DISCOVERART

Artist unknown German, late 15th century

Bookplate of Hildebrand von Brandenburg

c. 1470–80
Woodcut in black with hand coloring on cream laid paper, laid down on cream laid paper, with inscription in pen and brown ink, laid down on cream laid paper
6.7 × 6.5 cm (2.6 × 2.6 in)

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In the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago · as of July 2026

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

The earliest documented printed ex libris is this hand-colored woodcut arms of Hildebrand von Brandenburg. Hildebrand identified his entire personal library with this woodcut and a standardized inscription before giving it to the Carthusian monastery at Buxheim that he joined around 1480. 143 of his books have been identified, a large collection for a non-royal individual at the time. The inscription Libros historialem Pauli horosii likely refers to the fourth-century priest Paul Orosius’s Seven Books of History Against the Pagans , in which he argued that Christianity was not responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire and all subsequent calamities.

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