Northern Italy Map 1851 Illustrated Vignette Atlas Print - Milan, Venice, Turin, Genoa, Rome

This full-color map of Northern Italy was published by John Tallis of London in 1851, and it was engraved for R. Montgomery Martin's Illustrated Atlas. The decorative vignettes show the Grand Canal in Venice and St. Peter's in Rome, along with two others. Tallis was one of the last great decorative map makers, and his maps are prized for such vignettes of local scenes and people, which turn a geographical sheet into a small picture of national character. The sheet is a gorgeous full-color example of the series. It was made in the year the Great Exhibition opened in London, when Tallis issued his Illustrated World Atlas. The vignettes are the main attraction of the sheet, and the full-color printing is of the quality that made Tallis famous.

The atlas maps were engraved by John Rapkin, a skilled artisan, and later reissued by the London Printing & Publishing Company, which left the Tallis imprint on them and so kept the name alive. In 1851 northern Italy was divided into several states, with Venetia and Lombardy under Austria and Piedmont ruled by the House of Savoy, and the vignettes of Venice and Rome gave British readers the monuments they most wanted to see. Tallis had come to London from the Midlands in the 1840s and made his name with a series of street views. The map is as much an illustration of travel as a map.

A lover of decorative vignette maps, a family with roots in Venice, Milan or Turin, or a traveler who has stood on the Grand Canal will find a charming gift here. TheMapVault's Tallis sheet of Southern Italy completes the pair, whereas this Northern Italy carries Venice and Rome in its borders. 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.