A rare and important map of the East Indies includes the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines, and the north coast of Australia, depicting the region when it was the centre of the VOC (Dutch) trading network. Sandbanks, inlets, ports, towns, villages, are labelled in Italian. The title cartouche in the lower left shows winged cherub mermaids emerging from the water carrying the title in a banner format. Creative engraved line surrounds the island nations. 

Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718) is one of the most influential Italian mapmakers and is known especially for his globes and atlases. The son of a tailor, Vincenzo was apprenticed to a xylographer (a woodblock engraver) at a young age. At fifteen he became a novice in a Franciscan monastery. At sixteen he published his first book, the first of 140 publications he would write in his lifetime. The order recognized his intellectual ability and saw him educated in Venice and Rome. He earned a doctorate in theology, but also studied astronomy. By the late 1670s, he was working on geography and was commissioned to create a set of globes for the Duke of Parma. These globes were five feet in diameter. The Parma globes led to Coronelli being named theologian to the Duke and receiving a bigger commission, this one from Louis XIV of France. Coronelli moved to Paris for two years to construct the King’s huge globes, which are 12.5 feet in diameter and weigh 2 tons. The globes for the French King led to a craze for Coronelli’s work and he travelled Europe making globes for the ultra-elite. By 1705, he had returned to Venice. There, he founded the first geographical society, the Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti and was named Cosmographer of the Republic of Venice. He died in 1718.