Southern Italy Map 1832 Hand-Colored Atlas Print - Naples, Palermo, Cagliari, Messina

John Dower drew this South Italy, with commentary by W. M. Higgins, for an unrecorded atlas issued in 1832 by W. S. Orr and by W. & R. Chambers. The catalog lists a scale of 1:3,200,000 and an engraved sheet printed by Bradbury & Evans, Orr & Smith and Russell, hand colored to separate the political divisions. The map shows the southern peninsula with the Apennines, the Adriatic Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea, together with Sicily, and an inset gives Sardinia its own panel outlined in a different color. Major cities named in the catalog description include Naples, Palermo and Cagliari, and a graticule of latitude and longitude runs round the border. The map measures 27 by 22 centimeters, and the unrecorded atlas that carries it is catalogued with a note that it also includes maps of Australia and Tasmania.

Dower's atlas held 51 maps and is noted for an unusual sheet of mountains and rivers facing the title page, which shows that he cared as much for physical geography as for political boundaries. Its maps of Australia and Tasmania were later cited by scholars, and many of these sheets were reissued as lithographs in his Short Atlas for Schools. In 1832 southern Italy was a patchwork of kingdoms, with Naples as the great capital of the south, Sicily under the same crown and Sardinia governed separately from Piedmont. The map therefore documents the political geography that preceded the Risorgimento by a generation.

A reader of nineteenth-century Italian history, a family with roots in Naples, Sicily or Sardinia, or a collector of early British atlas cartography will find a fine gift here. TheMapVault's matching North Italy of 1832 completes the pair, whereas the Teesdale South Italy of 1831 shows the same region from a different London publisher a year earlier. 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.