As he was both a keen scholar and collector of antiquity, the book grew into an important work in its own right, reflecting the continued demand for material related to the ancient world. A year later, he began the Parergon, a classical atlas originally intended to act as a supplement to the Theatrum. Ortelius also wrote a critique of ancient geography in 1578, Synonymia geographica, which is considered to be the first work to refer to continental drift. He then travelled through Europe, and eventually produced a book of city views to accompany his great work. The Theatrum was incredibly popular, and Ortelius was made royal geographer to Phillip II. His contemporary Gerard Mercator, the best cartographer of his day, publicly praised the atlas and helped to revise the world map.

His friendship album, kept between 15, has dedications from all over Europe and every kind of profession. He was aided by his vast network of contacts throughout Europe, built through his successful career and his ability to speak five languages.

This in itself was not groundbreaking, but he then compiled a comprehensive list of his sources and included it at the beginning of each edition, an unprecedented acknowledgement which established his scholarship and made other cartographers keen to contribute. Ortelius sourced what he considered to be the best available map of each area, and had them expertly reproduced. The Theatrum was a work of great scholarship. It also contained the first accurate European map of Japan. It was also the first to make the maps uniform in style and scale and, unusually, the individual maps were not issued for sale beforehand, as Ortelius thought of them as a coherent whole. Although collections of maps had been bound together in the past, this was made according to principles laid down by its editor rather than a customer.

He then began his magnum opus, Theatrum orbis terrarum, the first atlas in the modern sense of the world. He moved into the publishing side of the business in 1561, after he assembled a collection of maps of Europe for his patron Gillis Hooftman, and three years later he produced his own eight sheet world map, Typus orbis terrarum. He dealt in maps and books to supplement his income, and met Gerard Mercator at the Frankfurt book fair in 1554. He lived with his sister Anna, who was also a map colourist one of his clients specifically requested an atlas coloured by her. He began his career as a map colourist, enrolling in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp in 1547, and appearing in the books of the Plantin publishing house in 1558 as a “peintre des cartes”. Abraham Ortelius was a cartographer and publisher, and the first person to publish an atlas as we now know it.

Abraham ortelius 1596