Now back in print, “the ultimate booklover’s gift book”—Los Angeles Times

In 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, desiring to prove the superiority of his art over Bocskay’s words, employed every resource of illusionism, color, and form to devise all manner of brilliant grotesques, from flowers, fruit, insects, and animals to monsters and masks.
 
Unavailable for nearly a decade, this gorgeous volume features over 180 color illustrations, as well as scholarly commentary and biographies of both artists to inspire scholars, bibliophiles, graphic designers, typographers, and calligraphers.

Praise for the first edition:         
 
“A superb . . . gift for anyone enchanted with, or enchantable by, printed words and the natural world.”
—Wall Street Journal
 
“It’s hard to think of a more exquisite book than this reproduction of Europe’s last great illuminated manuscript. Brilliant grotesques embellish gilded inscriptions on God, the universe and its owner (viz. Emperor Rudolf II).”
—Harper’s Bazaar
 
“Spectacular jewel of a book.”
—Times Literary Supplement
 
“An exquisite and unusual book, a book to be treasured for a long time by collectors, calligraphers, art connoisseurs, graphic designers, and nature lovers.”
—Bloomsbury Review