Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, deutsch
This is a fifteenth-century German manuscript chronicle of popes and emperors, made around 1460 and held by Heidelberg University Library. It was written for a lay reading audience of the period. Its pictures are small framed scenes of crowned rulers in red and green robes meeting men in fitted hose and hats, set on a flat green ground beside columns of hand-lettered text with painted red initials. A designer might take from them the flat colour blocks, plain ground lines and expressive gestures of late medieval manuscript painting.
