Xylographa Bavarica. Blockbücher in bayerischen Sammlungen (Xylo-Bav) ed. by Bettina Wagner (review)

It is safe to predict that no future work on fifteenth-century blockbooks can be undertaken without reference to this superb catalogue of the examples held in Bavarian libraries. Blockbook research has made enormous strides since Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber laid the foundations for their study in the fourth volume of his Manuel de l’amateur de la gravure sur bois et sur métal au XV^e siècle (Leipzig and Berlin, 1891–1911). Notable progress has been made in recent years, principally in the first volumes of the Catalogue des incunables of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris, 1992) and A Catalogue of Books Printed in the Fifteenth Century now in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 2005). In the case of the latter, much of the work describing the Bodleian’s eight blockbooks (see pp. 7–21 in the catalogue) was undertaken by Nigel Palmer, and indeed his magisterial scholarship provided the essential model for the descriptions in this new catalogue, which—entirely appropriately—is dedicated to him to mark his seventieth birthday. The publication of the Bavarian catalogue was adumbrated in the important volume of conference papers from 2012 published under the editorship of Bettina Wagner as Blockbücher des 15. Jahrhunderts. Eine Experimentierphase im frühen Buchdruck (Bibliothek und Wissenschaft, 46; Wiesbaden, 2013).

As project director, Wagner notes that about 600 blockbooks survive today world-wide, with London, Paris, and New York each having around fifty. German libraries hold more than 200, with nearly half of these held in Bavaria: 66 in Munich (with 49 in the Bavarian State Library alone), with others in Aschaffenburg, Augsburg, Bamberg, Erlangen, Kaufbeuren, Memmingen, Nuremberg, Pommersfelden, Schwabach, Schweinfurt, and Würzburg. Altogether the catalogue describes 92 complete or fragmentary blockbooks (54 in Latin, 38 in German), representing 21 different works; included in the total are nine which, though once in Bavarian collections (in Munich or in the Otto Schäfer Library at Schweinfurt), currently reside in such un-Bavarian places as Manchester, New York, and St Petersburg. The tally of 92 excludes single-sheet woodcuts and what one might call ‘mixed technique’ products such as blockbooks containing some typographic elements. Strongly represented are the ‘Ars moriendi’ (11 Latin, 3 German versions); ‘Der Antichrist und die fünfzehn Vorzeichen vor dem Jüngsten Gericht’ (7 German); ‘Apokalypse’ (9 Latin); ‘Ars memorandi’ (10 Latin); ‘Biblia pauperum’ (6 Latin, 9 German); ‘Canticum canticorum’ (7 Latin); and Donatus’s ‘Ars minor’ (7 Latin). Among the remainder are further religious texts, including two German ‘Apostles’ Creeds’; a ‘Totentanz’; a unique ‘Rechenbuch’ (a book of mathematical tables for use by a merchant); two German versions of the ‘Mirabilia Romae’; and five German calendars by Johannes Regiomontanus. In only a few cases can the producers of the books be identified: one of the versions of Donatus’s ‘Ars minor’ has a colophon testifying to its production by Konrad Dinckmut of Ulm (p. 197), while another may have been made by Heinrich Knoblochtzer at Strasbourg (p. 192); several other items were certainly printed by Hans Sporer of Nuremberg (p. 217); the ‘Meinradslegende’ may have been produced by Lienhart Eisenhut of Basel (p. 202) and three editions of the ‘Defensorium inviolatae virginitatis beatae Mariae’ by Friedrich Walther at Nördlingen (p. 185), while one of the three German ‘Chiromantie’ editions almost certainly comes from Augsburg, possibly made by Erhard Ratdolt (p. 180).

The book consists of five main parts. In the first, Wagner outlines the scope of the undertaking, Rachel Bacher describes the arrangement of the catalogue entries, and then she and Veronika Hausler present a detailed analysis of their research on the watermarks found in the blockbooks—655 thermographic photographs of watermarks in 61 blockbooks were taken, which has helped...