Beschreibung:

Three original colored drawings on a fragment of one leaf from "Spiegel der Menschlichen Behältnis" (Speculum Humanae Salvationis).
Western Germany (probably the Rhineland), c. 1500-1550]. Manuscript on paper with 3 drawings in black ink and colored pigments on a single irregularly-shaped oblong fragment (130 x 200 mm) from the upper half of a leaf with a straight inner margin and a frayed outer margin, tipped onto a backing sheet and matted. an attractive early series of images from an important medieval text. This is a fragment from one of the most influential illustrated texts of the late Middle Ages, originally written in Latin, perhaps in the circle of the Carthusian Ludolph of Saxony (d.1378). The present fragment, from chapters 11-12, shows: recto, (a) Nebuchadnezzar's Vision of the Image (Daniel 2:31 35), the king lying with his head on a pillow in a meadow of flowers with a pillar showing a naked figure with shield and broken lance, with a partial offset from Pharoah crowning Moses once on the facing page, verso, (b) the Baptism of Christ (Matthew 3:13-17), St.John the Baptist standing among the flowers and grass on the shores of the Jordan, Christ standing naked in the water, and (c) the Brazen Laver (III Kings 7:23-26), a vast chalice studded with flowerheads and supported on the heads of five oxen; with a partial offset of the scene of Nathan bathing from the facing page, The Speculum Humanae Salvationis tells the stories of the Gospels matched by parallel images from the Old Testament. It was translated into French, German, English, Dutch and Czech and widely disseminated in manuscript and in woodcut blockbooks. The bull's-head watermark here appears to be Briquet 14691 (Düsseldorf,1412) or a close variant.