Eurydice episode as a fable of the proximity of love and
death in the experience of religious initiates.
The Orpheus legend, of course, also lent itself to mu-
sical and dramatic treatment. POLITIAN’s pastoral drama
Orfeo, performed in Mantua in 1480, contained songs
which set the subject on the road towards opera. The ear-
liest surviving works that count as true opera were pro-
duced in Florence in 1600 and 1602; these are two
settings of Ottavio Rinuccini’s text L’Euridice, the first by
Jacopo Peri (1561–1633) with additions by CACCINIand
the second by Caccini alone. This pastoral treatment of
the story has a happy ending (lieto fine), as does the L’Or-
feo of MONTEVERDI, produced in Mantua in 1607.
Further reading: Elisabeth Henry, Orpheus With His
Lute: Poetry and the Renewal of Life (Carbondale, Ill.:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1992).
Orsi (da Novellara), Lelio (1511–1587) Italian painter
Born at Novellara, Orsi became a prominent figure of the
Parmesan school. He was influenced by CORREGGIOand
MICHELANGELOas well as by German woodcuts. The Walk
to Emmaus (National Gallery, London) reveals a taste for
dramatic lighting, while other works such as The Rest on
the Flight into Egypt (York) are more elegant and subtly
colored, in the style of PARMIGIANINO. The majority of his
frescoes are lost.
Ortelius, Abraham (Abraham Oertel) (1527–1598)
Dutch cartographer
Born at Antwerp, Ortelius trained as an engraver before
establishing himself as a dealer in maps and more general
antiquities. He traveled widely to collect and sell maps,
many of which he illustrated or colored before sale. He
made many contacts (see HOEFNAGEL, GEORG), but it was
his friendship with MERCATORthat prompted his active in-
volvement in cartography. Throughout the 1560s Ortelius
built his reputation as a map maker. His most famous cre-
ation was a heart-shaped map of the world (1564), fol-
lowed by maps of Egypt and Asia.
Ortelius’s masterpiece was a collection of maps by 87
different cartographers including himself. Entitled The-
atrum orbis terrarum (1570), it consisted of special en-
gravings of the best maps in the world and covered all
areas of the globe. It ran to seven editions by the end of
the century, and translated and abridged versions also ap-
peared. In 1575, despite suspicions that he might have
Protestant inclinations, Ortelius was appointed geogra-
pher to PHILIP IIof Spain.
Further reading: Paul Binding, Imagined Corners: Ex-
ploring the World’s First Atlas (London: Hodder Headline,
2003).
orthography Interest in spelling reform and standardiza-
tion was an aspect of interest in the VERNACULARwhich
manifested itself in most European countries during the
Renaissance. The wide dissemination of books made pos-
sible by PRINTINGincreasingly rendered unacceptable the
variations in spelling that reflected various dialectal pro-
nunciations; when printers could adopt a standard and ad-
here to it, the prospects for reliable versions of texts were
brighter than in the situation when individual scribes
could “myswrite” or “mysmetre for defaute of tonge”—as
CHAUCER feared would befall his Troilus and Criseyde
(V 1795–96). However, two centuries later Gabriel HARVEY
was still maintaining, in a letter to Edmund SPENSERpub-
lished in 1580, that the one essential prerequisite for a
proper grammar and prosody of English was “universally
to agree upon one and the same Ortographie”; for lack of a
better, he recommended the system proposed by Sir
Thomas SMITH, which had originated in the latter’s inter-
est in the controversy over the pronunciation of Greek
(see GREEK STUDIES).
Thoughtful users of the vernaculars recognized that
the Roman alphabet was inadequate to render all the
sounds current in speech, so proposals for rationalization
of spelling abounded. An early entrant in the field was the
Spanish humanist NEBRIJA. Giangiorgio TRISSINOevolved a
system for Italian, which he promoted vigorously in the
1520s; among other innovations the Greek letters εand ω
were drafted in to render the different sounds expressed in
written Italian by the simple vowels e and o. TOLOMEI, in
his Il Polito (1525), was one of those who opposed
Trissino’s scheme. In France Louis Meygret (1545), Jean-
Antoine de BAÏF, and RAMUStried and failed to achieve
a rational phonetic spelling in place of a learned, etymo-
logically based standard. The use of grave and acute ac-
cents (è and é) to denote different qualities of e became
standard French printing practice in this period. The most
thorough-going phonetician in England was John Hart,
whose Orthographie (1569) sets out an admirable pho-
netic alphabet which he claims would be equally applica-
ble to Italian, Spanish, German, and French.Orti Oricellari (Rucellai Gardens) The gardens in Flo-
rence that became the meeting place for the revived
Florentine Academy, succesor toFICINO’s Accademia Pla-
tonica. The grounds were laid out by Bernardo Rucellai
(1448–1514), who assembled there statuary looted from
the Medici after their expulsion in 1494. MACHIAVELLIat-
tended the discussions in the Orti Oricellari in the period
after 1513 and read his Discorsi (1513–21) to the mem-
bers, some of whom he made participants in his dialogues
Dell’arte della guerra (1521).Orzechowski, Stanisłław (Orichovius) (1513–1566)
Polish polemicist and theologian
Born at Przemys ́l, Orzechowksi was a Roman Catholic
priest and a zealous participant in all manner of contro-
versies. Among his Latin works are tracts urging a crusade
against the Turks (1543) and opposing celibacy (1551).33550 0 OOrrssii,, LLeelliioo