Hand-colored engraved title-page, 20 pp. of preliminary text (with hand-colored initials & tailpieces), hand-colored copper-engraved portrait of Ortelius. With 100 double-page hand-colored copper-engraved maps in the Theatrum, & 12 double-page hand-colored copper-engraved maps in the Parergon, for a total of 112 maps. The Parergon & the Nomenclator Ptolemaicus with hand-colored decorations on the title-pages to those parts. (Folio) 17¾x11¼, 18th century full mottled sheep, spine elaborately tooled in gilt, raised bands, morocco lettering piece, marbled pastdowns.

Magnificent copy of the enlarged 1584 edition of Ortelius' famed atlas, one of the major milestones in the history of cartography. First produced in 1570, the Theatrum is noted in Printing and the Mind of Man (91) as "a landmark in cartographic publication, for it is the first large modern atlas." The 1570 edition comprised only 53 maps, with Additamenta of additional maps added in 1573, 1579, 1584, 1590 and 1595. This 1584 Latin edition is the first to contain the Additamentum III of 23 maps, and the Parergon, in the second edition, is enlarged with eight new maps, bringing the total number of double-page map sheets for the atlas to 112, with a number of the sheets containing more than one map. The Parergon, the historical supplement to the atlas reflecting Ortelius' interest in the geography of Roman times, is sometimes issued separately but is proper to the atlas, as is the Nomenclator Ptolemaicus. In the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Ortelius' produced one of the most brilliant and innovative of all Renaissance books.

The first true atlas in the modern sense of the word, it introduced an entirely new and standardized method for the study of geography. For the first time in one volume, all parts of the globe were treated in a comprehensive and uniform manner, and thus it presented as complete a picture as was then possible of the whole world. Published not only in Latin, the traditional language of the scholarly elite, but also in German, Dutch, French, Italian and English, the Theatrum was thus accessible to the masses, or at least the upper middle classes who could afford the expensive volume. This widespread dissemination had profound results in an age when geographical knowledge was in a rudimentary state, and the information contained in the atlas became the accepted vision of the world. Another important aspect of the work was Ortelius' strategy to make the atlas more acceptable to the public by incorporating beautiful ornamentalism in the then-popular Mannerist style, thus appealing to contemporary aesthetic tastes. In speaking of the maps in the Theatrum the noted art historian, James A. Welu, comments on "their richness of ornamentation, [they are] a combination of science and art that has rarely been surpassed in the history of mapmaking... Ortelius' Theatrum is known for its numerous decorative cartouches, which undoubtedly added to the atlas's long popularity" - Art and Cartography, pp. 145-146. The 1584 edition, notable for being the first to contain the third series of additional maps, seems particularly scarce. In an article on the rarity of the various editions of the Ortelius atlas in The Map Collector, Marcel P.R. van den Broecke estimates that only 50 copies of the 1584 Latin edition were printed; of those the total number estimated to be extant is only 32. The present copy is a superb example, quite tall with full margins, and in an attractive 18th century binding. There is an ownership mark on the front free endpaper with a small drawing of a stork, dated 1909, with a small bookplate with a stork device on front pastedown, with the initials S.B.; below the bookplate is the small booklabel of Juan Carlos Ahumada, Buenos Aires, with a four-line ownership inscription by him on front free endpaper, dated Buenos Aires, Dec. 1936.