Peregrinatio in terram sanctam (Journey to the Holy Land)
Erhard Reuwich (text by Bernhard von Breydenbach (German, c. 1440–c. 1497); published by Peter Schöffer (German, c. 1425–1503))
1486
- Medium
- Book with letterpress and woodcuts in black on cream laid paper
- Classification
- Book
- Dimensions
- Closed: 32 × 23 × 3.5 cm (12 5/8 × 9 1/16 × 1 7/16 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
The first illustrated travel book about the journey to the Holy Land, this volume offered a pilgrimage to distant sacred sites from the comfort of one’s own home. A bestseller, it was translated into German, French, Dutch, and Spanish before 1500. To create the illustrations the artist traveled with the canon of the Utrecht cathedral from 1483 to 1484, depicting the Mediterranean cities from Venice to the Holy Land with relative accuracy compared to other works of the era. The two longest foldouts in the book showed Venice and the culminating destination of Jerusalem, a city central to all three major Abrahamic religions. The original woodblocks made their own pilgrimages around Europe for reprinting in several subsequent editions.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
