An English description of the project Book illustrations (woodcuts) of the 15th century is not yet available.



Status: finished

Funding: DFG  
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The Gutenberg bible of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek is one of 49 surviving copies of this significant printed work. It was acquired from the Benedictine monastery of Andechs in 1803. Entries made by the Benedictine Ulrich Kaegerl von Landau (deceased in 1505) indicate that the bible was originally purchased from the monastery of Tegernsee. The copy has coloured initials and borders. A peculiarity of the Munich copy is the 'tabula rubricarum', a list of the red headlines which were to be crafted by hand after the conclusion of the printing process. The only other surviving copy of this list is held by the Austrian National Library (ÖNB) in Vienna. The Munich copy of the bible was digitised in the autumn of the year 2005 by a team of the Humanities Media Interface Project of the Keio University of Tokyo. The two volumes and the tabula rubricarum are searchable in the electronic catalogue of incunabula BSB Ink online and can be accessed online from there.
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Realised in cooperation with: Humanities Media Interface Project der Keio-Universität Tokio
Status: finished


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The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek holds one of the world's largest collections of printed works from the 15th century. Within the framework of cataloguing projects and prompted by users' requests digital reproductions of individual pages and complete editions have been produced. The digital copies are searchable in the electronic catalogue of incunabula called BSB-Ink online. Among the already digitised parts of the collections there are: :

• graphic-art book illustrations of the 15th century (individual pages with additional search option for image contents)
• broadsides (complete collection)
• incunabula of special importance, among them the Gutenberg bible and Schedel's Nuremberg chronicle (reprint Augsburg 1500)

The Nuremberg chronicle of the physician and humanist Hartmann Schedel (1440 to 1514) was published by Anton Koberger in the year 1493 in a Latin and a German edition. The original edition of the chronicle contains more than 1,800 xylographs by way of illustration, which were crafted after drawings by Hans Pleydenwurff, Michael Wolgemut and possibly also Albrecht Dürer. The present German edition with the translation by Georg Alt was published in 1500 by Johann Schönsperger in Augsburg, and belongs to the abbreviated or simplified reprints, however which were complemented by approximately 350 xylographs. In comparison to the city views of the first edition, which frequently covered two pages, the small-scale xylographs of the reprint were much easier to handle from point of view of printing technique. This circumstance presumably rendered the production faster and less expensive.

Bibliographic information:
[Schedel, Hartmann: Liber chronicarum. Das buch Der Croniken unnd geschichten. Aus dem Lat. übers. von Georg Alt. Mit Beiträgen von Hieronymus Münzer. Augsburg: Johann Schönsperger, 1500]

Status: finished

Funding: DFG  

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