Book of Miracles

The Book of Miracles first surfaced only a few years ago and is one of the most spectacular discoveries in the field of Renaissance art. The near-complete illustrated manuscript, created in Augsburg around 1550, is composed of 169 pages of large-format illustrations in gouache and watercolor, depicting wondrous and often eerie phenomena.The mesmerizing images deal with both biblical and folkloric tales, depicting stories from the Old Testament and Book of Revelation as well as events that took place in the immediate present of the manuscript’s author. From shooting stars to swarms of locusts, terrifying monsters to fatal floods, page after page hypnotizes with visions alternately dreadful, spectacular, and even apocalyptic.This volume presents the revelatory Book of Miracles in a new, compact format, making this extraordinary document accessible to everyone. It comes with a translation of the manuscript texts and two essays that give an introduction to the cultural and historical context of this unique Renaissance work.

“The Book of Miracles is a revelation.”

Till-Holger Borchert studied art history, musicology, and German literature at the universities of Bonn and Bloomington (IN). An acknowledged expert on Early Netherlandish painting, he has worked as chief curator at the Groeningemuseum in Bruges since 2002 and as Director of the Bruges Museum since 2014. Borchert teaches art history at the universities of Aachen, Memphis (TN), and Middlebury (VT) and has curated exhibitions in Brussels, Rome, Madrid, and New York. He heads the Flemish Research Centre for the Arts in the Burgundian Netherlands. Joshua P. Waterman studied art history at Oregon State University and received a PhD from Princeton University for his dissertation on interrelations of literature and visual art of the Silesian Baroque. The proven expert on German art of the late medieval and early modern periods worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and was Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Currently he is a research associate at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. He has collaborated on exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Cologne, and Bruges.