Featured 2 Albums with early German woodcuts (1490-1600).

On an online auction I bought two albums with woodcuts that seem all German or Swiss and from the period of 1490 to 1600 (as far as I can see now). Maybe it is fun to post the progress I make on researching the albums here on this forum.

I did some research on the photo's in de advertisement and decided I am going to research all the woodcuts and the binding to see what information it contains, because the first findings are spectacular! I expect this will be a long thread.

According to the advertisement the albums are bound in old bindings and contain about 335 (!) woodcuts. At the time I write this post I can judge this only from the online photo's that were provides by the seller. I will make better photo's when the books arrive.

The advertisement:





The bindings seem to be both 16th century to me. The white one (pigskin) seems around 1500-1525 and the red one 1525-1550.






Here are some of the pictures on the add. From the 19 different woodcuts in de ad I have identified 18 so far. Here are the best:

Albrecht Durer, Ship of Fools - Ungrateful fools (1511)

Erhard Reuwig - Gart der Gesundheit - Mandrake Man (~1500)



Erhard Reuwig - Gart der Gesundheit - Mandrake Woman (~1500)



Jost Amman - Kunstbüchlin - Dancing Peasants (1599)



Heinrich Vogtherr - Gemeiner loblicher Eydgnoschafft Stetten - Satire on Gunpowder (1547)



Michael Wohlgemut, Nuremberg Chronicle, Tiburtine Sibyl (1493)
Title page, Horologium Eternam Sapientiae (1497)

 

I'm envious.

 

Stunning, EL, what a find. And congratulations on winning such a special and beautiful lot.

 

You ain't the only one, mos...

 

Wow, that looks very interesting!

 

nice find!

 

Today a woodcut very similar to mine has been sold in an online auction. Wow! Remember there are 335 prints in the collection. Say the average value of the prints is 1/10th of this one, then it a still a great find!

 

It is anyway. An amazing find.

 

Well yeah... if you've got an Albrect Durer (died 1528). There are very few print maker names that carry that much weight. A collection like that will have a lot of unknowns, but all the knowns will be worth money. A lot of the unknowns will do well just for the age and the imagery.

Look at the imagery in that gunpowder satire. That's not somebody imitating an archaic style - that's imagery current to the print.

Those mandrake images are iconic:
https://www.redbubble.com/i/photogr...gic-Mandragora-by-earthengoods/55070562.6Q0TX

 

While I am anxious waiting for the arrival of the albums (next Monday), I want to see if I can tie the print to a specific edition of the book. That is quite hard when a book has many editions, like the Ship of Fools. So I try to look close to reference data. The print in the auction was from a 1511 edition. As you can see in the picture it has a dent in the upper line. That means (I think) it had a crack in the woodblock at that time. In my version the crack isn't there yet, so it must be older (?). Now I can focus on editions before 1511.

 

Amazing-can't wait to see the rest.

 

Great find, I like the bindings. And as a collector, I am looking forward to seeing the bible images.

 

Pfff, I am completely overwhelmed.... I received the albums today and it is even more than expected. As I saw only about 20 prints in the ad, I was wondering if the seller photographed only the best prints or made a random selection. The latter is the case! Now my head is dealing with an information overdosis!

As far I can see now we have Holbein, Virgil Solis, Hanz Weiditz and others in the collection.

As a collection there isn't much provenance left. There is no name in the albums or hardly any description of the prints. All the prints are stuck on the pages with stamp hinges, so they can be removed quite easily.

I made scans of only the loose prints in the red book. I will just post some random prints. So many styles and periods!


This is a selection of the "Not Identified Yet" folder.



Cosmographia, Sebastian Munster, This is how Munster saw India in the 16th century.




Frederick Bloemaert


Hans Springinklee





Hanz Weiditz



Printermark Sigmund Feyerabend (1572)



The other book is the better one by the way!

 

Wow! Lots of research to do.

 

There are a lot of prints with a biblical theme in the collection, but I am not sure if they were part of a bible.

 

Fantastic collection!

 

I am speechless, such age and quality, and so much of it.

 

I know a lot of people are curious what I paid for the collection (I would!). Less than €2,- per print. As I’ve seen some prints go for €400 a piece, I think I had a bargain.

I am not sure what I should do with the collection in the longer term. For now I am greatly enjoying researching them, but there isn’t much to research about the provenance of the collection. I cannot find any name or description. Therefore the whole isn’t valuable as a collection. So maybe I am going to put all the prints in auction in the future and buy an old book for my book collection. We’ll see.

 

There is some information left about one of the recycled bindings. It once belonged to a monestary in de 1540’s and contained sermons. It contains the word Maillardi that could lead to Olivier Maillard. I found one of his books “Sermones” with a familiar woodcut! Maybe a coincidence.

https://books.google.nl/books?id=eVtTAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:"Olivier+Maillard"&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&ovdme=1&sa=X&redir_esc=y

I cannot read the owner mark from 1888. Old German is very hard to read.

Furter there is modern pencil writing that shows the German word “fehlen” (missing). So the original book was probably incomplete before the binding was recycled.



One of the woodcuts.

 

uhmmm....

You were so lucky!

That is certainly an option.

Of course the Virgin Mary on a crescent moon is classic iconography, with references to ancient Goddesses, but this one looks like the 'Patrona Bavariae':
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrona_Bavariae

I don't know if it is relevant at all.
I also don't know when the Patrona Bavariae was first depicted as we know her now. There is mention of a coin in 1610, which is a century after your book was printed. But the image as such could have existed long before 1610.

Btw, I like the name Feyerabend (of one of the printers). Feels so leisurely every time I read it.