Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718). America Settentrionale Colle Nuoue Scoperte sin all’Anno 1688. (Venice: 1688). Published in Atlante Veneto. Copperplate engraving with superb, full original hand color. 23 ¾ x 34 ¾ in. at neat line. Sheet: 24 1/4 x 36 ¼ in. Elaborate title cartouche at u/l corner. 2 stains at upper & lower left portions. Shrink wrapped. Overall, very fine example.
$15,000.00
Coronelli’s Influential Map of North America with California as an Island
Coronelli, a Venetian friar and cosmographer for the Republic of Venice, was one of the most eminent geographers of his time, producing more than 400 maps and 50 globes. His work is notable for its high standards of engraving and use of up-to-date reports, evident in the magnificent large map of North America offered here.
In the eastern part of the map, Coronelli assimilates important information on the Mississippi and Great Lakes regions from the explorations of Jolliet (1673), Marquette (1673), and La Salle (1682), thus making his treatment of the American interior the most accurate on a general map of the seventeenth century. Even more significant is the new information occurring in the depiction of New Mexico and the Southwest on the western part of the map. For this data, Coronelli drew heavily on a small manuscript map of the Rio Grande by Diego Penalosa, a former governor of New Spain. “Coronelli must have instantly recognized its importance,” writes Cohen of the Penalosa map, since New Spain was “an area little known beyond the Spanish authorities.” From Penalosa, Coronelli gleaned numerous place names and divided the Rio Grande into north and south branches. The oversized depiction of insular California is based on the shape popularized by Sanson in his Le Nouveau Mexique, et La Floride, although Coronelli notes on his map that it may actually be a peninsula.
The map is enhanced by numerous vignettes derived from De Bry, such as the killing of alligators (misplaced in the central Mississippi Valley) and the construction of a dugout. Overall, a fine and very beautiful example of this influential map of North America, which provided a much-copied prototype for cartographers during the next fifty years.
Refs.: Cohen, Mapping the West, pp. 43–47 (illus.); Cumming, The Exploration of North America, p. 148 (illus.); Leighly, California as an Island, no. 88; McLaughlin, California as an Island, 103 (illus.); Phillips, Atlases, 521; Tooley, California as an Island, no. 57, plate 25; Wheat, vol. I, no. 70, p. 45.
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