Nature Illuminated. Flora and Fauna from the Court of Emperor Rudolf II

THE COURT OF HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR Rudolf II produced nothing more amazing than the Mira calligraphiae monumenta, a brilliant demonstration of two arts – calligraphy and miniature painting. The project began when Rudolf's predecessor commissioned the master calligrapher, Georg Bocskay, to create a model book of calligraphy. A preeminent scribe, Bocskay assembled a vast selection of contemporary and historic scripts. Many were intended not for practical use but for virtuosic display. Years later, at Rudolf's behest, court artist Joris Hoefnagel filied the spaces on each manuscript page with images of fruits, flowers, insects, and other natural minutiae. The combination of word and image is rare and, on its tiny scale, constitutes one of the marvels of the Central European Renaissance. The manuscript is now in the manuscripts collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum. A selection of forty-one of its pages is presented here as testimony to the artistic imagination and skill of its creators. Another volume reproduces a similar number of pages from Hoefnagel's Abecedarium, bound in the same codex.