First Edition 17th Century Text on the War between Venice and the Ottomans, During the Morean War in Southern Greece, Including 58 Engravings, 1686

Vicenzo Maria Coronelli

First Edition

[Travel and Maps][Military][Greece] Coronelli, Vincenzo Maria. Seventeenth century first edition history chronicling the Venetian reconquest of the Peloponnese during the Sixth Turkish–Venetian War, a contemporary Catholic and Venetian account of Ottoman–European military conflict in the eastern Mediterranean. Issued amid the campaigns of 1684–1687, when the Republic of Venice seized control of the Morea from the Ottoman Empire, the work revisits the Peloponnese within the strategic geography of Habsburg–Ottoman rivalry and maritime imperial expansion. Coronelli, a Franciscan cosmographer and cartographer renowned for his atlases and globes, combines military reporting with regional description, producing a text that documents the fortification, siege, and the politics of newly conquered territory. The text's engravings provide a visual record of Venetian defensive architecture and campaign logistics at the height of seventeenth-century Mediterranean conflict.

Coronelli, Vincenzo Maria. Description Geographique et Historique de la Morée Reconquise par les Venetiens. Paris: Chez Claude Barbin, 1686–1687. First French edition. Small octavo. Two volumes bound in one. 295 pages. Fifty-eight double-page copperplate engravings, including a map of the Peloponnese. Woodcut chapter headpieces and tailpieces; printed guide letters in woodcut frames. Contemporary calf stamped in gilt to front cover with crowned monogram “V.” Front pastedown with mid-eighteenth-century engraved armorial bookplate of Jacques-Marie Jerome; remnants of inscription dated 1687 on front pastedown; later rebacked and recornered; ex-libris markings.

Produced during the consolidation of Venetian authority in southern Greece, the volume emphasized Christian victories over Ottoman forces during the broader Great Turkish War. Coronelli’s detailed narrative and large-format engravings contributed to broader European knowledge of the Peloponnese at a time when control of its ports and fortresses were especially key Adriatic and Aegean power dynamics. Small chips to front and rear boards; evidence of restoration at spine and corners; interior generally clean with expected age toning; bookplate and early inscription present. Overall very good condition. Substantial illustrated first French edition documenting Venetian imperial expansion and Ottoman–European warfare in early modern Greece.

Item #18390

Price: $2,200.00