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Nuremberg Chronicle

Lot 9
06.10.2022 12:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Sold
$ 60 480
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 813735
Lot 9 | Nuremberg Chronicle
Estimate value
$ 50 000 – 80 000
Nuremberg Chronicle

Hartmann Schedel, 1493

SCHEDEL, Hartmann (1440-1514). Liber chronicarum. Nuremberg: Anton Koberger for Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister, 12 July 1493.



First edition of the most extensively illustrated book of the 15th century—the tall Amherst copy with illuminated decoration. The Nuremberg Chronicle is celebrated for its fine and numerous woodcut illustrations, to which Albrecht Dürer, Koberger's godson, contributed 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 two editions were planned simultaneously, but the German was published five months after this Latin edition.



An icon of the Northern Renaissance, this copy is from the library of the celebrated collector William Amhurst Tyssen-Amherst. Much of his collection of papyri and rare books (which inspired a young Howard Carter) ended up in the collection of the Morgan Library; his Gutenberg Bible, however, is better known now as the Doheny copy. A very clean, fresh copy, with the Pope Joan woodcut unmutilated and manuscript note on the famous legend in the margin. HC *14508; BMC II, 437; BSB-Ink. S-195; Bod-Inc. S-108; Goff S-307; ISTC is00307000. See Adrian Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1976).



Imperial folio (456 x 314mm). 325 leaves (of 328, without the three blanks; gathering M, on Sarmatia, is bound between ff. 266 and 267). Two illuminated initials, blue on gold ground with red and green borders, one of which is large and part of an illuminated floral border on f. 1, other initials, paragraph marks, and capital strokes in red. Calligraphic woodcut title, 1809 woodcut illustrations printed from 645 blocks (S.C. Cockerell's count, Some German woodcuts of the fifteenth century, 1897, pp.35-6), by Michael Wolgemut, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and their workshop, including Albrecht Dürer (first two leaves repaired at inner margin and outer edges, first few gatherings with repairs to outer edges and corners, some small repaired edge-tears). 17th-century stiff vellum stamped with initials G.S.D.C. preserved over later boards, new ties. Custom box. Provenance: deleted ownership inscription on title and numerous annotations in various hands – William Amhurst Tyssen-Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst of Hackney, 1835-1909 (his sale, Sotheby's, 3 December 1908, lot 214).

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