Vincenzo Coronelli (
August 16,
1650 -
December 9,
1718) was a
Franciscan monk, a
Venetian cosmographer,
cartographer, publisher, and encyclopedist known in particular for his
atlases and
globes, and who spent most of his life in
Venice.
Vincenzo Coronelli, from the frontispiece of the folio edition of Atlante Veneto
Biography
Vincenzo Coronelli was born, probably in Venice, August 15, 1650, the fifth child of a
Venetian tailor named Maffio Coronelli. At ten, young Vincenzo was sent to the city of
Ravenna and was apprenticed to a
xylographer. In 1663 he was accepted into the
Conventual Franciscans, becoming a
novice in 1665. At age sixteen he published the first of his one hundred forty separate works. In 1671 he entered the Convent of Saint Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, and in 1672 Coronelli was sent by the order to the
College of Saint Bonaventura and Saints Apostoli in
Rome where he earned his doctor’s degree in
theology in 1674. He excelled in the study of both
astronomy and
Euclid. A little before 1678, Coronelli began working as a
geographer and was commissioned to make a set of terrestrial and celestial
globes for
Ranuccio II Farnese, Duke of Parma. Each finely crafted globe was five feet in diameter (c. 175cm) and so impressed the Duke that he made Coronelli his theologian. Coronelli's renown as a theologian grew and in 1699 he was appointed Father General of the Franciscan order.
Globes for Louis XIV
The terrestrial and celestial globes Coronelli made for Louis XIV.
Cardinal
César d'Estrées, friend and adviser to
Louis XIV and ambassador to Rome, saw the Duke of Parma’s globes and invited Coronelli to Paris in 1681 to construct a pair of globes for the
Most Christian King. Coronelli moved to the French capital in 1681, where he lived for two years. Each globe was composed of spindles of bent timber about ten feet long and four inches broad at the equator. This wood was then coated with a layer of plaster about an inch thick and covered in a layer of strong unfinished fabric. This was then wrapped in a quarter-inch layer of two very fine fabrics which provided backing for the painted information of the globes. These globes, measuring 384cm in diameter and weighing approximately 2 tons, are displayed in the
Bibliothèque nationale François Mitterrand in Paris.
Later life
thumb|left|Venetian citadel of [[Koroni|Coron in Greece]]
Due to his renown he worked in various European countries in the following years, permanently returning to
Venice in 1705. In Venice he started his own cosmographical project and published the volumes of
Atlante Veneto. In his home city he founded the very first geographical society, the
Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti. He also held the position of Cosmographer of the Republic of Venice. Later six volumes of the
Biblioteca Universale Sacro-Profana were published by Coronelli. This was a kind of
encyclopedia, its compiled entries were ordered alphabetically.
Coronelli died at the age of 68 in Venice, having created hundreds of maps in his lifetime. Original globes by Coronelli are today located in several collections. Pairs of his most famous large (c. 110 cm diameter) globes are e.g. in the
Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, in the
National Library of Austria and in the
Globe Museum in Vienna, in the library of
Stift Melk, as well as in
Trier,
Prague,
Paris,
London,
Washington D.C.. Having been restored and completed, another 1688 terrestrial globe is displayed at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library of
Texas Tech University in
Lubbock, Texas. The Ransom Center at The University of Texas in Austin has a pair of Coronelli globes both the 1688 Terrestrial and the Celestial (n.d.).
The International Coronelli Society for the Study of Globes, founded 1952 in Vienna, is named in Coronelli's honor.
Selected maps
- 1696-97 Isolario dell' Atlante Veneto
- 1692 Corso geografico universale
- 1693 Epitome Cosmografica
Partial bibliography
- Morea, Negroponte & Adiacenze (1686).
- Atlante Veneto (1691 - 1696).
- Ritratti de celebri Personaggi (1697).
- Lo Specchio del Mare (1698).
- Singolarità di Venezia (1708-1709).
- Roma antico-moderna (1716).
