Dutch Prototypography 2 items

A substantial group of early Netherlandish printing is gathered under the pallid name of Dutch Prototypography. None of the books is dated or presents a place of printing or name of printer. An old but unsubstantiated tradition claimed that these books were earlier even than Gutenberg’s first printing. Particularly from the study of their paper stocks, we now see them as ranging in date from the early 1460s to later 1470s. The three major Prototypography fonts are all formal square gothics, awkward in execution but highly detailed character by character, including renditions in typemetal of scribal hairstroke terminations of letters. The number of shops using these fonts is uncertain, but there is likely to have been more than one. From the survival context of Prototypography binding waste, Utrecht and Haarlem are plausible printing towns.

1.
  • GUILELMUS DE SALICETO, DE SALUTE CORPORIS. [Utrecht?: ca. 1468-1469]

Curatorial Note:
  • The Saliceto font, larger than the Speculum font, was used to print many editions on vellum of the schoolbooks Donatus and Alexander de Villa Dei, Doctrinale. It was also used to print the present collection of texts of Italian origin: short treatises on the preservation of the body (De salute corporis) and of the soul (De salute animae), and a miscellany of other brief humanist items. A copy in Darmstadt bears a rubrication date of 1472, but the paper stocks suggest an earlier date, 1468-1469.

2.
  • LUDOVICUS PONTANUS, SINGULARIA IURIS. [Utrecht?: ca. 1468-1469]

Curatorial Note:
  • The Pontanus uses the largest of the Prototypography fonts, with body size equal to that of the Gutenberg Bible font. Various editions of Donatus were printed with this font, but none of Alexander de Villa Dei. The tracts of the Roman jurist Ludovicus Pontanus, “monarch” of civil and canon law, presumably came north in manuscript from Italy together with the tracts of the Saliceto edition. Part II of the book, in the smaller Saliceto type, is a miscellany of epitaphs in the same setting as those in the Saliceto edition. Thus both fonts, larger and smaller, were in the same printing shop, and the two editions were printed concurrently. Likewise, the paper stocks of the two editions are the same.