Copper engraving, with charming period colouring, 362 × 510 mm. It depicts 11 islands on a single plate: Candia, Metellino, Cerigo, Scarpanto, Nicsia, Santorini, Milo, Stalimene, Negroponte, Rodus, Scio. An excellent specimen, generally well-preserved and slightly burnished. Taken from ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’, the first modern atlas, comprising maps of all regions of the world; Ortels’s (later Latinised) brilliant insight was precisely this: prior to this, cartographic production had been irregular and localised; the few atlases, the so-called “Lafrerian Atlases”, were compiled on request by gathering maps of certain areas whilst ignoring others. Ortelius brought together the diverse cartographic output of the period into a single collection, laying the foundations for an enormously successful publishing venture, published from 1570 to 1612. Van Den Broecke 147. 1608 edition with the Italian text on the reverse.