Wilson (Adrian), 1923-1988; Wilson (Joyce Lancaster), 1946-1996

(35 cm), 253 pp., 250 illustrations (12 in colour). Publisher’s cloth, pictorial dust jacket. - “The discovery in the Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg of complete manuscript-layouts for the most lavishly illustrated volume of the incunabula period, Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, and the survival of contracts for its woodcuts, its printing, and for a final settlement of profits, provides unique sources for this work on the entire production of a 15th c. book, from concept through distribution… The study reproduces layouts, as well as preparatory sketches discovered in 1972, and compares them with the printed results. They show evidence of the hand of Albrecht Dürer who was apprenticed in the workshop of Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff while the woodcuts were being made there. Included is extensive information on Koberger’s printing house, on earlier chronicles, on Nuremberg of the period, and on manuscripts used by incunabula printers” (authors’ abstract). ¶ Fine copy.