The first image of a Printing Shop

The Lyons Danse macabre, one of two surviving copies, contains the earliest depiction of a printing shop: one skeleton of death seizes the surprised compositor, another the pressman, and another, in adjacent scene, a dismayed bookseller standing at his counter. Only the young apprentice, wielding his ink balls, escapes. The picture book known as the Danse macabre, whose verses emphasize that death comes to all, from popes and emperors to plowmen, was first printed in Paris in 1486. The scenes derive from a lost sequence of Dance of Death murals painted in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents in Paris. The many Paris editions of Danse macabre do not include the printing shop. It is one of three new scenes, with corresponding verses, added to this Lyons version. One of two surviving copies; the other is at the British Library. The woodcut on f. 7r (b1r) is the earliest known depiction of a printing shop.

Credit: Paul Needham and Eric White - Gutenberg & After exhibition https://dpul.princeton.edu/gutenberg/