Manuscripts with Image Cycles in the Early Incunabula Period

FWF-Project PAT 2788124
Start: March 2025

Project management: Dr. Christine Beier
E: christine.beier@univie.ac.at
T: 4277-41464

Around the middle of the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg developed printing with movable type and thus revolutionised book production. In view of the resounding success of the invention, it is surprising that the production of handwritten books had not yet come to an end by the 1470s and was even on the increase. It is noticeable that these books were more frequently provided with sometimes very extensive picture cycles than before: the Austrian National Library, whose holdings are the focus of the research project, preserves 31 manuscripts from the third quarter of the 15th century with a total of 1,748 figurative depictions. These are German and Latin texts with subjects that were obviously of particular interest at the time, including several world chronicles as well as the natural history of Konrad von Megenberg, Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneasroman or the social criticism of Jacobus de Cessolis on the basis of the game of chess. There are also treatises on astronomy, wrestling, fortress building and fireworks in the collection. It does not seem to have been important to the readers or users of the illustrated texts to have pictures in opaque colours and gold: with few exceptions, they are coloured pen and ink drawings. Their artistic standard ranges from routine works from the circle of the Alsatian Diebold Lauber that were intended for sale to amateurish drawings that obviously did not have to compete commercially but were created for personal use. The latter demonstrate the desire to visualise what has been read in a particularly direct way.

Due to their texts, the manuscripts in question have in some cases been studied very intensively from the perspectives of various disciplines, but have so far received little attention from art history. The research project aims to correct this imbalance. The works will be recorded in a catalogue which, in addition to the content of the illustrations and their relationship to the text, will also deal with elements such as script, binding and writing material to define the historical context, for example the nature of a commission or the time and place of origin. Later library and ownership entries, coats of arms, and additions to the text and book decoration in turn provide information about the fate of the books in the centuries following their production. On the basis of these detailed individual examinations, important insights can be gained into complex processes during the period of upheaval in which handwritten and mechanically produced books coexisted. The biographies and later reorganisations of the manuscripts are also an important focus of the project, as they bear witness to the changing reception of the texts and thus document developments in intellectual and cultural history.