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CORONELLI, Vicenzo Maria (1650-1718). Orbis coelestis typus [title across northern gores 4 and 5]. Venice: V.M. Coronelli, 1693.
CORONELLI, Vicenzo Maria (1650-1718). Orbis coelestis typus [title across northern gores 4 and 5]. Venice: V.M. Coronelli, 1693. A set of engraved 24 half-gores and two polar calottes for a 3½ ft. diameter celestial globe, printed on thick paper (approx. 782 x 440mm; calottes 498 x 440mm). (Northern hemisphere: calotte with repaired closed tears to edges, gores 3, 4, 8 and 11 with closed tears repaired on versoes mostly in margins, gore 8 with long repaired tears with associated very minor loss; southern hemisphere: gore 3 with bottom 210mm replaced in facsimile, gores 9 and 10 with closed tears repaired on versoes mostly in margins, gore 11 with large paper repair on verso, gore 12 with marginal pinholes; some sheets with faint, insignificant marginal creasing, occasional scattered soiling, staining and spotting, mainly confined to margins.) Loose, housed in a modern half leather case (extremities rubbed, corners lightly bumped). AN EXTREMELY RARE SET OF CORONELLI CELESTIAL GORES. Vicenzo Coronelli, a Venetian monk, is the most celebrated Italian globe maker. Born in Venice and apprenticed in the art of wood-cutting, he joined the Franciscan order of Conventional Friars Minor in 1665, and in 1671 entered the convent of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Friari in Venice. Around 1680 he made his first pair of manuscript globes for the library of Duke Ranuccio Farnese de Palma. These were noticed by the ambassador to the French King in the Cardinal Csar d'Estres, through whose offices Coronelli was commissioned to make a similar pair of globes for Louis XIV. He remained in Paris from 1681 until 1683 to complete the pair - the famous 'Marly' globes, named for the place in which they now reside - which were an enormous 15 feet in diameter and garnered him a reputation of international renown, not only as a globe-maker of no small skill and elegance, but also as the first major manufacturer outside the Netherlands to achieve any sort of success. The success and acclaim that these globes brought to Coronelli, encouraged him to make a large, but reduced-size, version at 3½ foot diameter. The production of his first printed globes began in 1688. A problem which beset Coronelli, aside from the initial lack of funds and means, was the scarcity of qualified engravers in Venice. In response to this problem, Coronelli enlisted the aid of Jean-Baptiste Nolin (1657-1725), engraver to the French King, whose work on the celestial gores was at that time, and for many years subsequently, unparalleled. Italian engravers worked on the terrestrial gores in Venice, while the celestial gores were fashioned in Paris after drawings produced by Arnold Deuvez. These globes proved extremely popular, and inspired Leiden professor Isaac Vossius to write to a friend in 1688: 'There is a Venetian monk in Paris who makes very handsome globes out of wood, measuring three feet in diameter and this at a reasonable price, the pair for sixteen pistols' (van der Krogt, 1993, p.301).