DURER, Albrecht (1471-1528) & STABIUS, Johannes (1450–1522).
Culminatorium Fixarum / editum ex Tabula antiqua ligno incisa, que in Bibliotheca Aug. Vindob. asservatur. M DCC LXXXI (1781).
Woodcut with additional letterpress.
Vienna: Joseph von Kurzböck, 1781.
19 11/16" x 20 3/4" sheet.

Johannes Stabius (or Stab, 1450-1522) was a cartographer-astronomer at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, best remembered today as the inventor of the cordiform (heart-shaped) map projection made famous by Oronce Finé. Stabius worked with Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) to develop innovative ways of visualizing the heavens for the purpose of calculation and analysis (uranometry). These paper instruments -- sometimes layered with moving parts, called a volvelle -- are essentially analog computers.

In 1515, Stabius commissioned Dürer to make a series of four paper instruments as courtly gifts (at the lower left corner are the arms of Maximilian I (as King of the Romans) and at the upper right those of Jakob de Bannissis, the original dedicatee), a reflection of the interest in chronometry and horoscopy. Perhaps most famous of the four was the Imperial Astrolabe (Astrolabium imperatorium totius habitabilis orbis nobilioribus partibus inserviens), which is nevertheless not an astrolabe. Some 266 years later, the original woodblocks were rediscovered -- the prints having largely perished or slipped into obscurity -- and reprinted (per the subscription: "Editum ex Tabula antiqua ligno incisa quæ in Bibliotheca Aug. Vindob. asservatur/ M DCC LXXXI" ) in a portfolio by Johann Adam von Bartsch (1757-1821), who was perhaps the greatest scholar of old master prints. Because the text of the Imperial Astrolabe was set in letterpress, the block itself was renamed by Bartsch the Culminatorium fixarum: the tabulator of the zenith (reaching the meridian-line) of the fixed stars. It depicts the relationships between the fixed stars -- here exemplified by particular stars within major constellations such as Boötes, Orion and Canis Major -- the hour of night (along the x-axis top and bottom) and the 12 signs of the Zodiac (i.e., indicating times of year according to the sun's apparent transit through those constellations). Paper instruments such as the present item have recently become the focus of scholarship, both their use in their original XVIc intellectual milieu and then as items of antiquarian curiosity in the XVIIIc. Crucially, the coloring of the original examples -- now held at the Albertina and at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Einbl. VIII,12) -- renders them usable, per the long letterpress description below. As a Dürer-drawn celestial chart, it has an almost abstract allure, even without its color.

Condition: Sometime folded and mounted at the spine. Repaired splits (?) verso. Soiling to the upper right margin of the recto. A single worm-hole to the lower-right quadrant, kindly in a blank spot. Presented hinged and matted behind acetate.

Marr, Alexander. "Ingenuity in Nuremberg: Dürer and Stabius's Instrument Prints" in The Art Bulletin 100.3 (2018), 48-79.