Nice example of Coronelli's map of the island of Marie Galante, from his Isolario Dell'Atlante Veneto.
This is one of the few separate maps of the island of Marie-Galante in the French West Indies, as it is generally mapped with the large neighboring island of Guadeloupe. The island is now commonly known as La Grande Galette (Big Cookie) due to its round shape and almost flat surface.
The various sugar plantations are laid out and Fort Moliere is located (and shown in a small inset). A vignette at upper right shows a bloody battle that occurred in 1653 in which Carib rebels slaughtered the entire colonist population of the Vieux Fort River region noted here as C. du Massacre.
Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718) was one of the most influential Italian mapmakers and was known especially for his globes and atlases. The son of a tailor, Vincenzo was apprenticed to a xylographer (a wood block engraver) at a young age. At fifteen he became a novice in a Franciscan monastery. At sixteen he published his first book, the first of 140 publications he would write in his lifetime. The order recognized his intellectual ability and saw him educated in Venice and Rome. He earned a doctorate in theology, but also studied astronomy. By the late 1670s, he was working on geography and was commissioned to create a set of globes for the Duke of Parma. These globes were five feet in diameter. The Parma globes led to Coronelli being named theologian to the Duke and receiving a bigger commission, this one from Louis XIV of France. Coronelli moved to Paris for two years to construct the King’s huge globes, which are 12.5 feet in diameter and weigh 2 tons.
The globes for the French King led to a craze for Coronelli’s work and he traveled Europe making globes for the ultra-elite. By 1705, he had returned to Venice. There, he founded the first geographical society, the Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti and was named Cosmographer of the Republic of Venice. He died in 1718.