Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta

A Sixteenth-Century Calligraphic Manuscript Inscribed by Georg Bocskay and Illuminated by Joris Hoefnagel, Second Edition Lee Hendrix and Thea Vignau-Wilberg Now back in print, “the ultimate booklover’s gift book” —Los Angeles TimesIn 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 historical scripts for a work that summarized all that had been learned about writing to date—a testament to the universal power of the written word. Hoefnagel, desi