Nice example of Coronelli's important map of Japan and Korea, published in Venice.
Ezo named 'Tartari de Yupi'. In the sea between Japan and Korea is a vignette of a boat described as a Japanese vessel capable of crossing the 220 French miles between Osaka and Nagasaki in twelve days. Coronelli drew this information from Montanus who erroneously attributes the ship to Japan, when in fact it was Korean.
Cortazzi in Isles of Gold states:
Mention must also be made of another seventeenth-century map, namely that published by the Venetian cartographer Vincenzo Maria Coronelli in 1692... Coronelli used Dutch mariners' charts as well as Jesuit sources. Honshu is depicted on the lines adopted by Martini, but mountain ranges are delineated pictorially. ... In the Sea of Japan a somewhat Italianate vessel with a large bank of twenty oars is afloat. It is described as being used on the route from Nagasaki to Osaka, a distance which it is said to travel in twelve days.
Coronelli was possibly the best Italian mapmaker of his time. He made globes, including one 5 meters in diameter for Louis XIV. From Coronelli's rare Atlante Veneto, one of the most decorative and ornate of all 17th century atlases.
The map exhibits the fine engraving style of this coveted Venetian Atlas.
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.