Abraham Ortelius

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Abraham Ortelius
Ortelius by Peter Paul Rubens, 1633, after a 1570s engraving by Philip Galle
Born4 or 14 April 1527
Antwerp, Habsburg Netherlands
Died28 June 1598(1598-06-28) (aged 71)
Antwerp, Spanish Netherlands
NationalitySpanish Netherlands
Occupation(s)Geographer, cartographer
Known forCreator of the first modern atlas; proposing the idea of continental drift
Signature

Abraham Ortelius (

Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography. He was the first person proposing that the continents were joined before drifting to their present positions.[1]

Life

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. Abraham's grandfather, Willem Ortels, was a pharmacist. He had moved in 1460 to Antwerp where he married Mathilde 's Jagers, alias Reynaerts. They had five children: Imbert who inherited his father's pharmacy, Anna, Odille (or Ottilia of Odilia), who married Nicolaes van der Voorden, a merchant in Brussels, and, in her second marriage, Jacobus van Meteren from Breda, who was a Protestant and supervised the printing of English versions of the bible in England, Leonard (born in 1500 and father of Abraham Ortelius) and Josef. From his second marriage with Maria Antheard a son called Willem was born. The family lived in the Kipdorp street in Antwerp and was fairly well off. Leonard Ortelius married Anna Herwayers and they had three children, Abraham, Anna who would stay on her brother's side and Elisabeth who married a trader named Jacob Cool Sr., whose son Jacob Cool Jr. (known as Ortelianus) would be the principal heir of Abraham Ortelius.[2]

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. Leonard Ortelius was a successful antique dealer. Following the death of his father, Abraham Ortelius' uncle

Arias Montanus, who vouched for his orthodoxy.[4][5]

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).[4]

Beginning as a map-engraver, in 1547 he entered the Antwerp

Lorraine, and Poitiers, he seems to have been attracted, largely by Mercator's influence, towards the career of a scientific geographer.[4]
He died in Antwerp.

Map publisher

1570 Typus Orbis Terrarum

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.[3][6] This map subsequently appeared in reduced form in the Terrarum (the only extant copy is in now at Basel University Library).[7] 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.[4]

In England Ortelius's contacts included

Puritan controversialist William Charke, and Humphrey Llwyd, who would contribute the map of England and Wales to Ortelius's 1573 edition of the Theatrum.[3]

In 1578, he laid the basis of a critical treatment of ancient geography by his Synonymia geographica (issued by the Plantin Press at Antwerp[4] 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

tombstone reads: Quietis cultor sine lite, uxore, prole ("served quietly, without accusation, wife, and offspring").[8]

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum

Main article: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
Map of the Persian Empire from the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum

On 20 May 1570, Gilles Coppens de Diest at Antwerp issued Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the "first modern atlas" (of 53 maps).

Grampians lie between the Forth and the Clyde; but, taken as a whole, this atlas with its accompanying text was a monument of rare erudition and industry. Its immediate precursor and prototype was a collection of thirty-eight maps of European lands, and of Asia, Africa, Tartary, and Egypt, gathered together by the wealth and enterprise, and through the agents, of Ortelius's friend and patron, Gillis Hooftman (1521–1581),[11] lord of Cleydael and Aertselaar: most of these were printed in Rome, eight or nine only in the Southern Netherlands.[4]

Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574, The Phoebus Foundation

In 1573, Ortelius published seventeen supplementary maps under the title Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum.

antiques, and this resulted in the book (also in 1573, published by Philippe Galle of Antwerp) Deorum dearumque capita ... ex Museo Ortelii ("Heads of the gods and goddesses... from the Ortelius Museum"); reprinted in 1582, 1602, 1612, 1680, 1683 and finally in 1699 by Gronovius, Thesaurus Graecarum Antiquitatum ("Treasury of Greek Antiquities", vol. vii).[12]

The Theatrum Orbis Terrarum inspired a six-volume work titled

Civitates orbis terrarum, edited by Georg Braun and illustrated by Frans Hogenberg with the assistance of Ortelius himself, who visited England to see his friend John Dee in Mortlake in 1577,[13] and Braun tells of Ortelius putting pebbles in cracks in Temple Church, Bristol, being crushed by the vibration of the bells.[14]

Later maps

Maris Pacifici

In 1579, Ortelius brought out his Nomenclator Ptolemaicus and started his Parergon (a series of maps illustrating ancient history,

Peutinger Table in 1598.[4]

Contrary to popular belief, Abraham Ortelius, who had no children, never lived at the Mercator-Orteliushuis (Kloosterstraat 11–17, Antwerpen), but lived at his sister's house (Kloosterstraat 33–35, Antwerpen).[16]

Modern use of maps

Originals of Ortelius's maps are popular collectors' items and often sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Facsimiles of his maps are also available from many retailers. A map he made of North and South America is also included in the world's largest commercially available jigsaw puzzle, which is of four world maps.[17] This puzzle is made by Ravensburger, measures 6 feet (1.8 m) × 9 feet (2.7 m), and has over 18,000 pieces.

