The Art Of The Pen

The court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II produced nothing more amazing than the Mira calligraphiae monumenta, a brilliant 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 pre-eminent scribe, Bocskay assembled a vast selection of contemporary and historic scripts ranging from the latest Italic and humanist writing to antique Roman and German Gothic. Many were intended not for practical use but for virtuosic display - lines filled with vines, mirror writing, and tiny micrography. 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 constitutes one of the marvels of the Central European Renaissance. The manuscript is now in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum. A selection from its pages is presented here as testimony to the artistic imagination and skill of its creators.