Dominican Museum in Cracow

 There is an interesting museum in the cloisters of the Dominican church in Cracow. I mean it is interesting if you are either into history of the Dominicans or into calligraphy. There are some documents pertaining Dominican history here, they are of course mediaeval and written in the best hand. They are examples of official documents hand of the time. The first is so called "passport of st. Jacek", a letter explaining his credentials to whoever may be concerned (he was sent by the pope to organise the Dominican order in Poland). The second, of almost the same date, is the document permitting the Dominicans to build their church in Cracow. The third, a century later, is a document establishing the papal inquisition in Cracow. There also is a missal written for a pope, of course also in the best hand possible. It is an example of texture capitalis quadrata in the best version, although apparently created late for this style.

There are also examples of later styles. Apparently in the 17thcentury in Poland there was a custom of writing on the pictures, an information of who is on the picture would be written on it, not always in the best hand but in the style of the times. The styles are capitalis minumentalis with antiqua and also some corsiva, of course written by hand with a brush. They seem to have been written with a relatively wide brush held so that vertical lines would be thicker than the horizontal ones.

I also found a picture from the 19th century with descriptions of what is on the picture in quite a good hand of the time. In fact I wander how it was written there. It appears to be a style of hand writing taught at schools at the time, with a steel nib, which pressed when writing vertical strokes would produce a thicker line. But how it was done on an oil painting?

"Passport" of St. Jacek (also called St. Hiacynth),1227

Charter of the Dominican monastery in Cracow, 1227

Charter of the papal inquisition in Poland, 1327

Life of St. Jacek, 1360

Papal missal, 1570

Fraktur in Gdansk

 In 1538 Ludwig Neudorfer, a calligrapher of Imperial Chancery, published a book about writing letters which were at the time called "Gothic", as opposed to the Renaissance writing based on classical monuments, at the time in fashion in Italy. His book became popular in German-speaking areas and his style spread especially during the Baroque era. He introduced very elaborate capital letters, never used in Middle Ages but afterwards associated with Gothic script, which was then called "fraktur". They can be seen in many places where there was German-speaking population. 

Here is an example from Gdansk, which during the Baroque era was in the Kingdom of Poland but its inhabitants were mostly German-speaking Lutherans. Here it seems that the Neudorfer-style elaborate decorative letters are not only initials, but just capitals, which in German would mean the first letter of any noun. Not to speak of the first letter of each line of a poem, which appears to be one case. 

There is a book available, based on this blog.  

On the blog there is, so to speak, more room, one can show more illustrations there. Blogs, however, come and go, there is no certainty that it will be there ten years from now. The book, on the other hand, once you acquire it, will last, one can be sure of that.