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Abraham ortelius heritage1/3/2024 ![]() ![]() That in itself was not decisive but it did facilitate a careful review. The first was that the thief, or the person who bought it from the thief, tore out the cover and inserted the atlas between ugly cardboard covers. In 2001 the library would confirm that the book belonged to Cuba. The Athenaeum’s investigative work would last for a few more years. O’Neill acquired it in an auction and in late 1993 sold it for a high price to the Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest and most valuable private libraries of the United States.įor museums and libraries in the United States it is a routine process to review its purchasing decisions, for financial or legal reasons as well as in terms of ethics and academia: “Where did the money come from? Was the law followed? Should it form part of our collection? Is it at the same level in terms of quality as the rest of the collection? The review necessarily takes a certain time after the acquisition,” Jorge Domínguez, director of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, explained to OnCuba.Ībraham Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum returned to the Boston Athenaeum on November 16, 1999, protected by a box with leather binding that the Library ordered from the Conservation Center to preserve the volume. Everything indicates that Boston antique dealer David L. ![]() The Ortelius Atlas was stolen from the National Library at some time between 19, a period in which many works of art were lost in Cuba. Originally in Latin – like this copy – it was published in seven different languages: Dutch in 1571, German in 1572, French in 1572, Spanish in 1588, English in 1606 and Italian in 1608. The atlas grew in each one of its 31 editions. Its author, the erudite and geographer Abraham Ortelius, made other versions after 1570 where he introduces other maps. But at least thanks to Ortelius the island of Cuba is included in an atlas, although drawn much smaller than Santo Domingo, typical of 1570,” says Torres Cuevas. “America appears here very disfigured, which is logical if we take into account that it is made following the description of navigators. It is a collection of 53 maps with their corresponding texts made and engraved in copper plates that show how the world looked at that time. Eduardo Torres Cuevas, outstanding historian and director of the National Library, one of the document’s greatest values is the location of Cuba in the Antillean, American and world geography. The atlas published on in Belgium collects for the first time maps of America, the Antilles and Cuba. Now, two decades later, the copy has been returned to the island. In the 1990s an expert in valuable works stole it from the institution and sold it to the Boston Athenaeum. The first modern atlas, of which there are only three copies in the world, belongs to the collections of the National Library of Cuba (BNC).
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