![]() The Album amicorum provides a snapshot of the breadth and variety of Ortelius’s contacts with fellow intellectuals: cartographers, cosmographers, explorers, artists, historians, physicians, lawyers, lecturers and humanists. This numismatical work comprised a series of fifty-five engravings, depicting medallion portraits of ancient gods and personifications, and is witness to another aspect of Ortelius’s scholarship. Indeed, the frontispiece to the Album amicorum is directly modelled on the title-page of the Deorum. Many bear a close resemblance – and were likely inspired by – the borders found in another of Ortelius’s publications: the Deorum dearumque capita (‘The heads of gods and goddesses’), first published c. Painted by hand and pasted into the volume, presumably at Ortelius’s instruction, these borders are filled with elaborate, classically inspired architectural features: scrollwork, busts and heads, putti and human figures, foliage, flowers, cornucopia, animals, canopies, and so on. 90rĭee’s inscription was one of forty-five inscriptions incorporated into ornamental cartouches (seven other such cartouches were left unfilled). Ornamental cartouche containing the inscription of John Dee, with his coat of arms painted into the central roundel Pembroke College, MS LC.2.113, f. That same year on 21st September, another English antiquarian, William Camden, added a sketch and a lengthy poetic inscription, concluding with the motto ‘Maximo amori maximus timor iunctus’: ‘With the greatest love the greatest respect is joined’. Dee had his coat of arms painted into an ornamental cartouche, writing that he embraced Ortelius with love (‘complectetur amore’), and dated his contribution to 1577, his fiftieth year. There are some familiar names within the pages of the Album amicorum: perhaps the most famous, in this country at least, is that of John Dee (1527-1609), the mathematician, astrologer and antiquary. The inclusion of the story was doubtless intended as a compliment to Ortelius’s own devotion to scholarship. According to classical legend, Alexander visited the philosopher and asked if he wanted anything Diogenes’ response – ‘Not to stand in the way of the sun’ that he had been enjoying – indicated his detachment and lack of interest in worldly affairs. Laevinius Torrentius‘s entry includes a drawing in grisaille of Alexander the Great and Diogenes. Unfortunately, these were dispersed at auction in 1968, but scholars such as Joost Depuydt are now actively engaged in tracing them in libraries and archives across the world and many are now indexed as part of the Early Modern Letters Online project.ĭrawing in grisaille of Alexander the Great and Diogenes, with the inscription of Laevinius Torrentius Pembroke College, MS LC.2.113, f. An active figure in the early modern ‘Republic of Letters’, Ortelius left behind a large archive of letters. The proceeds from these apparently successful enterprises he deployed in developing his own collections, probably inspired at least in part by the ‘cabinets of curiosity’ belonging to the intellectuals and antiquarians he met during his European travels.Ĭommerce took Ortelius across Europe – notably to book fairs in Frankfurt, but also to Paris, London and elsewhere – and his scholarly contacts were similarly wide-ranging. 43rĪdmitted in 1547 to the painters’ Guild of St Luke, Ortelius progressed to dealing in antiques, coins and particularly maps and books. Ortelius had in fact begun his cartographical career out of economic necessity: the early death of his father, when Abraham was only twelve, prompted his mother to make a living selling antiques, with Abraham and his sisters Anne and Elizabeth contributing to the family income by hand-colouring maps.ĭrawing of a ship navigating between Scylla and Charybdis, added by Philips van Marnix van St Aldegonde Pembroke College, MS LC.2.113, f. It delineates many of the sources from which Ortelius’s own work was ultimately compiled, providing a window into his intellectual hinterland. The ‘Catalogus auctorum’ that accompanied the Theatrum was also the first printed list of cartographers and their maps. ![]() It is one of a growing number of manuscripts and books from collections across Cambridge that have been photographed by our Digital Content Unit, with the images and full descriptions now hosted on the Digital Library.Ībraham Ortelius is best known today as the creator of the first modern atlas, the Theatrum orbis terrarum, first published in 1570. The Album amicorum – literally ‘book of friends’ – belongs not to the University Library but to Pembroke College. The latest addition to the Cambridge Digital Library is the Album amicorum of Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598). Engraved portrait of Abraham Ortelius possibly early 17th century National Portrait Gallery, NPG D25672
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