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Script after print: Juan de Yciar and the art of writing

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02666280903403276

1943-2178

Jessica Berenbeim,

Early Modern Spanish Literature

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments The author thanks Thomas Cummins, Jeffrey Hamburger, Ann Blair, Leah Whittington, Stella Panayotova, Andrea Clarke, and Thomas Nickson, as well as members of staff at libraries and museums who made their collections available for consultation. Notes 1 – Nemo cogitet, fratres, nemo dicat: Quid necesse est me scribendo fatigari, cum ars impressoria tot tantosque libros transfundat in lucem, ut modico ere magnam bibliothecam possimus instruere? Johannes Trithemius, De laude scriptorum, ed. Klaus Arnold (Würzburg: Freunde mainfränkischer Kunst und Geschichte E.V., 1973), pp. 11–23, 62–3. Translation: author. The book was printed in 1494. See also the comments of Richard and Mary Rouse in ‘Backgrounds to Print: Aspects of the Manuscript Book in Northern Europe of the Fifteenth Century’, in Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), pp. 449–66. 2 – Several bibliographic or biographical investigations of Yciar's work acknowledge his importance as a calligrapher; the most comprehensive and analytical of these is Daniel Alonso García, Ioannes de Yciar. Calígrafo durangués del siglo XVI, 1550–1950 ([n.p.]: Junta de Cultura de Viscaya, 1953). See also Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, Diccionario biográfico y bibliográfico de calígrafos españoles (Madrid: [n.p.], 1913), no. 530; Rufino Blanco y Sánchez, Catálogo de calígrafos y grabadores de letra, con notas bibliográficas de sus obras (Madrid: [n.p.], 1920), pp. 42–3. Henry Thomas, ‘Juan de Vingles (Jean de Vingle), a Sixteenth-Century Book Illustrator’, The Library, 18 (1937), 121–56, also includes much useful information on Yciar. 3 – Six copies of Yciar's manual were consulted in the course of this research. For the first edition (1548): Houghton Library TypW 560.48.460, Cambridge University Library Td.56.1, and British Library C.31.h.9; for the second edition (1550): Houghton TypW 560.50.460, CUL F156 d 8.2, and BL C.41.h.14. There is also a published facsimile of each: Justo García Morales, ed., Juan de Yciar. Orthographia pratica (Madrid: Instituto Bibliográfico Hispánico, 1973); and Evelyn Schuckburgh, trans., Juan de Yciar: A Facsimile of the 1550 Edition of Arte subtilissima, with an introduction by Reynolds Stone (London: Lion and Unicorn Press, 1958; reprinted Oxford University Press, 1960). Translations from the 1550 edition follow Schuckburgh and Stone, as cited. 4 – despues de la inuencion de la impression que fue a la verdad cosa diuinalmente inspirada para utilidad delos hombres, no se tenga el cuydado que antes, de saber perfectame(n)te escreuir de mano… paresciome ami cosa digna del trabajo que enella he puesto… inquirir y recopilar todas las diuersidades de caracteres de letras que entre christianos mas se vsan…; Juan de Yciar, Recopilacion subtilissima, intitulada Orthographia pratica, por la qual se enseña a escrivir perfectamente (1548), Aii recto–Aii verso. Translation: author, with thanks to Andrea Clarke and Thomas Nickson for their advice. 5 – For discussion of a number of text and image questions that relate particularly to early modern printing, see the contributions to Printing Matters, a special issue of Word & Image ed. Graham Larkin and Lisa Pon, Word & Image, 17 (2001), pp. 1–183. 6 – Many palaeographical and bibliographic studies have been devoted to the Italian humanist scribes and manuals that inspired both his hand and his pedagogy. See especially: B.L. Ullman, The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1960); Albinia C. de la Mare, The Handwriting of Italian Humanists (Oxford: Oxford University Press/Association internationale de bibliophile, 1973–); James Wardrop, The Script of Humanism: Some Aspects of Humanistic Script, 1460–1560 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963); Albinia C. de la Mare, ‘New research on humanistic scribes in Florence’, Miniatura fiorentina del Rinascimento, 1440–1525: Un primo censimento, ed. Annarosa Garzelli (Florence: Giunta regionale toscana/La Nuova Italia, 1985), pp. I395–600; and Stanley Morison, Early Italian Writing-Books: Renaissance to Baroque, ed. Nicholas Barker (Verona: Valdonega, 1990). For a study of English calligraphy based on Derridean conceptions of cultural graphology, see Jonathan Goldberg, Writing Matter: From the Hands of the English Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), who also briefly mentions Yciar's manual, pp. 75–6. 7 – For unification and religious control, see A.W. Lovett, Early Hapsburg Spain, 1517–1598 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 277–97; for the Counter-Reformation in Spain and the ‘Campaign for uniformity’, particularly from the 1540s, see John Lynch, Spain, 1516–1598: From Nation State to World Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 342–50. See also the essays in Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry, eds, Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992). See Lovett, Early Hapsburg Spain, pp. 4, 21 and Lynch, Spain, 1516–1598, p. 2, among others, on peninsular Spain's lack of a ‘tradition of unity’. 