Steingruber’s Alphabet

The book about Johann Theodor de Bry’s Neiw Kunstliches Alphabet that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago was one of a set of four alphabet-themed volumes by Joseph Kiermeier-Debre and Fritz Franz Vogel that I’d purchased via abebooks from Bücher Thöne of Greven, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. These were originally published by Ravensburger in 1997-98, and seem to have since been re-issued by Urania-Verlag, of Stuttgart. The other three volumes were concerned with the calligraphic alphabet of Paulus Franck, the Alfabeto Pittorico of Antonio Basoli, and the Architectonisches Alphabeth of Johann David Steingruber. It is from this last book that the present images are scanned:

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In Steingruber’s alphabet, published in 1773, each letter of the alphabet is made into a plan of a palatial building. In some cases, as with A, there are two alternative plans. Accompanying texts explain the designs: in the case of A, there is a grand hall at the apex of the building, while its crossbar comprises a central passageway flanked by a pair of arcaded hallways, and, at the letter’s feet there are ‘cabinets’ and ‘garderobes.’ E is intended to house two sets of apartments, with main entrances top & bottom, and a chapel in the central prong of the building, which, Steingruber concedes, could equally well be made into a grand staircase, or a special reception room.

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Some letters make for more conventional buildings than others: H ‘lends itself admirably to a design for a palace in the country for a personage of consequence,' whereas S must yield a ‘curiosity, rather than a workable building.’ Even so, Steingruber has thought hard at making his S a suitably royal residence, with a pair of circular reception rooms, a quartet of spiral staircases, and a dozen servants’ rooms at the extremeties of the building, some of whose occupants would be granted the peculiar pleasure of inhabiting a serif. the Z building is another which provided the architect with a challenge, but by blunting its outward angles, and softenting its inward ones with rounded cabinets; and by carefully shaping and arranging rooms and stairwells; he is able to complete the alphabet to his satisfaction.

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Steingruber (1702-87) was the son of a master mason from a place called Wassertrüdingen an der Wörnitz, near the town of Dinkelsbühl. After an apprenticeship in which he worked on constructing palaces at Mannheim and Rastatt, he came to work at the Brandenburg court at Ansbach in the service of the margrave Friedrich Carl Alexander. He was soon appointed court & public surveyor, and was later made principal architect of the board of works. Besides completing many building projects, Steingruber expounded on architectural theory in his books Architeccture Civile (ca. 1748) and Practica Bürgerlicher Baukunst (Practical Course in Civil Architecture, 1763).

In their book, Kiermeier-Debre and Vogel mention other architects who had proposed constructions from alphabetical foundations: one Anton Glonner, a contemporary of Steingruber’s, designed a Jesuit church and college around that order’s ‘IHS’ monogram, while others sought to build up from their own initials. More interestingly, almost a century before the publication of Steingruber’s alphabet, a French architect named Thomas Gobert (1625-90) had compiled a manuscript Traitté d’Architecture dedié à Louis XIV which included a series of building-plans which spelled, in stylised letters, the words ‘LOVIS LE GRAND’ (Louis the Great). Click on the images above to see them enlarged.

De’ Grassi’s Animals

In the last issue of FMR magazine (no. 8 in the new format), there is an essay by Maria Grazia Recanati (translated from the Italian by Judith Landry) entitled A Fabulous Bestiary which describes the drawings and paintings of animals in the Taccuino di disegni (sketchbook) associated with the Milanese painter, illuminator, sculptor and architect Giovannino de’ Grassi (d. 1398). The essay is accompanied by many beautiful reproductions of pages from the Taccuino, of which I have scanned just a few: details from these follow below.

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Recanati writes that only the first seven folios of the Taccuino can be attributed with any certainty to de’ Grassi himself. The later pages were apparently decorated by several different hands—including, probably, Giovannino’s son Salomone—during the first two decades of the fifteenth century. I have mentioned the decorated alphabet from this book before: according to Recanati, this probably dates from around 1410, and shows the influence (and perhaps even the handiwork) of an artist known only as ‘the Master of the Modena Hours.’

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The Taccuino’s whereabouts during the later fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries are not known. From an inscription in the book, it is surmised that it was in possession of the Olmo (or Lolmo) family who worked as calligraphers in Bergamo in the later 16thC. It later passed to the Licinio family and then to one Alessandro Tassi (1691-1771). After Tassi’s death, the book came into the possession of Leonino Secco Suardo, who donated it to the Bergamo Library, now the Bibliotheca Civica Angelo Mai, in 1845.

