Beschreibung:

Quentell's Low German Bible, with brilliant contemporary color Low German Bible, c.1478 BIBLE, in Low German. With glosses according to Nicolaus de Lyra's postils. Cologne: [Bartholomaeus de Unkel and Heinrich Quentell, for Johann Helmann and Arnold Salmonster, c.1478]. The second edition of the Bible in Low German, with brilliant contemporary hand-colored cycle of woodcuts attributed to the Master of the Cologne Bibles. "With the exception of Dürer's Apocalypse, the most influential woodcut programme from Germany was that of the Cologne Bible 1478/9" (Price). These cuts exerted a decisive influence on later Bible illustrations, including Anton Koberger of Nuremberg. Most woodcut compositions correspond closely with the illustrations in a manuscript Low Rhenish Bible produced in Cologne 1457, now in Berlin (Ms. germ. fol. 516). Quentell published two nearly identical Low German Bibles almost simultaneously: this one in the West Low German dialect resembling Dutch; the other, given priority, in the Low Saxon dialect. Part one, with 40 leaves of Part two only. Bod-inc B-333; BSB-Ink B-494; GW 4308; Hain 3141; Darlow and Moule 4182; ib00637000. See David H. Price, “The Bible and the visual arts in early modern Europe” in New Cambridge History of the Bible , 3, 723. Folio (385 x 266mm). Part 1: 269 leaves (of 270, without initial blank); Part 2: 40 leaves (of 274, lacking the Prophets and the New Testament); 309 leaves total. Painted red and blue initials with pen flourishes; hand-colored decorated woodcut borders on first and fourth leaves; large-format hand-colored woodcuts throughout; strokes and paragraph marks rubricated (first three leaves reinforced at margins, a few small patch repairs). Two later leaves with 18th-century engraved borders by C. Galle bound in; four blank spaces with prints pasted in, then recovered with later paper. 18th-century mottled calf (spine perishing, boards worn). Provenance : early German marginalia – later manuscript tables of contents on two leaves.