Erhard Reuwich
Erhard Reuwich (
He came from a family of painters in Utrecht, and his father may have been Hildebrand Reuwich, who was Dean of the
Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam
The Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam or Sanctae Peregrinationes, an
Leaving in April 1483 and arriving back in January 1484, they travelled first to Venice, where they stayed for three weeks. They then took ship for Corfu, Modon and Rhodes - all still Venetian possessions. After Jerusalem and Bethlehem and other sights of the Holy Land, they went to Mount Sinai and Cairo. After taking a boat down the Nile to Rosetta, they took ship back to Venice.
It is most unusual for an illustrator to be named at this time - no doubt the fact that Reuwich was also the printer helped. The book also says that he printed the first edition (in Latin) at his house in Mainz; he may have inserted this information himself.
That is all the biographical detail that is known of Reuwich; no other documentation for him has been discovered. No other books say that he printed or illustrated them, but it is believed that Reuwich also designed the woodcuts for some illustrations of plants for a herbal published in Mainz in 1485. In December 1486 a "Meister Erhard von Mainz" is recorded as installing stained-glass panels in the "Amtskellerei" in Amorbach in Bavaria; this could be him.
Innovations
The Sanctae Peregrinationes, or the Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam, was the first printed illustrated travel-book, and marked a leap forward for book illustration generally. It featured five large fold-out woodcuts, the first ever seen in the West, including a spectacular five-foot-long (1600 x 300 mm) woodcut panoramic view of Venice, where the pilgrims had stayed for three weeks. The book also contained a three-block map of Palestine and Egypt, centred on a large view of Jerusalem, which is the oldest known printed map of Jerusalem.[3]
The book also contained panoramas of five other cities:
The
Bestseller
The book was a bestseller, reprinted thirteen times over the next three decades, including printings in France and Spain, for which the illustration blocks were shipped out to the local printers. The first edition in German was published within a year of the Latin one, and it was also translated into French, Dutch and Spanish before 1500.[6] Additional text-only editions and various abridged editions were also published.
The illustrations were later adapted by Michael Wolgemut for the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, and much copied by various other publishers.
The Master of the Housebook?
It was first suggested in 1936 that Reuwich should be identified as the Master of the Housebook, a painter and engraver in drypoint, the first artist to use this technique.[7] His identification with the Housebook Master has not been generally accepted, though A. Hyatt Mayor supported it; other suggestions have been made for the identity of the Housebook Master.
References
- ISBN 2-88260-009-7
- ^ Elizabeth Ross, Picturing Experience in the Early Printed Book. Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio from Venice to Jerusalem. University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press 2014.
- ISBN 9781134102877.
- ^ "Bernhard von Breydenbach.Die heyligen reyssen gen Jherusalem". www.brynmawr.edu. Archived from the original on 2002-01-11.
- ^ "Bernhard von Breydenbach". Archived from the original on 2014-08-22. Retrieved 2006-12-04.
- ISBN 0691003262
- ^ Ernstotto Graf zu Solms-Laubach, Der Hausbuchmeister, in: Städel-Jahrbuch IX (1935/36), pp. 13 – 96.
External links
- Hand-coloured copy from the Smithsonian, including the Map of Palestine. 7th item down
- More details and images from the National Library of Scotland
- Copy of the Spanish edition, previously owned by Ferdinand Columbus, the son of Christopher Columbus, from Indiana. Item 8
- annotated Egypt section of the Map of Palestine, from Princeton