This page is bound into a collection of images of Adam and Eve compiled by a former owner. It was removed from a book entitled Liber Chronicarum, or 'Nuremberg Chronicle', published in 1493 by printer Anton Koberger. One of the most ambitious books produced in the 15th century with over 1000 woodcut illustrations, the 'Nuremberg Chronicle' was also one of the earliest books with illustrations designed by artists rather than blockcutters. Koberger commissioned Michael Wolgemut, who ran a large art workshop, to design the illustrations and layout between 1487 and 1491. Wolgemut was helped by his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff

Woodcut images could be printed on the same page as text because the type used to print the words and the woodcut image were both in relief, so they could be set together in the same frame (called a ‘forme’) and printed simultaneously.

In common with practice at the time, not all of the images in the Chronicle were original designs, some being copies after artists like Martin Schongauer, and some being used more than once in the same book. But where earlier woodcut book illustrations were simple outlines the use of light and tone shows how differently an artist responded to the potential of the woodcut medium. Books like this led to artists such as Albrecht Dürer considering the potential of the woodcut as a medium of expression. Dürer trained under Wolgemut between 1486 and 1489 at around the time when Wolgemut received the commission for this book.