Picturing Experience in the Early Printed Book

Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio from Venice to Jerusalem

Nonfiction, Art & Architecture, Art History, European, General Art, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity, Christian Literature
Cover of the book Picturing Experience in the Early Printed Book by Elizabeth Ross, Penn State University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Elizabeth Ross ISBN: 9780271064949
Publisher: Penn State University Press Publication: March 25, 2014
Imprint: Penn State University Press Language: English
Author: Elizabeth Ross
ISBN: 9780271064949
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Publication: March 25, 2014
Imprint: Penn State University Press
Language: English

Bernhard von Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio in terram sanctam (Journey to the Holy Land), first published in 1486, is one of the seminal books of early printing and is especially renowned for the originality of its woodcuts. In Picturing Experience in the Early Printed Book, Elizabeth Ross considers the Peregrinatio from a variety of perspectives to explain its value for the cultural history of the period. Breydenbach, a high-ranking cleric in Mainz, recruited the painter Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht for a religious and artistic adventure in a political hot spot—a pilgrimage to research the peoples, places, plants, and animals of the Levant. The book they published after their return ambitiously engaged with the potential of the new print medium to give an account of their experience.

The Peregrinatio also aspired to rouse readers to a new crusade against Islam by depicting a contest in the Mediterranean between the Christian bastion of the city of Venice and the region’s Muslim empires. This crusading rhetoric fit neatly with the state of the printing industry in Mainz, which largely subsisted as a tool for bishops’ consolidation of authority, including selling the pope’s plans to combat the Ottoman Empire.

Taking an artist on such an enterprise was unprecedented. Reuwich set a new benchmark for technical achievement with his woodcuts, notably a panorama of Venice that folds out to 1.62 meters in length and a foldout map that stretches from Damascus to Sudan around the first topographically accurate view of Jerusalem. The conception and execution of the Peregrinatio show how and why early printed books constructed new means of visual representation from existing ones—and how the form of a printed book emerged out of the interaction of eyewitness experience and medieval scholarship, real travel and spiritual pilgrimage, curiosity and fixed belief, texts and images.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Bernhard von Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio in terram sanctam (Journey to the Holy Land), first published in 1486, is one of the seminal books of early printing and is especially renowned for the originality of its woodcuts. In Picturing Experience in the Early Printed Book, Elizabeth Ross considers the Peregrinatio from a variety of perspectives to explain its value for the cultural history of the period. Breydenbach, a high-ranking cleric in Mainz, recruited the painter Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht for a religious and artistic adventure in a political hot spot—a pilgrimage to research the peoples, places, plants, and animals of the Levant. The book they published after their return ambitiously engaged with the potential of the new print medium to give an account of their experience.

The Peregrinatio also aspired to rouse readers to a new crusade against Islam by depicting a contest in the Mediterranean between the Christian bastion of the city of Venice and the region’s Muslim empires. This crusading rhetoric fit neatly with the state of the printing industry in Mainz, which largely subsisted as a tool for bishops’ consolidation of authority, including selling the pope’s plans to combat the Ottoman Empire.

Taking an artist on such an enterprise was unprecedented. Reuwich set a new benchmark for technical achievement with his woodcuts, notably a panorama of Venice that folds out to 1.62 meters in length and a foldout map that stretches from Damascus to Sudan around the first topographically accurate view of Jerusalem. The conception and execution of the Peregrinatio show how and why early printed books constructed new means of visual representation from existing ones—and how the form of a printed book emerged out of the interaction of eyewitness experience and medieval scholarship, real travel and spiritual pilgrimage, curiosity and fixed belief, texts and images.

More books from Penn State University Press

Cover of the book Gothic Feminism by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book Buying Baroque by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book “I Don’t See Color” by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book Chaucer, Gower, and the Vernacular Rising by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book Heroine of the Harlem Renaissance and Beyond by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book Feminist Policymaking in Chile by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book Memories of Lincoln and the Splintering of American Political Thought by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book After the Fall by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book Confessional Crises and Cultural Politics in Twentieth-Century America by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book The Spiritual Franciscans by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book Dialectical Readings by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book Man or Citizen by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book Gorgeous Beasts by Elizabeth Ross
Cover of the book A Peculiar Mixture by Elizabeth Ross
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy