A TERRESTRIAL GLOBE AFTER WILLEM JANZ. BLAEU

June 11 2009, 4:30pm

Venetian. Nineteenth Century. The history of globes reaches back to antiquity, when astronomers and philosophers first began to consider the earth and heavens as spherical. As world exploration expanded over time, so did the art of globe making. Terrestrial representations became ever more accurate, recording the achievements of the world's leading cartographers from the 15th to the 17th centuries. Later globes, such as the present example, drew on these earlier successes, and copies were made of the works executed by some of the worlds most esteemed cartographers, including 17th-century Dutch mathematician and astronomer Willem Janszoon (Jansz.) Blaeu. Blaeu's famed celestial globe of 1622 was replicated in a 19th-century Venetian globe, previously in the collection of Carlton Hobbs. The stand of the present globe is strongly similar to that of celestial copy; both are comprised of a tripod base with scrolled legs and a bronze socle, with anthemion decoration connecting the two.