From Nowhere: Utopian and Dystopian Visions of our - Chris J. Young

11. Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514). Liber Chronicarum. Nuremburg: Anton
Koberger, 1493.
The Liber chronicarum, or the Nuremberg Chronicle as it is commonly known, is an illustrated history
of the world. Compiled from the stories of human history as told in the Bible and contemporary
sources, the Nuremberg Chronicle was written in Latin by Hartmann Schedel. it is considered to
be one of the most densely illustrated and technically advanced works of early printing, and was
one of the first to integrate image and text successfully. The Nuremberg Chronicle contains 1809
woodcuts produced from 645 blocks executed by Michael Wolgemut, who at that time was the
leading artist of Nuremberg. An estimated fourteen to fifteen hundred copies were printed in Latin
in 1493. The Nuremberg Chronicle reveals how fifteenth-century western European society perceived
the world shortly before the discovery of the Americas. The page displayed here shows the known
world up to 1493, and includes Europe, Africa, Asia, and the mysterious other worldly continent of
Taprobana, with Jerusalem sitting at the centre of the world.
12. Christopher Columbus. La prima lettera di Cristoforo Colombo. Florence:
Giannini, 1932 (facsimile of the 1493 Latin edition).
in 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail from the Canary islands in search of a direct trading route
to Asia. instead, he landed on what became known as the New World, or more precisely, the
Caribbean. From 1492 to 1504 he made four different voyages, reaching the West indies, Haiti,
Cuba, and the Gulf of Mexico. For most of his life Columbus did not realise he had reached a new
continent, but thought he had found the outlying islands to the indies and the territories of the
Great Khan.
This letter, dated 29 April 1493, written on his return journey from the New World, is addressed to
Gabriel Sanchez and describes the abundant resources of gold, spices and land he had discovered
on his voyage. Since Europeans had no prior knowledge of the new continents, Columbus’s account
is strewn with references to the East. His writings would come to shape early modern European
perceptions of the New World and inspire utopian writers such as Thomas More and Francis Bacon
to locate their imaginary islands off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America. This copy is a
facsimile of the 1493 Latin edition published in Florence.
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