Graphic Devotions: Late Medieval European Blockbooks

The Morgan Library & Museum: This exhibition will highlight the short period in European book history (1450–80) when blockbooks competed with hand-written and typographically-printed books as commercial products for readers.

Blockbooks, now often referred to as “medieval graphic novels,” were highly illustrated books printed entirely from woodcuts (text and image together). As such, they were the first print-on-demand books in the West. While some works maintained texts and imagery popular from manuscript tradition, block cutters and printers also produced new and innovative texts specifically designed for the medium. Ultimately, the cumbersome production process of woodcut-book printing was surpassed by the greater capabilities of typographic printing that integrated woodcuts, and the blockbook genre had largely died out by 1480. This thirty-year span, however, reveals a critical moment in European book history as the increasing demand for books led to inventions and experimentation in book production.

The Morgan holds the largest collection of blockbooks in the United States. A highlight of this exhibition will be the Ars moriendi blockbook, a rare copy printed in the Netherlands about 1467–69. In 2022, the Morgan acquired fifteen leaves of this blockbook that had been held in a private collection. Remarkably, the Morgan already possessed the remaining nine leaves—purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1902. This acquisition reunites the two parts, forming the only known complete copy of this monument to early European printing.