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The court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II produced nothing more amazing than the Mira colligrophioe 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 images 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 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.
Now back in print, “the ultimate book-lover’s gift book” (Los Angeles Times) In 1561–62 the master calligrapher Georg Bocskay (died 1575), imperial secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, created Mira calligraphiae monumenta (Model Book of Calligraphy) as a demonstration of his own preeminence among scribes. Some thirty years later, Ferdinand’s grandson, the Emperor Rudolf II, commissioned Europe’s last great manuscript illuminator, Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600), to embellish the work. The resulting book is at once a treasury of extraordinary beauty and a landmark in the cultural debate between word and image. Bocskay assembled a vast selection of contemporary and histor...
Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600) internationalized Flemish miniature painting in the sixteenth century unlike any other artist. He enriched the natural sciences as well, particularly entomology, with exquisite depictions owing to his keen gift of observation. Upon viewing his breathtaking works, it is all the more surprising that he Hoefnagel developed his own talent as a self-taught artist. The painter belongs to a circle of highly educated artists and humanists who were active in the late sixteenth century at the most important European courts. It is within this environment that he created his illuminations in comprehensive codices of religious and worldly content. After training as a painter in Antwerp, his son Jacob Hoefnagel (1575-1632/33) followed in his father's footsteps, dazzling the art chamber at the imperial court in Prague with his works. He, however, concentrated primarily on mythological and allegorical scenes. With an analytical gaze and scholarship-based texts, this richly illustrated volume introduces readers to the visual worlds of the miniaturists that, just as they did then, continue to arouse mesmerized admiration in the eyes of the beholder.
A selection of forty-one pages of the manuscript Mira calligraphiae monumenta, comprising Joris Hoefnagel's illumination of Georg Bocskay's model book of calligraphy, now in the manuscript collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
In 1561–62 the master calligrapher Georg Bocksay, imperial secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, created the Mira calligraphiae monumenta as a demonstration of his own pre-eminence among scribes. Years later, Ferdinand’s grandson, the Emperor Rudolf II, commissioned Europe’s last great manuscript illuminator, Joris Hoefnagel, to embellish his work. The resulting book is at once a treasury of extraordinary beauty, a landmark in the cultural debate between word and image, and one of the most intriguing memorials of Rudolf’s endlessly fascinating rule in Prague. This complete facsimile of the codex, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, is supported by scholarly commentaries and b...
The new definition of the animal is one of the fascinating features of the intellectual life of the early modern period. The sixteenth century saw the invention of the new science of zoology. This went hand in hand with the (re)discovery of anatomy, physiology and – in the seventeenth century – the invention of the microscope. The discovery of the new world confronted intellectuals with hitherto unknown species, which found their way into courtly menageries, curiosity cabinets and academic collections. Artistic progress in painting and drawing brought about a new precision of animal illustrations. In this volume, specialists from various disciplines (Neo-Latin, French, German, Dutch, His...
Included in the magnificent pages of the Mira calligraphiae monumenta are two alphabets. Executed by an unknown hand, the first consists of Roman capital letters; the other is Gothic lower-case letters. As with the calligraphy of Bocskay described above, these alphabets were embellished by Joris Hoefnagel, a painter at the court of Rudolf II. In embellishing the alphabets, Hoefnagel employed symbols and heraldic objects--masks, animals, plants, obelisks--to convey the power and greatness of the emperor. An Abecedarium contains the thirty-eight pages from the Mira codex that display Hoefnagel's virtuosity in decorating the alphabets. Calligraphers, graphic artists, and all lovers of beautiful books will delight in Hoefnagel's artistry.
How the nature illustrations of a Renaissance polymath reflect his turbulent age This pathbreaking and stunningly illustrated book recovers the intersections between natural history, politics, art, and philosophy in the late sixteenth-century Low Countries. Insect Artifice explores the moment when the seismic forces of the Dutch Revolt wreaked havoc on the region’s creative and intellectual community, compelling its members to seek solace in intimate exchanges of art and knowledge. At its center is a neglected treasure of the late Renaissance: the Four Elements manuscripts of Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600), a learned Netherlandish merchant, miniaturist, and itinerant draftsman who turned to...
The Antwerp artist Jan van Kessel the Elder (1626-1679) was esteemed throughout Europe for producing finely-wrought, miniature paintings on copper that depict a wide range of flora and fauna, exotic landscapes, and objects of natural artistry (e.g. shells, coral, precious stones). The 'natural' world presented in Van Kessel's art was not a transparent window onto nature, however, but instead was ambitiously crafted through the artist's reappropriation of Antwerp's artistic traditions, material culture, and artisanal knowledge practices. Through a combination of wit, technical virtuosity, self-referentiality, and allusions to local art-historical lineage, Van Kessel's paintings encourage view...