Coronelli's Terrestrial Globe Details

Coronelli's Terrestrial Globe presents a complete mapping of the world and its wealth such that they were open to the Sun King at the height of its glory. 

The Dedication Scene - César d’Estrées’ dedicatory text to Louis XIV extols the virtues of the sovereign. The bust of the King, crowned with laurels, dominates the gilded copper dedicatory plaque. The latter is surrounded by a series of allegorical figures, among whom Geography, of course, occupies the central position."

The Four Continents - The allegorical representation of the four continents is crowned by an architectural decor. Europe and Asia are represented by women. Africa, surrounded by unfriendly animals, is looking at Europe whose eyes are oriented toward America.

Free Trade - Evocative of the ease of trade, European store ships and long boats, like the Indian carracks or the Chinese snake boats, navigate the seas without danger.

Coronelli's Masterpiece

A Franciscan monk, cosmographer, cartographer, publisher, and encyclopedist known in particular for his atlases and globes. He spent most of his life in Venice.

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. 175 cm) and so impressed the Duke that he made Coronelli his theologian.

Grand Celeste Globe Coronelli,Vincenzo-maria

Cardinal César d'Estrées, friend and adviser to Louis XIV and ambassador to Rome, saw the Duke of Parma’s globes and invited Coronelli to Paris in 1681 to construct a pair of globes for the Most Christian King. Coronelli moved to the French capital in 1681, where he lived for two years.

 Coronelli's Masterpiece

Each globe was composed of spindles of bent timber about ten feet long and four inches broad at the equator. This wood was then coated with a layer of plaster about an inch thick and covered in a layer of strong unfinished fabric. This was then wrapped in a quarter-inch layer of two very fine fabrics which provided backing for the painted information of the globes. These globes, measuring 384 cm in diameter and weighing approximately 2 tons, are displayed in the Bibliothèque nationale François Mitterrand in Paris.

The globes depicted the latest information of French explorations in North America, particularly the expeditions of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.

Coronelli is best remembered for these pair of huge terrestrial and celestial globes he made for Louis XIV in 1681 to 1683. These weighed about two tons each and could fit 30 men inside at one time (there are doors built into the globes).

Coronelli did not become rich from the commission to make the Globes. Cardinal Duke d’Estrée, the French ambassador to Rome, paid Coronelli 46,000 pounds for the Globes. It is said that Coronelli estimated their cost of production to be 100,000 pounds. However, Coronelli was able to use the new knowledge his team generated in the research and production of the great globes to produce his groundbreaking engraved world atlas which earned him enduring fame and substantial income.

Colbert, the king’s powerful advisor, devised the idea for the great Globes. Originally the Coronelli Globes were intended for installation at Versailles, but this never came to pass. Colbert died the year the Globes were completed, and instead, they were installed at the Château de Marly in Yvelines in 1704.