The Bavarian Land Law of 1553 in Contemporary Illumination. Including the First True-to-Life Depictions of Fish Ever Printed
Bairische Lanndtsordnung 1553. Ingolstadt, [Samuel and Alexander Weißenhorn], 1553. Bound with: Erclärung der Landsfreihait in Obern unnd Nidern Bairn, Munich, [Andreas Schobser], 1553. And: Declaration unnd erleütterung etlicher in Jüngst Bairischer aufgerichter Policeiordnung begriffner Articul, Munich, [Andreas Schobser], 1557.
A spectacularly preserved and extensively contemporary coloured anthology of Bavarian legal printing from the reign of Duke Albrecht V, combining the landmark Bairische Lanndtsordnung of 1553 with two important supplementary legal texts of 1553 and 1557. Printed throughout in black and red and illustrated with illuminated woodcuts, folding plates, heraldic imagery, and extraordinarily vivid fish illustrations, the work stands among the most visually remarkable legal books of the German Renaissance.
Most famous of all are the folding fish plates, widely regarded as containing the first true-to-life depictions of fish ever printed in a book.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
*8 A-Z6 Aa-Ii6 Kk8 a-b6 c8 = 9 leaves, 18 numbered leaves, 1 leaf, leaves 19–125, 1 leaf, leaves 126–197, 20 leaves of index. Bound with: A8 A-E6 = 7 leaves, 29 numbered leaves. Final blanks removed. And: A-C6 = 18 leaves. Printed throughout in black and red. Illustrated with a full-page title woodcut, one illustrated page with two figures, and three double-sided folding plates with ten illustrations in total, all in woodcut and contemporary colouring, together with seven large historiated initials. The bound supplementary texts likewise contain contemporary coloured title woodcuts. Small folio (286 × 192 mm).
Modern vellum binding over smooth spine with gilt brown morocco spine label and blind-tooled lozenge arms on front cover, with two vellum page markers, preserved in a sturdy elephant-hide paper slipcase. Title woodcut minimally shaved as usual, occasional narrow dampmark in lower corner, register finger-soiled, otherwise virtually spotless internally.
Duke Albrecht V and the Ordering of Bavaria
With the Bairische Lanndtsordnung of 1553, the young Duke Albrecht V laid one of the central legal foundations for the consolidation of Bavaria in the second half of the sixteenth century. Since the Landshut War of Succession, peasant unrest, and the upheavals of the Reformation, Bavaria had experienced decades of instability. When Albrecht ascended the throne in 1550, the duchy was financially weakened and administratively exhausted. The legal reforms embodied in the present volume formed part of the broader reconstruction through which Bavaria gradually emerged as a politically and culturally significant territorial power.
Albrecht himself famously preferred the collecting of books and works of art to politics. He founded the ducal court library and created the first museums north of the Alps in the Munich Residenz, including the Antiquarium and the Schatzkammer. Something of this cultivated court culture is reflected in the present printing itself: the spacious typography, alternating black and red printing, large initials, and carefully illuminated woodcuts transform the legal code into an object of genuine visual splendour.
Beer Laws, Marriage, Beggars, and Public Order
The work is extraordinary in scope. Across six books, the Bavarian state attempts to regulate virtually every aspect of life, from criminal law, inheritance, contracts, and church administration to taverns, brewing, festivals, schools, pharmacies, roads, forestry, animal husbandry, guilds, poverty, gambling, and public morality.
The famous Bavarian beer regulations appear here alongside laws concerning marriage, “Winckelheyraten und leichtfertiger beywonung,” wandering entertainers, beggars, blasphemers, gamblers, Jews, travelling communities, and even judicial torture procedures under the heading “von peinlicher frag.”
The result is an extraordinarily vivid portrait of sixteenth-century daily life viewed through the lens of an emerging early modern administrative state.
The First Naturalistic Fish Illustrations in Print
The most remarkable visual feature appears in the Vischordnung. One illustrated page together with three double-sided folding plates depict a crayfish and ten species of fish rendered at full scale with astonishing naturalism and contemporary colouring of exceptional freshness and precision.
These images were not created merely for decoration. They served a practical legal purpose: the illustrations established the minimum permissible size below which fish could not legally be caught. Authorities were instructed to verify these measurements annually around St. Martin’s Day and St. George’s Day.
In many surviving copies the folding plates are entirely absent. Here they survive complete and vividly coloured. Euler described them as “the first true-to-life depiction of fish in a printed book.”
What began as bureaucratic regulation inadvertently produced a milestone in the history of scientific illustration.
Contemporary Illumination
All three title woodcuts were carefully illuminated by hand in multiple colours, while the fish plates display especially striking tonal accuracy and brilliance. The combination of Renaissance typography, administrative ambition, legal authority, and contemporary colouring produces one of the most visually compelling German legal books of the sixteenth century.
Provenance
Illustrated bookplate of the collector Hans Dedi (1918–2016), who acquired the volume in 2007. Later European private collection.
Literature
BM STC German 71; cf. ibid. 72; Euler 15; Graesse IV, 96; Nissen ZBI 4570 and II, 117; Schottenloher, Bibliographie III, 29491 and 29489 (Erclärung); Stalla 309; Tenschert XX, no. 94; VD16 B 1034, 1027, and 1024.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 52:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume II
