1603 Ortelius Map of Cyprus
Cyprus-ortelius-1573$900.00
Title
Cypri Insulae Nova Descript. 1573.
1573 (dated) 14 x 19.5 in (35.56 x 49.53 cm) 1 : 540000
1573 (dated) 14 x 19.5 in (35.56 x 49.53 cm) 1 : 540000
Description
This is a beautiful, original color example of Ortelius' 1573 map of Cyprus, combined with an inset map of Lemnos. Moreover, this is a Vrients edition of the map: maps from these editions typically exhibit finer quality color than those printed during Ortelius' lifetime and are consequently very desirable.
While generally most esteemed as an editor and compiler of maps, Ortelius was an accomplished mapmaker in his own right, and the inset of Lemnos is among the maps of his own composition, based on the 1555 report of French naturalist and diplomatic attaché Pierre Bellon (1517 - 1564.)
A Closer Look
This richly detailed and colored map presents Cyprus without referencing the Anatolian coastline, allowing the island to be shown at the highest possible scale, with its placenames clear and legible. Many cities are depicted and named, with Nicosia and Famagusta indicated as the most significant. Mountains are presented pictorially. A ruined aqueduct leading from the Kyrenia mountain range to Famagusta is also shown. The sea surrounding the island is indicated with neat stippling, is sailed by three ships, and is prowled by a monster. The map's strapwork cartouche is decorated with two nymphs and is embellished with a quartet of masks. (Masks have long characterized Cypriot archaeology.) In the lower right, an inset map of the island of Lemnos is included, depicting not only modern cities and windmills but also the ruins of ancient Ephesus.Sourcing The Map
Ortelius's map - engraved by the great Joannes à Doetecum - drew on and improved upon a 1570 map engraved by the Venetian Giacomo Franco. It is not known what Franco's source was: if Bifolco's attribution is correct, Franco would have been only 20 when he engraved his map, and it is very unlikely that he was responsible for the mapping of the island. Ortelius' embrace of Franco's map was not complete: the original presented the island framed by the Mediterranean coastline of Egypt, the Levant, and Anatolia, incorrectly positioned and on a grossly exaggerated scale. Ortelius seems to have known better, thus dispensing with the misleading coastlines and supplying the badly needed scales in the lower left corner of the map. As for Franco's mapping of the island itself, Ortelius remained faithful - with the result that this model for the mapping of the island would remain standard until Kitchener produced the British trigonometric survey map of the island in 1885.While generally most esteemed as an editor and compiler of maps, Ortelius was an accomplished mapmaker in his own right, and the inset of Lemnos is among the maps of his own composition, based on the 1555 report of French naturalist and diplomatic attaché Pierre Bellon (1517 - 1564.)
Publication History and Census
The map was produced for inclusion in Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, first appearing in 1573 editions of the work. The present map is the plate's third state, characterized by the stippled sea. Based on the verso text, this example can be identified as having been included in the 1603 Latin edition of Ortelius' atlas, published posthumously under the aegis of his executor, Johann Baptist Vrients. The map is well represented in institutional collections, and it appears on the private market with some regularity, but old color examples of this quality have become difficult to find.CartographerS
Abraham Ortelius (April 14, 1527 - June 28, 1598) also known as Ortels, was a cartographer, geographer, and cosmographer of Brabant, active in Antwerp. He was the creator of the first modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum and is a seminal figure in the history of cartography. Along with Gerard Mercator and Gemma Frisius, he was a founder of the Netherlandish school of cartography. His connections with Spain - culminating in his 1575 appointment as Royal Cartographer to King Phillip II of Spain - gave him unmatched access to Spanish geographical knowledge during a crucial period of the Age of Discovery. Ortelius was born in 1527 in Antwerp. In 1547 he entered the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as an illuminator of maps. He began trading in books, prints, and maps, traveling regularly to the Frankfurt book and print fair, where in 1554 he met Mercator. He accompanied Mercator on journeys throughout France in 1560 and it was at this time, under Mercator's influence, that he appears to have chosen his career as a scientific geographer. His first published geographic work appeared in 1564, an eight-sheet cordiform world map. A handful of other maps preceded the 1570 publication of the first edition of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, which would prove to be his life work. Appearing with but 53 maps in its first edition, Ortelius' work expanded with new maps added regularly. By 1592, it had 134 maps. Many of Ortelius' maps remained the standard for nearly a century. He traveled extensively, but his genius was as a compiler, locating the best informed maps on which to base his own. His contacts throughout Europe and extending even (via the Portuguese) to the Far East were formidable. Moreover, many of his maps were based on his own scholarship, particularly his historical works. His theories of geography were particularly ahead of his time with respect to the notion of continental drift, the possibility of which he mused on as early as 1596, and which would be proven correct centuries later.
