Slide Sets

Gerard Mercator was born in the small Flemish town of Rupelmonde in 1512. The family name was Kramer, but by the time he entered the university he had already Latinized it to Mercator (both words mean merchant or shopkeeper). He attended school in Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands and transferred to the university at Louvain in 1530, taking his Master’s degree there.

Mathematics, astronomy and geography were the subjects to which he devoted most of his energy and which led to the professions of instrument making and cartography. The celebrated Gemma Frisius was one of his instructors. But Mercator also had many other interests and published works, esteemed in their day, in history, cosmography, genealogy and theology.

Nor was his knowledge merely that of books; he had early learned to engrave copper and wood, he is reported to have made a trigonometrical survey of Lorraine, he wrote a fine italic hand and fostered the use of italic in Northern European engraving, and he operated a copper-plate printing press in his house.

He was thus one of the handful of men in history who have been competent in all aspects of mapmaking, from the mathematical basis through field work and drafting to engraving and printing. He first turned his hand to cartography in 1535-7, working on Gemma Frisius’s terrestrial and celestial globes. His first independent map was that of the Holy Land (1537), and it was followed by maps of the world (1538), Flanders (c. 1540), and a terrestrial globe (1541).

Mercator was a devout Christian, but his dedication to science led him into conflicts with the religious authorities in the Netherlands, and he was arrested on suspicion of heresy in 1544 and jailed in his native land for seven months. He had, however, earned the respect of a number of influential persons, and the charges were dropped. He remained in Flanders for eight years before moving to Duisburg, on the Rhine in Germany, where he spent the rest of his life. In Duisburg he published, in 1569, the world map on the projection that was to guarantee his immortality and make his name close to a household word.

His contemporary and biographer, Walter Ghim, maintained that Mercator had long planned to produce a collection of maps covering the world but that, not wanting to compete with his friend Ortelius, he waited until the latter had published his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in 1570. Mercator’s own work on an atlas cannot have been very far advanced before 1570, for the first part of his atlas (51 maps covering France, Germany and the Netherlands) was not published until 1585. A second part (the last to be published during his lifetime) appeared in 1589 and covered Italy, “Sclavonica” and Greece in 32 maps.

Mercator died in 1594, leaving another 28 maps, and the first complete edition of the atlas was published in 1595 by his son Rumoldus. The publication of this first full version was a family affair, for Rumoldus was assisted by his nephews Michael and Johannes Mercator and Gerard Junior, all of whom either drew or engraved maps for the atlas.

The copperplates passes into the hands of the Amsterdam publisher Jodocus Hondius in 1606, and later to his son Henricus and Johannes Janssonius, who continued to publish Mercator’s Atlas until 1641. The slides in this set were made from the Newberry’s 1630 edition published by H. Hondius (Ayer *135 M5 1630). Three of the maps reproduced (nos. 1, 3 & 4) remain unchanged from the 1595 edition; numbers 3 and 4 are printed from plates engraved by Mercator himself.

This version of America, drawn by Michael Mercator under the inspiration of Gerard, marks a transitional point in European understanding of the New World. The general outline of the continent is now understood, but South America is rather ill-shapen and the Great Lakes system is only hinted at. On the Mercator-Hondius America of 1636, South America is much more accurately delineated, and Hudson’s Bay is beginning to emerge. On the other hand, California, well shown here, has by 1636 assumed the insular shape it would retain for some decades.

This map of the country of Holland shows the heart of the United Provinces at the time of their greatest prosperity, just when their victorius war with Spain was winning them extraordinary wealth from the overseas empire. The orientation is unfamiliar, and was no doubt chosen so that the rather vertical shape of Holland would fit into two sides of the folio volume. Away to the south (left) is Brabant, part of the Spanish Netherlands, and to the northeast (lower right) is Friesland; Holland is outlined in yellow.

The first version of this map was drawn about 1558 by a certain Nicolas Nicolai, and engraved for the atlas of Ortelius (1570). Reproduced in the Theatre Françoys of Bouguereau, published at Tours in 1594, it was also adopted by Mercator for his atlas. In the 1636 Mercator-Hondius edition it was re-oriented with west at the top, but the outline was virtually unchanged. On the slide, the beautiful and unusual coloring is particularly successful in bringing out the position of the boundaries between the French provinces and of the frontier with imperial territory (“Flandriae pars”).

During the 16th century, most mapmakers copied the general outline of Sicily established by the map of Jacopo Gastaldi (1545). In his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570, Ortelius even exaggerated the inaccurate aspects of the map, making the island notably stumpy in the northeast and west. Mercator’s map, reproduced here, continues with this faulty general outline, which survived into the Grand Atlas (1663)of Jean Blaeu. Like the map reproduced in slide no. 3, this one demonstrates the balanced design, legibility and fine italic hand that characterized Mercator’s cartography.

It is interesting to compare the versions of the Ottoman Empires offered by Ortelius and by Mercator. The latter, shown here, differs from the former in having a latitude and longitude grid and in showing some areas, like the Nile Delta, with greater accuracy. It also includes a fine portrait of Sultan Mahomet, whose power was still much feared in Christian Europe.

The cartography of the East Indies is very difficult, as there are many islands, of very irregular shapes. The Portuguese and the Dutch were the pioneers in the mapping of the area, and the map shown marks a relatively early stage. The delineation is basically the same as that by van Langren, published to accompany the account of van Linschoten’s voyages in the 1580s, and in its turn, based on Portuguese charts by Lasso. During the 1620s, Dutch navigators began to clarify the geography so that by the time Jansson’s 1636 edition of Mercator’s atlas appeared, the “island” of Ceram was shown to be a part of new Guinea.

LeGear, Clara E. “Mercator’s Atlas of 1595.” Library of Congress Quarterly Journal, vol. 7 (May 1950): 9-13; reprinted in Walter W. Ristow, ed., A La Carte. Washington: Library of Congress, 1972. 45-50.

Osley, A.S. Mercator: A Monograph on the Lettering of Maps, etc. in the 16th Netherlands with a Facsimile and Translation of the Treatise on the Italic Hand and a Translation of Ghim’s “Vita Mercatoris.” London: Faber, 1969.

Skelton, R.A. “Bibliographical note” in Mercator-Hondius-Janssonius, Atlas, or a Geographicke Description of the World. Amsterdam, 1636 (T.O.T. 4th series, volume 2).