ABRAHAM ORTELIUS & NETHERLANDISH CARTOGRAPHY

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Abraham Ortelius, the Flemish cartographer, whose masterpiece, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum is considered the first true modern atlas and was originally printed in Antwerp on a day like today in 1570. The Grandma loves old maps and she has wanted to know better this incredible Flemish cartographer, geographer, and cosmographer.

Abraham Ortelius (also Ortels, Orthellius, Wortels; 4 or 14 April 1527-28 June 1598) was a cartographer, geographer, and cosmographer from Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands.

He is recognized as the creator of the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World). Along with Gemma Frisius and Gerardus Mercator, Ortelius is generally considered one of the founders of the Netherlandish school of cartography and geography.

He was a notable figure of this school in its golden age (approximately 1570s-1670s) and an important geographer during the age of discovery. The publication of his atlas in 1570 is often considered as the official beginning of the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography. He was the first person proposing that the continents were joined before drifting to their present positions.

Abraham Ortelius was born on either 4 April or 14 April 1527 in the city of Antwerp, which was then in the Spanish Netherlands. The Ortels or Wortels (latinized as Orthellius and Ortelius) family was originally from Augsburg, a Free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire.

Leonard Ortelius was well educated. He spoke Greek and Latin, and worked with his brother-in-law Jacob van Meteren on the translation of Miles Coverdale's English Bible. 

In 1535, they were both prosecuted for possessing suspicious books. Searches turned up nothing and the case was subsequently dismissed.

He traveled extensively in Europe and is specifically known to have traveled throughout the Habsburg Netherlands; in southern, western, northern, and eastern Germany (e.g., 1560, 1575-1576); France (1559-1560); England and Ireland (1576); and Italy (1578, and perhaps two or three times between 1550 and 1558).

Beginning as a map-engraver, in 1547 he entered the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as an illuminator of maps. He supplemented his income trading in books, prints, and maps, and his journeys included annual visits to the Frankfurt book and print fair, where he met Gerardus Mercator in 1554.

In 1560, however, when travelling with Mercator to Trier, Lorraine, and Poitiers, he seems to have been attracted, largely by Mercator's influence, towards the career of a scientific geographer. He died in Antwerp.

More information: ThoughtCo

In 1564, he published his first map, Typus Orbis Terrarum, an eight-leaved wall map of the world, on which he identified the Regio Patalis with Locach as a northward extension of the Terra Australis, reaching as far as New Guinea. This map subsequently appeared in reduced form in the Terrarum (the only extant copy is now at Basel University Library). He also published a two-sheet map of Egypt in 1565, a plan of the Brittenburg castle on the coast of the Netherlands in 1568, an eight-sheet map of Asia in 1567, and a six-sheet map of Spain before the appearance of his atlas.

In England Ortelius's contacts included William Camden, Richard Hakluyt, Thomas Penny, Puritan controversialist William Charke, and Humphrey Llwyd, who would contribute the map of England and Wales to Ortelius's 1573 edition of the Theatrum.

In 1578, he laid the basis of a critical treatment of ancient geography by his Synonymia geographica (issued by the Plantin Press at Antwerp and republished in expanded form as Thesaurus geographicus in 1587 and again expanded in 1596; in the last edition, Ortelius considers the possibility of continental drift, a hypothesis that would be proved correct only centuries later).

In 1596, he received a presentation from Antwerp, similar to that afterwards bestowed on Peter Paul Rubens. His death on 28 June 1598 and his burial in the church of St. Michael's Abbey, Antwerp, were marked by public mourning. The inscription on his tombstone reads: Quietis cultor sine lite, uxore, prole (served quietly, without accusation, wife, and offspring).

In 1579, Ortelius brought out his Nomenclator Ptolemaicus and started his Parergon (a series of maps illustrating ancient history, sacred and secular). He also published Itinerarium per nonnullas Galliae Belgicae partes (at the Plantin press in 1584, and reprinted in 1630, 1661 in Hegenitius, Itin. Frisio-Hoil., in 1667 by Verbiest, and finally in 1757 in Leuven), a record of a journey in Belgium and the Rhineland made in 1575.

In 1589 he published Maris Pacifici, the first dedicated map of the Pacific to be printed. Among his last works were an edition of Caesar (C. I. Caesaris omnia quae extant, Leiden, Raphelingen, 1593), and the Aurei saeculi imago, sive Germanorum veterum vita, mores, ritus et religio. (Philippe Galle, Antwerp, 1596). He also aided Welser in his edition of the Peutinger Table in 1598.

