Giuseppe Longhi

Longhi was one of the leading book and print publishers and sellers in Bologna, “well known for his entrepreneurship and the variety of his productions. These included illustrated works such as academic theses, encomiastic lyrics, comedies, and historical and geographical texts, which often concerned local topics. Towards the end of his career, he became “archiepiscopal printer” under the Archbishops of Bologna Girolamo and later Giacomo Boncompagni. Longhi was active in publishing for some forty years, from 1650 to his death in 1691, during which he changed the location of his workshop at least three times. In the last three decades of the seventeenth century, when he embarked on [as series of] wall-maps… he was occupying a group of small rooms in the Vicolo della Scimia. In 1677, he rented a house from the church of San Petronio, and in 1682 he moved his workshop to Palazzo Montecuccoli in Via Orefici, where he also lived” (Cesari).

In addition to a large twelve-sheet wall-map of the world, Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula (after 1675), engraved by Carlo Scotti, Longhi published two issues of a version of Blaeu’s wall maps of the four continents. The first set appeared in 1672-1673 (state 1) and then again between 1677 and about 1680 (state 2). In the meantime, he published two issues of Greuter’s very large wall-map of Italy between 1675 and 1676. All these maps were engraved by Pietro Todeschi, who worked extensively with Longhi over many years.