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Stock# 32349bpw
Description

Nice example of Ortelius' map of the World, from Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern World Atlas.

The map includes a massive Terra Australis Nondum Cognita, distinctive northwest passage below the Terra Septemtrionalis Incognita, and other early cartographic misconceptions. The western bulge South America has been removed, but there is still only the Straits of Magellan separating the continent from the unknown southern continent. The early misprojection of Japan is prominent, as is the equally erroneous depiction of Nova Guinea and the Solomon Islands. North America is a study in early conjecture and mythical cartography, including a projection of the St. Lawrence reaching to the middle of the continent and a similar river running from the Gulf of Mexico to the same vicinity. Nova Francia is shown, although well prior to the visits of Champlain and the Jesuits. Quivira and Anian appear. Many other wonderful early configurations. The map is embellished with sea monsters and sailing ships.

This is the third state of the map, which first appeared in 1589 and adds the new embellishments, including the strapwork around the image and the medallions with quotes from Cicero and Seneca. The map is based upon Mercator's map of 1569, Gastaldi's map of 1561 and Diego Gutierrez' portolan map of the coastlines of the Atlantic.

Ortelius' Theatrum was perhaps the single most influential set of maps published in the 16th Century. First issued in 1570 and expanded over the next 42 years to this final Vrients edition of Ortelius' masterwork, the Theatrum revolutionized the presentation of maps to an increasingly educated classes of Renaissance Europe and became the standard from which most cartographic works of the period were copied.

Ortelius meticulously searched the Europe for the best available regional maps, constantly compiling, adding and updating his work. It is through Ortelius that the works of many regional mapmakers, whose works are virtually unobtainable to modern collectors, can be studied and appreciated.

Abraham Ortelius Biography

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).