Gerard Mercator
date: label: date made
content: 1574
notes: label: Description
content: Gerard Mercator (1512-1594) was a cartographer and mathematician from Rumpelmonde who worked in Antwerp, in the Spanish Netherlands, and later in Duisburg, in western Germany. Frans Hogenberg (1535-1590), an engraver of maps and city views, created this half-length portrait in 1574. Mercator here wears a flat hat and long beard, and uses dividers to measure distances on his terrestrial globe of 1541, a globe that depicted America, Peru, and the north magnetic pole. The image was produced at the request of Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish merchant, scholar, and cartographer who compiled what is considered to be the first modern atlas. Ortelius wanted the portrait for inclusion his <i>Album Amicorum</i>. It later appeared in Mercator’s 1584 edition of Ptolemy’s <i>Geography</i> and the 1595 edition of Mercator’s <i>Atlas</i>. This example was used as frontispiece to Mercator's <i>Italiae Sclavoniae, et Graeciae tabulae geographicae</i> (Duisburg: 1589).
label: Description
content: The text at top reads “ÆTATIS SUÆ LXII.” The text around the image reads “Magna Pelusiacis debetur gratia chartis: Magna tibi priscum tandem superasse laborem. Mercator, tractusque novus, terræque, arosque. Mons trasse, et magnum quod continent Omnia cæsum. I. Vivian. ludeb:” The text below the image reads “GERARDI MERCATORIS RUPELMUNDANI EFFIGIEM ANNOR. / DUORUM ET SEX – AGINTA, SUI ERGA IPSUM STV DII / CAUSA DEPINGI CURABAT FRAC. HOG. M. D. LXXIV.”
label: Description
content: Ref: Mercator, Gerhard, 1512-1594, Karrow, Robert W., Octavo Corporation, Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection (Library of Congress), Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi et fabricati figura [Octavo CD-ROM edition], Oakland, CA: Octavo digital ed., 2000 [1595]; http://mail.nysoclib.org/Mercator_Atlas/MCRATS.PDF
label: Description
content: Nicholas Crane, <i>Mercator. The Man Who Mapped the Planet</i> (New York, 2003).
label: Description
content: Jason Harris, “The Practice of Community: Humanist Friendship during the Dutch Revolt,” <i>Texas Studies in Literature and Language</i> 47 (2005): 299-325.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Tennessee, Chestnut Ridge
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
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content: Prints from the Physical Sciences Collection
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content: Measuring & Mapping
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.329720
label: catalog number
content: 329720
label: accession number
content: 283332
objectType: label: Object Name
content: print
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 18 in x 13 in; 45.72 cm x 33.02 cm