Bible

Sensenschmidt, Johann (German publisher, 1424-1491)

Bible

German (Nuremberg), 1476-1478

height 41.5 cm    

Woodcuts: 1 illustration, initials, hand colored in red.

Vol. 2, fols. 381v-382r: Text pages with initial "I" beginning Haggai and initial "I" beginning Zechariah.

Mount Angel Abbey Library, VAULT BS236 1476

Diebold, William. The Illustrated Book in the Age of Printing: Books and Manuscripts from Oregon Collections. Portland, OR: Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, 1993, p. 9 - Quoted with permission

Although the two volumes [reference applies to exhibition from which this text with originally a catalog entry] of this Bible were printed at the same time and came to Mt. Angel Abbey together, they are not a pair. In volume 1, the woodcut initials which appear at the beginning of each book of the Bible are uncolored. The only additions by hand in the opening from the first volume on display [refers to exhibit from which this text was a catalog entry] are the initial "I" on the verso, the underlining of the incipit and explicit on the recto, and the paragraph sign in the running title. In the second volume, in addition to these same hand additions, each of the woodcuts has been painted, apparently in imitation of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts.

These differences in the form of decoration and its style (compare the painted initial "I"s in each volume) make clear that each volume was decorated by a different person. Rubrication and painting occurred outside the print shop; books were sold undecorated and were taken by their buyers to scribes and illuminators for finishing. Often, this was done far from the place of printing. The style of the painted border in number 16, for example, suggests that it was executed in France or Flanders, not the German town of Mainz where it was printed. This practice of completing the book after its sale explains why neither the scribes' guild nor that of the painters protested seriously against the printers. The new technology would eventually sharply curtail their professions, but it actually increased work for them during the second half of the fifteenth century, as hundreds of thousands of volumes, many needing extensive handwork, came off the presses.