The Fourth Day of Creation (verso); The Fifth Day of Creation (recto), from The Nuremberg Chronicle

Next to the Gutenberg Bible, the Nuremberg Chronicle was the publishing event of the century. It was no less than a history of the world, beginning with Creation. The Fifth Day shows the arrival of creatures, including one owl rather immune to the august moment. The Sixth Day shows God creating Adam from a mound of clay, his cape swirling like a wheel. The humanist circle involved in publishing the Nuremberg Chronicle would have known Augustine, who had written about the Apostle Paul's reference to God as a potter and to humans as clay (Romans 9).