The Uselessness of Coronelli’s Great Globes of 1681–83

Reflections on shifting contemporary and historiographic attitudes towards these oversized globes

Another bit that I wrote as the first part of the vignette introducing chapter 9, which deals with the rejection of the normativity of maps. I was starting off with the great “Marly Globes” and their installation in the 1980 exhibition, Cartes et figures de la terre, as a way to introduce that exhibition. But, in the event, it might be fascinating, but it’s long and unneeded. So here’s what I wrote, expanded a bit …

The globes I’m talking about are a simply amazing celestial and terrestrial pair. I had the good fortune to see them on 8 July 2019, as the culmination of a wonderful visit with good colleagues to the incredible exhibit Le monde en spheres at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, all led by M Hofmann, the exhibition’s curator and the head of BnF’s département des cartes et plans (Hofmann and Nowrocki 2019):

Me looking at the Coronelli globes in 2019. Photograph by Kathryn A. Edney

The globes were the work of the Venetian geographer Vincenzo Coronelli, who in 1681–83 moved to Paris to design them and to supervise their production. Each measured twelve Parisian pieds in diameter (3.9m or 12′9″.5); when mounted on their bases they stood 6m (19′8″) high. Cardinal Caesar d’Estrées had commissioned Coronelli to make the globes as a gift for Louis XIV, to be placed within the great palace at Versailles, which was then under construction. Truly, a gift fit for a king of Louis’ out-sized pretensions.

A grand gesture, the globes were effectively useless. Their imposing grandeur made them completely the wrong size to be used effectively. Smaller globes—made with diameters between 0.075–1.7m (3–67″)—could be easily turned to show specific parts of their convex surface. Or, people could enter within much larger globes, called georamas, turning themselves around as necessary to see all parts of the earth on the concave interior surface. Coronelli’s globes were far too large for the former, and far too small for the latter. They must be held fixed, and viewers must move around them on platforms and balconies:

Agence Robert de Cotte, view of one of the pavilions at the Marly palace containing the great Coronelli globes (1703). Manuscript. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département estampes et photographie (RESERVE HA-18 (40)-FOL). Click on image to consult in high resolution.

This unavoidable reality inverted the usual physical relationship between viewers and globes, undermining the viewer’s usual sense of intellectual domination and converting the globe-viewing experience to one of awe and amazement. As a result, no-one really knew quite what to do with them, both physically, as Catherine Hoffman (2005) has explained and the following section summarizes, and also intellectually.

Inconstant Installations

The king and his architects dithered about where to house the globes. The globes’ gores—made from hand-painted cloth—and their wooden frames remained in their packing cases for twenty-one years, until 1704, when Louis installed them in two large pavilions at his private residence at Marly (above) (Bentz 2012). Plans were made as early as 1712 to transfer the globes to the Bibliothèque royale, in Paris, in anticipation of which they were disassembled in 1715, shortly before the king’s death, as it happened. They would not be reassembled again until 1782 (Bléchet 2012), when they were installed in a specially refitted, two-story gallery in the former Mazarin palace. Their new home was not, however, conducive to their easy study. Only library staff had access to the lower hall, leaving readers in the geography reading room to view just the upper third of each globe from the gallery.

The librarians debated the presence of the globes and the excessive floor space they consumed. The map curators argued for the globes’ continued display as a way to preserve and perhaps augment their territory and autonomy (e.g., Jomard 1848, 73, 97–98). This argument allowed Edme-François Jomard to successfully resist the removal of the globes to the new museum at Versailles in 1848–50 (Hofmann 2012). Other librarians saw the globes as obstacles to the much-needed improvement of the library’s facilities. As one curator of prints declared in 1858, the hall

should be emptied of these monstrous globes which usurp such a vast expanse of our floors which they have destroyed: old devices as cumbersome as they are useless, despised by the learned, worth at the best the banal curiosity which attaches itself to monsters, and whose very size has preserved them up to now from the proscription that they merit. (Hofmann 2005, 37n73, quoting Théophile Baudement)

The situation was only briefly improved, as part of the library’s map exhibition for the 1875 International Geographical Congress, when the public was given full access to the lower salle des globes (hall of the globes). Even then, the public had to pass through unfinished corridors to be able to see the globes from below (Letort 1875, 178):

Joseph Burn Smeeton and Auguste Tilly, “Les grandes sphères de la Bibliothèque nationale,” in Letort (1875, 177), as accessed during the 1875 International Geographical Congress. Lithograph from a wood engraving, 16.5 × 14 cm (image neatline). Bibliothèque nationale de France (département philosophie, histoire, sciences de l’homme, 4-R-45). click on image to view in high resolution

Soon thereafter, in 1886, the globes were completely hidden from view when wooden shells were erected around them, to protect them during building work. In the end, they were removed in 1901 to make way for a new periodicals reading room. Further plans to reinstall them in the library or at Versailles (Richard 2012), and after World War II in other cultural and scientific sites, all failed to materialize before May–September 1980, when they were briefly exhibited in the Centre Georges Pompidou.

photograph of the installation of the great globes for the exhibition Cartes et figures de la terre, in the grand, ground-floor forum of the Centre Georges Pompidou, May–September 1980. I am thoroughly indebted to Jean-Marc Besse for pointing me to this resource and for sharing other images from the archive. Centre Georges Pompidou, Kandinsky Library, CCI 93 570–671 = img M5050_X0031_CCI_093_0601_P; click on image to see related images (free registration required)

Coronelli’s great globes finally found their forever home in 2005 within a specially redesigned gallery in the national library’s Bibliothèque François-Mitterand (see first image above).

