Scolari World Map, 1662

SCOLARI, Stefano (1612-1691), after ARNOLDI, Arnoldo di (d. 1602).
Descrittione Universale Della Terra Con L'Uso Del Navigare, Novame Accresciuta.
Engraved map on 10 sheets, joined. Venice: Scolari, 1662.
41 1/4" x 72 3/4" visible, 48" x 81" framed.

VERY RARE map of the world originally published by Arnolodi di Arnoldi in Siena, 1600 and then later by Petrucci in 1640. This is the third and final edition by Scolari in 1662. Only one other copy of this map can be found: Dresden, Saxon State Library - State and University Library Dresden (SLUB). John Rennie Short description: "At the end of the 16th century the Dutch had extended their colonial control and commercial capitalism around the world. Their global reach is evident in the cities they founded, New York, Cape Town and Batavia (Jakarta) This commercial world centered around Amsterdam which grew as a center for the map and globe trade in the early years of the 17th century war. Peter Plancius (1552-1622) was an important globe maker from Antwerp who settled in Amsterdam, He was a cartographer to the Dutch East India company from 1602 to 1619, which gave him access to immense range of new geographical knowledge His 1592 wall map was based on thee ne geographical awareness based on Maps from the Spanish and Portuguese . It I sth3e form of a Mercator projection so the world is displayed as a flat square object. This projection exaggerates the size of the polar regions and reduces the relative size of the tropical areas. However, it has the advantage of laying out h entire world on a flat surface. It implies global perspective as befits global commercial empire, His cartographic masterpiece was repeatedly copied Before the invention of copyright or intellectual property law, good maps were freely copied, appropriated and redone. It was form of flattery. This 1662 version was bases on Plancius’s 1592 map. It was only slightly revise in a 1600 edition and again in 1640. It depicts the world laid flat centered on north west Europe. The map expresses a European ordering and understanding of the world."The present map was based on Petrus Plancius' hugely important 1592 wall map of the world, Nova et Exacta Terrarum Orbis Tabula Geographica Ac Hydrographica. At the time, Plancius was the official cartographer for the Dutch East India Company (VOC), a position that gave him unparalleled access to cutting edge geographical knowledge. His special access is on display in the wall map, which, although based on Mercator's map of 1569, also derived information from exceptionally-closely-guarded Portuguese cartography in the form of a manuscript map by Pedro de Lemos.Arnoldi replicates the Plancius mapping without updating to account for the important explorations of the 1590s, although he did include scant modifications on the central and southern American Atlantic coast. The Americans, India, and some of the Far East are well rendered, while the Chinese coast and Japan are poorly understood. Aronldi has also done away with the southern polar projection inset, choosing only to show the four-part arctic.Roberto Almagia, the great Italian map scholar of the early 20th Century, believed that the map was also influenced by cartographic updates which first appeared in De Jode's 1593 Speculum Orbis Terrarum. Almagia also postulates that the De Jodes may have created a wall map of the world which pre-dated the Plancius, which no longer survives. Stefano Scolari was active between 1644 and 1687. He was a designer, engraver and editor from Brescia, although he practiced his trade in Venice. His shop, in S. Zulian under the sign of the Three Virtues, was one of the best known in seventeenth-century Venice. He engraved, printed, and traded in prints, particularly, maps. He specialized in the re-issue of important maps like this one.Arnoldi was a Belgian artist, who worked extensively in Italy, first with Giovanni Magini in Bologna, and later in Siena with Matteo Florimi. Arnoldi is known primarily from two printed world maps -- the present wall map and a reduced two-sheet version of it - and a set of continents, all of which were published by Florimi.Almagia, Il Planisfero di Arnoldo de Arnoldi, 1600. Pubblicazioni dell’Instituto di Geografia della R. Universita di Roma, Rome, 1934; Robert Duowma, Catalogue 22, 1979, item 100, with Petrucci imprint dated “164-”; Shirley 227, plate 182 (1640 state illustrated), RR.