Asia ex magna orbis terre descriptione Gerardi Marcatoris desumpta studio et industria G.M. Iunioris. by MERCATOR, Gerard (1512-1594) - 1595

Duisburg, 1595., 1595. A SUPERB MAP OF ASIA FROM MERCATOR'S FUNDAMENTAL ATLAS DEMONSTRATING EXCEPTIONAL CONDITION AND QUALITY OF ORIGINAL COLOR. Copper-plate engravings with original hand color, from Mercator's Atlantis Pars Altera atlas of 1595. For nearly sixty years, during the most important and exciting period in the story of modern mapmaking, Gerard Mercator was the supreme cartographer, his name, second only to Ptolemy, synonymous with forms of map projection still in use today. Although not the inventor of this type of projection, he was the first to apply it to navigational charts in such a form that compass bearings could be plotted on charts in straight lines, thereby providing sailors with a solution to an age-old problem of navigation at sea. His influence transformed land surveying and his research and calculations lead him to break away from Ptolemy's conception of the size and outline of the continents. This drastically reduced the longitudinal length of Europe and Asia and altered the shape of the Old World as visualized in the early 16th century. Unlike the work of Abraham Ortelius, a contemporary (and equally celebrated) cartographer, Mercator's maps are original. Ortelius did what most of the atlas-makers of our time are engaged in: the reduction and generalization of already existing maps. Gerard Mercator, with his sense that scientific work should be original and new, checked the current knowledge of the earth's topography against its fundamental sources and drew maps in an original manner. After his death in 1594 it was left to Mercator's son Rumold to publish the last of three parts that formed his famous atlas, the Atlantis Pars Altera. The atlas was finished with a number of maps engraved by various descendants of Gerard, such as the superb map of the Americas executed by Michael Mercator, his grandson, which is the only known work by this clearly gifted mapmaker. This spectacular map represents a remarkable example of Mercator's Asia, with the highest quality in engraving, color, ornament, and geographical sophistication.. Map.