Tag: Coronelli

The Useless Grandeur of Coronelli’s Great Globes

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Constructed in the 1680s for Louis XIV, and measuring nearly four metres in diameter and weighing a couple of tons apiece, Vincenzo Coronelli’s great globes “are a simply amazing celestial and terrestrial pair,” writes Matthew Edney, who saw them at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 2019. But, he goes on to say,

[T]he globes were effectively useless. Their imposing grandeur made them completely the wrong size to be used effectively. Smaller globes—made with diameters between 0.075–1.7m (3–67″)—could be easily turned to show specific parts of their convex surface. Or, people could enter within much larger globes, called georamas, turning themselves around as necessary to see all parts of the earth on the concave interior surface. Coronelli’s globes were far too large for the former, and far too small for the latter.

This unavoidable reality inverted the usual physical relationship between viewers and globes, undermining the viewer’s usual sense of intellectual domination and converting the globe-viewing experience to one of awe and amazement. As a result, no-one really knew quite what to do with them[.]

Their difficult size and limited utility is why they’ve spent most of their 340-year existence hidden from view, though they’ve been on display since 2005 at the BNF’s François-Mitterrand site (see the above BNF video, in French).

Miscellaneous Globes

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Random and miscellaneous globe items:

Roy Frederic Heinrich, "James Wilson, the Vermont globe-maker, Bradford, Vermont, 1810." Library of Congress.
Roy Frederic Heinrich, illustration of James Wilson, n.d. Library of Congress.

James Wilson was America’s first globe maker; his Bradford, Vermont-based globe factory opened in 1813. Geolounge points to the above illustration of Wilson, undated but from the early 20th century, by Roy Frederic Heinrich.

Dennis Townsend, "Townsend's Patent Folding Globe," 1869. Norman B. Leventhal Map Center.
Dennis Townsend, “Townsend’s Patent Folding Globe,” 1869. Norman B. Leventhal Map Center.

The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center: “Dennis Townsend, a Vermont schoolteacher, created this collapsible, portable, and inexpensive paper globe for students as an alternative to the large, more expensive globes available mainly in schools and libraries.”

In my post about old British films about globemaking I said, “These films fascinate me because they describe a kind of globemaking—layers of plaster, paper globe gores, and varnish—that I don’t think happens any more.” On The Map Room’s Facebook page, a commenter replied that Lander and May use the same methods today. Handmade by Chris Adams, these artisanal globes appear to be closer in class and price to Bellerby than to Replogle.

Finally, via the Washington Map Society’s Facebook page, news that a book about 17th- and 18th-century cartographer and globemaker Vincenzo Coronelli, Marica Milanesi’s Vincenzo Coronell Cosmographer, 1650-1718, is now available, though apparently not easily.