CALLIGRAPHIE Livre de Maître en Calligraphie.

A precious collection of writing examples by a master calligrapher, produced in Italy in the early 16th century in the style of Francesco Alluno.

The volume contains four alphabet samplers presenting four different types of writing, preceded by a beautiful floral title painted in full colour. The first leaf of the manuscript is richly decorated: in the center, a bust of a knight in armour, in profile, and a large coat of arms bearing a coat of arms – a gilded pinecone on a red and white field – all set against a background of flowers, foliage scrolls and pinecones set in a gilded fillet. These decorated coats of arms are surrounded by a rich border very similar to the frames of books of hours: red flowers and green foliage, a mask painted in wash in the upper part, cherubs’ heads on the sides (different) and, on either side, two medallion compositions showing a rabbit and a duck against a landscape background.

The first alphabet book (26 letters), the most luxurious, features large capitals in fine gold (from 5 to 12 cm high, depending on the letter) surmounted by sentences calligraphed in a fine humanistic style. These maxims are taken from ancient writers and moralists (Sallustus, Seneca, Macrobius, etc.), the Fathers of the Church and theologians such as Boethius. On the reverse of each leaf are quotations from ancient authors in scripts of different styles and sizes, set in painted cartouches of various shapes.

The second alphabet consists of 23 large textura capital letters in black ink, accompanied by a full word calligraphed in the same script. Below the letter A is a coat of arms bearing the same coat of arms as the title (a golden pine corn on a red and white background), flanked by two capital P’s.

The third alphabet, a very elaborate rotunda, consists of 15 leaves, some with several letters each, in black ink, topped by two lines of text in different scripts. Finally, the last alphabet features two ‘Antica’ letters per page, with large areas of ink, also accompanied by calligraphic quotations.

The last part of the volume contains various quotations in cancellaria, followed by texts in a large floral script: it is clearly unfinished. The volume obviously continued to be used by subsequent generations, with more modern hands adding new quotations in more or less skillful calligraphy.

The illustrations in the manuscript are very interesting. Sparse but highly attractive, it embroiders the classic themes of ephemerality and the dangers of female seduction, combining images with quotations from scripture or from the works of the greatest Italian poets. The verso of the last three pages of the first alphabet book features some very elaborate drawings. The first, in ink and wash, depicts the tree of life, with painted bird and foliage. The second is a composition in ink depicting a standing woman holding a mask in one hand and hiding her nudity with a green vine leaf; on her bust she bears the following quotation: ‘Femina est pulchrum palatium constructum super cloacà; a later hand has added at the top of the page a tercet on the inconstancy of women taken from Petrarch’s Canzoniere and, at the bottom of the page, an extract from a satire by Juvenal on the same subject. Finally, the last drawing, watercoloured and more accomplished than the previous ones, shows the naked man at the entrance to a cave, holding a phylactery bearing an extract from the Book of Job: ‘Vita hominis militia super terra’; above the miniature, a cartouche bears a quotation by Petrarch from the Trionfo della Morte :  O ciechi, el tanto affaticar che giova? / Tutti tornate a la gran madre antica / e’l vostro nome a pena si ritrova ; at the bottom of the page is a medallion with a citation of the Divine Comedie : “Siate Christiani a movervi più gravi / Non siate, come penna ad ogni vento / E non crediate ch’ogni acque vi lavi”.

The author of this manuscript remains a mystery: the repeated coat of arms with a pine cone and the initials PP may suggest a calligrapher from a patrician family called Pigna (‘pine cone’), a surname that we have not yet been able to locate precisely.

The watermark on the paper – an anchor in a circle, used around 1500 in southern Germany, Austria and northern Italy – and the decorated binding, typically Venetian, suggest that the manuscript was produced in Venice, a particularly active center for calligraphy in the 16th century.

An interesting example of the golden age of calligraphy.

Alongside the extraordinary flowering of printing in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, calligraphy also underwent a major boom, characterized by advanced aesthetic research, particularly in northern Italy. On the one hand, calligraphy was used to make luxury copies, competing with printing in terms of innovation and creativity; on the other, it was aimed at a prosperous business clientele, eager for copies of official documents from the various chancelleries, bills of exchange, diplomas, insurance contracts and other notarial deeds. The names of some of the great calligraphers of the period have gone down in history, such as Francesco Alunno and those who – like Ludovico Arrighi, Giovambattista Palatino and Giovanni Francesco Cresci – printed an Arte di scrivere that has been reprinted several times. But most of these calligraphers remained anonymous.

Very few calligraphic master books such as this have survived: these handwritten documents, which were necessarily ephemeral, were used both as a catalogue of the calligrapher’s work and as models for training student scribes, which did not help their survival.

“Actual manuscripts by Italian writing-masters of the sixteenth century are not common” (cf. Nicholas Barker, The Glory of the Art of Writing: The Calligraphic Work of Francesco Alunno, Los Angeles, 2009).

A few occasional stains.