Florencia [Florence, Italy]

One of the only 15th-century views of Florence available to collectors.

Hartmann Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum is considered to be one of the first encyclopedias printed in Europe and was an influential text of the Renaissance era. It is often called the Nuremberg Chronicle after the city in which it was originally printed (by Anton Koberger, the godfather of Albrecht Dürer). Incredibly, the volume contained nearly 2,000 woodcuts across its 336 pages, though only approximately 650 of them were unique, ensuring that some images were re-used several times within updated captions.

This is a lovely example of the double-page view of Florence, Italy, issued in the first Latin edition (1493) as leaf numbers 85 and 86. The image is based on a large manuscript plan created just over a decade earlier by Francesco Roselli, an influential painter and engraver of maps. It shows the walled city straddling the River Arno with the rolling Italian countryside in the background. A boatman can be seen poling through the water while iconic landmarks such as Brunelleschi’s Duomo, Giotto’s Bell Tower, the Palazzo Vecchio and Santa Croce can all be distinguished amid the urban density.

Around the time of publication, Florence was under the authority of the Medicis and flourished as a Renaissance center for music, sculpture, art, and architecture. An impressive view of the Italian city at its height and one of the earliest and best from the 15th century available to collectors today. Text in Latin and images of Syrian Kings are depicted on the verso.