Planisfero del mondo nuovo

Description

Printed map. "Descritto dal P. Coronelli, cosmografo publico". Includes text, "Tavola di Clavio nella sfera del Sacrobosco" [table], and illustrations of the signs of the zodiac. Described in Goss, The Mapping of North America, map 43, pp. 98-99: "By the great Venetian mapmaker and publisher Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718), founder of the world's first formally organized geographical society, the Argonauti, or Accademia Cosmografo della Serenissima, this impressive map of the western hemisphere shows North America with California as a large island off the west coast. It is an interesting mixture of fantasy and up-to-date geography: favourite fantasy of California (albeit tempered by the thought that it may be a peninsula after all), the up-to-date in the form of the latest information pertaining to the Great Lakes from the Jesuit Relations, such as the accounts of La Salle, Jolliet, Franquelin and Marquette, with its delineation of the Mississippi Valley based on La Salle and his report on the discovery of the mouth of the great river in 1682. Nevertheless, that great river is placed some six hundred miles too far to the west here. This is one of the more attractive maps of North America of the late seventeenth century, and one of the very few of any geographical importance produced in Italy at the time." Donated by Dr. Franc Joubin.