8 – For extensive discussion of Nebrija in the colonial context, see Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonialization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 1–2, 29–67; for Nebrija's prologue, see especially pp. 38–9, with further bibliography. García, p. 15, also invokes Nebrija in his life of Yciar. 9 – See Oscar Ogg, ed., Three Classics of Italian Calligraphy (New York: Dover, 1953); Stanley Morison, ed., The Calligraphic Models of Ludovico degli Arrighi, Surnamed Vicentino: A Complete Facsimile; Carla C. Marzoli and Stanley Morison, Calligraphy 1535–1885: A Collection of Seventy-Two Writing-Books and Specimens from the Italian, French, Low Countries, and Spanish Schools (Milan: La Bibliofilia, 1962); Morison, Italian Writing-Books; David P. Becker, The Practice of Letters: The Hofer Collection of Writing Manuals, 1514–1800 (Cambridge: Harvard College Library, 1997). 10 – Marzoli and Morison, Calligraphy 1535–1885, no. 66; Becker, Practice of Letters, no. 47. 11 – Becker, Practice of Letters, no. 49. 12 – siguendo las pisadas delos excelentes autores Italianos que desta materia trataron, que son (Ludouico Vicentino, y Antonio Tagliente, y Iuan baptista Palatino), 1550 edition, A iii recto and verso; Schuckburgh and Stone, Juan de Yciar, p. 7. 13 – Morison, Italian Writing-Books, pp. 51, 62. 14 – See especially Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Dáibhí Ó Crónín and David Ganz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); David Ganz, ‘The Preconditions for Caroline Minuscule’, Viator, 19 (1989), pp. 23–44; Rosamund McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Rosamund McKitterick, ‘Script and Book Production’, Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. Rosamund McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 221–47. 15 – For Aléman's Ortografía, see Julie Greer Johnson, The Book in the Americas: The Role of Books and Printing in the Development of Culture and Society in Colonial Latin America (Providence: The John Carter Brown Library, 1988), no. 18, fig. 25 (reproducing title page). 16 – Schuckburgh and Stone, Juan de Yciar, p. ix; Becker, Practice of Letters, p. 18, counts seven more (for a total of nine). Neither lists these editions, so it is unclear how they correlate to the present author's count: 1548, 1550, 1553, 1555, 1559, 1564, 1566, 1596. These are, however, the same dates listed by Thomas, ‘Juan de Vingles’, p. 124. 17 – See Thomas, ‘Juan de Vingles’, esp. Appendix (‘Books Containing Cuts Signed IV or IDV’). 18 – For example: Houghton Library TypW 525.32.162 ([1532]), TypW 525.33.162 (1533), and TypW 525.39.162 (1539); Cambridge University Library F153.c.2.1 (1538). 19 – See Morison, Italian Writing-Books, pp. 70–1. 20 – Wardrop, Script of Humanism, pp. 40–1. 21 – For the early development of humanistic script, see especially Ullman, Origin and Development, chap. 2–4; de la Mare, Handwriting, chap. 4–5. 22 – For the early history of the printed frontispiece as an ‘announcement’ of the text, see Margaret M. Smith, The Title-Page: Its Early Development, 1460–1510 (London: British Library, 2000). 23 – Porque hay muchas personas curiosas que dessearan saber el modo, y manera como este libro se ha hecho: pensando algunos que hay punzones, o matrizes enla emprenta para poder hazer tanta diuersidad de letras como aquii van. Y tambien pensando que las letras blancas, tambien las hay enla Emprenta: acorde de poner el modo como se ha hecho: por dos cosas. La primera por contentar al que no lo sabe: y la otra porque vean el trabajo tan grande, y tan largo que ha hauido en hazer esta obra… Sera pues el caso que todas estassuertes de letras estan escriptas al reues en unas tablas de Azarollera, porque necessariamente ha(n) de estar ansipara que salgan al derecho como esta(n) aqui. Y despues de escriptas enlas tablas estan grauadas o cortadas a pu(n)ta de cuchillo, con gra(n)dissima dificultad, como qualquiera curioso podro notar en tanta variedad de letras. 1548 edition, I vii recto and verso; translation: Thomas, ‘Juan de Vingles’, p. 125. 24 – Thomas, ‘Juan de Vingles’, p. 130 and Appendix. 25 – Measured from approximately the same place in the text, Cv verso and Biii recto, respectively, Houghton MSS TypW 560.48.460 (1548) and TypW 560.50.460 (1550). 26 – Thomas, ‘Juan de Vingles’, p. 129. They had also appeared in a Spanish edition of Alciati, printed in Lyons in 1549. 27 – See records at: University of Western Ontario Faculty of Music, CANTUS: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant, 28 – 1550 edition, G iiij recto through verso, a typeset interlude entitled Trata de los casos y otros cosos necessarias a vn escriptor de Libros. 