In a sense his greatest achievement was his successful navigation of the religious and political violence endemic to his city throughout his adult life: The Dutch Revolt, or Eighty Years' War (1568 - 1648), fully embroiled Antwerp. Although outwardly and officially recognized as Catholic (Arias Montanus vouched for Ortelius' Catholic orthodoxy prior to his appointment as Royal Geographer), Ortelius was able to separate himself from the religious furor which characterized the war in the low countries. Ortelius showed a glimpse of himself in a letter to a friend, regarding humanist Justus Lipsius: 'I do not know whether he is an adherent of the Pope or a Calvinist, but if he has ears to hear, he will neither be one nor the other, for sins are committed on both sides'. Ortelius' own explorations of Biblical history in his maps, and the Christogram contained in his own motto, suggest him to be a religious man, but his abjuration of political religious authorities mark him as an individualist. His tombstone at St Michael's Præmonstratensian Abbey in Antwerp bears the inscription, Quietis cultor sine lite, uxore, prole. ('served quietly, without accusation, wife, and offspring.') More by this mapmaker...
Johannes Baptista Vrients (1552 - 1612) was a Flemish engraver, publisher, and mapseller. Little is known of his early years, but it is to be assumed he came up as an apprentice among the mapmakers of Antwerp, where the guild named him a master in 1575. In the 1590s, he executed world maps for Plancius and Linschoten. (In 1600, after Ortelius died, he became the estate's executor and acquired the plates for the Theatrum.) He would go on to publish further editions of the Ortelius atlas between 1606 and 1612. Vrients also acquired the plates for Gerard De Jode's (1516/17 - 1591) Speculum in and around 1600, but he did not republish that work - though he would preserve the De Jode plates depicting the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire, reprinting it in his editions of the Ortelius atlas after 1603. Most likely, his purchase of the De Jode plates was a play to keep them off the market. Vrients' editions of the Theatrum were not published in Antwerp (that city having fallen during the Dutch war with Spain) but in Amsterdam. Learn More...
Giacomo Franco (1550 - c. 1620) was a Venetian engraver and publisher; in his will he described himself as 'desegnador,' and he was listed as a member of the Venetian painters' guild. He was the son of painter and engraver Battista Franco. He was regarded chiefly as an illustrator, being known mostly for two works describing Venetian costume. He published Giuseppe Rosaccio's 1605 Viaggio Da Venetia a Costantinopoli, and his imprint appears on at least one of the maps in that work - a general chart of the Turkish - held Mediterranean. He also contributed at least one map to Rosaccio's 1598 edition of Ramusio's Ptolemy, a modern map of Hungary and Transylvania. Tooley attributes a 1589 plan of Rome to him. Bifolco and Ronca identify many works belonging to Franco, including several plans of Venice, Rome, and a fine map of Cyprus. Learn More...
Source
Ortelius, A., Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, (Antwerp: Vrients) 1603.
Abraham Ortelius' magnum opus, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, was the world's first regularly produced atlas, which 'set the standards for later atlases . . . It was the first undertaking of its kind to reduce the best available maps to an uniform format.' (Koeman) A modestly-sized work of fifty-three maps in its first edition of May 1570, it was an immediate success: there were three further editions that year, and the work remained in print for a total of 32 editions, the last of which was 1641, well after its author's 1598 death. Ortelius added to his atlas constantly, and by 1595 the Theatrum contained 147 maps. Ortelius is renowned generally as an editor, and indeed much of the Theatrum is compiled from a variety of sources: in such cases, Ortelius was scrupulous in naming his sources. But Ortelius was also a mapmaker in his own right: many of his maps are a distillation of various sources into his own work, and there were many maps - particularly in his atlas of Biblical and ancient history Parergon - which were entirely Ortelius' work. In his role as an editor, Ortelius followed in the footsteps of Munster, whose Cosmographia was, until Ortelius, the best window on the world for the curious European reader. In terms of the artistry of his maps, Ortelius oversaw the first great flourishing of copperplate engraving in the service of cartography to occur in Northern Europe. Ortelius' work provided the model for the atlases of Mercator, Hondius, Blaeu and all their progeny in the 17th century - many of whom were to produce faithful editions of Ortelius' maps in their own productions.
Condition
Very good. Some offsetting; slight water staining in bottom corners, mainly visible in margin, and one wormhole. Else a beautiful example with rich, original color both on recto and verso.
References
Rumsey 10001.280 (1608). OCLC 837687845. Van den Broecke, M.,Ortelius Atlas Maps Ort 149. state 3.