8 October 2011 - 0:00Nuremberg Chronicle Of 1493 Is Dramatic And Beautiful

The Nuremberg Chronicle was an illustrated history of the world that was first printed in the city of Nuremberg in 1493. Nearly 1500 copies were printed in Latin and another 1000 were printed in German. An unauthorized version was also published in Augsburg four years later. The book was compiled by the Nuremberg physician Hartmann Schedel.
The Nuremberg Chronicle relates the history of humanity as given by the Bible, and supplements that with the events following the birth of Christ up until the late Fifteenth Century. The Chronicle broke new ground in printing by its immense popularity. Buyers were drawn to it because of its wonderful colored illustrations, many of which were also sold separately as prints. The book was also important for being the first in which the illustrations worked together with the words to tell the story.
The illustrations in the Nuremberg Chronicle portray saints, martyrs, popes and other mythic or historic persons, as well as locations and events. There were nearly 650 original woodcuts used for the illustrations in the book. Interestingly, many of the people and places are portrayed by the same illustration, which was a common practice in early printed works. The same woodcut was used to portray Hercules and Aristotle, and the city of Alexandria is identical to Athens and Prussia. Many of the city views are authentic though, especially if they were of communities in central Europe that were familiar to the artists.