A Full Color Example
This rare 1601 miniature world atlas, published by Jan Baptista Vrients, represents the final and most refined edition of the small-format Epitome of Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the pioneering modern atlas. Containing 124 intricately engraved maps, the atlas showcases the world, continents, and numerous regional maps, making it one of the most comprehensive pocket atlases of its time.
The Epitome was part of the second series of miniature atlases conceived initially by Philip Galle, following his 1577 Spieghel der Wereld (Mirror of the World). The earlier atlas, while innovative, suffered from coarser engraving and less refined cartographic detail. Over the next two decades, new editions of the Epitome gradually replaced the older plates with sharper, more elegantly engraved maps, improving both aesthetic quality and readability. The accompanying text, prepared by Peter Heyns, drew from the Theatrum, reinforcing the atlas’s role as a compact and affordable reference for travelers, students, and merchants.
Following Ortelius's death in 1598, Jan Baptista Vrients acquired the plates and further refined the atlas, incorporating new maps and retouching older engravings. By the time of this 1601 edition, only 10 of the original Spieghel der Wereld plates remained, with the majority of the maps newly engraved to align with contemporary cartographic information.
Phillips points out seven of the maps as relating to America:
- 1. Typvs Orbis Terrarvm
- 2. Evrope [part of Greenland shown]
- 4. Africa [part of Brazil]
- 5. America five Novvus Orbis
- 97. Septentrionales Regiones [Greenland and part of the Northeastern North America]
- 99. Tartaria five Magni Chami Imperivm [shows simplified Southwest and California, including "Quivira" and "Axa"]
- 101. India Orient [simplified NW North America]
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).