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Great decorative image showing a Venetian Galleon at the height of the Italian city state's naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. Engraved by one of the great Italian cartographers of the 17th century, Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, this work first appeared in his Atlante Veneto.
The image of the ship is masterfully engraved and shows a massive naval vessel setting out on a calm Mediterranean sea. The stern of the ship contains ornate designs displaying numerous balconies and more. Out of the sides of the ship radiate dozens of canons. Coats of arms and more are shown. A massive banner reads "Idrograpfia" or "Hydrography."
The image served as a kind of half-title before the "Idrografia, Overo Descrittione Generale..." section of the Atlante Veneto.
Coronelli's Atlante Veneto was intended to accompany Blaeu's Atlas Maior and contained abundant maps. However, due to the idiosyncratic nature of the publication of the book, images of Coronelli's ships are rarer today than his maps are.
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.
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