29 – En el Arte delos libros de yglesias he hecho alcun hincapie, y ha sido por dos razones. La vna porque ninguno delos autores Italianos ha hecho mencion alguna, excepto Antionio Taglie(n)te que puso la geometria dela letra guessa delos libros: la qual he visto ser reprouada por muy gra(n)des escriuanos del arte, por la gran desproporcio(n) que enellas hay. Y la otra por ser esta mi propria arte, detener me he en la consideracion desta forma de letras, poniendo las sin geometria ninguna, sino solamente escriptas ala mano, paresciendo me que si ellas estan bie(n) hechas, exceden a todo co(m)pas, como claramente vera qualquiera, H vij recto of the 1550 edition; translation: Schuckburgh and Stone, Juan de Yciar, pp. 26–7. 30 – For the ‘secret’ aspect of the Holy Names, see Daniel Arasse, ‘Entre dévotion et hérésie. La tablette de Saint Bernardin, ou le secret d'un prédicateur’, Res 28 (1995), pp. 128–9. 31 – Eleana Isabel Estrada de Gerlero, ‘La epigrafía en el arte Novohispano del siglo XVI’, in World Art: Themes of Unity in Diversity, ed. Irving Lavin (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), pp. 349–54. 32 – See, for example, Flora Lewis, ‘The Wound in Christ's Side and the Instruments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response’, in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H.M. Taylor (London: British Library, 1996), pp. 204–29. 33 – Manuel Toussaint, Colonial Art in Mexico, trans. Elizabeth Wilder Weismann (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), pp. 70–1; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries, no. 118. 34 – John Huxtable Elliott, ‘Spain and Its Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Spain and Its World, 1500–1700: Selected Essays (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 7–26; see pp. 13, 15. 35 – Vicenta Cortés, La escritura y lo escrito. Paleografía y diplomática de España y América en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1986), p. 34; Kathryn Burns, ‘Notaries, Truth, and Consequences’, American Historical Review, 110 (2005), pp. 352, 358–9. 36 – Lynch, Spain, 1516–1598, pp. 267–8. 37 – Elliott, ‘Spain and Its Empire’, esp. pp. 14–15, and Parker, p. 31. 38 – BL Add. 28, 528/30–31; see Parker, p. 34, n. 89. 39 – See Angel Rama, The Lettered City, ed. and trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996). 40 – Javier Docampo's catalogue essay, ‘Arte para una sociedad estamental. La iluminación de documentos en la España de los Austrias’, in Museo del Prado, El documento pintado (Madrid: AFEDA, 2000), pp. 45–66, is one of the few general studies on the art of Patents of Nobility, with references to more specialized bibliography. I.A.A. Thompson, in ‘Neo-Noble Nobility: Concepts of hidalguía in Early Modern Castile’, European History Quarterly, 15 (1985), pp. 379–400 discusses the role of these documents but not their visual aspects. 41 – Museo de América, Los Siglos de Oro en los Virreinatos de América, 1550–1700 (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, 1999), no. 34; Thomas B.F. Cummins, Los Incas, Reyes del Perú (Lima: Banco de Crédito, 2005), p. 203 and fig. 28. 42 – Docampo, ‘Arte para una sociedad estamental’, p. 52. 43 – See Irving Albert Leonard, Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949). 44 – Lyle N. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 74, 78. 45 – Johnson, Book in the Americas, no. 12, fig. 13 (reproducing f. 142). 46 – Detlef Heikamp, Mexico and the Medici (Florence: Editrice Elam, 1972), nos 18 and 20–23; Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries, no. 120; Teresa Castello Yturbide, The Art of Featherwork in Mexico (Mexico: Banamex, 1993), pp. 160–74; Eleana Isabel Estrada de Gerlero, ‘La plumaria, espresión artística por excelencia’, in México en el mundo de las colecciones de arte (México: El Gobierno de la República, 1994), III, pp. 82–95; Alessandra Russo, ‘Plumes of sacrifice’, Res, 42 (2002), pp. 242–4, fig. 13. 47 – Heikamp, Mexico and the Medici, no. 19, first suggested this connection, albeit tentatively (N.B. Heikamp — and others subsequently — have cited this leaf incorrectly). For an earlier reference, see A. Sauzay, Musée Impérial du Louvre. Catalogue du Musée Sauvageot ([Paris]: C. de Mourgues Frères, 1861), no. 1049. 48 – Listed in E.F. Bange, Die Bildwerke in Holz, Stein und Ton. Klenplastik (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1930), p. 5 (M. 102), with reproduction on following page. See also Rudolf Berliner, ‘Arma Christi’, in Rudolf Berliner (1886–1967): ‘The Freedom of Medieval Art’, und andere Studien zum christlichen Bild, ed. Robert Suckale (Berlin: Lukas, 2003), IX, 139, fig. 19. Bange localizes the relief to Bavaria, Berliner to Flanders. 49 – Jeanette Peterson, The Paradise Garden Murals of Malinalco: Utopia and Empire in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), pp. 66, 75, 149–51. 50 – Estrada de Gerlero, ‘La epigrafía en el arte Novohispano del siglo XVI’; Elena Estrada de Gerlero, unpublished paper on the Holy Names (author's typescript provided by Thomas B.F. Cummins).