![]() ![]() The west coast of North America is shown too far west, as was standard at the time. This was not entirely dispelled until the second voyage of the remarkable Captain James Cook in 1772-75. No sight had been made of a vast continent, but conventional wisdom had it that there had to be as much land in the southern hemisphere as in the northern. Once through the Strait of Magellan, the voyager's sea route took him on an almost direct course for the East Indies. A strategically placed cartouche hides a complete lack of knowledge of the southern waters of the Pacific. It is recorded that they travelled together through France in 1560. The two of them had a close relationship and shared their knowledge openly with each other. The general shape of the continent is derived from Gerard Mercator's excellent twenty-one-sheet world map of the previous year. Ortelius depicts the discoveries of several people on this map. It is almost identical to the earlier plate except for the following:ġ570 plate: The largest ship in the Pacific is sailing westwards, and the Equator is shown with no graduations between the longitudinal marks.ġ579 plate: The largest ship in the Pacific is shown sailing eastwards, and graduations now appear along the equatorial line.ġ587 plate: The bulge to the southwestern coast of South America is removed. The first, of 1570, had by now developed several cracks. This is the third of three copperplates that Ortelius used to depict the American continent. Throughout its publication history, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum was the undisputed leader in the field of European atlas making."One of the most famous and easily recognised maps of America, and one that is both functional as well as decorative." (Burden) During this period, over seventy-three hundred copies were printed in thirty-one editions and seven different languages. His heirs transferred publication rights to Jan Baptiste Vrients who produced the later editions until he died in 1612. Ortelius’ daughter learned the skill of illumination from her father and colored the special presentation atlases with rich washes and jewel-like pigments.Īpart from the modern maps in the Theatrum, Ortelius himself designed a series of historical maps known as the Parergon Theatri, which appeared from 1579 onwards, sometimes as a separate publication and sometimes incorporated in the Theatrum.Īfter the initial release of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in 1570, Ortelius regularly revised and expanded the atlas, reissuing it until his death in 1598. The oceans were generally stipple engraved, mountains were shown as picturesque rolling hills, and towering castles and church spires depicted cities. Most of the maps were elegantly engraved by Frans Hogenberg and have a distinctive style of elaborate strapwork cartouches and bold borders. Ortelius employed the most prominent engravers, printers and colorists in the production of his atlas. Many of Theatrum’s maps were based upon sources that no longer existed or were extremely rare. This list included the thirty-three cartographers whose maps Ortelius consulted, as well as, all eighty-seven geographers known to him. The Theatrum included a list of sources to provide readers with a historical context for the maps. In an era when citing references were the exception rather than the rule, Ortelius was one of the best bibliographers of early cartography. Therefore, it was an encyclopedic description of the world and a milestone in cartographic history. Ortelius departed from the Italian model and created a compilation of maps and narratives that were presented logically to represent the world, continents, regions and nations. Although Lafreri and others in Italy had published collections of ‘modern’ maps in book form in earlier years, the maps had not been specifically engraved for the project and the books were assembled to suit the needs of the individual customer. This book gathered together for the first time a collection of uniformly sized maps and related text bound to form a book. Ortelius’s Theatrum (as it is often called) is considered the first true atlas, although Mercator coined the term atlas twenty years later. It was not however, until the publication of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World) in 1570 that Ortelius’ place in history was assured. Between 15 he produced several of his own maps including a large map of the world on eight sheets. ![]() In the course of his business, he traveled throughout Europe and established important contacts with cartographers and other literati. Born in Antwerp where he was educated in the classics and mathematics, he began his career in cartography as an illuminator or ‘painter of maps’ and opened a bookstore in partnership with his sister. Abraham Ortelius (1527 – 1598) is regarded as one of the most prominent cartographers of the sixteenth century. ![]()
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