Harry Ransom CenterThe University of Texas at Austin

The Coronelli Celestial Globe

Instructions: Use the arrows to rotate the globe, move the slider to zoom, or press play/pause to automate rotation.
                      When the image is zoomed in, you may use the hand tool to adjust position.

Vincenzo Coronelli (1650-1718) was a member of a Franciscan order in Venice and one of the greatest map and globemakers of the 17th century. In 1681, the French king Louis XIV commissioned a pair of enormous globes, one terrestrial and the other celestial, from Coronelli, and he spent two years in Paris working on the project. These globes, weighing two tons each, are now displayed in the Bibliothèque Nationale. The Ransom Center is one of a handful of institutions with a pair of smaller Coronelli globes modeled on the larger ones. The terrestrial globe, nearly five feet high, is dated 1688 and its celestial counterpart is from roughly the same period.

The celestial globe depicts only a few of the constellations, which are labeled in Italian and Latin. The globe is made up of printed gores (the Center also owns a bound set of these) glued onto a modern wooden structure.

The pair of Coronelli globes was acquired, along with other cartographic materials, from the bookseller H. P. Kraus in 1969. The globes are available for viewing only by special appointment, except when they are on display in the gallery.