Decorative map of the Low Countries, oriented northwest, set in an ornate decorative border, from Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas of the world. The coastline is shown from Dieppe on the North Sea to Emden on the banks of the Ems River.
Dunkirk (Duynkerke) and Lille (Ryßel) are shown in Flanders. The Pale of Calais, which had been retaken by the French in 1558, is bordered by Picardy, Flanders, and Artois. Cambrai
Two cherubs hold an ornate banner cartouche aloft, with sailing ships and a sea monster.
Koeman (1964) attributes this map to Jan van Hoirne's 1556 map of the Oosterscherzee which only covers one eighth of the present map. Van der Heijden in the oldest maps of the Netherlands, Utrecht 1987, p. 20, map 14 thinks that another, unknown map by this cartographer, as mentioned in the Catalogues is more likely. Karrow (88/8, p. 619-620) attributes this map to the 1568 map of the Low Countries by Matthias Zuendt (1498-1571). Finally, Meurer (p. 91) makes a convincing case for de Jode's 12 sheet map of 1566, itself based primarily on Jacob van Deventer's province maps.
1592L32 (525 copies printed) (last line, italic in three columns except for the first word: lines "dicunt Galli. ..nomen tantùm. ..citur".),
Abraham Ortelius is perhaps the best known and most frequently collected of all sixteenth-century mapmakers. Ortelius started his career as a map colorist. In 1547 he entered the Antwerp guild of St Luke as afsetter van Karten. His early career was as a business man, and most of his journeys before 1560, were for commercial purposes. In 1560, while traveling with Gerard Mercator to Trier, Lorraine, and Poitiers, he seems to have been attracted, largely by Mercator’s influence, towards a career as a scientific geographer. From that point forward, he devoted himself to the compilation of his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World), which would become the first modern atlas.
In 1564 he completed his “mappemonde", an eight-sheet map of the world. The only extant copy of this great map is in the library of the University of Basel. Ortelius also published a map of Egypt in 1565, a plan of Brittenburg Castle on the coast of the Netherlands, and a map of Asia, prior to 1570.
On May 20, 1570, Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum first appeared in an edition of 70 maps. By the time of his death in 1598, a total of 25 editions were published including editions in Latin, Italian, German, French, and Dutch. Later editions would also be issued in Spanish and English by Ortelius’ successors, Vrients and Plantin, the former adding a number of maps to the atlas, the final edition of which was issued in 1612. Most of the maps in Ortelius' Theatrum were drawn from the works of a number of other mapmakers from around the world; a list of 87 authors is given by Ortelius himself
In 1573, Ortelius published seventeen supplementary maps under the title of Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum. In 1575 he was appointed geographer to the king of Spain, Philip II, on the recommendation of Arias Montanus, who vouched for his orthodoxy (his family, as early as 1535, had fallen under suspicion of Protestantism). In 1578 he laid the basis of a critical treatment of ancient geography with his Synonymia geographica (issued by the Plantin press at Antwerp and republished as Thesaurus geographicus in 1596). In 1584 he issued his Nomenclator Ptolemaicus, a Parergon (a series of maps illustrating ancient history, sacred and secular). Late in life, he also aided Welser in his edition of the Peutinger Table (1598).