Antique Map of Europe 1570 — Ortelius, Europae

An antique map of Europe from Ortelius’s atlas, Antwerp 1570

This map of Europe appeared in 1570 in Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum, published in Antwerp “apud Aegid. Coppenium Diesth”, that is, Gielis Coppens van Diest. The Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center keeps it as a colored sheet of 37 × 49 cm, with relief shown pictorially and a Latin text on the back that opens “Europa… Europa unde hoc nomen acceperit”.

In 2016–2017 the Leventhal Center showed this sheet in its exhibition “Shakespeare’s Here and Everywhere”, introducing Ortelius as an older contemporary of William Shakespeare and the sheet as a map of “Europe, the Mediterranean, Northern Africa, and Western Asia”.

Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) was born and died in Antwerp. Britannica describes him as trained as an engraver and setting up a book and antiquary business about 1554; the History of Cartography records that he started out as an “afsetter van carten”, an illuminator of maps. About 1560, under the influence of Gerardus Mercator, he became interested in mapmaking.

The Leventhal Center calls the Theatrum orbis terrarum “the first modern world atlas”. Stanford Libraries’ catalog of another 1570 copy explains what was new: it was “the first undertaking of its kind to reduce the best available maps to a uniform format”, and Ortelius named the mapmakers whose work he used. Stanford’s copy has 53 maps; its catalog credits nearly all the plates to the engraver Frans Hogenberg and his assistants.

The atlas outlived its author: Stanford’s catalog, citing Van der Krogt, lists 37 editions in Latin, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, English and Italian, the last in 1641. Britannica notes that in 1575 Ortelius was appointed geographer to Philip II of Spain.

Your file

How to print

• At 300 dpi the map prints to 34 cm. Pick the archive whose proportions match your frame; ask for matte fine-art paper in sRGB with auto-enhancement off.
• Where to print it: print shops near you and checked prices at online labs.

Source and rights

The file is made from the digitized image published by the Boston Public Library, Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center (the record notes that the atlas was scanned by Internet Archive), with the statement “No known copyright restrictions. No known restrictions on use.” The record gives 1570 and marks the date as inferred. It calls the sheet colored (“col.”) but names neither the method of coloring nor the printing technique. There is no TIFF master in the package. Catalogue record: Leventhal Map & Education Center →