Lorraine. - Lotharingiae Nova Descriptio.

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Original copper engraving, published 1612 in an Italian text edition of the 'Theatrum Orbis Terrarum' at C. Diesth in Antwerp. Shows northern Lorraine and Saarland (Metz in the center). Area: Saarburg, Zweibrücken, Nancy, S. Morise. Abraham Ortelius (also Ortels, Orthellius, Wortels; * 4 or 14 April 1527 in Antwerp; † 28 June 1598 ibid) was a Flemish geographer and cartographer. Abraham Ortelius came from a family that had immigrated from Augsburg to the southern Netherlands. He first studied Greek, Latin and mathematics in Antwerp under his uncle Jakob van Meteren and then on his own initiative. Ortelius joined the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke at the age of 20, initially coloured maps, then worked as a map and bookseller and trained as a cartographer. According to John Vermeulen, Ortelius worked with his contemporary Gerhard Mercator. On 20 May 1570, his first edition of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first collection of maps in book form, was published, financed and published by Gillis Hooftman, an Antwerp merchant, banker and shipowner. Atlases did not yet have this name at that time. This collection was published between 1570 and 1612 in 42 editions and in 7 languages: Latin, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, English and Italian. Unlike his colleagues, he clearly referenced the sources of his maps and texts. The work contains, among other things, a depiction of the world known up to 1492 and was thus already retrospective at the time of its creation. Another frequently cited map is Ortelius' map focusing on Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa and Arabia, which dates from 1601 (another estimate: 1603 to 1612). It is entitled Geographia sacra (Sacred Geography) and also contains a reduced, embedded world map. The detailed entries were made primarily for the Levant and Mesopotamia, i.e. with the places mentioned in the Bible and even an attempt to fix places from the biblical description of paradise. The depiction of the river courses in Mesopotamia alone is rather inaccurate. The work exists in several versions with changing text fields and was often colored. It was included in the historical atlas by Johannes Janssonius (1652 and 1662), among others, although experts assume that these are usually handwritten copies of the original. Furthermore, a world map in sheet format from 1612 under the title Typus Orbis Terrarum (originally Latin: Typvs Orbis Terrarvm, was sheet 1 of the Theatrum) by the cartographer has been preserved in moderate numbers. (Wikipedia)

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