REUWICH, Erhard - b. ~1455 Utrecht, d. ~1490 Mainz

German painter, designer and woodcutter of Netherlandish birth. He was probably the son of the painter Hillebrant van Reewijk, who worked for the Buurkerk in Utrecht between 1456 and 1465 and in 1470 was Dean of the Utrecht guild. In 1483 Erhard accompanied Graaf Johann zu Solms-Lich, the Ritter Philipp von Bicken and Bernard von Breydenbach, chamberlain to the Archbishop of Mainz, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In 1486 Peregrinationes in terram sanctam, written by Breydenbach and illustrated with woodcuts by Reuwich, was published and became highly popular as a travel guide. The woodcuts, which fold out to show townscapes, including Venice and Jerusalem, made this publication technically as well as artistically an exceptional achievement. The title page, with a richly dressed Venetian lady, and other smaller woodcuts showing inhabitants of the Holy Land, are similar in style to prints by the Master of the Housebook.

Animal page

Woodcut illustration in printed books flourished in Germany during the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The major presses established in Bamberg, Augsburg, Ulm, Basel, Strasbourg, Speier, Mainz, Cologne, Nuremberg, and Leipzig turned out a great variety of texts with illustrations ranging from the classics to nature books and satirical or moralising treatises. One of the most original publication was Bernhard von Breydenbach’s ‘Sanctae peregrinationes’ (Holy Pilgrimages), issued in Mainz in 1486 by the Utrecht artists and printer Erhard Reuwich.

Breydenbach, an aristocrat with considerable means, had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1483-84. Reuwich accompanied him as his personal artist to record the various sites and peoples. The resulting travelogue, printed upon Breydenbach’s return, contains Reuwich’s illustrations. The present plate the exotic animals believed to have been seen by Reuwich, but that were, for the most part, fanciful hybrids designed to satisfy Western beliefs and interests. The unicorn figures prominently among them.