The two curious L’s are from the title-page and from the beginning of
one of the chapters of a Lyons _Proprietaire_, wanting the last page,
but of which we have not seen any other copy. The L with a profile and
crowned lion is from the title-page. The other letters, D, H, M, are
from the treatise on men and women at the end of the volume, arranged
according to the signs of the Zodiac. The M shows the author meditating
the effect of his opening remarks. The D and the H are at the beginning
of a paragraph referring to Virgo and the Gemini respectively.
The two large letters C and D, representing the Viaticum and the
Nativity, with the seven smaller ones, are to be found in an edition
of the _Regimen Sanitatis_, with comments by Magnini, attributed by
Claudin, on the strength of an initial on the title-page with a bird,
to Fradin, 1505. This is no doubt correct, for the large C (a priest
carrying the host), with several of the smaller letters, is to be found
in an undoubted edition by that printer of Platina’s _De Honestate
Voluptate_ of 1505.[32]
[32] The G, C, and I, with profiles and grotesques, were used two
years before in a Lyons edition of the _Rommant de la Rose_, by G.
Balsarin, 1503.
From a technical point of view, from the elegance of the design and the
delicacy of the execution, the series taken from works by Blanchard
and others, with masters and scholars in costumes of the time of Louis
XII., is particularly interesting, the S with pope and cardinals being
quite remarkable.
The children’s alphabet was used by Fradin and four or five different
printers, perhaps by more. A certain number of children’s letters, but
enlarged to the size of the initials of Cologne of Albert Dürer, are in
the _Graduale Viennense_ of 1534. One of them, the R, is a coarse copy
of the same Dürer letter, and has been given under Cologne for the sake
of comparison. The others, eleven in number, although not exact copies
of the smaller letters, are very much like our smaller reproductions
and are treated in the same manner, but the best proofs we have seen of
the specimens we give are in a copy on vellum of the Narbonne Missal of
Fradin of 1528, from which the P with the Nativity, the smaller P with
a saint about to be beheaded, and the R with Death, are also taken.
There is a very similar set in the German Psalter of Nuremberg, printed
by J. Petreius in 1525.
The F with a portrait of St. Ambrose is from a translation of St.
Jerome by Erasmus, of whom an excellent portrait is also seen in
another initial.
Two of the most characteristic sets of Lyons letters are those taken
from the _Biblia cum Summariis et cum Concordantiis_, printed by John
Moylin for Stephen Gueynard in 1516, and from the _Catalogus Sanctorum_
of Saccon of 1514. The Bible letters represent necessarily scenes in
Scripture history, often being inspired by the initials in the Bibles
of Nuremberg and Augsburg.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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