Folio 24

Georg Bocskay, calligraphy; Joris Hoefnagel, miniature painting, "Folio 24," from Calligraphic Specimen Book, 1591-94 miniature painting; 1571-73 calligraphy. Parchment, watercolours and opaque paint, silver and gold heightening, 18.8 x 14 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. no. KK 975

Immediately the eye is dazzled by a sprawling mass of intertwined curves and loops, which render the text hardly legible. However, imagery is tied together via the confusing forest of line work. Take, for example, the pheasant crouched on top of a spiral – it is just as reasonable to assume that the tangled path leads to the stroke caressing the monkey’s back (at the bottom of the page) as it is to say that it terminates at the butterfly (on the upper right). 

Bocskay and Hoefnagel, "Folio 24" (detail).

It is through such relations, resulting from the intersection of text and image, that a kind of narrative or significance emerges out of the depictions. For otherwise how else could one relate birds, insects, fruits, vegetation, and reptiles so widely scattered around the borders of a page? Or in the folio 94, a cat, stork, toad, mouse, and shark? Not only do the illuminations enhance the visual pleasure of the text, they are dependent upon its lines, curves, and flourishes in conveying a sense of meaning.

Bocskay and Hoefnagel, "Folio 24" (detail).

Such a cross-referencing in form and implied movement or energy occurs also between specific animals and their calligraphic environment. Once again, notice the pheasant’s crouch, its physical posture is directly paralleled in the spiral below its feet. To its right lies a snake, contorted in a manner mirroring the embellishments directly below it that lie in a kind of double-infinity configuration, with one inscribed somewhat within the other.