Coronelli, Vincenzo Maria | A fine impression of a foundational map

Coronelli, Vincenzo Maria
America Settentrionale colle nuove scoperte fin all' anno 1688. Venice: V. M. Coronelli, [1690, or later]

Copper-engraved map (sheet size: 641 x 946 mm). On two joined sheets.

A superlative impression of Coronelli's important and innovative map.

Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, a Venetian scholar and Minorite Friar, became one of the most celebrated map and globe makers of his era. Throughout his industrious life he produced more than one-hundred terrestrial and celestial globes, several hundred maps, and a wealth of cartographic publications. In 1683, he completed the Marly Globes for Louis XIV, the largest and most magnificent globes ever made. In 1684 he founded the Academia Cosmografica degli Argonauti, the first geographical society, and was appointed Cosmographer of the Republic of Venice. He published two atlases, the Atlante Veneto (Venice, 1691) and the Isolario (1696-98), and compiled the first encyclopedia to be arranged alphabetically.

This map of North America, published in the Atlante Veneto, is widely considered to be one of Coronelli's finest maps, and is cartographically similar to the scene depicted on his famous globe of 1688. Printed initially on two separate sheets, the present example has been carefully joined to form a unified image. The map is preserved in its uncolored state, as originally intended. Beyond its attractive aesthetic, in the present map Coronelli has rendered the continent with far greater geographical detail than his contemporaries, having benefited enormously from his favor at the French court, and his publishing partnership with Paris cartographer Jean-Baptiste Nolin. The Great Lakes are executed with unrivalled accuracy, drawing on information gleaned in 1673 by the Quebecois explorer Louis Jolliet, and his traveling companion, the French-born Jesuit Jacques Marquette. The Mississippi basin is rendered with great detail, reflecting French discoveries, most notably those by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle on his first expedition of 1679-82. This map depicts La Salle's dramatic misplacement of the mouth of the Mississippi 600 miles to the west of its true location. Importantly, it is on the western portion of the map where Coronelli has added the most significant amount of new information, drawn mostly from a highly important manuscript map by Diego Dionisio de Peñalosa Briceño y Berdugo, which included numerous previously unrecorded place names and divided the Rio Grande into the Rio Norte and the Rio Bravo in the south. The most prominent geographical detail is California's appearance as a massive island, this map being one of the best renderings of this beloved misconception.

A foundational map of North America.

REFERENCE
Burden II:643; Mapping the West 43-47; Cumming 148; Leighly, California as an Island 88; Martin, Maps of Texas and the Southwest 87; McLaughlin, California as an Island 103; Phillips 795; Shirley 548; Tooley 125; Wheat I:70

Condition Report:
Condition as described in catalogue entry.