The Nativity scene, showing Baby Jesus in the manger surrounded by Mary and Joseph, with an ox and an ass in the background, has inspired artists for many centuries.

This charming woodcut, which has been carefully coloured by hand, was carved in the workshop of  the Nuremberg artists Michael Wolgemut (circa 1434/37 – 1519) and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff (circa 1450 – 1494), who illustrated the Liber Chronicarum of Hartmann Schedel printed in Nuremberg by Anton Koberger in 1493.

The Liber Chronicarum, or Nuremberg Chronicle as it is more generally known, is a history of the world from the beginning of times to the early 1490s.  The Birth of Jesus is used by the artists to illustrate the year 5200 after the Creation, following the calculations of the early Christian historian Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (ca. 260-ca. 340).

A digital image of the Nativity can be viewed together with the whole of the Nurember Chronicle  in the Cambridge Digital Library.

With all very best wishes from the Incunabula Project Team !