Terrestrial Globe

The globe made up of twelve hand coloured engraved gores with cartouche inscribed: “GLOBUS TERRESTRIS NOVUS operâ IOH. GAB. DOPPELMAIRI M.P.P. exhibitus â Ioh. Georg Puschnero Chalcogr. Norib. A. 1736.” Held in an engraved and calbrated brass meridian circle, on Dutch style stand with hand coloured engraved horizon ring.

Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr (1671-1750) was one of the most prolific of the globe-makers of early 18th-Century Nuremberg, as well as being a distinguished mathematician, translator, writer, editor and teacher. He studied in Altdorf and Halle, and travelled for some time in Germany, England and the Netherlands. Professor of Mathematics at the Aegidien Gymnasium in Nuremberg from 1704, globe-making was only a small part of his general efforts to encourage interest in science, in particular the progressive work of the likes of Newton, Huygens and Descartes, and transmission of this knowledge throughout Europe. He was the translator of several works on astronomy and cartography from French and German, such as Nicolas Bion’s L’usage des globes cilestes et terrestres, et des spheres and Astronomy by Thomas Street, as well as producing works of his own, including the Atlas novus coelestia of 1742.