![]() While the name “America” had been floating around on maps since 1507, putting it on equal footing (so to speak) with Europe, Asia, and Africa was new. War-like, mysterious America, lounges at the bottom, holding a severed head, to show both barbarity and cannibalism. The two figures at the bottom would have been unfamiliar to Ortelius’s readers. They are, of course, the personifications of the continents.Įarly modern readers of Ortelius would have been immediately familiar with three of them: Europe, of course, sitting at a place of prominence at the top, with her crown and scepter and orb, showing the perceived European mastery of the world Asia, draped in rich silks and holding incense (note in the 1606 edition how the colorist has made Asia’s stomach area yellow…) and wild, dark-skinned Africa, crowned by the fiery sun. Readers are immediately confronted with four (well, really four and a half-we’ll get to the poor half in a minute) women in varying states of dress. These hand-colored atlases are perpetual favorites when we do rare book show’n’tell sessions, and the intrigue starts right from the title page. Over thirty editions of this Epitome were published in different languages.Left, the title page from the 1595 Antwerp edition right, the title page from the 1606 London edition. ![]() In 1577, engraver Philip Galle and poet-translator Pieter Heyns published the first pocket-sized edition of the Theatrum, the Epitome. The number of map sheets grew from 53 in 1570 to 167 in 1612 in the last edition. ![]() Editions were published in Dutch, German, French, Spanish, English, and Italian. Some 24 editions appeared during Ortelius's lifetime and another ten after his death in 1598. Nothing was like it until Mercator's atlas appeared twenty-five years later. The importance of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum for geographical knowledge in the last quarter of the sixteenth century is difficult to overemphasize. The Parergon can be called a truly original work of Ortelius, who drew the maps based on his research. Later editions included Additamenta (additions), resulting in Ortelius' historical atlas, the Parergon, mostly bound together with the atlas. This first edition contained seventy maps on fifty-three sheets. It was one of the most expensive books ever published. He completed the atlas in 1569, and in May of 1570, the Theatrum was available for sale. In 1568 the production of individual maps for his atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum was already in full swing. In 1565 he published a map of Egypt and a map of the Holy Land, a large map of Asia followed. The inspiration for this map may well have been Gastaldi's large world map. In 1564 he published his first map, a large and ambitious world wall map. In addition, he travelled a lot and visited Italy and France, made contacts everywhere with scholars and editors, and maintained extensive correspondence with them. Luke as an "illuminator of maps." Besides colouring maps, Ortelius was a dealer in antiques, coins, maps, and books, with the book and map trade gradually becoming his primary occupation.īusiness went well because his means permitted him to start an extensive collection of medals, coins, antiques, and a library of many volumes. He learned Latin and studied Greek and mathematics.Ībraham and his sisters Anne and Elizabeth took up map colouring. The maker of the 'first atlas', the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570), was born on 4 April 1527 into an old Antwerp family.
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