Netherlands, 15th Century

The Flight into Egypt, one blockbook leaf from: Biblia Pauperum (Schreiber e.II)

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Netherlands, 15th Century
The Flight into Egypt, one blockbook leaf from: Biblia Pauperum (Schreiber e.II)
woodcut printed in olive-brown ink with xylographic text and contemporary handcolouring, circa 1465, on sturdy laid paper without watermark, from the Netherlandish edition II (of X), printing very clearly and with considerable relief, handcoloured in red, green, yellow, pink, grey and black, with small to narrow margins outside the borderlines at right and below, trimmed to or just inside the borderline at left and to or just into the subject above, several scattered wormholes, a few small rubbed and skinned spots in the black area at right, otherwise in good condition
S. 268 x 195 mm.

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Charlie Scott

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拍品專文

Blockbooks, of which the Biblia Pauperum were the most common, were mainly produced during a relatively short, transitional period in the middle of the 15th century. The text and the images were cut into and printed from a single woodblock, a technique soon to be superseded by Gutenberg's invention of movable type and it's swift dissemination across Europe.

Several theories exist as to the precise use and audience of the so-called 'pauper's bibles' (biblia pauperum). Although certainly not created for the illiterate poor, the illustrations in these bibles are clearly given importance over the text and one can assume that these books served for the visualisation of the biblical stories for less educated clergy and laymen.