An Interesting Calligraphy Of Late Xv Century, And Two Italian Pens

[fpupulin]

It always makes me an interesting impression see how, despite the inevitable generalizations about the form of historical handwriting, these were completely personal in everyday life, as well as in our present hand writings.

With my daughter Carlotta we have recently taken up, for a couple of chapters of her thesis, some key events in the history of Spain towards the end of the fifteenth century, at the time of the so-called Catholic Kings. Among the numerous elements that in one way or another ended up largely shaping the shape of the world as we know it today, there was certainly Fernando and Isabella's decision to sponsor the discovery journey of Christopher Columbus, with whom the Italian navigator hoped to open a new route to the Indies. The agreements between the Catholic Monarchs and Columbus (the implications of which Fernando and Isabella tried to limit for years), known as the Capitulaciones of Santa Fe, were written by the secretary of the King, Juan de Coloma. The document is kept in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, in Barcelona. The Spanish government has prepared a perfect digital copy, available at: https://enciclopediapr.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Capitulaciones.pdf

[the glosses on the side were written at a later date]

Juan de Coloma, of humble origins, became the man of trust of the King of Aragon John II the Great and later, not without mishaps and misunderstandings, of his son Fernando II the Catholic. When he died in 1517, he had acquired the titles of Baron of Alfajarín and first Lord of Elda.

The handwriting of Juan de Coloma, as can be seen in the Capitulaciones, is at first sight inexpugnable ... but at the same time fascinating and unique. The fact that I know the modern Spanish language, and that the electronic version includes a transliteration of the text, allowed me little by little to decipher most of the letters as Coloma wrote them.

Now that I had a Colomesque alphabet at hand, I wanted to try it with a text written in Italian. First of all, a message of congratulations for Carlotta's birthday last week, with a writing style in use at the times of the Catholic Kings, perfect for her studies on the music of that era. Then, something literary and contemporary (or almost) to the calligraphy style. I therefore copied some lines of the Orlando furioso, a famous Italian work that writer Ludovico began writing between 1504 and 1507, when Juan de Coloma was still alive.

Looking at Coloma's writing, I became convinced that a pen with a “normal” (not an italic) nib could be used for the purpose. I chose an Omas "Grand" Paragon, with a soft fine nib. The gialletta (yellowish) laid paper of Fabriano has almost the same color as the now aged paper used by Coloma to write up the Capitulaciones. The ink of choice was Montblanc's Toffee Brown, a dark and saturated brown. I used a height of two millimeters for the basic character, with a line spacing of 7 mm.

Then I wrote some personal considerations on Coloma's calligraphy. They are hand written with the stub nib of my Montegrappa Extra Otto Shiny Lines and, as they are in Italian, I am translating them here for those members of the forum (most of them, I guess) who do not read Dante's language.

[translation of page 1] Previously, I had never studied an ancient "real" calligraphy, or the individual and personalized execution of some model in vogue at the time of writing. Now that I have tried for a few days with the writing of Juan de Coloma, I can say that there is a great difference between the writing of a living person and the model that historians, paleographers and calligraphers then fixed in a calligraphic style.

What is most striking about Coloma's way of writing is his freedom in the interpretation of letters, which can take various forms depending on their position in the context of the word and the sentence, but sometimes even without any apparent special order.

The "f", for example, can take these forms:

The "r" can be written alternately:

The "s" shows an absolute freedom:

The "l":

[translation of page 2] It also amazes how the secretary of Fernando of Aragon abbreviated with freedom some words, using diacritical marks to indicate abbreviations, but also how, from time to time, he made apparently diacritical signs but in reality they were simply decorative, in order - I would say - to keep a certain 'rhythm' in the lines of the text.

Original and nice, the conjunctions "and" ("y" in Spanish) and "or" ("o" in Spanish) take this form:

 

[OMASsimo]

This is absolutely wonderful and I admire your penmanship. I've never tried to copy the script of old documents though they are pretty much always stunningly beautiful. Those people had time and were very much aware of writing something important. They had no choice but to use a quill but the effect was very pretty. I bet it must have been a pain to produce a beautiful sheet of written text with a quill without any glitches and blotches.

 

This text appears to be rather readable by modern readers. Is this the same with Italian script? I wonder how Dante wrote. German script made several drastic changes, so most people are not capable of reading Gothic script, very prevalent in old documents, or Kurrent, the script that has been used until about 100 years ago. Most people here of my age group are unable to decipher the letters of their grandparents. It's sad and it's because most are not willing to learn it. But if you need to study the archives, there is no way around it. I wonder if writing like this would help to read the old documents. But then, handwriting has been so much individual that I'm skeptical.

 

Anyways, you did a fantastic job.

Edited March 16, 2019 by OMASsimo

[inkstainedruth]

Very interesting. My initial thought on seeing the original is that it was some form of Secretary Hand (which I had thought was predominantly used in England at that time period) -- but apparently its use was more widespread.

