Lot 1583 Dα

Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld travelled to Rome in 1818, remaining there until 1827. There he joined a number of other religiously minded German artists in the Nazarene group. The idea for an illustrated bible was developed in the mid-1820s, but was to be published much later in Dresden. The present image, dated 1825, is comparable to “Ruth on the fields of Boaz”, which was painted in the same year and is kept in the Ratjen collection. Schnorr's ink drawings for the “Bibel in Bildern” were transferred into non-mirror image woodcuts. The picture bible was published for the first time in 1860, and aimed to depict the most important scenes from the Old and New Testament using only Schnorr von Carolsfeld's 240 woodcuts and dispensing largely with biblical texts.