![[ Electors of the Holy Roman Empire ] Ordines Sacri Romani Imp: Ab Ottone III Instituti By Abraham Ortelius](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/99053.jpg)
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Finely engraved image depicting a group of the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire, originally engraved by master engraver Antonie Wierix, for Gerard De Jode in 1593, and later re-issued by Ortelius.
The engraving depicts the nobles entitled to choose German Emperors, as instituted to end the turmoil and quarreling that occurred after the death of Charles the Great, by Otto IV and the Pope. This plate shows left of the Emperor, the highest ranking officials, three ecclesiastical, and four lay dignitaries. The second rank consists of four dukes and four marquesses, the third of 8 earls, etc.
This engraving was published from 1593 for the first time in the atlas by Gerard de Jode. The plate was later acquired by Vrients and was then from 1603 onwards included in Ortelius's 'Theatrum' and the 'Parergon'.
The image is one of two sheets depicting the Electors, this being the upper of the two sheets, containing the most important ranks.
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).
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