Coronelli, Vincenzo

Vincenzo Coronelli, fifth child of a Venetian tailor, was, at ten, sent to Ravenna and apprenticed to a
xylographer – a maker of woodblock prints. In 1663 he was accepted into the Conventual Franciscans,
becoming a novice in 1665. At sixteen he published the first of his 140 works. 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 the Duke of Parma. Each globe was five feet in diameter and so impressed the Duke that he made Coronelli his theologian. In 1699 he was appointed Father General of the Franciscan order. Due to his renown he worked in various European countries in the following years, permanently returning to Venice in 1705, where he started his own cosmographical project and published the volumes of “Atlante Veneto”. He founded the very first geographical society: Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti, and created hundreds of maps.