Arabic Gospels

[Arabic Gospels].
Evangelium sanctum Domini nostri Iesu Christi conscriptum a quatuor Evangelistis Sanctis, id est, Matthaeo, Marco, Luca, et Iohanne.
Rome: Typographia Medicea, 1591. (AER1214)

Published by a press established in Rome for the purpose of disseminating the scriptures in non-European languages, this first edition of the Gospels in Arabic was illustrated with sixty-eight woodcuts. The illustrations were designed for this edition by the Italian painter and printmaker Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630), a colleague of Giorgio Vasari who had worked in both Florence and Rome. Tempesta was a highly gifted and original artist, but the exhibited image corresponds so closely to Dürer’s woodcut of Christ Nailed to the Cross in the Small Passion that its creation seems to have been intended as an act of homage to great the German printmaker.