Cassini globes

Pair of terrestrial and celestial globes by G.M. Cassini, diameter 33cm, height with stand 59cm.

Rome, terrestrial dated 1790, celestial 1792. Each globe covered by 12 printed, hand-coloured, gores, with polar calottes. The meridian circle, paper laid on wood, the horizon ring with zodiac and calendar scales on a octagonal frame supported on fruit-wood stand, the four legs united by cross-strechers carrying the centrepost.

The globes are in good condition, some imperfections are restored, but generally the globes are good and dark impressions with some remains of old out-line colour. The polar calottes are restored and small missing parts of paper are re-inforced and carefully re-drawn.

The wooden horizon rings are covered by printed zodiac and calendar scales, unfortunatally the imprints are somewhat poor impressions and on many places the names, scales and cartouches are during the recent restoration process  re-drawn.

Estimate EURO 30.000 - 35.000

The title of the celestial globe reads as follows:

GLOBO TERRESTRE
delineato sulle ultime osservazioni
Con i Viaggi e nuove scoperte
del Cap. Cook inglese.
IN ROMA Presso la Calcogafia Cam.le
1790
Gio. M.a Cassini C.R.S. inc.

One of the inscriptions also carries a table presenting the length of the terrestrial great circle in 14 different units. The globes shows the track of Captain Cook.

The title of the celestial globe reads as follows:

GLOBO CELESTE
calcolato peril corrente anno sull osservazioni de Sigg. Flamsteed e de la Caille
ROMA Presso da Cale.le 1792
Ineisso P.Gio. M.a Cassini C.R.S.

The gores are engraved with the classical constellations in figured forms and with the more recently defined star groups of the southern hemisphere. The globe is designed on a traditional external perspective and uses the nomenclature of the French edition of Flamsteed’s star atlas published in 1776. Cassini has copied various other mapmaker’s works and introduces errors, showing "Il Dorado" constellation as a swordfish, instead of a goldfish, for instance. Dahl and Gauvin comment of Cassini "His globes are idiosyncratic, containing elements that reflect academic learning and scientific rigour, yet at the same time are concerned with what was politically and religiously appropriate, and consequently introduced elements that were foreign to science per se."

Ref.: Dahl & Gauvin, Sphaerae Mundi Early Globes At The Stewart Museum, p.131-134.

Giovanni Maria Cassini (1745-1812)

Cassini was a cartographer and publisher in Rome in the late 18th and early 19th century. He was one of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s best disciples and one of Italy’s last globe-makers in the XVIIIth century. His globes enjoyed widespread success as too did his Nuovo Atlante geografico delineato sulle ultime osservazioni, published in Rome from 1702 until 1801.

This important atlas Nuovo Atlante includes gores for a pair of 33cm globes. Cassini globes are found either mounted up from the gores or presumably mounted from Cassini himself.

Similair globes are to be found in:

Museo della Specola, Bologna (Celestial, however equator, the tropics, the polar circles and the ecliptic are all in manuscript)