Northern Italy Map 1856 Lombardy & Venice Atlas Print - Milan, Venice, Turin, Florence, Parma

George W. Colton drew Northern Italy: Lombardy & Venice, Sardinia, Tuscany, Parma, Modena, Lucca, and the States of the Church for Colton's Atlas of the World, published by J. H. Colton & Co. of New York in 1856 as map number 18. The sheet measures 41 by 34 centimeters at a scale of 1:2,217,600 and is printed in full color with an ornate decorative border. Each state is given its own tint, which makes the political divisions easy to read, and mountain ranges, rivers and the principal cities are shown. The Adriatic coast and Sardinia also appear, and inscriptions name the regions and key landmarks of the time. The imprint of J. H. Colton & Co. at 172 William Street, New York, and the date of entry in 1855 appear in the margin, and the catalog lists the sheet in the Rumsey Collection.

The map records northern Italy before unification, when Lombardy and Venetia belonged to Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia, ruled from Turin, was the main Italian power. Tuscany, Parma, Modena and Lucca were separate duchies, and the States of the Church stretched across the center of the peninsula. Within five years, in 1861, most of these lines were erased by the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. Colton's atlas, one of the finest of its time, was printed lithographically, a method that allowed mass production while keeping a high level of detail.

A collector of nineteenth-century American atlas maps, a family with roots in Lombardy, Tuscany or the Veneto, or a student of the Risorgimento will find a handsome gift here. TheMapVault's 1858 Colton sheet adds railroads to the same region, whereas this 1856 sheet is the earlier edition of the atlas, and its Southern Italy companion completes the pair. 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.