Sicily & Calabria Map 1849 Kingdom of the Two Sicilies Atlas Print - Palermo, Messina, Catania, Reggio Calabria

Joseph Meyer's Das Konigreich beider Sicilien: Sudliche Halfte, Sicilien und Calabrien was made for Meyer's Zeitungs-Atlas, the Neuester Zeitungs-Atlas fur Alte und Neue Erdkunde, and it is number 22 in the atlas. The Bibliographisches Institut of Hildburghausen engraved it on steel in 1849, and the catalog records a scale of 1:1,900,000, a size of 25 by 19 centimeters and a hand-colored outline. It shows the southern half of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies with administrative boundaries, cities and towns, relief in hachures, a legend and a list of provinces. An inset covers Malta, Gozzo and Comino. The atlas's engraved title page, index and maps were issued in parts, and the catalog numbers the sheet 22 in the series, with the imprint printed in the upper margin.

The atlas appeared in thirty-one deliveries and held 123 steel-engraved maps dated between 1849 and 1852. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was a major political entity at the time, ruled from Naples by the Bourbons, and the map shows its southern half, with the mountains of Sicily and Calabria drawn in hachures. In 1848 Sicily had risen against Naples and failed, a year before this sheet was made, and in 1860 Garibaldi would end the kingdom. The inset of Malta, Gozzo and Comino ties the Italian south to the neighboring British island. Such a sheet gives the island and the toe of Italy in one clear and well-ordered view.

A reader of nineteenth-century Mediterranean history, a family with roots in Sicily, Calabria or Malta, or a collector of German steel-engraved atlases will find a fine gift here. TheMapVault's 1872 Family Atlas sheet shows the same toe of Italy and Sicily in English, whereas this 1849 Meyer sheet is a German one, drawn under the Bourbon kingdom. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.