Disegno Idrografico del Canale Reale . . .

A decorative Coronelli map showing the Canal du Midi. It shows the extent of the canal from the Mediterranean sea at Narbonne to Toulouse. Featuring a pair of large coats of arms, an intricate and large cartouche and a numbered key with 64 places and lettered points of interest (A-O).
Places, scales of miles, mountains rendered in great detail. With a large dedication cartouche. From the: Atlante Veneto, nel quale si contiene la descrittione...degl' Imperii, Regni, Provincie, e Stati dell' Universo.

Vincenzo Coronelli (August 16th, 1650 - December 9th, 1718) was a Franciscan monk, a Venetian cosmographer, cartographer, publisher, and encyclopaedist known in particular for his atlases and globes, and who spent most of his life in Venice.
At age sixteen he published the first of his one hundred and 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.

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.
Coronelli died at the age of 68 in Venice, having created hundreds of maps in his life time.

More about Vincenzo Coronelli. [+]