Chiromantie Facsimile Edition

Chiromantie is a rare late-fifteenth-century block book devoted to the art of palm reading. Produced in Augsburg around 1488–1490 and preserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, it translates a learned tradition of divination into an unusually direct visual handbook. The work is attributed to Johannes Hartlieb, physician and adviser at the Munich court, who composed a German treatise on palmistry in 1448 for Anna of Brunswick, wife of Duke Albrecht III of Bavaria.

Knowledge Printed from Wood

Unlike books printed with movable type, Chiromantie was created from carved wooden blocks bearing both words and images. Its introduction is followed by forty-four representations of hands, arranged in corresponding pairs: a woman’s left hand faces a man’s right. Lines, signs, and markings are identified through concise German inscriptions integrated into the designs, allowing image and explanation to operate as a single field of instruction.

Hands as Mirrors of Destiny

Each diagram presents the hand as a map of character and fortune. Its marks promise to reveal prosperity or misfortune, adventure, magical aptitude, and the changing conditions of love. Through this system, the body becomes legible—a surface upon which hidden tendencies and future events appear to have been inscribed.

A Book Between Manuscript and Print

The volume belongs to a transitional moment in European book culture. Even its paper covers imitate the ornament of Gothic leather bindings, preserving the visual authority of the manuscript age within a reproducible printed object. Associated with the Augsburg block cutter and bookbinder Jörg Schapf, this copy embodies both technical experimentation and the enduring medieval desire to make the invisible order of human life visible.