Contrary to popular belief, Abraham Ortelius, who had no children, never lived at the Mercator-Orteliushuis, but lived at his sister's house.

More information: 'Theatrum orbis terrarum', the first modern atlas

There's no map for you to follow 

and take your journey.
[...] You are the mapmaker.

Phillipa Soo

'THEATRUM ORBIS TERRARUM', THE FIRST MODERN ATLAS

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first true modern atlas, written by Abraham Ortelius, that was originally printed in Antwerp on a day like today in 1570.

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Theatre of the Lands of the World, is considered to be the first true modern atlas. 

Written by Abraham Ortelius, strongly encouraged by Gillis Hooftman and originally printed on 20 May 1570 in Antwerp, it consisted of a collection of uniform map sheets and supporting text bound to form a book for which copper printing plates were specifically engraved.

The Ortelius atlas is sometimes referred to as the summary of sixteenth-century cartography. The publication of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570) is often considered as the official beginning of the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography (approximately 1570s-1670s).

The atlas contained virtually no maps from the hand of Ortelius, but 53 bundled maps of other masters, with the source as indicated. Previously, groupings of disparate maps were only released as custom lots, to individual order. In the Ortelius atlas, however, the maps were all in the same style and of the same size, printed from copper plates, logically arranged by continent, region and state. In addition to the maps he provided a descriptive comment and referrals on the reverse. This was the first time that the entirety of Western European knowledge of the world was brought together in one book.

In the bibliography, in the section Catalogus Auctorum, not only were the 33 cartographers mentioned whose work was recorded in the Theatrum (which at the time was not yet customary), but also the total of 87 cartographers of the 16th century that Ortelius knew. This list grew in every Latin Edition, and included no less than 183 names in 1601.

Among the sources the following are mentioned: for the world map, the World Map (1561) by Giacomo Gastaldi; the porto Avenue of the Atlantic coast (1562) by Diego Gutierrez, the world map (1569) of Gerardus Mercator, which have eight maps derived from the Theatrum.

For the map of Europe, wall map (1554) of the Mercator map of Scandinavia (1539) by Olaus Magnus, map of Asia was derived from his own Asia-map from 1567, which in turn was inspired by that of Gastaldi (1559). Also for the Africa map he referred to Gastaldi.

More information: Utrecht University 

This work by Ortelius, consisted of a collection of the best maps, refined by himself, combined into one map or split across multiple, and on the same size (folios of approximately 35 x 50 cm). The naming and location coordinates were not normalized.

After the initial publication of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Ortelius regularly revised and expanded the atlas, reissuing it in various formats until his death in 1598. From its original seventy maps and eighty-seven bibliographic references in the first edition (1570), the atlas grew through its thirty-one editions to encompass 183 references and 167 maps in 1612.

The online copy of the 1573 volume held by the State Library of New South Wales contains 70 numbered double-page sheets, tipped onto stubs at the centerfold, with six maps combined with descriptive letterpress on the recto of each first leaf. The legends of most maps name the author whose map Ortelius adapted. In the preface Ortelius credits Franciscus Hogenberg with engraving nearly all the maps.

The 1573 Additamentum to the atlas is notable for containing Humphrey Llwyd's Cambriae Typus, the first map to show Wales on its own.

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum is used as the centerpiece of the Fool's Cap Map of the World, which is a satirical presentation of Europe's understanding of the globe.

From the 1630s, the Blaeu family issued their work under a similar title, Theatrum orbis terrarum, sive, Atlas Novus.

The moneyed middle class, which had much interest in knowledge and science, turned out to be very much interested in the convenient size and the pooling of knowledge. For buyers who were not strong in Latin, from the end of 1572, in addition to the Latin version, Dutch, German and French editions were published. This rapid success prompted the Ortelius Theatrum to constantly expand and improve. 

In 1573, he released 17 more additional maps under the title Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum, bringing the total at 70 maps. By Ortelius' death in 1598, there were twenty-five editions that had appeared in seven different languages.

More information: Library of Congress

 The earliest maps were 'story' maps.
Cartographers were artists who mingled
knowledge with supposition, memory and fears.
Their maps described both landscape and the events,
which had taken place within it,
enabling travellers to plot a route
as well as to experience a story.

Rory MacLean