Beschreibung:

SCHEDEL, Hartmann (1440-1514). Liber chronicarum , in German: Das Buch der Croniken und Geschichten . Translated by Georg Alt (c.1450-1510). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger 23 December 1493. Imperial 2° (447 x 295mm). Collation and contents as Feltrinelli copy, Christie's, 7 October 1997, lot 88. 297 (of 298, without blank 56/6) leaves, 3 quires on guards. Table and parts of text double column. 59-62 lines and headline. Types 24:111G (text), 9:165G (headlines). Initial spaces in table and 2/1r. Xylographic title, over 1800 woodcuts from 645 blocks, by Michael Wolgemut Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and their workshop, probably including the young Albrecht Drer. Five figures with contemporary hand-colouring (fos. L, LV, CLXXX, CLXXXI, CCXVI). (Dampstained with resultant tears to some leaves, including the two maps, neat tears in 2 leaves.) Contemporary blindstamped pigskin over wooden boards, 2 fore-edge clasps, green edges (one clasp missing, head of spine torn away). Provenance : Teplitz?, monastery (18th-century inscription ('Liber Monasterii Teplensis') and rubberstamp partially removed). [ Bound with :] SCHRENK VON NOZING, Jacob (d.1612). Der aller durchleuchtigisten...Keyser,...Königen...und...Kriegshelden ... warhafftige Bildtnussen . Translated into German by Johann Engelbert Noyse von Campenhout. Innsbruck: Daniel Baur, [1603]. 2°. Engraved allegorical frontispiece with portrait of the dedicatee, Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, title with woodcut border, woodcut armorial device flanked by griffins, the title border repeated on each text leaf, 125 engraved portraits within elaborate architectural setting. (Borders trimmed at fore-edge and occasionally at lower edge, repaired tears with slight loss to about 12 leaves, some light staining.) FIRST EDITION IN GERMAN of the Nuremberg Chronicle, printed in the same year as the first, Latin edition. The German and Latin editions were planned simultaneously, with the German edition of Georg Alt's translation appearing five months after the Latin edition. The same woodcuts were used, with minor variations in the placement of the smaller cuts. Both the German and Latin editions of the Nuremberg Chronicle include two woodcut maps, one a Ptolemaic world map and a map of northern and central Europe. The world map derives from Pomponius Mela's Cosmographia (Venice: 1482), with the addition of an unidentified island off the west African coast and mythical and fantastical figures. The map of Europe has been identified as the work of Hieronymus Mnzer (1437-1508), a Nuremberg physician who supplied the geographical contents of the Chronicle. Because of its close association with the engraved 'Eichstätt' map of Nicholas of Cusa (1491), the Europe map has been 'claimed as 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' (cf. T. Campbell The Earliest Printed Maps, 1472-1500 , London: 1987). H *14510; BMC II, 437 (IC. 7458); Polain(B) 3471; Goff S-309.