The Representation of the World

A singular form of assimilation and updating of Ptolemy's Geography, one of the founding texts of modern geographical studies, was the ambitious project for the Guardaroba Nuova in Palazzo Vecchio, conceived by Cosimo de' Medici as a grandiose theatrum mundi. This project was then emulated by Ferdinando I in the Uffizi Gallery, with a Cosmographic Room containing representations of the Medicean domains and a great Ptolemaic model of the universe designed by the cosmographer Antonio Santucci. It is the great armillary sphere that dominates this room, surrounded by terretrial and celestial globes of the finest workmanship.
In the adjacent room are four globes by the Venetian cosmographer Vincenzo Maria Coronelli. Famous for the great size of his creations, he built enormous globes, nearly four meters in diameter, for Louis XIV, King of France,.
As Coronelli explained in his Epitome cosmografica published in 1693, these globes are formed of many hand-written or printed sheets of paper, called gores, glued onto a large ball made of wood and papier-mâché coated with plaster.