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THE RARE SPANISH EDITION OF THE THEATRUM -- COLORED IN A CONTEMPORARY HAND -- THE SCHÄFER COPY. Antwerp: Officina Plantiniana/ Jan Baptist Vrients, 1602. First Vrients edition. Folio (18" x 12 ¼", 457mm x 310mm). [Full collation available.] With an engraved title-page (and the full-page engraved arms of Philip III of Spain verso), and 117 double-page engraved map-sheets, all with original hand-color, heightened with gold. Bound in XVIIc tied panelled vellum gilt (re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down) with yapp edges. On the spine, author and title in red and black ink calligraphic manuscript. All edges of the text-block gilt. Presented in a green morocco-backed clam-shell box. Re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down. Ties perished (one laid in). Some soiling and cockling generally. Paste-downs split and patched. Mildly evenly tanned, with pigment oxidation verso throughout, indicating original color. Price ("40-1") indicated in ink manuscript to the recto of the first free end-paper. Bookseller's (H.P. Kraus) pencil collation to the rear paste-down. A lovely unsophisticated example. Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598) is the father of modern atlas-making; he was the first to gather maps of a regular format systematically into a comprehensive book. From the first edition of the Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570, Theater of the world), Ortelius himself drew or re-drew the maps; unlike most cartographers (before or since) he was explicit in his source material; the catalogus auctorum appears in Latin editions, but their names appear on the maps nonetheless. Beyond the maps, Ortelius provides apposite text -- in the present item in Spanish, but he also published in Latin, Dutch, German, French, and English -- on the verso of each map-sheet, an eminently useful idea imitated by Braun & Hogenberg and a great many others over the following centuries. The publication history of the Theatrum is nuanced, but can be simplified into five "expansions" of the original Latin edition (issued with 53 maps): the 1573 expansion (70 maps), 1579 (93 maps), 1584 (112 maps), 1590 (134 maps) and 1595 (151 maps). Because the Parergon was not issued with the Spanish edition, this is roughly in line with other editions of the same period (e.g., the German 1602 edition has 118 maps in the Theatrum). Van de Kroegt comments on the appearance of the Spanish edition (1588): " The Spanish edition is the initative of Christoffel Plantin himself. After a short stay in Calvinistic Leiden it was necessary for him to prive his loyalty to the Spanish king" (Van der Kroegt-Koeman, IIIA.207). The present example has fine contemporary color, and it has been suggested by Dutch atlas-color specialist Truusje Goedings that it is the work of Mynken (Wilhelmine) Liefrinck. She was one of a trio of colorists employed by Plantin. Acquired at the sale of Otto Schäfer (1912-2000; part III, Sotheby's New York 1 November 1995, lot 162). His library -- books as well as engravings -- assembled in Schweinfurt, was one of the great private collections of the XXc. The Museum Otto Schäfer continues his "second" collection of German books. Van der Kroegt-Koeman 31:451A. Seller Inventory # JLR0299
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