Ludwig Denig

Ludwig Denig (1755 - 1830) was an American folk artist.

A native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he became a believer of the Reformed Church, whose congregational learned he attended. He served in the American Revolution and worked as a shoemaker before, in 1787, moving to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and taking up function as an apothecary.

He died in Chambersburg. Denig is remembered for a 200-page illuminated manuscript he produced in 1784. The book, filled afterward spiritual texts and sermons and illustrated in watercolor, contains mainly scenes from the New Testament, including images from the passion of Jesus and the martyrdoms of the apostles. Also incorporated into its pages are pictures of figurative flowers and supplementary items, as skillfully as twenty hymns. The pages action six-and-one-half by eight-and-one-half inches, and the combination is bound in leather. The photo album contains a associates register recording births, marriages, and deaths; his own death was noted in the ledger by one of his children.

Denig's illustrations depict their subjects dressed in the costume of contemporary Pennsylvania German people. They were painted later than the fraktur tradition in Pennsylvania was at its height, and accordingly they bear its imprint, as well as the pretend to have of Christian devotional prints and illustrated Bibles popular during the period. Theologically, the sticker album contains moralistic texts and illustrations of sacrifice, reflective of the Pietism subsequently in vogue accompanied by some members of the Pennsylvania German Community.

Denig's compilation was published in 1990 as The Picture-Bible of Ludwig Denig: A Pennsylvania German Emblem Book. At the times it was owned by Esther Ipp Schwartz, who had offered it to folklorist Don Yoder for study.