2-999-394 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Single Leaf with Lutheran Devotional Design, 1752. This leaf, which appears to have been created as a singular work rather than part of a book, was designed and made by Johann Leonhard Tauber in 1752. Tauber, who identifies himself as a 63-year-old gravel-crusher in Nuremberg, Germany, "drew" using lines of texts of Christian doctrine, Martin Luther's catechism, and daily prayers. He identifies the ultimate design as the "Reichs Apffel," or "Orb of the Empire." Written in the most minute script, with the smallest text in the centre of the flower virtually illegible to the naked eye, this work would have been a painstaking act of devotion.