Beschreibung:

BIBLIA PAUPERUM. BLOCKBOOK (Schreiber xyl. ed. III). [Low Countries: ca. 1465] Chancery 2° (252/266 x 187/190mm without margins). COLLATION: [1-20 2 ], 40 leaves signed a-v, a - v . The sheets printed on the inner side only, in pale brown occasionally greyish water-based ink, by a rubbing process, from twenty double-page woodblocks (a-b ... t - v ), the outer sides blank. Each woodcut page comprising three pictures, four portraits, and Latin text. PAPER: a single stock, probably from a Piedmont mill, the watermark pair of a hand surmounted with a star not recorded in Briquet but belonging to his group 11088-90 and 11092-93, whose use is found from Sicily to Zeeland over a fifty-year period from the 1430s to the 1480s. This paper stock apparently not recorded in any other surviving impression of the blockbook Biblia Pauperum . CONDITION: the bifolia now divided and each leaf remargined with Whatman paper affecting the outermost frame (replaced in manuscript with a black and red-ruled frame); a few small wormholes repaired very slightly affecting text or illustration in about twelve leaves; minor defects, mainly marginal, repaired in eight leaves and repairs along the extreme outer and/or top edges of thirteen other leaves affecting woodcut increasingly towards the end; printed surface rubbed in small central portions of fos. 1, 17-19, 21 and 26, as well as elsewhere on five other pages; defect in centre of fo. 8 restored with missing lines of illustration replaced in manuscript; crease across fos. 33-36 flattened when the leaves were pressed for rebinding; a few very minor stains; uneven inking of lower caption in fo. 35, but by whatever frottage they were produced the impressions of the double-page woodcuts have fine tone and are remarkably strong, only fo. 40 and perhaps one or two other pages showing a few lines or letters strengthened in pen-and-ink (a much more common occurrence in most other copies); although the leaves were rebound in the correct order, the codex opens with the woodcut on fo. 1 as a right-hand page instead of on the left, so that as a result the facing pages are presently not arranged as they were printed from the double-page blocks. The listing of these defects is meticulous, perhaps obscuring the fact that this extremely rare blockbook is generally in very good condition. BINDING: English gold-tooled blue straight-grained morocco of ca. 1790, sides panelled with multiple fillets, a Greek-key outer border with a small sunburst tool in the corners, the Carysfort arms added in the centre of the front cover, flat spine decorated in compartments with foliate ornament and pointillé tooling, two roll-tooled borders on turn-ins, purple watered-silk liners, gilt edges. (Binding somewhat faded and rubbed in places.) PROVENANCE: Jean-Baptiste Pâris de Meyzieu (not in the French edition of his 1791 London sale catalogue, but lot 4 bis in the English version, which suggests that it was a last-minute insertion by the auctioneer-bookseller James Edwards and that perhaps it was his own property rather than part of the Pâris collection, thus explaining the English binding, sold at ¨51 to); Ralph Willett of Merly, Dorset (lot 296 in his London sale of 7th December 1813, ¨257 5s); P. A. Hanrott (his inscription on provenance "The Paris Copy", condition "very fine and complete", Heinecken reference, date "A.D. (circa) 1430" and rarity "excessively rare", 1833 London sale, ¨36 15s); 4th Earl of Ashburnham (27th June 1897 Sotheby sale, lot 419, via Quaritch to); William, Earl of Carysfort (bookplate); by descent to the present owner. In the third quarter of the fifteenth century the pictures and text of the so-called Biblia Pauperum , current in manuscript since before 1300, were modified for publication in both typographical and xylographic (or blockbook) editions. Albrecht Pfister printed one Latin and two German-language editions in 36-line Bible type, illustrated with woodcuts, Bamberg: ca. 1462-63 (GW 4325-27). In