Ancient map of Padua by Giovanni Valle Giustinopolitano from the 18th century

Antonio Zatta's map of Padua by Giovanni Valle Giustinopolitano, Venice 1784. An exquisite and detailed geographical map of the Padua territory derived from the monumental work Atlante Novissimo, illustrated and supplemented with observations and discoveries made by the most renowned and contemporary geographers, authored by Antonio Zatta, published in four volumes with maps of the entire world, between 1775–1785 at the Remondini printing house in Venice. In the upper left corner, within an elegant, rustic-style cartouche that departs from the Renaissance reminiscences of previous cartographers, there is the title “Il Padovano di Giovanni Valle Giustinopolitano di Nuova Projezione,” followed by the publisher's signature Antonio Zatta and the date 1784. Outside the graduated margin, the cardinal directions are indicated, and in the lower left corner, there is the engraver's signature G. Zuliani inc., with the designer G. Pitteri written to the right. The title emphasizes that the cartographic source used by Zatta in creating the map is Giovanni Valle's model.

The beautiful map is oriented with north at the top and presents, in a rather innovative way, only the area of Padua, with the bordering provinces marked with large letters (Trentino at the top, Vicenza on the left, and Polesine di Rovigo at the bottom), but without providing their characteristics or geographical representations; this allowed, combined with the coloring of the internal boundary contours, to focus attention on the actual subject of the map.

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