The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle by Adrian Wilson

They were to be paid 1,000 gulden for their designs, with subsequent profits to be shared between the artists and the patrons. This was repeated in a contract of 29 December 1491 when the artists were commissioned, in an unusual step, to make complete manuscript layouts of the text and illustrations. In 1487 or 1488 Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister commissioned Wolgemut and Pleydenwurff to illustrate the text of the Chronicle. This shows that at all stages the project was planned on an ambitious level with a meticulous attention to detail.

Its production is remarkably well documented (the contracts are translated in Adrian Wilson, 'The making of the Nuremberg Chronicle', Amsterdam 1976, who also discovered the layouts of the designs for the pages). The format of the Nuremberg Chronicle, a history of the world from the creation onwards, follows that of medieval chronicles, but the large scale of the publication (the closed book measures 460 x 320 x 90mm), with its unprecedented number of illustrations and elaborate text, put it on a far superior level to any of the earlier publications. It was written by the humanist and physician Hartmann Schedel, and published by Dürer's godfather Anton Koberger it therefore provided not only an important precedent for Dürer's published books (see 1895,0122.552 1895,0122.617 1896,0125.1(28)) but also a vast source of experienced block-cutters, from which Dürer could draw for his own woodcut projects of the late 1490s onwards. Curator's comments Text revised from Giulia Bartrum, 'German Renaissance Prints, 1490-1550', BM 1995, no.1:Īfter Johann Gutenberg's Bible (Mainz, 1453-6), the Nuremberg Chronicle is the most famous fifteenth-century publication and an early bestseller.

The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle by Adrian Wilson