Art Institute of Chicago

Emblem with Blank Heraldic Shield, folio 156 from the Anthologia Gnomonica

Jost Amman (Swiss, 1539-1591)

Date

1579, assembled into portfolio 1937

Medium

Woodcut and letterpress in black on cream laid paper

Culture

Switzerland

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

When is a book illustration not a book illustration? These leaves (1938.86.27 and 1938.88.52) were removed from their original texts in the early twentieth century and grouped into portfolios celebrating fifteenth and sixteenth-century book illustrations. Yet the Saint Otilia bears an early owner’s mark from her previous life, and this viewer or another early user has augmented the saint’s halo; the border of the altar showing Christ’s Resurrection; and the muscles on the soul escaping the mouth of hell in Otilia’s vision. In contrast, Jost Amman’s book boasted many woodcuts with spaces intentionally left blank for viewers to complete with their personal coats of arms, an option not realized on this particular sheet.

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