CASSINI, Giovanni Maria. Globo celeste da tavolo. Roma, Calcografia Camerale. 1792

Celestial globe in the original table in wood, height mm. 560, width 500 mm. The Globe has a diameter o 350 mm. it is composed of twelve segments on paper engraved on copper in contemporary colouring, glued on a wooden sphere. It is housed in a frame formed by a first ring which is the observer's horizon, inserted in an octagonal wooden circle, and by a second brass ring which represents the meridian of the place. The globe is pivoted in the ring at the meridian of the celestial poles and can be tilted so that the height of the pole on the horizon coincides with that measured in the particular place of observation. The meridian circle is engraved on copper and applied to the brass ring, the horizon tables, with zodiac gradations and calendar, are applied to the octagonal wooden circle. The wooden support has four columns connected at the bottom by a cruise to the centr0r of which is the seat of the meridian circle; the top is secured, horizontally, the equatorial circle, or equinoctial.

Original edition, contemporary coloring. Rare celestial globe, complete with all the parts and mounted on wooden sphere. The twelve time celestial were published in 1792. The celestial globe is based on the astronomical observations of Flamsteed and Lacaille, and represents all the constellations known at the stars vary in size according to their magnitude. The spindles reproduce the twelve segments of 30 degrees amplitude that, once clipped and pasted on a wooden sphere and papier-mâché of about 35 cm diameter, make up the entire celestial globe; in the title block at the center of one of the segments, including Boote and Mount Menalo, it reads " GLOBO CELESTE Calcolato per il corrente anno sulle Osservazioni de’ Sigg. Flamsteed, e de la Caille. ROMA presso la Calc.a Cam.le 1792". Giovanni Maria Cassini, 1745 - 1824, disciple of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, was a manufacturer of globes, geographer, engraver and cartographer Italian, working in Rome in the decades straddling the eighteenth and nineteenth century. His globes are rare.

Dekker, p. 66; Dahl & Gauvin, Sphaerae Mundi early globes at the Stewart Museum, p.131-134. See F. Stoppa, Atlas Colestis.

Good state of preservation.