DANCERS Seminar
The cartography of the Danube and the surrounding areas
in the times of Vincenzo Maria Coronelli and Luigi Ferdinando Marsili
23rd April, 2015
Venice Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti
Palazzo Franchetti
San Marco 2847
The seminar is part of the initiatives to disseminate the project DANCERS results (http://www.dancers-fp7.eu/project/), which has the aim to develop new instruments and tools that will enhance environmental research and promote innovation in Danube Region, CORILA organizes, in collaboration with CNR-ISMAR.
The seminar will focus on the historical cartography of the Danube and will underline the historical links between the Danube river area with the city of Venice.
This DANCERS seminar will framed into the International Study Conference “Venice and Eastern Europe from the late Middle Ages to the Modern Age”, organized by the Romanian Cultural and Humanistic Research in Venice, April 23-24 (here a draft of the program).
The seminar will include invited lectures from relevant specialists and it is open to the participation of all DANCERS consortium Institutions, as well as to other Institutions and to the public.
The admission is free, after registration to be made through the site http://www.registration.corila.it.
Among the many historical and cultural ties that bind Venice with the Danube region, the geographical maps by the Venetian father Vincenzo Coronelli are included, as he was called in the year 1717 in Vienna and appointed by the Emperor Charles IV of Habsburg “Commissioner and permanent director of the Danube and other rivers of the Empire”. The assignment was exactly given when the Empire was preparing to seize, after Transylvania and Banat, also a conspicuous portion of the left bank of the Danube’s territory, between the Iron Gates and the Olt river; the area was of great strategic importance.
Scholar and cosmographer (Venice 1650 -1718), Franciscan Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, the prior of the Frari Church, built grandiose globes that represent the earth and celestial bodies and wrote large number of maps and general works of geography. He founded in 1684 the “Accademia cosmografica degli Argonauti”, considered the oldest geographical society of the world. From 1685 he was cosmographer of the Venetian Republic and by 1689 reader of geography. Consultant of the Water Authority of the Venetian Republic, planned large public works, then implemented (two bridges on the Grand Canal, the embankments of the Lido, a diversion channel of the Adige). He produced over 200 papers, in part combined into grandiose atlases (Atlante Veneto, 1690; Isolario, 2 vols., 1696-1698). In the last years of his life he studied the Danube and wrote a treaty about hydrostatic effects of natural waters, which was published on his return to Venice in 1718.
Luigi Marsili is well known, thanks to his direct knowledge of the Turkish language and the Ottoman court, for his relevant contribution to the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699); after that he was appointed “plenipotentiary commissioner” for the definition of the new Austro-Ottoman borders.
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili (Bologna 1658-1730), scientist, military, geologist and botanist, in 1682 joined the army of Emperor Leopold I, but, taken prisoner by the Turks, accompanied a Pasha to the battle of Vienna, as a slave connoisseur of the fortifications of Vienna. Redeemed shortly after, he returned to military life as an engineer. His activities consisted mainly in studying and design fortifications and other military engineering works and in drawing topographic maps. Between military operations and diplomatic missions, Marsili was able to indulge his interest for the natural sciences and geography; his knowledge of the Danube is documented in the book “Danubius Pannonian-Mysicus” (1726), containing information on geography, ethnology, geology, and hydrology of the Danube region. He spent the last years in Bologna; he donated to the city all the collected materials, giving rise to the “Institute of Sciences” (probably in 1715).
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