Pictorial New Testament, Illustrated with Petite Engravings

Biblische augen-und seelen-Lust. Das ist die heilige Geschichte neuen Testaments in Kupffer abgebildet und gestochen auch mit heiligen Andachte gezieret. Der Christlichen Jugend zu erbaulicher Ergezung. 
Augsburg: Christoph Weigel, 1696. (BRB0351)

This late seventeenth-century children’s pictorial New Testament consists of 102 leaves of text and 102 copperplate engravings. The illustrations were produced by Christoph Weigel (1654–1725), an engraver and publisher active in Augsburg and Nuremberg. The image of St. Mark the Evangelist, on display, typifies the artist’s detailed, diminutive engravings in the volume.

Complementing the present text, the publisher issued a similar work on the Old Testament the same year. A year earlier, the Weigel firm had also published an entirely illustrated Bible in folio with more than 800 engravings. Not intended specifically for children, the 1695 Biblia Ectypa may have inspired Weigel to issue this work in small format for younger readers.