Exceptionally rare pamphlet to rouse a crusade against the Turks

30 Celestial vision at Constantinople – Kunt und wissennt sey allermeniglich das ein sölich geschicht unnd erschreckliches erschein gesehen ist worden hinter Canstantinopel ...

Single-leaf print on paper. [Nuremberg? c. 1491.]

Transverse 2°, 295 x 411 mm.Watermark: bull’s head (cf. Piccard X, 76-92). – Woodcut including border 272 x 195 mm, text and frame including border 272 x 192 mm. 28 lines of text. Combined single-leaf print with a coloured woodcut on the right and a xylographic text with floral border on the left. Original colouring hues of bright orange, green and vermilion resemble those on the parallel Munich copy (cf. Arnim 1984). – Very few tiny wormholes, moderate mending at the margins.The leaf was once, as its Munich pendant, bound in a book; the remains of the binding in the fold have been carefully restored.

PROVENANCE:1. Austrian monastery? (cf. von Arnim, footnote). 2. Acquired in 1934 by Hellmuth Wallach and Emil Hirsch, antiquarians in Munich. 3. Sold to Richard Zinser in 1938; later on sold back to 4.Wallach. In 1959 Adalbert Lauter, antiquarian in Munich, acquired the leaf for 5. Collection Otto Schäfer, Schweinfurt, OS-A-17.

TEXT: Extraordinarily rare pamphlet reporting on a celestial vision at Constantinople. This print probably represents the model for Georg Glockendon who produced a near identical leaf shortly afterwards.The model survives in our copy alone. The text on the left hand side tells the following story: in July 1490, some years after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in May 1453, fire descended from the skies, completely devastating a Turkish army encampment near to Constantinople.The fire destroyed all the army’s weaponry, whilst eight hundred houses, men and cattle were wiped out: ganntz eben als hab mansz mit einem pesen wegk kert. (As if everything had been swept clean with a broom). Afterwards, a vision of a three-headed knight in full armour appeared in the heavens at Mount Farsso for 24 hours without interruption. The knight’s three heads resembled three heavenly bodies, the sun, moon and morning star, while in his hands he held a beautiful young virgin with braided hair, the legs and paws of a lion, yellow eagle’s wings and a forked tail. The two parts of her tail were wrapped around the knight’s legs, and she held in her paws two red escutcheons, each decorated with a white letter ‘W’: ein rotten schilt mit einem weisen zwifachen v oder b. Darnach mag mans aus legen ein Zollcher wie er will. (Everybody may read this the way he pleases.) The fire is most likely to have been caused by a flash of lightning and Heß believes that the celestial apparition was actually the aurora borealis with a strong arc and flickering glows of light (cf. exh. cat. Munich, no. 97).The Nuremberg Chronicle mentions the fire too, although not the apparition itself, and counts as many as 3000 people dead. The text interprets the natural disaster as an expression of divine wrath against the Turks. In June 1490 Pope Innocent VIII summoned a council in Rome to discuss the problem of the Turkish invasion.The inner circle around Maximilian, later the Holy Roman Emperor, referred constantly to the ‘Turkish Danger’ all the time and sought a new crusade. In this light, our pamphlet appears to be a piece of political propaganda.

ILLUSTRATION: The illustration of the celestial apparition on the right hand side of the leaf follows the textual description in detail. The two hybrid figures, i.e. the three headed knight and the winged, lion-legged virgin, are presented like a heraldic emblem with escutcheons at their feet. The composition of the woodcut is quite static and contains no visual hint at the devastating catastrophe that preceded the apparition. Instead, the miraculous figures seem to be shown out of scale and dominate the scenery like monumental giants. The colourist must have read the text concerning the apparition as he employed all the colours given in the description.

PRINT: Another single-leaf print with near identical text and similar illustration has survived in Munich (BSB Xyl. 52), most likely also a unique example. It had been attached to a book in the collection of Hartmann Schedel that was broken up in the 19th century. It deviates only slightly from its model, lacking some hyphens and with slightly different hatching. However, instead of the decorative border there is the imprint “Jorg Glogkendon” below the text. Georg Glockendon († 1514) settled in Nuremberg in 1484 where he established himself as a busy illuminator and painter of playing cards and letters, designing and publishing short documents and applied art and graphics, such as pamphlets, devotional images and calendars. He was the founder of an artistic dynasty that dominated the bookmakers’ trade in Nuremberg up to 1550. Von Arnim states that our print must have been the model for Glockendon’s copy. The close similarity between the two sheets implies a Nuremberg origin for the print at hand.

RARITY: Only traceable copy of this version. Woodcuts and especially single-leaf prints could only survive in such excellent condition in the protective environment of books, as is the case with our print. However, pamphlets were only very rarely sewn into books as they were intended as instant news media rather than objects to be preserved permanently. Schreiber counts more than 4700 different illustrated single-leaf prints, only about 7 % of which have survived in more than one copy (cf. Richard S. Field in exh. cat. Washington 2005, p. 19).

LITERATURE: Arnim 1984, Xylo-j. Cf. the Munich copy: Heß 1911, p. 105f, B 1; Heitz 1913, plate 55; exh. cat. Munich 1990, no. 97; Schreiber 1994. Exh. cat.Washington and Nuremberg 2005.