Rumold Mercator Hand Numbered Limited Edition Print on Paper :"Orbis Terrae Compendiosa Descriptio, 1587"
Title: Orbis Terrae Compendiosa Descriptio, 1587
Dimensions (W x H ): Paper Size: 46 x 26 in | Image Size: 46 x 26 in
Edition | Medium: Each print is hand numbered, accompanied by a certificate signed by the Master Printer and is numbered to match the print. The editions are limited to 1880 copies. |
This Gouttelette print on paper is published with light-fast inks to BS1006 Standard onto acid-free calcium carbonate buffered stock, mould-made from 100% cotton and sourced from environmentally conscious paper suppliers. This product is exclusive to Rosenstiels.
About the Art: Superior Edition
About the Artist:
Rumold Mercator was born in approximately 1545 and died in approximately 1599. He was a member of perhaps the greatest family of mapmakers of all time, founded by the supreme cartographer Gerard Mercator, who lived between 1512 and 1594 and who flourished during the most significant period of early mapmaking. His three sons, Arnold, Rumold and Bartholomeus, continued his business, as did three of his grandsons, Gerard, Joannes and Michael.
Mercator’s name is synonymous with the form of map projection still in use today. Gerard Mercator did not actually invent the projection, but he was the first to apply this invention to navigational charts in such a way that compass bearings could be plotted on those charts in a straight line. His researches and calculations enabled him to break away from Ptolemy’s understanding of the size and relative placement of the continents and produce a new understanding of the shape of the world for the early 16th century.
Gerard Mercator was born in Flanders. The excellence of his early maps brought him to the attention of the Emperor Charles V, for whom he made a globe. He was however charged with heresy during the persecution of Lutheran Protestants and moved to the more tolerant Duisburg, where in the 1550s and ’60s he produced his famous large scale maps of Europe, the British Isles and the 18-sheet World Map of 1569. The subsequent 3-volume collection of maps he produced between 1585 and 1589 was the first occasion on which the word “atlas” was applied to a book of maps.
Gerard Mercator’s sons and grandsons were all cartographers and made contributions in various ways to the great atlas. Rumold in particular was responsible for the complete edition in 1595.
The Mercator family’s plates and atlas dominated the map market well into the 17th century.
