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Description

Coronelli's Suite of Double-Sheet Continents in his Most Important Atlas.

Coronelli’s work “is more than a collection of maps… it is a compendium of geographical, cosmographical, and scientific information… on contemporary Italian science and geography" -- The World Encompassed

First volume. 46 double-page engraved maps and plates, 20 full-page or vignette maps and plates. Half-title; full-page engraved device with the imprint of the Argonauti dated “1691”; engraved title; engraved “gli Argonauti” plate; engraved portrait of Morosini; engraved dedication to the same (with text continuing in letterpress on verso); letterpress text.

Folio, 19x14 inches, early full vellum, spine in seven compartments separated by raised bands, lettering piece in the second.

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.