Italy Map 1746 Kingdoms & States Georgian Print - Rome, Naples, Venice, Palermo, Cagliari

This A Map of Italy with its Kingdoms, States, &c. was made by Richard William Seale and published in London in 1746. It is a decorative map of Italy, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily, showing towns, roads, lakes, rivers, castles and forts. It comes from Tindal's Continuation of Rapin's History, the English history of England by Rapin that Nicholas Tindal extended and that was one of the best-known illustrated histories of its time. The map is a classic Georgian engraving, made to be read alongside a narrative of events and not as a navigation chart, and its castles and forts are drawn individually. The engraving draws castles and forts one by one, which sets it apart from a plain political map.

In 1746 Italy was a mosaic of states in which foreign powers fought for control, and the War of the Austrian Succession was then raging across the peninsula. The kingdoms and states named in the title include Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, together with the Papal States and the republics of Venice and Genoa. Rome was the papal capital, Naples the seat of a Bourbon king, and Venice was still an independent republic. A map printed in London in that year gave English readers the political geography that a good history needed. It gives the reader an Italy of rival crowns and republics, drawn for a book of history.

A reader of eighteenth-century European history, a family with roots in any of these old states, or a collector of Georgian engraved maps will find a thoughtful gift here. TheMapVault's French maps of 1640 and about 1683 show the same peninsula from the previous century, whereas this English sheet of 1746 is a history-book engraving with forts and castles. 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.