[60] Fiorini, op. cit., pp. 299-301.
Chapter XI
Globes of the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century
Certain striking tendencies exhibited in the matter of globe making in this period.—The Gottorp globes.—Weigel’s globes.—Carlo Benci.—Amantius Moroncelli.—Castlemaine’s immovable globe.—The armillary of Treffler.—Armillary sphere of Gian Battista Alberti.—The numerous globes of P. Vincenzo Coronelli.—Certain anonymous globes of the period.—Joannes Maccarius.—Jos. Antonius Volpes.—Vitale Giordani.—George Christopher Eimmart.—Giuseppe Scarabelli.—Giovanni Battista.—Joseph Moxon.—The Chinese globes of Peking.
AMONG the globes constructed in the second half of the seventeenth century there were none which surpassed in scientific value, if indeed any equaled, those sent out from the workshops of the Netherland masters in the first half. The work of P. Vincenzo Coronelli, the Venetian monk, crowns the period. His abilities were of a high order, and entitle him to a place among the world’s great map and globe makers, but the traces of his influence seem not to be so pronounced as were those of his immediate northern predecessors.
The period was one which lent encouragement to some extravagance in globe making. The earliest of those constructed in the post-Columbian years, as has been noted, were of small size, but before the close of the sixteenth century we occasionally find one of large dimensions, as, for example, that of the great Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. Blaeu’s globes of the year 1622 were thought to be of extraordinary size, but the half century here under consideration furnishes us with examples of globes having gigantic proportions, globes such, for example, as would have pleased the Greek geographer, Strabo,[61] who thought that one to be of value should have a diameter of at least ten feet. The Gottorp globe, the globes of Weigel, the Coronelli globes constructed for Louis XIV, were not such as would lend themselves to easy duplication, certainly not as to size, ranging as they did from about nine to fifteen feet. Of real value they possessed but little. They were interesting mechanical curiosities, representing a tendency in globe construction which might be referred to as the ultrapractical. In the following century we find the opposite extreme exemplified in what were known as pocket globes.