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BIBLE

Sold
£ 50 400
Auction dateClassic
14.12.2022 10:30UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 870832
Lot 110 | BIBLE
BIBLE

BIBLE, in German: Biblia Germanica. Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 17 February 1483.

Ninth edition of the Bible in German, a deluxe copy, illuminated and exuberantly coloured. The succeeding five editions of the German Bible depend textually on this Koberger edition. It is illustrated with a series of woodcuts by the ‘Master of the Cologne Bibles’, possibly based on drawings in a Netherlandish manuscript (Berlin, Ms.germ.fol.516), which were created for the Low-German Bibles printed at Cologne in 1478/79, with which Koberger was also involved. They strongly influenced later Bible illustration, including that by Dürer for Koberger's Apocalypse printed in 1498. This book demonstrates the wide scope of Koberger's business, including planning, production, marketing and distribution. As a text it fits neatly into a trio of German editions, complementing those Cologne Bibles in two Low German dialects. Koberger commissioned two new German types for his Bible and is said to have run 24 presses to print it. The edition of between 1000 and 1500 copies was available in three forms: completely uncoloured, rubricated and coloured simply in green, ochre and purple, or rubricated and coloured in a wide variety of colours and gold leaf. The present set belongs to the deluxe category; the colouring is entirely consistent across the two volumes, and only slight differences in rubrication and binding point to the two volumes being joined at a later date. The bindings, not readily identifiable with a known shop, are south German. (See H. Wendland, ‘Eine fünfhundertjährige Inkunabel - Anton Kobergers deutsche Bibel‘, Philobiblon, 28, 1984, pp.30-37.) Davies Murray German (63) and M. Breslauer, cat. 104, II, nr.128 describe copies with 6 leaves in the first quire, bifolium 1.6 being blank. H *3137; GW 4303; BMC II, 424; CIBN B-444; Bod-inc. B-330; Goff B-632; Schreiber 3461; BSB B-490; ISTC ib00632000.



Two volumes, royal folio (I: 402 x 278mm; II: 404 x 278mm). 584 leaves (of 586, without blank 39/6 at the end of vol. I and 40/1 at beginning of vol. II). Coloured and illuminated, mostly likely in the Koberger shop at Nuremberg: 109 woodcuts from 108 blocks, all hand-coloured in blue, green, orange, yellow, brown or maroon, the first (creation of Eve) also illuminated, 5- to 8-line initials on 1/1r, 2/1r and 40/2r in gold and colours with extensions, major initials opening each book in interlocking red and blue, those in vol. II with contrasting Maiblumen penwork decoration, smaller initials in red or blue, paragraph marks and initial strokes in red, very occasional early quiring. (8 leaves remargined and likely supplied, minor wormholes in first and last leaves, some light thumbsoiling at lower corners, some small stains, occasional dampstaining, internal tear without loss in about 10 leaves, fore-edge repairs in about 10 leaves, coloured cut on 6/1 lightly worn, illumination a little rubbed, a few blue initials washed.) Non-uniform contemporary south-German blindstamped calf over wooden boards, each volume similarly but not identically tooled (vol. II expertly rebacked and restored, vol. II rebacked preserving contemporary backstrip, minor repairs, modern endpapers and clasps); modern brown leather-backed folding cases. Provenance: a few contemporary marginal annotations in German in vol. I – Max Huttler (d. 1887; newspaper and book publisher, founder of a Literary Institute at Augsburg; ‘Ex Bibliotheca Dr M. Huttler’ stamp in vol II) – H. M. Brower (bookplate) – Ernst Ansbach (bookplate).





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