SCHEDEL (Hartmann) (1440-1514) Lot n° 42

Registrum huius operis Libri cronicarum cu[m] figuris et ymag[in] ibus ab inicio mu[n]di [Liber Chronicarum]. Nuremberg, Anton Koberger for Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister, 12 July 1493. In-folio (467 x 315 mm), (20)-CCXCIX-(1) ff. (the last blank) + (6) ff. (including 1 blank) between CCLXVI and CCLXVII; CCLVIIII-CCLXI blank except for the running title. Type: Antiqua rotunda on strong wove paper. 6 non-leafy ff. (including 1 blank) which should follow the colophon have here been bound after CCLXVI. Missing 2 blank leaves in fine. Contemporary saddle leather over wood, spine ribbed, boards decorated with cold framing of fillets and vegetal roulette, fleurons in crosses in the center of the inner frame. Missing clasps. (Restorations to the headpieces, to the upper part of the spine and the boards, and to the edges of the second board, endpapers and headband renewed - copy rebound; title and last 3 leaves - including a map of central Europe on a double page - heavily restored in the margins, angular or marginal restorations to a few other leaves). First edition, Latin, of the Nuremberg Chronicle, the most famous illustrated incunabulum. It is one of the most densely illustrated and technically advanced printed books of the 15th century. It is a history of the world from the Creation to the 1490s, written in Latin by the humanist physician Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514), with the help of the physician Hieronymus Münzer (1437-1508) and the poet Konrad Celtis (1459-1508), from ancient and contemporary sources. The Nuremberg Chronicle is renowned for its many superb woodcuts by Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and their workshop, to which Albrecht Dürer, godson of the printer Koberger, probably contributed (cf. Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1976). The layout of this book, one of the first to successfully integrate text and images, is one of the most sophisticated and inventive ever. The lush illustration includes 1809 woodcuts, some of them repeated, printed from 645 matrices (according to S.C. Cockrell's count, Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century, 1897, pp. 35-36). Among the best known are the Creation, Adam and Eve driven out of paradise, a striking danse macabre, portraits of famous philosophers of antiquity, as well as magnificent views of cities (Venice, Nuremberg, Rome, Paris, Padua, Jerusalem, Rhodes...). There are also two important double-page maps: a world map based on Mela's Cosmographia of 1482 and a map of Northern and Central Europe by Hieronymus Münzer after Nicolas Khyrpffs. The world map is one of only three maps of the fifteenth century to depict the Gulf of Guinea based on the knowledge acquired by the Portuguese around 1470. The publication history of the Nuremberg Chronicle is perhaps the best documented of all the incunabula: the contracts between Schedel and his partners Schreyer and Kammermaister, and between Schedel and the artists, all survive in the Nuremberg Stadtsbibliothek, as do detailed manuscripts of the Latin and German editions. Both editions were planned to be published simultaneously, but the Latin edition appeared five months earlier. A copy entirely in period colors, embellished with several large initials painted in blue and red. REFERENCES Hain *14508; Goff S-307; Polain 3469; GW M40784; ISTC is00307000.