Celebrating the Military Successes Against the Ottoman Turks in the Region
Detailed map of a portion of the the Coast of the Adriatic, including parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzagovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Macedonia, published by Coronelli.
The map includes an elegant cartouche and an multiple coats of arms of the various regions. Extends east to the region drained by the Drino River.
The map includes a number of references to successful military battles fought by the Venetian Republic against the Ottoman Turks in the region. The map was produced during the Venetian-Turkish war for Morea (1683-1699). The map includes short descriptions of regions with statistics for the number of orthodox, catholic and Muslim homes in the region.
Within the Venetian owned territory administrative organization boundaries are indicated. The relief is only sporadically denoted by lines of shaded hills unable to feature real characteristics of the geographic area.
A baroque cartouche in the lower left corner of the map contains the title.
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.