Cataneo Manuscript

This page is my homework from our Fairbank Calligraphy Society class from last night with Georgia Angelopoulos. We looked at a beautiful piece of writing from the book by Stephen Harvard called An Italic Copybook - The Cataneo Manuscript. This hand is an example of Cancellaresca Corsiva of Bernardino Cataneo of Siena, Italy from around 1545. The hand has many pen lifts within and between letters and is not a running hand with joins or ligatures. Virtually each letter stands alone. Letters like the n's do not branch from the base of the letter but arch from a point about midway up the main stem of the letter body. The generous ascenders end with kerns which are flat and square-edged. With this style you can use Roman capitals or slightly slanted basic capitals but Cataneo took great pleasure in his fanciful majuscules.

In the original copybook the work was done with ink on vellum and he did twenty leaves. The page size for this piece is 14.5 by 21 cm. The class traced the original in pencil and today I used a small nib to trace it again. Then I took it to the photocopy store and had it blown up and tonight I did a rendering of it using Prout's Brown Ink made from Van Dyke crystals. This was such a great pleasure to slowly form these letters and make these extravagant flourishes. I used a Mitchell nib but last night in the class we were lucky enough to use quills and a writing nib from England which I loved - "flight commander". Although my Italic did not always "soar "with this new pen ...I did truly enjoy writing in another language!