Nuremberg Chronicle

As many readers might have noticed, from my first and most recent book, I’m slightly obsessed with medieval information design, and the remarkable work of many our visualization forefathers, such as Isidore of Seville (ca. 560–636), Lambert of Saint-Omer (ca. 1061–ca. 1125), or Joachim of Fiore (ca. 1135–1202). An important figure in this context was the German historian and cartographer Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514). In 1493, in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, Schedel published a remarkable, densely illustrated and technically advanced incunabulum (a book printed before 1501), entitled the Nuremberg Chronicle. Also know as Liber Chronicarum (Book of Chronicles), this universal history of the world was compiled from older and contemporary sources, and comprised 1,809 woodcuts produced from 645 blocks. Some of the book’s maps were the first illustrations ever produced of many European cities and countries.

There are many online versions of this work, but if you want to get a decent, well-bound copy of this beautiful book, Taschen has recently published one that I highly recommend.

You can read more about Taschen’s copy here and here.

A few more online resources about the Nuremberg Chronicle:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Chronicle
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedelsche_Weltchronik
- http://www.wdl.org/en/item/4108/
- http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/21.36.145