Biblia, das ist, die gantze heilige Schrifft, Deudsch, Auffs new zugericht, D. Mart. Luth.
Leipzig, Gedrukt durch Nickel Wolrab, 1543 (new edition).
Folio (308 × 207 mm), four volumes bound as one, comprising: (1) [Old Testament]: viii, 358 leaves (last blank), title with historiated woodcut border, with 52 woodcut illustrations (15 full-page, 37 smaller); (2) 'Die Propheten, alle Deudsch D. Mart. Luth., Wittemberg': 174 leaves, sectional title with historiated woodcut border, with 16 woodcuts (4 full-page, 12 half-page); (3) 'Apocrypha': 90 leaves; (4) 'Das Newe Testament. D. Martinus Luther': 169 leaves, sectional title with historiated woodcut border, with 34 woodcut illustrations (8 full-page, of which two are duplicates, 26 smaller).
Contemporary sheepskin over wooden boards, extensively blind-tooled in a panel design, with metal corner-bosses; expertly rebacked, retaining most of the original backstrip; remnants of fore-edge clasps (straps and hasps missing); some wear and worming to the leather, with some minor surface loss. Lacks a1, with partial loss to a2 (these are the first two leaves of Genesis), and partial loss to the colophon; title leaf reinforced at the margins; a number of tears and chips, many with old paper repairs; a few tidemarks; some worming (these faults largely confined to the early sections of the text block); a couple of gatherings a little proud of the fore-edges; some nineteenth-century ink annotations to the front endpapers; notwithstanding a very presentable copy.
A scarce early edition of Luther's translation of the Bible (the first complete edition of which appeared in 1534), with over 100 woodcut illustrations, many after Lucas Cranach the Younger. Nicolaus Wolrab, a printer of Catholic materials before the conversion of Saxony in 1539, soon began to issue unauthorised editions of Luther's writings, including sections of the Bible. Luther himself intervened with the Elector of Saxony to have these editions suppressed on behalf of the Wittenberg printers who held the lucrative monopoly. However, despite this action, and despite Wittenberg editions from 1541 carrying a warning against the production of unauthorised editions, Wolrab's first complete edition of the Bible appeared the same year, with the present edition following soon afterwards in 1543. Curiously, this edition contains Luther's warning immediately after the title leaf, suggesting either that a rapprochement had taken place between Wolrab and the Wittenberg printers, or that the former was particularly brazen in his piracy. The attribution to Cranach of the woodcuts in Wolrab's first edition appears to be settled, and a comparison of our copy with digital copies of those editions appears to confirm that many of the full-page woodcuts were printed from the same blocks. The catalogue record for a copy of this edition in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Bu 9491) attributes the woodcuts to Lucas Cranach the Younger: 'Holzschnitte von [ermittelt] Lukas Cranach'. This edition contains many additional woodcuts (perhaps most notably the small Old-Testament scenes in the text), and further differs from the edition of 1542 by the setting of the text in two columns.
Item #112686
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