For a city steeped in imperial history, there must be tens of thousands of official records, hand written illuminated manuscripts, and beautifully decorated bibles. During my trip, I took at least 60 pictures of different examples of beautiful lettering that I saw; whether written with a nib and parchment or on stained glass or any other medium. Of these images, I have some observations to share :)
Before we start I'd like to give a brief intro to the tools and techniques that most of the calligraphers from the middle ages and early modern period would have used.
Lets start with the pen. Or as the origins of the word pen suggest, the quill. Pen is derived from the Latin word penna which means feather. The quill, made from feathers, was the main writing implement of the middle ages and was excellently engineered for its purpose. The quill is the whole reason for huge difference in style between Western calligraphy and almost all other forms like Eastern or Middle Eastern. They use a brush instead of a quill. For more facts like this and a demonstration on how these quills were made I suggest you watch this great video
But here's the skinny: The feather is strong enough to hold its shape, yet flexible when you push down on it. This give you that all important line variation that you see in calligraphy and you won't see coming from a normal ball point pen. Also, a bird's feathers have a central shaft that is hollow and the walls of this hollow shaft are built out of this material that is like a spiderweb of interlocking keratin proteins that leaves it full of holes. This is beneficial to the bird because it reduces weight drastically, but it also is great for calligraphers because these interlocking proteins hold ink. Then capillary action, the same thing that pulls water up a piece of paper against gravity, sucks the ink out of the quill as its being used.
Alright back to the Vienna.
My most chief interest while finding all these wonderful examples of calligraphy was to find out what made them uniquely Viennese. Calligraphy comes in so many different forms and in so many different languages, so I wanted to know what set this city apart.
The first thing I learned was the most common font or style that the Viennese would use, and this turned out to be a more interesting story than I thought. Fraktur is the dominant style of calligraphy in Vienna, and the name comes from the word "fracture". This refers to the broken up, very angular strokes used to make up the letters, as opposed to the smooth and unbroken lettering of other common styles coming out of Rome. 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖐𝖙𝖚𝖗 becomes interesting in the story of Vienna because it is Emperor Maximilian I of the house of Habsburg who we can thank for the prevalence of this calligraphic hand. Here's a quote from the Wikipedia page on Fraktur, and yes I'm using Wikipedia,
"The first Fraktur typeface arose in the early 16th century, when Emperor Maximilian I commissioned the design of the Triumphal Arch woodcut by Albrecht Dürer and had a new typeface created specifically for this purpose, designed by Hieronymus Andreae."
So this got really interesting real quick because Albrecht Dürer is one of my favorite artists. This portrait of Maximilian, in fact, was made by Dürer himself. I would have never known that Emperor Maximilian I had this connection to Dürer if I didn't research this calligraphic font. But anyways, Fraktur took over as the most common style in the German speaking lands shortly after, likely due to Maximilian wanting everything official to be in his favorite script.
Also, the Triumphal Arch woodcut that Maximilian had Dürer make has popped up in my life before. Every now and then I watch art conservation videos and this one by the BBC has been in my youtube recommendations for months. It's a fascinating watch, but doubly so once you realize the Triumphal Arch is the reason all German speaking lands had a totally different style of lettering opposed to the rest of Europe well into the 20th century. It's why you see German and Austrian pub signs made today that look like this:
But here is the Triumphal Arch in all its glory
And here is the fascinating BBC video on its conservation
Now here's something I learned from Lawrence and Father Ambrose when visiting Klosterneuburg. The color blue was incredibly expensive to produce in medieval Europe, being derived from lapus lazuli from the Afghan mountains. So that's why you'd see the Virgin Mary typically depicted in blue from the 12th century on. But that also meant that blue and red, which was also an expensive color to produce, show up in many richly decorated and illuminated manuscripts from the middle ages.
Take a look at these example from my trips to Melk monastery as well as the Austrian Jewish museum in Eisenstadt.
The discussion of blue and its exclusivity at Klosterneuburg came from talking about the walls of the Gothic style church from the middle ages they had perfectly preserved. I thought it was beautiful, but more so when I heard that the act of painting the accents blue meant so much to the people making it.
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