book;
title-page;
print
- Museum number
- 1904,0206.9.1-12
- Description
-
'Etliche unerricht zu befestigung der Stett, Schloß, und Flecken'; first edition of Albrecht Dürer's book on fortification with German text in letterpress and illustrations by Dürer, printed by Hieronymus Andreae in Nuremberg in 1527; the book includes a title-page illustration with hand-colouring, ten large folding-plates, other smaller diagrams, and a folding-plate of a siege of a fortress.
The hand-coloured title-page (Meder 284) shows the coat of arms of Ferdinand I, as king of Bohemia and Hungary, the escutcheon surmounted by the crown and surrounded by the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and on both sides of the collar's pendant the title of the book in letterpress. 1527
Woodcut and letterpress
The last folding-plate (Meder 272) showing the siege of a fortress, with from right to left an army approaching a town fortified with a rampart which has two rows of firing slits and canons on top, surrounded with a broad, round moat, in the left foreground the defenders of the fortress forming up in squares for a counterattack. 1527
Woodcut
- Production date
- 1527
- Dimensions
-
Height: 222 millimetres (siege)
-
Height: 256 millimetres (title-page printed area)
-
Width: 690 millimetres (siege)
-
Width: 156 millimetres (title-page printed area)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- This book is wanting leaves C 4 and C 5; it contains the leaf of errata bearing title and 29 lines, and a MS leaf of errata. This copy is bound in vellum, is dated inside1536 with the name of Jacob Tucher (1498-1568). It also bears a dedication, dated 1837, from Hauptmann Ferd[inand?] von Praun to Oberleutnant Carl Nachtigall.
In the title-page illustration (Meder 284), the pendant of the Fleece is cut on a separate block, and the link which connects it with the collar is on a third block. The woodcut of a siege of a fortress (Meder 272) is printed from two blocks and, according to Paisey, is from the 1603 edition (with watermark M224).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1971 BM, Dürer, no. 300
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Etliche unerricht zu befestigung der Stett, Schloß, und Flecken
- Acquisition date
- 1904
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1904,0206.9.1-12
