{"id":10145,"date":"2011-10-10T02:52:22","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T01:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=10145"},"modified":"2011-10-11T02:54:59","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T01:54:59","slug":"paulinis-mythological-alphabet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2011\/10\/10\/paulinis-mythological-alphabet\/","title":{"rendered":"Paulini’s mythological alphabet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"paulini1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Whoever I. Paulini was, no one seems to know his (or, indeed, her) first name. Even the Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a>, NYC, which owns a copy of these plates, doesn’t elaborate. The copies here are scans from a Getty edition of Alphabeto<\/em><\/a>, part of the collection of Getty Institute volumes at the Internet Archive. The book is usually dated 1570 but a note states that “The watermarks … suggest a printing date closer to the end of the 16th century than to 1570, the conjectural date of first publication.”<\/p>\n

\"paulini2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Paulini gives use twenty engraved plates each showing an ornamented letter of the Roman alphabet with a background depicting a scene from Greek and Roman mythology; each letter is tied to a different character or scene, so here we have G for Ganymede, and N for Narcissus. Mister Aitch at the late, lamented Giornale Nuovo was a great enthusiast for these kinds of alphabets, and for engravings in general. He pursued his own researches into the Paulini mystery back in 2006<\/a> when copies of the complete set of letters were difficult to find.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The etching and engraving archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Joseph Balthazar Silvestre\u2019s Alphabet-album<\/a>
\n\u2022 Johann Theodor de Bry\u2019s Neiw Kunstliches Alphabet<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Book of Ornamental Alphabets<\/a>
\n\u2022 Paul Franck\u2019s calligraphy<\/a>
\n\u2022 Gramato-graphices<\/a>
\n\u2022 John Bickham\u2019s Fables and other short poems<\/a>
\n\u2022 Letters and Lettering<\/a>
\n\u2022 Studies in Pen Art<\/a>
\n\u2022 Flourishes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whoever I. Paulini was, no one seems to know his (or, indeed, her) first name. Even the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, which owns a copy of these plates, doesn’t elaborate. The copies here are scans from a Getty edition of Alphabeto, part of the collection of Getty Institute volumes at the Internet Archive. The … Continue reading “Paulini’s mythological alphabet”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42,21,10],"tags":[266,2956,2955,2954,1489,2846,225,1418],"class_list":["post-10145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-fantasy","category-typography","tag-calligraphy","tag-ganymede","tag-giornale-nuovo","tag-i-paulini","tag-johann-theodor-de-bry","tag-joseph-balthazar-silvestre","tag-narcissus","tag-paul-franck"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-2DD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}