Inconstant Attitudes

These architectural travails point to the changing attitudes over the centuries, not just towards Coronelli’s globes but more generally towards geographical maps and globes. Although made as a conventional terrestrial-celestial pair, the globes were plainly too large to be used in the usual early modern manner as instruments for teaching mathematics, astronomy, geography, and cosmographical relationships (see Dekker 2002). Nor could they be easily manipulated to study geography. One of the largest globes made in the same era specifically for consultation of world geography completed in 1701 by two Franciscan monks in Lyon. The horizontal mount allowed the 1.7m diameter manuscript globe to be rotated for study (Gauthiez et al. 2024):

painted canvas globe over wooden ball, ca. 1701; restored after extensive damage in 1918; Bibliothèque Part-Dieu, Lyon, where it is currently on display as part of the exhibition “Representing the far away: an European view,” installed in conjunction with the 30th International Conference on the History of Cartography; photo by author, 9 July 2024; unknown person for scale. Click on image for more information (and for the rest of the exhibition).

Rather, Coronelli’s great globes were made to appeal to contemporary ideas of curiosity as a genteel virtue, a virtue enshrined in the early modern Wunderkammern (cabinets of curiosities). The globes were to be appreciated as guides to the wonders of God’s creation, at a size suitable for the Sun King (Milanesi 2005, esp. 15–16). With the emergence around 1800 of new disciplines of history and geography, curiosity ceased to be a valid intellectual attribute in and of itself: scientific curiosity was actively tempered and shaped by intellectual discipline; mere curiosity became the “banal” enjoyment of the frisson of pleasure granted by the spectacular, the agreeable horror of the sublime, the wonder of apprehending a vast work that extends beyond what one can see. As comparative map history developed, scholars did not find Coronelli’s great globes to be especially impressive as scientific works. Even Edme-François Jomard could muster only a half-hearted assessment of their historical significance. He simply concluded his brief commentary on the globes by stating, without any further explanation, that

These monuments of geography and astronomy, built 160 years ago, occupy precisely the midpoint in the history of science between the present era and the year 1528, and they mark a transition. (Jomard 1848, 98) [n1]

They “mark a transition” between cultural stages—in line with the philosophical, stadial history advanced by comparative map historians—but Jomard could not elaborate which stages, nor why 1528 was a key date in map history. (I know of nothing map-significant from that year! see Hofmann 2012, esp. 286–87).

Moreover, as comparative map history developed, map historians generally did not find Coronelli’s great globes to be especially impressive as scientific works. The terrestrial globe’s geographical information did not compare well against the contemporary reforms of geographical mapping initiated in the 1680s by Jean-Dominique Cassini at the Paris Observatory and after 1700 by Guillaume Delisle’s wholesale remapping of the continental outlines (Edney 2019, 478–82). By the end of end of the nineteenth century, the globes were seen as physically cumbersome and, even if they had been easily consulted, lacking in intellectual value. As the reviewer of the 1875 exhibition regretfully concluded, also with reference to the large georama built in Paris in 1825, “but we can say that these kinds of constructions are made more to satisfy curiosity than to serve for scientific teaching” (Letort 1875, 179). [n2] The globes’ size and spectacular nature insulted the emergent commitment to the normativity of maps, so it is little wonder that they were eventually disassembled and removed to long-term storage. For most of the twentieth century, they were missed only by map historians frustrated by their inability to see them during the several decades of their “unjust oblivion” (Pelletier in Anonymous 1980, [5]; Pelletier and Wallis 1980, xiv).

Coronelli’s globes were briefly rehabilitated in 1980 as part of the large exhibition, Cartes et figures de la terre (maps and images of the earth), mounted by the Centre de création industrielle (center for industrial design) within the Centre Georges Pompidou. Cartes et figures de la terre effectively marked the culmination of the long struggle with the idealized normativity of maps, as its curators celebrated maps “at the confluence of exact science and art” that possess as much “imagination” as “theoretical principles” (Jean-Claude Groshens in Rivière 1980a, iii). The curators were entranced by the sheer variety of map imagery, both scientific and artistic, old and current, that “permeate almost all human activities” (Rivière 1980b, 9).

