ABC of bodies: anthropomorphic alphabets of the Sixteenth century in the Prints and Drawings Department of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna

Abstract

Among different kinds of patterns, anthropomorphic alphabets set up a real genre in its own right, drawing on the iconographic repertoire of his time and reflecting it in charming and original compositions. For quantity, quality and variety of specimens preserved, the Prints and Drawings Department of the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Bologna is a quite unique case in Italy, boasting figured alphabets that span wide geographical and chronological boundaries, ranging from the late Gothic to the Nineteenth Century.

After an introduction on collecting events of so unusual and particular graphic core, the article focuses on some examples of figurative alphabets of the Sixteenth century of transalpine area. Starting from the Alphabet of the children of Hans Weiditz (1521), constructed in accordance with the strictest rules of geometry, encoded in contemporary Renaissance treatises, but also reflecting the reborn taste of the ancient friezes with putti, we pass to Peter Flötner’s (1534) and Jost Amman’s (1567) alphabets, where the letters are made up entirely of human bodies forced into complicated postures, sometimes even bawdy. These specimens represent some interesting calligraphic experiments, where man truly becomes the measure of the characters of the alphabet