Peregrinatio in terram sanctam (Journey to the Holy Land)

About this artwork

The first illustrated travel book about the journey to the Holy Land, this volume offered a pilgrimage to distant sacred sites from the comfort of one’s own home. A bestseller, it was translated into German, French, Dutch, and Spanish before 1500. To create the illustrations the artist traveled with the canon of the Utrecht cathedral from 1483 to 1484, depicting the Mediterranean cities from Venice to the Holy Land with relative accuracy compared to other works of the era. The two longest foldou...

Art Historical Context

This 1486 volume, *Peregrinatio in terram sanctam* (Journey to the Holy Land), represents an important early example of a printed illustrated book. Created by Erhard Reuwich, it combines letterpress text with woodcut images printed in black on cream laid paper. The compact format—roughly the size of a large modern hardcover—made such works portable and reproducible, marking a shift from labor-intensive illuminated manuscripts to more widely accessible printed editions. The use of woodcuts alongside movable type highlights the innovative printing techniques of the late fifteenth century. These illustrations would have brought distant places and pilgrimage routes to life for readers who might never travel themselves. As a work now housed in the Prints and Drawings department of the Art Institute of Chicago, the book demonstrates how early printed volumes bridged text and image to document travel and devotion during the Renaissance.

About the Artist

Erhard Reuwich · 1425–1503

Erhard Reuwich (ca. 1445–ca. 1500) was a pioneering German artist and printmaker whose illustrations for the first printed travel book revolutionized European book illustration. Coming from a family of painters in Utrecht, with his father likely being Hildebrand Reuwich, Dean of the painters' guild in 1470, Erhard represented a new generation of artists who recognized printing's transformative pot...