Carte Particuliere de l’Isle de Corse

Title

Carte Particuliere de l’Isle de Corse

Description

Decorative map of Corsica divided into its ten provinces and four ;fiefs,; with an inset of Cape Corso point, a letter key to the ten provinces and their populations, and a highly decorative title cartouche. After Hubert Jaullot.

ca. 1784

Artist

Santini

Francois (Francesco) Santini was an Italian cartographer and map publisher with his brother Paolo and based in Venice. He re-issued the works of Robert de Vaugondy, Homann’s Heirs and De L’Isle. At this time, cartography in Italy was commercialy very slow, so Santini, essentially a publisher rather than a map-maker modelled his work on two of the leading practitioners of cartography in Europe, the French map-makers Gilles and Didier Robert de Vaugondy. Their “Atlas Universel” was first published in 1758, and was much re-issued there after. The atlas was a commercial and cartographic success, with widespread influence on map-makers throughout Europe, most notably on Santini, who commissioned a new set of plates, published in 1776, being almost exact copies of the original French maps.

Historical Description

The name of the island of Corsica or French Corse probably goes back to the Phoenician term Korsai, which roughly means “covered with forests”. Occasionally, the Greek term for the island Kalliste (“the beautiful”) is thought to be the root of the current name. From the 14th century, Corsica belonged to the Republic of Genoa. In 1729, several years of uprisings against the Genoese began. On April 15, 1736, Corsican rebels made the German adventurer Baron Theodor von Neuhoff (1694-1756) their king in the monastery of Alesani in Castagniccia. King Theodor I of Corsica was the only king Corsica ever had. However, the Kingdom of Corsica lasted barely a year. Independence was proclaimed in 1755. Genoa then sold the island to France, which defeated the Corsican troops at the Battle of Ponte Nuovo in 1769. Corsica has been a French territory ever since - apart from a brief period during the French Revolution, when the island belonged to England.