Antique Map of North Africa by Ortelius (c.1600)

Description: Antique map titled 'Barbariae et Biledulgerid nova descriptio'. Old map of coastal North Africa and the Mediterranean. The map extends from Morocco and the Sahara to Libya and shows most of the Mediterranean, including the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and Italy, along the Canaries off the coast of Africa. This map originates from 'Theatrum Orbis Terrarum' by A. Ortelius. 

Artists and Engravers: Abraham Ortelius is perhaps the best known and most frequently collected of all sixteenth-century mapmakers. Ortelius started his career as a map engraver. In 1547 he entered the Antwerp guild of St Luke as afsetter van Karten. His early career was as a business man, and most of his journeys before 1560 were for commercial purposes. In 1560, while traveling with Gerard Mercator to Trier, Lorraine, and Poitiers, he seems to have been attracted, largely by Mercator’s influence, towards a career as a scientific geographer. From that point forward, he devoted himself to the compilation his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World), which would become the first modern atlas.