South America--Coronelli, Vincenzo Maria.

The condition of this item is as described in the catalogue description
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The best map of South America of its time, not superseded until the mid-eighteenth century

The companion to the previous lot, this important map summarises European knowledge of the continent in the last decade of the seventeenth century, with the coastline, bays, harbours, ports, lower river courses and so on, accurately delineated, but forming a complete contrast with the interior, which is largely, but not completely, filled with the imaginary inventions of several generations of geographers. Again, the map is famous for the vignettes spread across the face of the map. Brazil is filled with all manner of warlike scenes, the western sheet with examples of the fauna - elephants (!), jaguars, storks, llamas and ostriches, and some weird and wonderful creatures - with the southern Andes depicted as a chain of volcanoes.

As with North America, this map is as famous for its main misconception. Deep in the Amazon jungle is the legendary Lake Parime, "discovered" by Lawrence Keymis, on one of Walter Raleigh's expeditions to Guiana, although he died of the fever he contracted while exploring the interior, before being able to accurately place the lake on the map. The significance of the lake was not the water, but the city on its shore - El Dorado, the city of gold - although Coronelli dismisses the story as "favolosi".

"The Amazon kingdom and El Dorado were the last vestiges of the medieval European notions that somewhere strange and alluring places existed in faraway lands" (Benevento).