 | The internet antique map exchange Cartographers database: Ortelius, Abraham, cartographer, geographer | Open database Cartographers and publishers You are here: www.atlasandmap.com/cartographers/details |
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|  | Ortelius, Abraham |
| name: | Ortelius, Abraham | ||||||
| also known as: | |||||||
| domestic | Anvers | ||||||
| lived in | 1527-1598 | ||||||
| job: | cartographer, geographer | ||||||
| Beginning as a map-engraver, in 1547 he entered the Antwerp guild of St Luke as afsetter van Karten. His early career is that of a businessman, and most of his journeys before 1560 are for commercial purposes (such as his yearly visits to the Frankfurt book and print fair). 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; in particular he now devoted himself, at his friend’s suggestion, to the compilation of that atlas, or Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World), by which he became famous. In 1575 he was appointed geographer to the king of Spain, Philip II, on the recommendation of Arias Montanus, who vouched for his orthodoxy (his family, as early as 1535, had fallen under suspicion of Protestantism). 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 this last edition, Ortelius considers the possibility of continental drift, a hypothesis proved correct only centuries later). In 1596 he received a presentation from Antwerp city, similar to that afterwards bestowed on Rubens. His death, on July 4, 1598, and burial, in St Michael’s Præmonstratensian Abbey church in Antwerp, were marked by public mourning. Quietis cultor sine lite, uxore, prole, reads the inscription on his tombstone. | |||||||
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