Liber chronicarum

Los 80
05.02.2026 10:00UTC +00:00
Classic
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
VeranstaltungsortVereinigtes Königreich, London
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ID 1540328
Los 80 | Liber chronicarum
Schätzwert
$ 80 000 – 120 000
SCHEDEL, Hartmann (1440–1514). Liber chronicarum. Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, for Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister, 12 July 1493.

Hand-colored first edition of the most extensively illustrated book of the 15th-century, in 16th century pigskin. Perrette copy. Albrecht Dürer, godson of the printer Anton Koberger, is thought to have contributed to the celebrated series of 1809 woodcuts while working for the workshop of Michael Wolgemut. The publication history of the Nuremberg Chronicle is perhaps the best documented of any book printed in this period: 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 manuscript exemplars of both the Latin and the German editions. The Nuremberg Chronicle includes two double-page maps: a world map (Shirley 19) based on Mela’s Cosmographia (1482) and a map of northern and central Europe by Hieronymus Munzer (1437–1508) after Nicolas Khyrpffs. The world map is one of only three 15th-century maps showing Portuguese knowledge of the Gulf of Guinea of about 1470. The map of Europe is closely associated with Nicolas of Cusa’s Eichstatt map, with which it is thought to share a common manuscript source of c.1439–54. It is therefore claimed to be the first modern map of this region to appear in print. Although published later than the map of Germany in the 1482 Ulm Ptolemy, it was constructed earlier (Campbell, The Earliest Printed Maps, 1472–1500 (1987)). HC 14508*; CIBN S-161; BSB-Ink S-195; Bod-inc S-108; BMC II 437; Goff S307; GW M40784; Klebs 889.1; Schramm XVII p. 9; ISTC is00307000.

Imperial folio (468 × 313mm). 325 leaves (of 328; without f. CCLX and two final blanks, 55/1–5 bound at end). 1809 woodcut illustrations printed from 645 blocks (S.C. Cockerell’s count, Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century (1897), pp.35–36), by Michael Wolgemut, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and their workshop, including Albrecht Dürer, woodcuts with early hand-coloring, 24 hand-colored initials (significant repairs in title-page, table and first 9 ff., title-page supplied, world map and ff. XXXIv–XXXIIIv, LXVI and LXVII uncolored, several marginal repairs, repair in f. CCIII touching woodcut, text of Pope Joan on f. CLXIXv censured but subsequently washed and now legible, burn hole in f. CLIX affecting view of Ferrara, blank corner repaired in f. CCXVIII, blank lower margin repaired in f. CCLXII, marginal worming at end, stains and soiling). 16th century German pigskin over bevelled wooden boards, tooled in blind with roll of Classical figures’ profiles in medallions between territorial arms of the Holy Roman Empire and palmette rolls among others, two brass clasps (rehinged, lower clasps’ strip renewed, rubbed, scratches some exposing boards, worm holes especially in lower cover, few stains). Provenance: few contemporary annotations including one mathematic equation – Ludwig Hartmann, Stadtschreiber of Lucerne (“eques auratus”, bought for 3 florins on 9 October 1659, note pasted onto supplied title-page) – Werdenstein Convent (“Nunc pertinet ad Conventum Werdensteinensem 1744” inscription onto supplied title-page) – Lucerne, Switzerland, City Library (sale notice dated 1854 pasted onto supplied title-page) – Librairie de Th. Belin (auction catalogue pasted onto front free endleaf, with possibly his own bibliographic note inscribed below) – Jean R. Perrette (bookplate; his sale, Christie’s, New York, 5 Apr 2016, lot 476).
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