Getting started with the collection:
No image available
Exercitatio alphabetica nova et utilissima, varijs expressa linguis et characteribus, raris ornamentis, umbris & recessibus, picture, architecturaeque, speciosa
By
Publisher
Publication
Nieuwkoop: 1968
Year
Type
Language
Annotations / title notes
Notes
- “The ‘Exertatio’ may be looked upon as a showpiece, a special collector’s item suitable for princes, nobility and wealthy burghers, to be coveted by all lovers of penmanship. Presented in a large format, its beautifully written title, and exemplars all set within imaginative, intriguing, and richly decorated borders, no writing-book had hitherto been such a form. An additional feature which will have made the book even more attractive for collectors was the fact that never before had a writing-master’s book been reproduced in copper engraving. Quite apart from the aesthetic advantages or disadvantages this method entailed in comparison with woodcut, hitherto used for reproducing script, this was a technical first…. Add to this that until then the models in such a book had never yet been written in so many languages, seven in all, and each of them in its appropriate hand” (Croiset van Uchelen). “With the exception of Neudörffer’s early experiments with etched lettering samples, Perret’s book is the first intaglio writing manual” (Becker). Among its many marvels of the calligraphic inscriptions are a plate of mirror writing, and a calligram in the form of four mirrored hearts, braided in a single line of text. Significant aspects of the book’s history remain uncertain, as does much of the author’s mysterious biography. The design of the ‘Excertatio’s’ elaborate grotesque and strapwork ornamental borders has been attributed by some authorities to Perret and by others to Hans Vredeman de Vries, and opinion is divided on the engraving of the borders, attributed variously, and uncertainly, to the Doetechum brothers, to Jacob Floris, and to Ameet Tavernier. (The writing samples are assumed to have been engraved by Cornelis de Hooghe.) Perret himself (1551-1591), whose even rarer “Eximiae peritiae alphabetum” followed the “Exercitatio” two years later, in 1571, virtually disappears from view for two decades before his early death. The great seventeenth- century Dutch calligrapher Jan van den Velde, in a testimonial statement discovered by Croiset van Uchelem, implied that Perret had entered the service of Queen Elizabeth I of England as her personal tutor in the Italian hand— a circumstance that could explain Perret’s complete absence from Netherlandish documents, though there are equal arguments to dispute its accuracy.
- Facsimile van de uitgave Antwerpen 1569
- In a census of extant examples, Croiset van Uchelen has located only four copies of the first issue, among the twenty- six copies of the book in public collections throughout the world (Amsterdam University Library; Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden; British Library; Victoria and Albert Museum). Apart from the fact that the plates in the first issue are unnumbered, printed before the addition of roman numerals, the text exhibits numerous differences from later issues; Croiset van Uchelen has identified more than sixty points, mostly of errata, which were later rectified, beginning with the first word of the title. In addition to changes in spelling and line-breaks, there are other corrections, such as a small panel in the border of the title-page, which in the first issue identifies the engraver Cornelis de Hooghe as “Bredanus Sculpsit”—an error, de Hooghe having been born in The Hague and not Breda. In later issues, the statement is replaced with the words “Sculptor Literarum.” Very soon after, the sale and exclusive distribution of the book was contracted to Christopher Plantin, and a privilege leaf was added to copies of it, both in letterpress and in engraved form. Croiset van Uchelen identifies as the second and third issues of the book those copies which include the two versions of the privilege. The fourth issue consists of copies in which the text is fully corrected, but which do not contain the privilege leaf. Croiset van Uchelen speculates that Perret distributed copies of the first issue himself, and that Plantin insisted on correcting the faults of this first “varys” edition before releasing it under his imprint.
Persistent URL
To refer to this object, please use the following persistent URL: