AMD 5 Cole Grisham

For the most recent AMD, I chose to write about my visit to the Toledo Museum of Art. It wasn’t exactly a German-oriented trip in and of itself, but seeing as there was much German, Austrian and other German-speaking groups represented in the art and artifacts, I feel it was valuable. There was much from the 15th to 17th centuries Germanic regions of Europe on display that I found especially intriguing. The link below, which was difficult to find after returning home, was one of my favorite pieces. It’s a 15th century book printed in Nuremberg called the Liber Chronicarum (“Book of Chronicles), which is essentially an early history of the world in a way. If you navigate to this page, you can view a close up of one of the ornate pictures from inside the book.

One of the most interesting facets of this image, and indeed viewing these pieces in person, is choice of language used. In some of the more locally oriented pieces of German art, earlier forms of German language is used, but in items designed for more intelligent audiences (such as the book I show) Latin appears to be used in lieu of the local language. Latin wasn’t the language used in all German art shown, as I suggest, but there definitely was a division based on the intended audience, I believe.

All in all, viewing these pieces was very interesting, but the most fascinating to me was seeing the early books published in German. Although I was unable to find an example from their sight unfortunately, I recommend visiting the TMA yourself to see these in person.

http://classes.toledomuseum.org:8080/emuseum/view/objects/asitem/search$0040/24/invno-asc?t:state:flow=d6b63cae-a864-416d-8fc6-5d74efd7a4f6