Celestial globe

In many cases veritable works of art, in addition to being useful instruments for representing the celestial vaultand the Earth, globes are important objects for scholarsof cartography and cosmography. Thales, Pliny, and especially Ptolemy used celestial globes for their studies. The idea of representing the Earth’s surface on a sphere came about later. Arabs and Persians were already producing engraved bronze globes in the 1st millennium CE. In Europe, production flourished between the 16thand 18th centuries: the perfecting of techniques gave rise to objects of great beauty and precision. Silvestro Amanzio Moroncelli (1652—1719) was a highly skilled producerof globes, capable of a rare quality of technique.The outlines of the continents, the details, and the final coloring are all hand drawn directly on paper glued to the wooden sphere giving structure to the object. Becauseof this, each individual globe was different from any other, by contrast with those produced by his contemporary Vincenzo Coronelli.