked a turning point in Italian cartography. It displaced the composite Lafreri-style sheets of the sixteenth century, provided a model for later mapmakers such as Hondius and Blaeu, and stood as the most detailed printed survey of the peninsula for much of the seventeenth century.
