Vienna Rising: A Salzburg Missal at the Dawn of the Sixteenth Century with a Vellum Canon and Two Illuminated Woodcuts by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Missale Saltzeburgense. Vienna, Johannes Winterburger, 1506.
A monumental Salzburg Missal printed in Vienna in 1506 by Johannes Winterburger, containing a Canon section on vellum and two extraordinary illuminated woodcuts attributed to the young Lucas Cranach the Elder.
Produced during the explosive cultural ascent of Vienna under Maximilian I, the volume captures a decisive moment in Central European printing, when the late Gothic world began transforming into the visual language of the sixteenth century.
Preserved in an exceptionally beautiful contemporary Viennese binding, possibly connected to the Slatkonia Master, the Missal survives not merely as a liturgical book but as a remarkably intact witness to the artistic ambitions of early Habsburg Vienna.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
Missale Saltzeburgense. Vienna, Johannes Winterburger, 1506. Π8 †4 a-r8 s6 t8 v6 Π2 +6 x6 y-z8 A-I10 K-L6 = 281 [instead of 282] leaves. Printed throughout in black and red.
Illustrated with a full-page composite woodcut of the patron saints, a full-page Crucifixion woodcut illuminated in gold and colours, one very large historiated initial and a small medallion likewise illuminated, a computistical woodcut for determining the Sunday letter, approximately forty decorative initials on black or red grounds, numerous lombards in red, and musical notation printed in black on red four-line staves. Folio (314 × 221 mm).
Contemporary brown calf over wooden boards on three broad raised bands with blind tooling, ornamental rolls and stamps, painted floral decoration, brass bosses and intact clasps, with traces of leather page markers preserved. Minor rubbing and small repairs; generally an extraordinarily well-preserved contemporary binding.
Vienna Against Augsburg
The Salzburg Missal emerged from a highly competitive moment in German-speaking printing.
Johannes Winterburger had established himself in Vienna shortly after Maximilian I reconquered the city in 1490. By the early sixteenth century he had become the dominant liturgical printer in the Austrian lands and increasingly challenged the supremacy of the great Augsburg printer Erhard Ratdolt.
The comparison between Winterburger’s Salzburg Missal of 1506 and Ratdolt’s Passau Missal of 1505 reveals two competing visions of liturgical printing.
Ratdolt’s Augsburg productions possess a calm monumental harmony shaped by decades of Venetian experience. Winterburger’s Vienna, by contrast, feels younger, more restless, more experimental. The typography is slightly heavier, the compositions more dramatic, the decorative language more heterogeneous.
You can almost feel Vienna discovering itself.
Lucas Cranach the Elder
The artistic climax of the volume lies in the woodcuts attributed to the young Lucas Cranach the Elder, who was active in Vienna until roughly 1505.
Particularly astonishing is the woodcut used to determine the Sunday letter: against a black ground, an owl violently descends upon a dove in a composition of extraordinary theatrical intensity. Hedwig Gollob described it as a “magnificent master achievement.”
The Crucifixion woodcut in the Canon section is equally remarkable. Unlike the more inward and devotional restraint of Burgkmair’s Augsburg Crucifixions, Cranach’s scene becomes intensely physical and human. Mary and John react with visible emotional strain; the drapery falls heavily; even blades of grass assert their own material presence.
As the catalogue observes, the transcendental Gothic atmosphere begins here to give way to something new: a more earthly, emotional, and naturalistic sixteenth-century vision.
The Vellum Canon
Like the great luxury liturgical books of the period, the Canon section was printed on vellum to withstand repeated ritual use during Mass.
Intriguingly, the catalogue identifies the vellum Canon as originating from another Winterburger Missal, most likely the Missale Olomucense of 1505. Winterburger appears to have reused surplus vellum Canon sections from that project in the present Salzburg edition, quietly economizing without noticeably diminishing the luxury impression of the finished volume.
It is exactly the sort of subtle production history that reveals the realities behind Renaissance printing workshops.
A Contemporary Viennese Publisher’s Binding
The binding itself may be just as important as the printed text.
The catalogue strongly suggests that the volume preserves its original publisher’s binding produced in Vienna shortly after printing. Winterburger evidently had portions of his deluxe liturgical editions bound before sale, anticipating a much later publishing practice by centuries.
Stylistically the binding stands precisely at the transitional moment when Viennese decorative traditions began absorbing influences from Augsburg, Nuremberg, Italy, and the Low Countries after Maximilian’s reconquest of the city.
The result is a binding that feels historically alive: Gothic structure colliding with early Renaissance ornament.
Provenance
Auction Hartung & Karl 49, Munich, 7–9 May 1985, lot 250; purchased by H. P. Kraus for DM 60,000 plus premium.
Literature
Bohatta 418; Denis 18; Dodgson II, 280; Dolch 56ff., no. 42; Gollob 1925, no. 171; Panzer IX, 2, no. 8; VD16 M 5621; Weale/Bohatta 1381; Zisska & Lacher 64, no. 226; Durstmüller; Gollob 1936; Mayer.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 14:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
