BIBLIA LATINA, a bifolium, printed on vellum. [Mainz: Gutenberg, c. 1454-1455]

BIBLIA LATINA. A bifolium printed on vellum from the Gutenberg or 42-line Bible. [Mainz: Johann Gutenberg, c. 1454-1455]

Royal folio (342 x 290mm.; lower margin replaced to give a leaf height of 408mm.), conjoint bifolium 14/2_9 (folios 132 and 139 of volume II), containing the text of Daniel I:18-II:46 and X:12-XI:39, 42 lines, double column, type 140G, one 2-line initial in blue (very faded), one initial supplied in red, chapter numbers and running title supplied in red, capitals filled with yellow, eighteenth-century title written in centre of first recto, modern red morocco binding, both upper corners excised with loss of a few words, a few small wormholes at head with slight loss of text, slightly rubbed and creased across head

A CONJOINT BIFOLIUM FROM THE GUTENBERG BIBLE, THE FIRST PRINTED BOOK IN EUROPEAN HISTORY. For a long time, however, copies were not identified as printed but thought to be manuscript, because of the textura typeface and manuscript rubrication and decoration.

This leaf comes from the Sopron/Ödenburg group of fragments, as identified by Eric White, due to the notable yellow infilling of letters. Ödenburg is now known as Sopron, a town now in the north-western corner of Hungary close to the Austrian border, but not many miles from Wiener Neustadt where Enea Silvio Piccolomini famously saw some quires of a printed Bible in 1455, which had been taken to show to the Emperor. Other leaves from this group are in Sopron, Klagenfurt and Budapest, along with two leaves at Bryn Mawr College (Pennsylvania) that were in an auction in Munich in the 1920s. The present bifolium also has a Munich connection as well as the manuscript reference to Oberneukirchen on the cover; there are towns with this name in both Bavaria and Upper Austria.

The sheet was used as a wrapper for a volume from the guild of tailors in Oberneukirchen, with the eighteenth-century manuscript title "Schneider Innung zu Oberneukirchen" in the centre of the first recto.

PROVENANCE

1. Oberneukirchen, Tailors' guild, eighteenth century
2. Karl & Faber, Munich, sale, 10 December 1941, lot 6
3. Ludwig Strecker (1883-1978), purchased from Karl & Faber, and bound for him
4. Sale, Sotheby's, London, 9 December 2003, lot 17
5. The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 1424

REFERENCES

ISTC ib00526000; Eric M. White, "The Gutenberg Bibles that survive as binder's waste" in Early printed books as material objects (IFLA conference proceedings, Munich, 2009; De Gruyter, 2010), 21-38, census group 6