Imagining continental drift

Ortelius was the first to underline the geometrical similarity between the coasts of America and Europe-Africa and to propose continental drift as an explanation. Kious described Ortelius's thoughts in this way:[18]

Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus … suggested that the Americas were "torn away from Europe and Africa … by earthquakes and floods" and went on to say: "The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents]."

Ortelius's observations of continental juxtaposition and his proposal of rupture and separation went unnoticed until the late 20th century. However, they were repeated in the 18th and 19th centuries and later by

Harry H. Hess, 1960) and finally established continental drift as an ongoing global mechanism (e.g. by the work of W. Jason Morgan by 1967 and Dan McKenzie in 1968). After more than three centuries, Ortelius's supposition of continental drift was proven correct.[21]

Bibliography

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1609
  • Ortelius, Abraham (1603). Nomenclator ptolemaicus (in Latin). Antwerpen: Robert Bruneau.
  • Ortelius, Abraham (1609). Theatrum orbis terrarum (in Latin). Antwerpen: Jean Baptiste Vrints.
  • Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. Gedruckt zu Nuermberg durch Johann Koler Anno MDLXXII. Mit einer Einführung und Erläuterungen von Ute Schneider. Second unchanged edition (2. unveränd. Aufl). Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007.

Notes

  1. ^ The first work that contained systematically arranged maps of uniform size, intended to be published in a book, thus representing the first modern atlas, was De Summa totius Orbis (1524–26) by the 16th-century Italian cartographer Pietro Coppo. Nonetheless, this distinction is conventionally awarded to Abraham Ortelius.[10]

References

Iceland, c. 1590
Brittenburg-Ortelius-1581
1584 map of Greece by Abraham Ortelius
  1. S2CID 4281585
    .
  2. ^ Wouter Dirk Verduyn, Emanuel van Meteren, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1926, pp. 4-5
  3. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/20854. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Beazley, Charles Raymond (1911). "Ortelius, Abraham". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 331–332.
  5. ^ Pedersen, Olaf (2008). "ORTELIUS (OR OERTEL), ABRAHAM". Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Charles Scribner's Sons – via Encyclopedia.com.
  6. ^ Peter Barber, "Ortelius' great world map", National Library of Australia, Mapping our World: Terra Incognita to Australia, Canberra, National Library of Australia, 2013, p.95.
  7. ^ cf. Bernoulli, Ein Karteninkunabelnband, Basle, 1905, p. 5. NOVA TOTIUS TERRARUM ORBIS IUXTA NEOTERICORUM TRADITIONES DESCRIPTIO and [1]
  8. ^  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Fischer, Joseph (1911). "Abraham Ortelius". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  9. ^ "Map, Indiae Orientalis Insularumque Adjacentium Typus". Virtual Collection of Asian Masterpieces. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  10. ^ Mercator, Gerardu; Karrow, Robert W. Jr. Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura (PDF). Library of Congress. p. 2. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 March 2016.
  11. ^ Derde, Katrien. "Gillis Hooftman: Businessman and Patron". KU Leuven. Retrieved 11 October 2023.
  12. ISBN 9789061943884
    .
  13. ISBN 9781134572274
    .
  14. ^ Chatterton, Thomas (1888). Thomas Chatterton and the Vicar of Temple Church, Bristol [A.D., 1768-1770]: The Poet's Account of the "Knightes Templaries Chyrche.". W. George's Sons. p. 11.
  15. ^ Map Mogul – Antique Maps & Prints – Ortelius, Abraham SOLD Maris Pacifici
  16. ^ "Het Mercator-Orteliushuis te Antwerpen". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 25 March 2013.
  17. ^ "JigsawGallery.com's World Map – The Worlds Largest Puzzle". Archived from the original on 12 April 2007. Retrieved 21 May 2009.
  18. ISBN 0-16-048220-8. Retrieved 29 January 2008.; Ortelius, Thesaurus Geographicus (Antwerp, (Belgium): Officina Plantiniana [Plantin Press] 1596), entry: "Gadiricus"
  19. ^ Wegener, Alfred (July 1912); Wegener, Alfred (1966)
  20. ISBN 0-471-62017-3
    .
  21. USGS
    .

Sources

Further reading

See also

External links

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