Hartmann Schedel - De Kroniek van Neurenberg - Karel de Stoute, Sprinkhanenplaag & Nicolaas van Flüe - sexta etas mundi - 1497

This original incunabulum leaf (wiegend print) comes from the rare, reduced Latin edition of the famous Chronicle of Nuremberg, printed on February 1, 1497 by Johann Schönsperger in Augsburg [Liber chronicarum, Schedel]. It concerns the complete leaf Folium CCLXXXVII (287) with a total paper size of about 30 x 19 cm. The text covers part of the Sixth Age of the World ("Sexta etas mundi") around the years 1477–1480. The front (recto) bears two hand-colored woodcuts: upper left a portrait of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy ("Carolus burgundie dux"), followed by his biography and the Pazzi plot against the De' Medici family in Florence (1478), and in the right column a small woodcut of a swarm of locusts accompanying the account of a devastating locust plague in Northern Italy, followed by the capture of the city of Shkodër (Scodra) by Sultan Mehmed II in 1479. The back (verso) continues the account of Ottoman expansion with the famous Siege of Rhodes by Mehmed II in 1480, followed by a hand-colored woodcut of the Swiss hermit Nicolaus of Flüe ("De fratre Nicolao in suitensi") and his biography, and it closes in the bottom right with the beginning of the Ottoman attack on Otranto ("Idruntum") in 1480. The leaf is in good, authentic condition with lovely old hand coloring, broad margins, and light signs of aging.

Depicted on recto:
1. Carolus burgundie dux (Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy)
2. Swarm of locusts (Locuste), in the account of the locust plague in Italy (1478)

Depicted on verso:
1. De fratre Nicolao in suitensi (Nicolaus of Flüe / Bruder Klaus, Swiss hermit and mystic from Unterwalden/Schwyz)

On recto: among other things the biography of Charles the Bold (Carolus burgundie dux), with his wars against King Louis XI of France, the destruction of Liège, and his eventual defeats and death at Nancy in 1477: “Three cities were fatal to him: Grandson, Morat, and Nancy. He left only one daughter, Maria, as heiress to this empire, who later married Maximilian, the son of Emperor Frederick.” Also the account of the bloody assault on Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Florence Cathedral (1478), a severe plague and locust plague in Northern Italy, and the Ottoman siege of Shkodër.
On verso: the account of the Siege of Rhodes in 1480, where Sultan Mehmed II attacked the island with a vast fleet, but after three months of bombardment was defeated by the defenders under Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson. Then the biography of the holy hermit Nicolaus of Flüe (De fratre Nicolao in suitensi), regarding whom it is written that he “lived for twenty years without any physical food” and gained great fame through his strict asceticism and prophecies, followed by the opening lines about the Ottoman attack on Otranto (1480).

To be sent by registered mail as a parcel