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These drawings and paintings were made with a degree of ‘attention to observation from life’ that was very unusual in late-mediæval Europe. Besides the pages I’ve scanned here, there are others depicting homo salvaticus (a shaggy, club-wielding wild-man); a lion killing a deer; a pack of dogs devouring a boar (a design strikingly similar to another contemporary manuscript illumination); an heraldic griffin; a peacock; and an eagle’s nest… Click on the details above to see them in context.

Free Books in October

Too late for the autumnal equinox, or even for Canadian Thanksgiving; yet too early for Hallowe’en: here, not quite coinciding with either my sixth wedding anniversary, or the third anniversary of the conception of this site, is the seventh of my occasional free book giveaways. Peruse the list of books below. If you’d like one of them, check the comments to see whether your choice has already been claimed or not: if not, then leave a comment stating which book you want. Once you have laid claim to the volume of your choice, send me an e-mail (to mr.h@spamula.net) which contains your snail-mail address. In a few days’ time, I’ll sort through the requests, and will decide who gets what: in most cases, it’ll simply happen that the first person to claim a book will be the one who receives it. I’ll mail out the books within a week or so (I will pay all postage costs). I’m limiting the offer to one book per recipient (except in the case of #10—see below).

1. Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery: The 1758-1760 Hertel Edition of Ripa’s Iconologia, published by Dover Books. Had this been a little less Rococo and a little more Baroque then I would be keeping it. As it is, the imagery, while elaborate and not uninteresting, doesn’t have whatever quality it is that particularly attracts me to late-16th-Century and early-17th-Century emblem-books & their ilk. The book has 430pp; ISBN: 0486227480.

2. A Matter of Death and Life by Andrey Kurkov, translated from the Russian by George Bird. This slender novella by the author of the delightful Death and the Penguin has a premise I had met with elsewhere (a man engages the services of a hit-man to end his own life, but then comes to have second thoughts) but Kurkov adds a couple of sharp twists which just suffice to keep his tale from falling flat. My copy is of the UK harcover ediiton; 128pp; ISBN: 1843431041.

3. The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch, translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent. Late one night, whilst driving through the deserted streets of The Hague, womanising astronomer Max Delius happens upon absent-minded linguist Onno Quist in what seems to them a chance meeting, but in fact is an encounter precisely choreographed by an interested third party. What follows is the story of their peculiar friendship, of their complicated joint involvement with musician Ada Brons, the progress of their careers, and ultimately of the remarkable son born from their three-way relationship. This stout novel (736pp) has some slow & awkward spots but for the most part is engrossing and thought-provoking. This is a UK paperback edition published by Penguin. ISBN: 0140272380.

4. Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey. This first novel didn’t strike me as particularly remarkable, but it was generally very well-reviewed: ‘A sublime take on the Gothic horror novel,’ ‘a strange and beautiful book.’ Its plot centres on Francis Orme, heir to the eponymous Mansions, a magnificent estate turned apartment-complex, who works as a living statue ‘practicing “inner and outer stillness,”’ meanwhile curating a private museum of stolen objects. Statistically improbable phrases from the book give a good idea of the flavour of its prose: upright pine chair, glove diary, flesh dummy, outer stillness, wax sculptors, hundred smells, wax people, moustache man, remembered aloud, wooden eyes, red leather armchair, statue plinth… My copy is the UK paperback edition published by Picador, (368pp). ISBN: 033039116X.

5. Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter S. Turchi. I bought this book after reading that it had won an award in an international competition for the most beautiful or best-designed books. It is indeed a notably handsome, well-made volume, but I found that the text itself, a discourse on the likenesses and analogies between map-making and story-telling, struck me as lacking in depth; perhaps a little too much like a map itself, and not quite enough like the territory it describes. This hardcover book is published by the Trinity University Press, and runs to 224 pages; ISBN: 159534005X.

6. Celestial Harmonies, by Péter Esterházy, translated from the Hungarian by Judith Sollosy. This long novel relates ‘the intricate chronicle of the Esterházy family, a saga spanning seven centuries of epic conquest, tragedy, triumph, and near-annihilation. Told by a scion of this populous clan, Celestial Harmonies is dazzling in scope and profound in implication. It is fiction at its most awe-inspiring.’ Well, maybe so, but I couldn’t get more than a few-dozen pages into it, and, if I ever try reading it again, it won’t be this cheaply-&-nastily made UK hardcover edition issued by HarperCollins’ Flamingo imprint; 608pp; ISBN: 0007141475.

7. On Beauty: A History of a Western Idea, edited by Umberto Eco and Girolamo de Michele, and translated from the Italian by Alastair McEwen. One has to look carefully on the back of the title-page to see that this book is adapted from a CD-ROM project issued in Italy a few years ago. Such is the selling-power of Eco’s name, that he could probably get his Collected Shopping Lists published if he put his mind to it. Nevertheless, this history, while sometimes a little perfunctory, is fairly interesting, and includes extracts from numerous notable writings about beauty. The book’s best feature, though, are its many delightful illustrations. This is a 438pp UK hardcover edition published by Secker & Warburg; ISBN: 0436205173.

