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Scarce portrait of Ferdinand Charles, Archduke of Austria, engraved by Vincenzo Coronelli at the end of the 17th-century and originally appearing in his Atlante Veneto. The portrait is surrounded by leaves showing the genealogical tree of his family, traced back to pre-Carolingian times, and is above a composite coat of arms that includes the insignia of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Ferdinand Charles died many years before this portrait was published, although his daughter would marry current Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, making his genealogical history relevant. He was known as an absolutist ruler who wasted vast sums of money on his courtly lifestyle, especially regarding his love of Austria.
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, the double-printed maritime images 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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