Plate no. 36 from Cassini's 'Nuovo atlante geografico universale delineato sulle ultime osservazioni' (1792-1801), showing Tasmania as a peninsula

The mapmaker
Giovanni Maria Cassini was an Italian polymath, mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, engineer and cartographer, who was a pupil in Rome of Giambattista Piranesi. "A talented engraver, who greatly admired James Cook and certain European astronomers, was to produce some influential atlases, maps and globes at a time of major political upheaval in Europe. Many re-drawn boundaries followed in the wake of the French Revolution and Napoleon's conquest. While Britain, Spain and France were engaged in world-wide imperial conflict, Cassini's views emerged, anticipating by over fifty years those that would lead to insurrection in Italy in 1831 and 1848-49 and Cavour's advocacy at the Congress of Paris in 1856 of an 'Italian State'. The fact some of Cassini's globes still survive in Italian schools suggests that Cassini's work made a real educational contribution to the emergence of Italian nationalism, if not tot the great power campaigns and treaties that led to the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1859-60" (Baldwin).