Author: Noor Al-Samarrai / Source: Atlas Obscura
Getty Museum open content program
Separated by nearly 30 years and more than 200 miles, two Renaissance men created what is perhaps the most impressive, unusual, inventive illuminated manuscript in the Western world.
Full of swirling and knotted words, letters that spindle or drip and curl across the page, bite-begging fruit and bugs realistic enough to swat, Mira calligraphae monumenta is an astounding record of imagination and skill, in book form.Georg Bocksay, then secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I in Vienna, composed the manuscript over the course of 1561 and 1562. Commissioned as a calligraphy manual, it was more like a catalogue of Bocksay’s unparalleled penmanship. A century before, the printing press had overtaken the handwritten manuscript, and transformed the trade skills of lettering and illumination into something more akin to art forms. Rather than instruction, the manuscript provides a bombastic display of Bocksay’s skill, and showcases the artisan talent that the emperor was able to attract. “It’s kind of in the stratosphere,” says Elizabeth Morrison, a specialist in Flemish illumination at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where the manuscript is housed.
Most of the actual text of Mira calligraphae monumenta is taken from the Bible—the “lorem ipsum” graphic filler used in those times. The dizzying circular text on a page featuring a pair of pears and a seashell is actually the Lord’s Prayer squeezed into an area the size of a quarter, dexterously rendered with a bird-quill pen and runny ink. Bocksay used the same tools as other scribes of his day, but he had…
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