Eleazer's Victory in the Wheat Field, from the Cologne Bible

This woodcut comes from the Cologne Bible, first published by Heinrich Quentell in 1478-9. The pages of this bible were filled with hand-colored woodcut illustrations, the purpose of which, as outlined in the Bible's preface, was to "show the same to the eye and further explain the text of the chapter in which they are found." The illustration shown here depicts Eleazer, one of King David's warriors, in battle with the Philistines. As told in Samuel 2:10, Eleazer supposedly fought so intensely that "his hand clave unto the sword" that he held. Quentell's Cologne Bible illustrations were later re-used in a bible issued in Nuremberg in 1483 by the eminent publisher Anton Koberger, the godfather of Albrecht Dürer. Dürer, whose Apocalypse series shows Quentell's influence, was one of many later artists to use the Cologne Bible illustrations as models for his own works.