In 1625 the copyright was acquired by Willem Blaeu, who in 1631 published an appendix to the work and then edited his own Theatrum orbis terrarum sive atlas novus in 1634. The Theatrum was an immediate success and the Plantin press published a long series of editions and epitomes in Latin between 15. Much of what we know of the minor cartographers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries derives from this catalog. The map was, however, an unmistakable improvement on previous maps of the region, which was also true for most of his other maps, although Ortelius still relied to a certain extent on material later shown to be legendary, for example the travels of Prester John.Ī unique feature of the Theatrum was the Catalogus cartographorum, in which Ortelius listed eighty-seven map makers as authorities for his own work. 1543 by Cornelis Anthoniszoon, and from Niccolò Zeno’s map published in 1558. But Ortelius’ map also included a number of features taken from Caerte van oostland, drawn ca. To cite a single example, his map of Denmark, entitled Daniae regni typus, had as its immediate prototype a map with the same title made in 1552 by Marcus Jordan. Unlike Mercator, Ortelius never devised new projections but acquiring the rights to utilize maps produced by others, he reduced them to a uniform size and brought their geographic contents up-to-date. The atlas clearly reveals that Ortelius was more an editor of maps than an original mathematical cartographer. It contained fifty-three sheets with a total of seventy copperplate maps, most of them engraved by Frans Hoogenberg, and thirty-five leaves of text. It appeared in May 1570 in the form of a single volume, in folio, entitled Theatrum orbis terrarum, published by Egidius Coppens Diesth and printed by Plantin in Antwerp. At the suggestion of the Dutch merchant and map collector Hooftman, and of his friend Radermacher, Ortelius undertook the publication of a comprehensive atlas of the world. The growing demand for maps of distant countries, caused by the rapidly expanding colonization and the development of commerce, had already led to the production of large collections of maps of various size and provenance, for instance, Lafreri’s atlas published ca. In 1565 he published a map of Egypt (two sheets), in 1567 a map of Asia (two sheets), and in 1570 a map of Spain (six sheets). The first product of this new activity was an eight-sheet map of the world published in 1564. In the period 1559-1560 he traveled through Lorraine and Poitou in the company of Mercator, who encouraged him to become a cartographer and to draw his own maps. Ortelius traveled widely in his profession he went regularly to the Frankfurt Fair and visited Italy several times before 1558. Soon he was able to earn his living by buying, coloring, and selling maps produced by map makers in various countries. At the age of twenty he was admitted as an illuminator of maps into the guild of St. He was born to a Catholic family whose origins were in Augsburg. With the exception of his friend Mercator, Ortelius was the principal cartographer of the sixteenth century. Antwerp, 4 July 1598), cartography, geography. The latest images from the Hubble Space Telescope showed how nearby galaxies have a similar structure as the Milky Way and could help astronomers understand why a galaxy takes a spiral shape.( b. More than 400 years later, while humans already mapped out the Earth, the drive to explore is now pointed to the stars. Theatrum Orbis Terrarum continued to be published and translated into multiple languages until 1612. He also credited 87 cartographers in the bibliography, although 33 were the ones who made the maps he used while the rest were cartographers he knew of at the time. In Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Ortelius added multiple sea monsters, which was a common belief at the time. by earthquakes and floods.” It wasn’t until 1912 when Alfred Wegener hypothesized that the continents were at one time one, which he called “Urkontinent” or “primal continent.”īorn on April 14, 1527, in Antwerp - which was then part of Habsburg Netherlands, but now is Belgium - Ortelius became a map engraver in 1547 and published his first map in 1564. Jacquelyne Kious wrote that Ortelius suggested the Americas were “torn away from Europe and Africa. In Dynamic Earth: The Story of Plate Tectonics (1996), author W. It was when he put forth the idea that the lands were once connected as one large land mass. When creating the atlas, Ortelius placed the land masses in a logical order. 'Typus Orbis Terrarum' drawn by Abraham Ortelius Wikimedia / Thomas Blomberg
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