Dec 05, 2017 - Sale 2464

Sale 2464 - Lot 294

Price Realized: $ 32,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
ORTELIUS, ABRAHAM. Parergon, sive Veteris Geographiae Aliquot Tabulae. Engraved architectural title-page, 3 leaves of preliminary matter and 38 double-page engraved maps and plates all fully colored in a contemporary hand. bound with: Nomenclator Ptolemaicus. Letterpress sectional title with hand-colored engraved cartographic device, 30, [5] pages. Folio, 18x12 inches, full period mottled calf, richly gilt, expertly rebacked preserving original spine compartments, corners renewed, maps on later guards; very small chip to title-page, oxidation of mineral pigments on map versos. Antwerp: Jan Baptist Vrients, [1609]

Additional Details

A superb example of Ortelius's Parergon in exceptional full original color. The present example of this atlas of ancient and classical geography, together with the Nomenclator Ptolemaicus, agrees with the appendix to the 1609 Latin edition of Ortelius's Theatrum, but is seen here as an independent work. "In its final state, the Parergon was published as a separate book by Balthasar Moretus in 1624. Separate editions of an earlier date occur less frequently" (Koeman).

The Parergon was the great Dutch publisher's response to Renaissance Europe's fascination with antiquity, of which he himself was something of a scholar and had a particular interest in. "This atlas of ancient geography must be regarded as a personal work of Ortelius. For this work he did not, as in the Theatrum, copy other people's maps but drew the originals himself… He took many places and regions from the lands of classical civilization to illustrate and clarify their history, a subject very close to his heart… The maps and plates in the Parergon have to be evaluated as the most outstanding engravings depicting the wide-spread interest in classical geography in the 16th century" (Koeman). Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici, Volume III, pages 69-70; Van der Krogt, Abraham Ortelius and the First Atlas, pages 74-75.