Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (August 16, 1650 - December 9, 1718) was an important 17th-century cartographer and globe maker based in Venice. Coronelli was born the fifth child of a Venetian tailor. Unlikely to inherit his father's business, he instead apprenticed in Ravenna to a woodcut artist. Around 1663, Coronelli joined the Franciscan Order and, in 1671, entered the Venetian convent of Saint Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Coronelli excelled in the fields of cosmography, mathematics, and geography. Although his works include the phenomenal Atlante Veneto and Corso Geografico, Coronelli is best known for his globes. In 1678, Coronelli was commissioned to make his first major globes by Ranuccio II Farnese, Duke of Parma. Each superbly engraved globe was five feet in diameter. Louis IV of France, having heard of the magnificent Parma globes, invited Coronelli to Paris, where from 1681-83 he constructed an even more impressive pair of globes measuring over 12 feet in diameter and weighing 2 tons each. The globes earned him the patronage of Louis XIV and privileged access to French cartographic information from Jesuit sources in the New World, particularly Louisiana. Coronelli returned to Venice and continued to publish globes, maps, and atlases, which were admired all over Europe for their beauty, accuracy, and detail. He had a particular fascination for the Great Lakes region, and his early maps of this area were unsurpassed in accuracy for nearly 100 years after their initial publication. He is also well known for his groundbreaking publication of the first accurate map depicting the sources of the Blue Nile. At the height of his career, Coronelli founded the world's first geographical society, the Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti, and was awarded the official title Cosmographer of the Republic of Venice. In 1699, in recognition of his extraordinary accomplishment and scholarship, Coronelli was also appointed Father General of the Franciscan Order. The great cartographer and globe maker died in Venice at the age of 68. His extraordinary globes can be seen today at the Bibliothèque Nationale François Mitterrand in Paris, Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, the National Library of Austria, the Globe Museum in Vienna, the Library of Stift Melk, the Special Collections Library of Texas Tech University, as well as lesser works in Trier, Prague, London, and Washington D.C. Coronelli's work is notable for its distinctive style, which is characterized by the high-quality white paper, dark intense impressions, detailed renderings of topographical features in profile, and numerous cartographic innovations. More by this mapmaker...

Hiob or Job Ludolf (Iobus Ludolfus; June 156, 1624 - April 8, 1704) was a German orientalist, linguist, and philologist. He has been hailed as having earned 'the most illustrious name in Ethiopic scholarship.' He studied philology at Erfurt academy and Leiden university, but thereafter traveled broadly to build a daunting collection of languages (he is understood to have had familiarity with twenty five, and was a correspondent on the subject of linguistics with Leibniz.) During a visit to Rome, he met and befriended Abba Gorgoryos, a monk from the Ethiopian province of Amhara. From him, Ludolf was able to learn the Amharan Ethiopic language. Ludolf's Ethiopic and Amharic works were for more than a century the best means for a European to learn those languages, and his history of Ethiopia remains important to this day. His interest in Ethiopia would not be limited to history and linguistics: he attempted to promote European trade with Ethiopia, even visiting England in 1683 to do so. His efforts failed, primarily due to resistance on the part of the leadership of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Thereafter he returned to Frankfurt in 1684 to write; in 1690 he became president of the Collegium Imperiale Historicum. Learn More...