This sumptuous work is the result of the largest publishing company in the history of the press in the age of incunabula. Output from the printing presses Koberger in July 1493 in Latin under the title Liber chronicarum, was reprinted in December of the same year in German under the title Weltchronik, then widely known and sought after in Italy and in Europe as the Nuremberg Chronicles.
Author was Hartmann Schedel, a famous German humanist, who, with the publisher and sponsors, created a pool of scholars, illustrators (including the young Albrecht Dürer), pressmen and bookbinders to equip the German and European culture of an encyclopedia on history of the world from the Creation until the eve of the discovery of America.
The work contains 1809 woodcut illustrations (including 645 from original timbers) entirely hand colored, as was required for the most luxurious pieces intended for the princely libraries. The mapping system is one of the most important features: all the then known world is represented with more or less fantasy. Stand for truth, however, large plants topographical area of the city of Franco-German and Italian cities most important and famous: Rome, Venice, Florence and Genoa.
We have 3 facsimiles of the manuscript "Nuremberg Chronicle - Weimar Copy":
- Hartmann Schedel: Liber Chronicarum Das Buch der Chroniken facsimile edition published by Pytheas Books, 2020
- Weltchronik - Le cronache di Norimberga facsimile edition published by Il Bulino, edizioni d'arte, 1993
- Hartmann Schedel, Weltchronik - Nürnberg 1493 facsimile edition published by Edition Libri Illustri, 1993