Illuminated Latin Bible

[Latin Bible].
Venice: Franciscus Renner de Heilbronn and Nicolaus de Frankfordia, 1475. (06127)

Beginning with the Gutenberg Bible, printed in Mainz c. 1455, the earliest printed Bible editions offered no accommodation for pictorial decoration aside from indented spaces for the addition of handwritten initials. Shortly after this copy of the first Bible published in Venice left the printer’s shop in 1475, it was illuminated by the anonymous Venetian artisan known as the “Master of the Pico Pliny.” He decorated the large blank space left for the initial “F” with a fine image of St. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate version. This is the Bible’s only illustration.