A superb, finely colored example of Coronelli's etching of HMS Royal Charles the 100-gun first-rate ship of the line launched in 1673.
The ship portrait is one of the great naval subjects that were included in Coronelli's Atlante Venento, which was published at the end of the 17th century.
The HMS Royal Charles was launched as a replacement for the original Royal Charles (1655), which was lost in the infamous Dutch Raid on the Medway.
She fought against Michiel de Ruyter's fleet at the Battle of Schooneveld. She was rebuilt at Woolwich in 1691 to '93, and renamed the HMS Queen.
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.