Sumatra and Java are shown heavily distorted in shape together with the principal spice islands, but the emergent shape of Borneo and the Philippines is apparent as well as the general configuration of the East Indian archipelago. Exending from Portuguese India in the west, through China, Japan, Southeast Asia and the East Indies (Indonesian archipelago), including New Guinea, to the Northwest coast of America. This unique map showed in the late 16th century the best readily available information on Southeast Asia and the East Indian Islands from Italian, Portuguese and Spanish sources. This map must be considered one of the gems of any private collection of maps of the region and, somewhat surprisingly, is still available for collectors at a reasonable price. Representing the synthesis of cartographic knowledge of the region for the first seventy years of the sixteenth century and, most importantly, brought that knowledge to a very wide audience. ‘Indiae Orientalis Insularumque Adiacentium Typus’ by Ortelius is a real milestone in the cartography of Southeast Asia and the East Indian Islands. Latin text on verso and crossed arrows watermark in eastern sector of the map.

The Theatrum was the first uniformly-sized, systematic collection of maps ever produced and hence is generally referred to as the first true atlas although the term was not used until 25 years later by Gerard Mercator.

Antique Map South-East Asia by Ortelius titled ‘INDIAE ORIENTALIS, INSULARUMQVE ADIACENTI: VM TY: PVS’.Ī very attractive and much sought-after late 16th century map black and white map of South-east Asia by Abraham Ortelius from a Latin edition of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum published by Christophe Plantin in Antwerp in 1595, 1601 or 1609.

Ortelius maps for sale