Anbotor Christi 1450

Created in the year 1840, this small codex contains a series of eleven medievally-inspired woodcuts consisting of a title page and ten simple illustrations showing the Anbotor Christi, the messengers or heralds of Christ. Each figure is labeled with a letter or ligature corresponding to a handwritten note on the opposite page by Georg Kaspar Nagler (1801–1866), an German art historian and owner of an antiquarian bookshop. Some woodcuts depict biblical scenes with explanatory banderoles such as the Expulsion from Paradise as well as texts written in red and blue ink. Both thematically and technically, as well as stylistically, this curious codex imitates 15th-century block books, thus reflecting the 19th-century revival of interest in and romantic fascination with the European Middle Ages. The only known surviving copy of the work is stored today in the British Library.