Celestial globe

The work is one of a pair of globes.
See also Inv. AP IV 50

The two globes, conceived as companion pieces, were made by Vincenzo Coronelli, the famous cartographer of the Venetian Republic, geographer, biographer and encyclopaedist, founder of the Academy of the Argonauts and author, among other things, of the Atlante veneto, published between 1690 and 1695. His fame took him to Paris, where he was invited by Cardinal d’Estrées, between 1681 and 1683, to make two manuscript globes with a diameter of four metres for Louis XIV, one representing the heavens and the other representing the earth. Back in Venice, Coronelli began reproducing the two Parisian prototypes in print, creating smaller versions which circulated all over Europe. Among these were the two globes in the Vicenza Civic Art Gallery, in which the prints of the twelve time zones, divided in twenty-four, and of the polar caps are stuck onto the plaster surface of the sphere.

The first (the printed edition of 1700) shows the constellations of the two celestial hemispheres and the strip of the zodiac: it is a convex representation of the celestial sphere, a type of depiction criticised by some cosmographers of the time, who favoured the realisation of concave globes, the only ones, in their opinion, that were able to offer a correct vision of the celestial vault.

The Terrestrial globe, supported by a wooden structure similar to that of the previous sphere, represents the earth and is signed and dated 1688, but it is really the edition of 1692-1693.

The various examples of the globes, seen as luxury objects rather than instruments of study, were very successful and circulated widely.