8. The Mirror:A History by Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, translated from the French by Katharine Jewett. Even though this history has a fairly narrowly French focus, it is still an interesting glance at some reflections from the past, and a nicely-made little book. The publisher’s blurb: ‘This engaging cultural history traces the evolution of the mirror from antiquity to the present day, illustrating its journey from miraculous wonder to commonplace object. Drawing on rich sources of history, art, literature and philosophy, the author recounts the story of the mirror as one of discovery and invention, commerce and intrigue.’ My copy is a UK hardcover, 288pp; ISBN: 0415924472.

9. Either/Or (Part I), by Søren Kierkegaard, edited, and translated from the Danish by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Every year or two I will forget my customary antipathy toward philosophical tracts and, acting on some uncharacteristic impulse, will order a big book of thinking-aloud, an impulse which, by the time the book arrives, I will find myself beginning to regret. Alas, I only have to think about this thick block of a book by the Danish proto-existentialist and my eyes glaze over; it’s a 728pp US paperback edition, courtesy of the Princeton University Press; ISBN: 0691020418.

10. Il Sistema Periodico by Primo Levi, is one of the books I bought while in Italy optimistically thinking that my command of the language would advance to the point where I could read it; an ambition I failed to realise. I had read it in English translation some years earlier, and it is a book I still love. I’ll throw in my copy of Levi’s I Sommersi e I Salvati too, if the claimant wants it. Both books are Einaudi Tascabili (pocket-paperback) editions. 264pp/184pp. ISBNs: 8806135171/8806126954.

De Bry’s Alphabets

Among the few dozen books I was recently reunited with after having left them in storage when I left the UK in ’00 was one entitled The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination. As a history, it is only intermittently interesting, but its many illustrations are often beautiful and fascinating. It was in this book that I first learned of Johann Theodor de Bry’s 1595 Neiw Kunstliches Alphabet. I subsequently discovered that de Bry’s engraved alphabet had been reprinted in one of a series of volumes by the alphabetologists Joseph Kiermeier-Debre and Fritz Franz Vogel (whose book Menschenalphabete I could have used when compiling my entry about figurative alphabets.) I ordered a copy of this reprint, published by Ravensburger in 1997: the present images are all scanned from its pages.

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In the Neiw Kunstliches Alphabet there are twenty-four engravings of decorated letters. Most of them relate to biblical personages: ‘A,’ for example, is for Adam (who is accompanied—see the first image above— by Eve, and, aptly, given the triangular shape of his initial, by his first wife, Lilith). While it follows that ‘C’ is for Cain, ‘B’ (immediately above) is made (presumably for the sake of narrative neatness), to represent Abel. ‘H’ (below) is personified by Holofernes, whose martial, greedy and lustful nature is suggested by the armour & weapons, the pelican, and the decidedly phallic arrangements of fruit & vegetables respectively. Holofernes shows his face again in the ‘I’ engraving, (the 2nd image, below), whose subject is Iuditha (Judith).

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The ‘X’ engraving, below, represents Christ (‘Xhristus:’—see the fifth comment below), whereas that for ‘Y’ is one of a few in the series which do not represent a specific person, but which is instead more generally emblematic, in this case apparently portraying a parting of the ways between virtue and vice. As with the other letters, it is festooned with decorative and symbolic elements in the form of birds & beasts, fruit & flowers, weapons & armour, musical instruments, and the ubiquitous putti.

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Theodor de Bry (1528-98, Johann’s father) had been a goldsmith in Liège who found himself obliged, as a Protestant, to leave that Catholic city in 1570. After living in Strasbourg for several years, he relocated again, to Frankfurt, in 1588, where he established himself as a book-seller and publisher, many of his volumes being illustrated with engravings by his own hand. He was aided in this enterprise by his sons Johann Theodor (1561-1623) and Johann Israël (ca. 1570-1611). The de Bry firm issued almost two hundred books, including a renowned series of illustrated accounts of the Americas, emblem-books, and the mystical & alchemical works of Robert Fludd and Michael Maier.

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The year after the publication of the Neiw Kunstliches Alphabet, another alphabetical work was issued by the de Bry presses, this time a joint venture of Johann Theodor and Johann Israël, which claimed to present all of the world’s known alphabets. Its global ambitions notwithstanding, their book Alphabeta et Characteres… was (not surprisingly) focussed for the most part on Europe and the Near East…

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Click on the images above to see them enlarged…