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Description

Finely colored pair of Celestial Globe Gores, prepared for Vincenzo Maria Coronelli's monumental 42 inch celestial globe.

The sheets include the northern hemisphere (sheet nine with Hercules), and the southern hemisphere (sheet nine with Ophiuchus, Serpent and Scorpion). These gores were part of a set of 24, which make up Coronelli's largest commercially published celestial globe produced at the request of Coronelli’s Accademia Cosmografica. The copper plates used to make these gores were designed by Arnold Deuvez and engraved by Jean-Baptiste Nolin in 1693 in Paris.

These 1693 plates were a revision of those which Coronelli used in 1688 in Venice. At the time, Coronelli’s 1688 globe was the largest and most accurate celestial globe in Europe. The Latin and French legends distinguish this 1693 Paris reprint from the 1688 Venetian gores, which were in Italian. These 2 beautiful gores were printed in the 19th Century using the actual 1693 Parisian plates.

 

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.