I have a technical question for you. First of all, when you did your re-creation of the hand, did you use a flex nib to get the line variation? Or did you effectively draw the letters and fill in for the thicker sections?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Uncial]

Thank you. I'm currently reading about the warrior queen and I'm on the chapters dealingbprecisely with this.

[geodesigner]

It always makes me an interesting impression see how, despite the inevitable generalizations about the form of historical handwriting, these were completely personal in everyday life, as well as in our present hand writings.

With my daughter Carlotta we have recently taken up, for a couple of chapters of her thesis, some key events in the history of Spain towards the end of the fifteenth century, at the time of the so-called Catholic Kings. Among the numerous elements that in one way or another ended up largely shaping the shape of the world as we know it today, there was certainly Fernando and Isabella's decision to sponsor the discovery journey of Christopher Columbus, with whom the Italian navigator hoped to open a new route to the Indies. The agreements between the Catholic Monarchs and Columbus (the implications of which Fernando and Isabella tried to limit for years), known as the Capitulaciones of Santa Fe, were written by the secretary of the King, Juan de Coloma. The document is kept in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, in Barcelona. The Spanish government has prepared a perfect digital copy, available at: https://enciclopediapr.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Capitulaciones.pdf

[the glosses on the side were written at a later date]

Juan de Coloma, of humble origins, became the man of trust of the King of Aragon John II the Great and later, not without mishaps and misunderstandings, of his son Fernando II the Catholic. When he died in 1517, he had acquired the titles of Baron of Alfajarín and first Lord of Elda.

The handwriting of Juan de Coloma, as can be seen in the Capitulaciones, is at first sight inexpugnable ... but at the same time fascinating and unique. The fact that I know the modern Spanish language, and that the electronic version includes a transliteration of the text, allowed me little by little to decipher most of the letters as Coloma wrote them.

Now that I had a Colomesque alphabet at hand, I wanted to try it with a text written in Italian. First of all, a message of congratulations for Carlotta's birthday last week, with a writing style in use at the times of the Catholic Kings, perfect for her studies on the music of that era. Then, something literary and contemporary (or almost) to the calligraphy style. I therefore copied some lines of the Orlando furioso, a famous Italian work that writer Ludovico began writing between 1504 and 1507, when Juan de Coloma was still alive.

Looking at Coloma's writing, I became convinced that a pen with a “normal” (not an italic) nib could be used for the purpose. I chose an Omas "Grand" Paragon, with a soft fine nib. The gialletta (yellowish) laid paper of Fabriano has almost the same color as the now aged paper used by Coloma to write up the Capitulaciones. The ink of choice was Montblanc's Toffee Brown, a dark and saturated brown. I used a height of two millimeters for the basic character, with a line spacing of 7 mm.

Then I wrote some personal considerations on Coloma's calligraphy. They are hand written with the stub nib of my Montegrappa Extra Otto Shiny Lines and, as they are in Italian, I am translating them here for those members of the forum (most of them, I guess) who do not read Dante's language.

[translation of page 1] Previously, I had never studied an ancient "real" calligraphy, or the individual and personalized execution of some model in vogue at the time of writing. Now that I have tried for a few days with the writing of Juan de Coloma, I can say that there is a great difference between the writing of a living person and the model that historians, paleographers and calligraphers then fixed in a calligraphic style.

What is most striking about Coloma's way of writing is his freedom in the interpretation of letters, which can take various forms depending on their position in the context of the word and the sentence, but sometimes even without any apparent special order.

The "f", for example, can take these forms:

The "r" can be written alternately:

The "s" shows an absolute freedom:

The "l":

[translation of page 2] It also amazes how the secretary of Fernando of Aragon abbreviated with freedom some words, using diacritical marks to indicate abbreviations, but also how, from time to time, he made apparently diacritical signs but in reality they were simply decorative, in order - I would say - to keep a certain 'rhythm' in the lines of the text.

Original and nice, the conjunctions "and" ("y" in Spanish) and "or" ("o" in Spanish) take this form:

 

 

This is beautiful, thanks for the inspiration. I have saved this for future reference.

[fpupulin]

Very interesting. My initial thought on seeing the original is that it was some form of Secretary Hand (which I had thought was predominantly used in England at that time period) -- but apparently its use was more widespread.

I have a technical question for you. First of all, when you did your re-creation of the hand, did you use a flex nib to get the line variation? Or did you effectively draw the letters and fill in for the thicker sections?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

The letters are written directely with the nib, not drawn and filled. Bith the nibs I used are not flexible, but I would say someway ‘responsive”. They allow my hands to do some pression with no damages...

The nib of the Paragon is, as often happens with Omas nibs, a very balanced and wet nib, so it is very forgiving with any writing style. Montegrappa’s stub is more stiff and requires more skills to give the results it is able to offer.

Actually, I would say that the original nib used by Coloma must have been both a 0.6-0,7 mm italic AND with some flexibility. A difficult nib to recreate today.

[amk]

I love those ascenders and descenders that almost seem to be doing a Mexican wave! a very vivid, even dramatic hand. Thanks for bringing it to life and writing this fascinating post.

[TheDutchGuy]

Fantastic work! Very inspiring!