![]() It had been finished the year before, as appears from the privileges by the Brabant Council and the Privy Council from respectively February 21 and October 23, 1569. The first edition of the Theatrum is dated (vdK 31:001). ![]() That being said, because of Mercator’s work habits, he would not have been able to produce a work likethe Theatrum by 1570, even if he had that in mind. Elsewhere it has been suggested that Gerard Mercator was the progenitor of the idea for the first standardized atlas, but that he held back from competing with Ortelius out of a spirit of friendliness. At the time, Italy was the center of global cartographic publishing.Therefore Ortelius ordered from Rome an «Italian Assembled to Order Atlas» (or «Lafreri School» atlas) with 38 maps. When Radermaker befriended Ortelius in 1555, he evidently passedthe task off to him. Apparently, Hooftman found unrolling large maps to be unwieldy, so it was suggested to him by Jan Radermaker to bind his maps up in book form. Ortelius’s Theatrum has its genesis in the 1550s when the merchant Gilles Hooftmanwas building a practical map collection. When it was published in 1570, the Theatrum was the best available summary of 16th-century cartographic knowledge, covering much of the exploration of the world in the century following the discovery of America. Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum is widely considered to be the first true modern atlas. «A landmark in cartographic publication, for it is the first largemodern atlas.» (PMM, 91)Įxceptional, unsophisticated example of the first state of Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum, one of the most important works in the Western Canon. Collation: A-DII (including engraved title), 53 double-page engraved maps, a-iII, k-Nii, o. Small loss to the tail of the spine a bit unevenly warped at the edges, possibly a temporary publisher’s binding intended to be replaced later. Contemporary limp vellum With 53 double-page engraved maps, all in first states. The Theatrum also includes an engraving of the only portrait made of Ortelius during his lifetime, by Adriaen Thomaszoon Key ( sixth image). One of the most arresting engravings in the Theatrum shows the world as mapped by Ptolemy of Alexandria, superimposed on the much larger world known to Ortelius ( fifth image). ![]() The second part of the Theatrum contained historical maps, depicting the world as known to ancient geographers, such as a map of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent ( fourth image). We reproduce above: the world map (considerably improved from that of 1570) a map of the New World ( second image above) and the map of Iceland, charming because of the many ferocious sea beasties that fill the North Atlantic south of the island ( third image). The Library’s copy of the Theatrum is the 1592 edition, considerably enlarged from that of 1570 (134 maps instead of 53). It also made the previously poor Ortelius a great deal of money, which meant he could now afford to travel and collect geographical information and improve his maps. The Theatrum was an immediate publishing success, and it went through 23 editions and translations in Ortelius’ own lifetime (he died in 1598). Most of the maps were not original with Ortelius-he borrowed freely from previous cartographers and he fully credited all his sources-but many of the maps, such as the world map, are brand new. It contained 53 maps, and its novelty lay in the fact that the maps were uniform in style, size, and lettering had been engraved especially for this work had descriptive text on the back of each map and covered the entire world, region by region. In 1570, Ortelius published Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, or Theater of the World. Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish cartographer, was born Apr.
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