Annales, non tam de Augustorum vitis, quam aliorum Germanorum gestis. (Mainz, Johann Schöffer, August 1521.

WITH A POSTHUMOUS PORTRAIT OF THE EDITOR

With woodcut title border, full-page woodcut portrait of Rotenhan, full-page woodcut of his coat-of-arms and white-on-black decorative initials.

Folio (280 x 210 mm). 12, 58, [2]ff. 19th century blue wrappers (spine faded, a few tears).

 First edition of the medieval chronicle of Regino, Abbot of Prüm. It originally ended in 906 but was continued until 967 by a Trier monk, probably Adalbert von Magedeburg. The editor, humanist, cartographer and jurist Sebastian von Rotenhan (see ADB XXIX, 299 ff.), whose impressive woodcut portrait is printed towards the end of the work, dedicated his edition to Emperor Charles V.

“Abbot Regino of Prüm (d.915) was the last great historian of the Carolingian Empire, which spanned around a million square kilometres of continental western Europe during the eighth and ninth centuries. His Chronicle is the essential account of the empire’s collapse, while its brief continuation by Adalbert, archbishop of Magdeburg, is one of the key accounts of the rise to power of the Ottonians, the first great German dynasty” (Maclean).

The present work is wonderfully illustrated. Alongside Anton Woensam’s four-part title border with scenes, at the foot, from the story of Lucretia, are two crisp, full-page woodcuts at the end of the work, showing a richly detailed half-length portrait of Rotenhan, and his coat of arms opposite (not in Muther). While the arms have been attributed to Dürer (see Passavant, III, no.319) Heller categorises them and the portrait under ‘Incorrectly attributed works’ (see Heller, Dürer, II, no.2144, under ‘Blätter, welche irrig zu den Dürerischen Kipferstichen gerechnet werden’).

In a close study of the style in this and other works, Else Thormählen has instead attributed the arms and the portrait to Conrad Faber von Creuznach (d.1552-53), active in Mainz between 1517 and 1523, and known to have worked with Schöffer on other works, and for other portraits (including Hutten and Erasmus). “For Schöffer, in addition to other work Faber also drew two full-page woodcuts, a portrait and a coat of arms of the author Sebastian von Rotenhan in 1521. Rotenhan was Hutten’s brother-in-law. He died in 1519.” Thormählen writes that the portrait was likely only created after Rotenhan’s death, due to the uncertain modelling of the cheek (Thormählen, p.148).

Provenance: title with ownership note from the monastery of St. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg.

Some dampstaining to upper margins; browning or some staining here and there, waterstaining to last leaf.

VD16 R599. Adams R276. Wegele 251. Simon Maclean, History and politics in late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The chronicle of Regino of Prum and Adalbert of Magdeburg (2009). E. Thormählen, ‘Die Holzschnittmeister der Mainzer Livius-Illustrationen’, Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1934, pp.137-154.

Stock Code: 252104