Science Art: From Four Roses des Vents, by Vincenzo Coronelli.

Scientific illustration of a compass rose, a map marking telling us which way we're facing and which direction we should go.
Scientific illustration of a compass rose, a map marking telling us which way we're facing and which direction we should go.

This is one of four compass roses created by Vincenzo Coronelli, a 17th-century cartographer. I found them all on Wikimedia Commons, which got them from the French Bibliotheque Nationale.

Coronelli was a Franciscan friar from Venice who made atlases and encyclopedias, learning the art of woodcuts at age 10 and, at age 16, publishing the first of what would be 140-plus works. His star charts were so celebrated, he eventually rose to the position of Cosmographer of the Republic of Venice.

A good compass rose can help you chart a true course.

I inverted this one from its original orientation so that the banner could be read more easily, and so that north pointed up. It’s interesting to me that this is not written in Italian (or French), but so the reader could Praticaii Dage Inglese. I guess *everyone* was reading Coronelli, even the English. (And the Italians, the Latin-speakers, and the Dutch – for those are the other three compass roses in the collection.)