The Art of the Pen: Calligraphy from the Court of the Emperor Rudolf II

Lee Hendrix and Thea Vignau-Wilberg

The court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II produced nothing more amazing than the Mira calligraphiae monumenta, a flamboyant demonstration of two arts—calligraphy and miniature painting. The project began when Rudolf's predecessor commissioned the master calligrapher Georg Bocskay to create a model book of calligraphy. A preeminent scribe, Bocskay assembled a vast selection of contemporary and historic scripts. Many were intended not for practical use but for virtuosic display. Years later, at Rudolf's behest, court artist Joris Hoefnagel filled the spaces on each manuscript page with images of fruit, flowers, insects, and other natural minutiae. The combination of word and image is rare and, on its tiny scale, constitutes one of the marvels of the Central European Renaissance.

The manuscript is now in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Forty-eight of its pages are reproduced in this book, containing samples of classic italic hands; historical, invented, and exhibition hands; Rotunda, a classicizing humanist script based on Carolingian miniscule; classically based scripts; and Gothic blackletter and chancery.

Lee Hendrix is curator in the Department of Drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Thea Vignau-Wilberg is curator of Netherlandish drawings at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, Germany.