Mira calligraphiae monumenta

Joris Hoefnagel; Georg Bocskay

fols. 1-129 written 1561–1562; illumination added about 1591–1596

Tempera colors, watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink, Tempera Colors, Watercolor, Gold

J. Paul Getty Museum

A page from a manuscript features decorative calligraphy and an illustration of a pear with a caterpillar, a butterfly, a bee, and a centipede. In the 1500s, as printing became the most common method of producing books, intellectuals increasingly valued the inventiveness of scribes and the aesthetic qualities of writing. From 1561 to 1562, Georg Bocskay, the Croatian-born court secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, created this Model Book of Calligraphy in Vienna to demonstrate his technical mastery of the immense range of writing styles known to him. About thirty years later, Emperor Rudolph II, Ferdinand's grandson, commissioned Joris Hoefnagel to illuminate Bocskay's model book. Hoefnagel added fruit, flowers, and insects to nearly every page, composing them s