![]() ![]() In 1547 he entered the Antwerp guild of St Luke as afsetter van Karten. Ortelius started his career as a map colorist. Vietor said about Stevenson collection that went to Yale "this is the stuff of which great libraries are made."Ībraham Ortelius is perhaps the best known and most frequently collected of all sixteenth-century mapmakers. It is truly an impressive collection and many of the items, though reproductions, have serious antiquarian merit. Much of his collection was donated to Yale University after his death (click on the title link above for about that), but the present item comes from a large collection of photos, manuscripts, and related material that were part of Stevenson's library, but were not donated to Yale. Stevenson viewed facsimiles as integral to the study of early cartography, and he committed himself to building an unparalleled collection of photographs of early maps and globes. He was responsible for numerous cartobibliographic books, including the first translation of Ptolemy to English, as well as a series of impressive facsimile maps produced while he was at the Hispanic Society of New York. Ortelius' design was copied by De Jode in his smaller cordiform map of 1571 and by Humphrey Gilbert in his much simplified world map of 1576 but apart from these two examples the map's influence was overtaken by Mercator's great new chart of 1569, itself widely disseminated through Ortelius' oval rendering in his Theatrum from 1570 onwards.Įdward Luther Stevenson was among the most important scholars of early cartography active at the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. These are in the British Library, the Maritime Museum, Rotterdam, and the University Library, Basle. The East Indies are much more accurately delineated than on other contemporary maps.Īlthough Plantin's records show that Ortelius' map was widely circulated and that a number of copies reached England, only three copies have survived. The old fortress town of Zimbabwe (marked Symbaoe) is shown for the first time following its discovery by the Portuguese. Africa and Asia are shown in considerable detail, both being based on recent large-scale works by Gastaldi. Labrador stretching out across the North Atlantic is a complete misreading of the actual approaches to Canada and the St. It seems most likely that Ortelius' source was Mercator's large globe of 1541, although the curious assemblage of large islands called Canada. However, Ortelius' North America is quite different in outline from Gastaldi and his followers Zaltieri (1566) and Camocio (1567). 1561 incorporating his latest view regarding the separation of America and Asia. The geographical form of Ortelius' map was at one time believed to follow Gastaldi's world map of c. Ortelius has added a number of fully-rigged sailing vessels of the time also spirited sea monsters, flying fish, serpents, and even a winged turtle just off Greenland. ![]() Some of the details on the map - cannibals in South America, rhinoceroses in Africa and India, a camel train in Tartary - hark back to Waldseemiiller. In the lower left-hand comer is a panel of text describing the sources of gold, silver, ~precious stones and spices to the right are two large birds-eye views of Cusco and Mexico City. The names of the winds are printed in Latin, Italian and Dutch. There is a border of clouds and twelve interesting windheads - cherubs, old men, and monkeys - sporting a variety of headgear. Ortelius' map is on a cordiform projection which 1s cut off at the bottom where a large austral continent is depicted. The copper engraving is of a high standard and indicative of the new school of map making in the Low Countries that was to surpass the Italians over the next 150 years. It is the first cartographical production of Abraham Ortelius, by then aged 37 and an established map salesman in Antwerp along with his older rival Gerard de Jade whose publication imprint appears on the map. This magnificent eight-sheet world map is not nearly as well-known as it deserves to be. Shirley (114) provides the following commentary of Ortelius's wall map: Here Reproduced for Edward Luther Stevenson's Collection of Early World Map Facsimiles.Īttractive early sepia-tone photographic facsimile of Abraham Ortelius's cordiform world map, his first cartographic production. ![]()
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