ORTELIUS (OR OERTEL), ABRAHAM

(b. Antwerp, Brabant [now Belgium], 14 April 1527; d. Antwerp, 4 July 1598), cartography, geography.

With the exception of his friend Mercator, Ortelius was the principal cartographer of the sixteenth century. He was born to a Catholic family whose origins were in Augsburg. At the age of twenty he was admitted as an illuminator of maps into the guild of St. Luke in his native town. Soon he was able to earn his living by buying, coloring, and selling maps produced by map makers in various countries. Ortelius traveled widely in his profession; he went regularly to the Frankfurt Fair and visited Italy several times before 1558. 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. The first product of this new activity was an eight-sheet map of the world published in 1564. 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 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. 1553. 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. 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. 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.

The atlas clearly reveals that Ortelius was more an editor of maps than an original mathematical cartographer. 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. 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. But Ortelius’ map also included a number of features taken from Caerte van oostland, drawn ca. 1543 by Cornelis Anthoniszoon, and from Niccolò Zeno’s map published in 1558. 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.

A unique feature of the Theatrum was the Catalogus cartographorum, in which Ortelius listed eighty-seven map makers as authorities for his own work. Much of what we know of the minor cartographers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries derives from this catalog.

The Theatrum was an immediate success and the Plantin press published a long series of editions and epitomes in Latin between 1570 and 1624. 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. Ortelius’ atlas was translated into Dutch (Toonneel des aertbodems) in 1571 and 1598; German (Schawplatz des erdbodems) in 1572, 1573, 1580, 1602; French (Théátre de l’univers) in 1572, 1574, 1578, 1581, 1587, 1598; Spanish (Theatro de la tierra universal) in 1588, 1600, 1602, 1612; Italian (Theatro del mondo) in 1608 and 1612; and English (Abraham Ortelius his Epitome of the Theatre of the Worlde) in 1603 and 1606. Ortelius continually revised the new editions, adding new maps and reediting the old. In 1573 he published the first Additamentum theatri orbis terrarum. This work was later incorporated into the Theatrum (1601), which contained no fewer than 161 maps and 183 authorities.

The Theatrum won for Ortelius the title of geographer to King Philip II of Spain. (Arias Montanus vouched for Ortelius’ orthodox faith, which had been under suspicion.) It also secured for him a substantial income, enabling him to continue his travels to collect new material. In 1577 he visited England and Ireland, making the personal acquaintance of John Dee, Camden, Hakluyt, and other British geographers. The report of a similar journey in 1575 appeared as Itinerarium per nonnullas Galliae Belgicae partes, written in collaboration with J. Vivianus and published in 1584 by Plantin.

During the later part of his life, Ortelius spent much time on classical studies. His large collection of ancient coins and other antiquities was described in the Deorum dearumque capita ex vetustis numismatibus… effigiata et edita ex museo A. Ortelii, published by P. Gallaeus in 1573 (later editions are 1582, 1602, 1680, 1683, 1699). An edition of C. J. Caesaris omnia quae extant (1593) appeared in Leiden and Aurei saeculi imago, sive Germanorum veterum vita, mores, ritus et religio iconibus delineata (1596) was published in Antwerp. Of particular interest are Ortelius’ works on ancient geography, which began with his Synonymia geographica, published by Plantin in 1578 and later revised as Thesaurus geographicus (1587, 1596). In 1584 he published Nomenclator Ptolemaicus, which dealt with place names in Ptolemy’s geography, and Parergon, a collection of maps illustrating ancient history, printed by Plantin. The Nomenclator and the Parergon were incorporated into several of the later editions of the Theatrum; thus the 1601 edition contained forty maps from the Parergon. Ortelius also collaborated with Marcus Welser on his edition of the Tabula Peutingeriana (Venice, 1591), a fourth-century Roman military itinerary map.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

On Ortelius and his work, see L. Bagrow, Abrahami Ortelii Catalogus Cartographorum (Gotha, 1928–1930); J. Denucé, Oud-Nederlandsche Kaartmakers in betrekking met Plantin, II (Antwerp 1913), 1–252, which contains a good biography of Ortelius and a complete bibliography of the Theatrum; J. H. Hessels, “Abrahami Ortelii … et virorum eruditorum… epistolae,” in J. H. Hessels,Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae archivum,I (Cambridge, 1887); and H. E. Wauermans, Histoire de l’école cartographique belge et anversoise du XVI^e Siècle (Brussels, 1895).

Olaf Pedersen