From the 16th through 18th centuries two types of writing books predominated in Europe: the writing manual, which instructed the reader how to make, space, and join letters, as well as, in some books, how to choose paper, cut quills, and make ink; and the copybook, which consisted of pages of writing models to be copied as practice.
In Rome in 1540 Giovanni Battista Palatino published his Libro nuovo d’imparare a scrivere (“New Book for Learning to Write”), which proved to be, along with the manuals of Arrighi and Tagliente, one of the most influential books on writing cancelleresca issued in the first half of the 16th century. These three authors were frequently mentioned and imitated in later manuals, and their own manuals were often reprinted during and after their lifetimes.
cancellarescaVariety of cancellaresca script by Giovanni Battista Palatino, from Libro nuovo d'imparare a scrivere, 1540.Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago
The first non-Italian book on chancery was by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator. His Literarum Latinarum (“Latin Letters”), published in Louvain, Belg., in 1540, was written in Latin, then the universal language of scholarship; that fact must have increased the work’s appeal to northern European scholars who associated chancery with humanist learning. Mercator expanded on the Italian teaching method of showing, stroke by stroke, how each letter of the alphabet is made; like his Italian contemporaries, he grouped letters according to their common parts rather than alphabetically. Thus c, a, and d are presented together since they all begin with a common stroke c and are completed with a dotless i or l. His manual goes further than any previous one in presenting the order and number of strokes in making chancery capital letters. (The Italians merely presented examples of such letters to be copied.) Mercator also introduced the 45-degree pen angle for writing cancelleresca, something never suggested or practiced by Italian writing masters.
Juan de Yciar was the first in Spain to publish a copybook, the Recopilacion subtilissima (1548; “Most Delicate Compilation”). Two years later he published his Arte subtilissima (1550; “The Most Delicate Art”), in which he acknowledged his debt to the printed books of Arrighi, Tagliente, and Palatino. Like them he showed a variety of formal and informal hands and decorative alphabets. His manual differed from theirs in its inclusion of advice for teachers as well as for students.
The italic hand had little effect on publications in 16th-century Germany and Switzerland, where black-letter alphabets predominated. Johann Neudörffer the Elder was the first German to print a copybook. His Fundament…seinen Schulern zu einer Unterweysung gemacht (1519; “Foundation of…Instruction of His Pupils”) shows examples of German Kurrent (cursive), Kanzlei (chancery), and Fraktur (black letter). This Kanzlei bears no resemblance to Italian chancery; the name of the script is derived from the place where the script was used (a chancery is an administrative office) and does not describe a particular writing style. Neudörffer is considered the author of the definitive version of Fraktur script, a combination of the rigid textualis quadrata and the more relaxed bâtarde. This long-lived style was used as late as the 19th century by some German speakers in the United States and Canada. In 1538 Neudörffer published the first copybook to use an intaglio technique (i.e., printed from incised rather than raised areas of a plate). His Ein gute Ordnung… (“A Good Arrangement…”) contains etched writing examples produced as counterproofs—the incised plate produced writing with a mirror image, which was then transferred to plain paper while the ink was wet in order to give the letters in their correct orientation. Because this technique was cumbersome, having two separate steps, and did not produce a sharp image, it would be nearly 30 years before intaglio engraving was used again in a writing book. Most 16th-century German writing books, like those produced elsewhere in Europe, continued to be printed from woodcuts. Relief methods of printing, such as woodcut and movable type, required less pressure from the press and produced a correctly oriented page in one pass because the plate was made with a reversed image.
Lettre bâtarde by Henri de Ferrières, from his Livre du Roy Modus et de la Reine Ratio, c. 1435; in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City (M.820, fol. 16v).Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
Wolfgang Fugger, a student of Neudörffer, published his Ein nutzlich und wolgegrundt Formular (“A Useful and Well-Grounded Form”) in Nürnberg in 1553. The work reveals many of the techniques used in teaching formal handwriting and calligraphy in the 16th century. Detailed drawings show how to cut a quill and the right and wrong way to hold a pen. Most of the included alphabets are diagrammed stroke by stroke. Some rather remarkable pages show how to transform black-letter capitals into ornate initials by the addition of a few formulaic flourishes. Fugger’s manual presents, in addition to the standard German and Italic hands, a geometrically constructed Roman capital alphabet and the Greek and Hebrew alphabets, acknowledging a debt to Italian writing books. But Fugger’s roman and italic minuscule scripts are rather poorly done and show how little these hands were understood or practiced in German-speaking countries during the 16th century.
The first writing books by French, Dutch, and English authors appeared in the second half of the 16th century. Like the German authors, these followed the Italian method of teaching the alphabets. Their books generally featured a rather spiky cursive secretary hand as well as some version of the Italian chancery script. By the time most of them were published (between 1561 and 1575), italic writing had undergone radical changes under the influence of the Vatican scribe Gianfrancesco Cresci.
Cresci published three writing books: Essemplare di piu sorti lettere (1560; “Model of all Sorts of Letters”), Il perfetto scrittore (1570; “The Perfect Writer”), and Il perfetto cancellaresco corsivo (1579; “The Perfect Cursive Chancery”). In relation to earlier works, these books show a chancery script written with a narrower pen, and as a result there was less contrast between the thick and thin letter strokes. Cresci’s hand was further characterized by a steeper letter slope to the right (10 to 15 degrees rather than the earlier 5 to 8 degrees); more joins between letters; and alternate forms for o, h, p, r, and d. The most striking characteristics of Cresci’s italic, however, are the pronounced, bulbous serifs on the ascenders, called testeggiata" class="md-crosslink">testeggiata. Cresci’s newly decorative minuscules and florid capitals were harbingers of the coming fashion in penmanship.
Italic bastarda, from a letter by Gianfrancesco Cresci, 1572; in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City (Lat. 6185, fol. 135 R).Courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
The Essemplare is finely printed from woodcut blocks, but seven years after its publication a new and better method of reproducing elaborate calligraphy appeared. In 1567 Pierre Hamon, secretary and royal writing master to Charles IX of France, published the first copybook printed from engraved metal plates, Alphabet de plusiers sortes de lettres (“Alphabet of Several Sorts of Letters”). Although this title echoes the title of Cresci’s 1560 book, the works are different. Hamon devotes the first part of his book to various forms of the French secretary hand, a style he writes adding such wild embellishments that they seem to take on an independent existence, in contrast to the relatively orderly flourishes found in contemporary Italian writing books. Hamon also takes advantage of the metal engraving process by presenting free-form letters drawn in thin outlines, something beyond the capabilities of the woodcut. The second part of his copybook is given over to formal and informal styles of chancery, following Palatino’s models more than Cresci’s.