From this new perspective, Coronelli’s globes appeared as remarkable works of art whose size made them fitting emblems of the Sun King’s out-sized pretensions. These “cartographic jewels” were installed in the central forum of the Pompidou Center to serve as the “spectacular introduction” to the exhibition (image above) (Anonymous 1980, [1]; Rivière 1980b, 8). In large part, the globes spoke for themselves, their size embodying their historical significance; their long banishment demonstrated the challenge they had posed to the normative map concept (Calvino 1980, 20). The press release explained how it had taken almost three months to unpack, check, and then assemble the globes in situ (Anonymous 1980, [6]). Otherwise, the exhibition material offered brief, factual statements describing the globes and how Coronelli had made them for Louis XIV. For those unable to see the globes for themselves, the exhibition’s accompanying volume reproduced the almost life-sized bust of the king being crowned by an angel, surmounting the dedication to the king of the terrestrial globe; this vignette’s significance is readily apparent and did not need a detailed iconological explication in the otherwise brief and factual account of Coronelli, his globes, and their gifting to the king (Pelletier and Wallis 1980, esp. xiii).

Bust of Louis XIV and the cartouche around the dedicatory text lay west and south of Australia, against the limb of the terrestrial globe in this image.

Coronelli’s great globes stand today as marvels of geographical practice, but their marvel is as works of art and of craft. They very much embody the post-1980 commitment of map historians not to the history of geographical content, but to the history of map consumption. We should not, however, let this status obscure the implications of the more recent turn to consider the material nature of maps. They stand as the example that proves the rule: if maps are objects to be physically held and studied by people, then these are maps that dominate their readers. They rear up over their viewers and preclude careful examination and study. They are, in this regard, truly exceptional works.

Notes

n1. “Ces monuments de la géographie et de l’astronomie, construits il y a 160 ans, occupent précisément dans l’histoire des sciences le point milieu entre l’époque présente et l’année 1528, et ils marquent une transition.”

n2. “Mais on peut dire que ces sortes de construc tions sont plutôt faites pour satisfaire la curiosité que pour servir à un enseignement scientifique.”

References

Anonymous. 1980. “Cartes et figures de la terre: Information Presse CCI.” 24 May 1980. https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/ressources/media/6PSIHDy.

Bentz, Bruno. 2012. “Les globes à Marly: Un cabinet de géographie.” In Hofmann and Richard (2012, 236–47).

Bléchet, Françoise. 2012. “Le destin des globes dans les collectins de la Bibliothèque royale au XVIIIe siècle.” In Hofmann and Richard (2012, 248–69).

Calvino, Italo. [1980] 2013. “The Traveller in the Map.” Trans. M. L. McLaughlin. In Collection of Sand: Essays, 18–25. London: Penguin Books. Originally published as “Il viandante invisibile sulle strade della Terra: Il mappamondo più grande del mondo, carte geografiche, mappe e globi celesti, in una eccezionale mostra al Beaubourg di Parigi,” La Repubblica 5, no. 140 (18 June 1980): 18–19, and then as “Il viandante nella mappa,” in Collezione di sabbia (Milan: Garzanti, 1984), 23–29.

Dekker, Elly. 2002. “The Doctrine of the Sphere: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Globes.” Globe Studies: The Journal of the International Coronelli Society, nos. 49–50: 25–44.

Edney, Matthew H. 2019. “Geographical Mapping in the Enlightenment.” In Cartography in the European Enlightenment, ed. Matthew H. Edney, and Mary S. Pedley, 474–89. Vol. 4 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gauthiez, Bernard, J. Sirdey, and Enali De Biaggi. 2024. “The Hectic History of a Globe Made in Lyon in 1700.” International Conference on the History of Cartography, Lyon. 1 July 2024.

Hofmann, Catherine. 2005–6. “‘Incomparable’ Globes or ‘Old Devices as Cumbersome as They Are Useless’? The Vicissitudes of the Great Globes of Coronelli, 1683–1915.” Trans. Anthony Turner. Globe Studies 53–54: 24–41.

———. 2012. “Des hôtes devenus indésirables: La tentative de ‘translation à Versailles’ en 1848–1850.” In Hofmann and Richard (2012, 270–87).

Hofmann, Catherine, and François Nowrocki, eds. 2019. Le monde en sphères. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Hofmann, Catherine, and Hélène Richard, eds. 2012. Les globes de Louis XIV: Étude artistique, historique et matérielle. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Jomard, Edme-François. 1848. De la collection géographique créée à la bibliothèque royale; examen de ce qu’on fait et de ce qui reste à faire pour compléter cette création et la rendre digne de la France. Paris: D’E. Duverger.

Letort, Charles. 1875. “Les grands globes de la Bibliothèque nationale.” La nature 3, no. 1 (116) (21 August 1875): 177–79.

Milanesi, Marica. 2005–6. “A ‘Special Geography” for the King: Animals and Human Beings on the Terrestrial Globe Made by Vincenzo Coronelli for Louis XIV (1681–1683).” Globe Studies 53–54: 11–23.

Pelletier, Monique, and Helen Wallis. 1980. “Les globes du Roi Soleil.” In Rivière (1980, xii–xiv).

Richard, Hélène. 2012. “Project d’installation des globes dans la vielle aile du Château de Versailles (1914–1915).” In Hofmann and Richard (2012, 288–99).

Rivière, Jean-Loup, ed. 1980a. Cartes et figures de la terre. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou.

———. 1980b. “Cartes et figures de la terre.” Le Bulletin [du Centre Georges Pompidou] 18: 8–9.