Lot 17•
SCHEDEL (HARTMANN)
Liber chronicarum, FIRST EDITION, Nuremberg, Anton Koberger, 12 July 1493
15 September 2021, 13:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £60,250 inc. premium
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SCHEDEL (HARTMANN)
Liber chronicarum, FIRST EDITION, 325 leaves (of 326, without final blank), 65 lines plus headline, gothic letter, woodcut title, approximately 1809 woodcut illustrations printed from 645 blocks by Michael Wolgemut, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and their workshop, including Albrecht Dürer, comprising 29 double-page town views, 8 full-page woodcuts and double-page maps of the World [Shirley 19] and of Europe by Hieronymus Münzer after Nicolas Khrypffs, washed, title laid down, a handful of stains, a very few leaves shaved touching headline, occasional repaired tears at edges, reaching into text on 6 leaves, fol. 101 repaired at head of gutter with loss to a couple of words and border of illustration, fol. 129-130 mounted on guard, fol. 291 and 296 repaired at blank lower fore-corners, Europe map shaved at fore-edges and with cleanly-repaired tear lower left, sixteenth century blindstamped vellum, rubbed, one corner repaired, new endpapers [ISTC is00307000], folio (410 x 285mm.), Nuremberg, Anton Koberger, 12 July 1493
Footnotes
The Nuremberg Chronicle, a pictorial history of the world, is the most lavishly illustrated book of the incunable era. The twenty-nine large double-page city views, many illustrated for the first time, are accurate in depicting particular distinguished features of each city. In addition it includes many details of fifteenth-century daily life: carpenters with their tools, astronomers and their instruments, archers, bridges, derricks, dishes, furniture, windmills, ships, beds, houses, fortifications, weapons, tents, wharves, ferries, books, drawing materials, dogs, horses, and other animals, as well as costumes. Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle epitomizes "the commercial sophistication, economic power and technical virtuosity that brought the art of print to this extraordinary climax" (Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance, New Haven, 2011 p.42).
Provenance: 'Joannis Baptista Gadii militis', ownership inscription on title.