[Australia]

Rare gore by Vincenzo Coronelli of the north eastern coast of Australia, the southern portion of Tasmania and New Guinea. This gore is one of three which makes up the Australian continent on Coronelli’s massive world globe. The cartography is based on the discoveries made by Abel Tasman and other Dutch navigators up 1644.

Coronelli a Francisian priest and mathematician was also one of Italy’s most famous cartographers and globe-makers, having constructed a pair of enormous hand drawn globes for Louis XIV. These were over fifteen feet in diameter (4.5m) and large enough to hold up to thirty people via a special door. These hand crafted made to order globes, were only afforded by the wealthy, Coronelli consequently printed a set of twelve gores which first appeared in his book, Libro dei Globi (Book of Globes) in 1697. These twelve printed gores were then able to be made up to a smaller more affordable 1.1m in diameter, still a very large globe. 

The gore offered here is from his rare second edition of Coronelli’s major book of globes, Globi Differenti del P.Coronelli, published 1in 1701 . In this work Coronelli used the original plates (1697). The gore is on watermarked paper consistent with paper he used in 1693-1696. Coronelli used the original plates of his 1692-1693 terrestrial globes, yet masked parts so they could fit into atlas form. For this reason this gore has visible plate marks on only three sides.

This rare gore is a monument to this major figure in late seventeenth-century European cartograph and how he recorded the southern continent.

From Coronelli, Atlante Veneto, nel quale si contiene la descrittione geografica, storica, sacra, profana e politica degl’imperii, regni, provincie e stati dell’universo, loro divisione e confini, coll’aggiunta di tutti li paesi nuovamente scoperti, accresciuto di molte tavole non più pubblicate….