Description
hand-coloured copper engraving. verso: Spanish text. EXTREMELY RARE.
The first European map of China appeared in Abraham Ortelius’s atlas ” Theatrum Orbis Terrarum”, showing the area of Canton, Mindanao (no Luzon), some islands to the North, but only Cubo[Cebu] is marked and part of Japan – Spanish edition. An extremely important map for the Philippines, here in the first state: there is no indication yet of’ ‘Las Philippinas’ as will be shown later in the second state, on the long, elongated island just north of Borneo, in the position and orientation of Palawan, but apparently not based on Spanish knowledge.
Ortelius was a notable Dutch cartographer, and the publication of this atlas in 1570 marked an epoch in the history of cartography. It was the first uniformly sized, systematic collection of maps of the countries of the world based only on contemporary knowledge since the days of Ptolemy, & in that sense may be called the first modern atlas; although that term itself was not used until 20 years later by Mercator. The Theatrum was re-issued in 42 editions with 5 supplements with text in Latin, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian & English between the years 1570-1612. The protrusion of a Southern landmass, initially called ‘Beach’ by Marco Polo, is shown South of “Java Major”, alluding to Australia?
