CHAPTER XIV

EARLY DUTCH INITIALS

The early typography of the Low Countries has been made the subject of a most interesting monograph by J. W. Holtrop, chief librarian at the Hague, _Monuments Typographiques des Pays-Bas au Quinzième Siècle_, and it is from this work that we have reproduced most of the initials in this section.

The first specimen given by Holtrop is the G of the _Fasciculus Temporum_, printed at Utrecht by J. Veldener in 1480--an immense initial more than eight centimetres square. The page is surrounded by a folio-floral border in the same style. It has also been reproduced by Bodemann.

In the _Summa Experimentorum sive Thesaurus Pauperum_ of Thierry Martens, who printed at Alost and afterwards at Antwerp, is the large A with a profile.

Passing over the initials of Ludovicus de Ravescot of Louvain, the next printer mentioned by Holtrop is G. Leeu of Gouda, who published in 1481 a _Dyalogus Creaturarum_ with illustrative cuts, a very black S, not unlike the large one reproduced, and an ornamental border.

The thirteen smaller initials of the same type are from an impression by Godfrid de Os of Gouda, and furnished Caxton, who copied from different continental sources, with the models of some of his initials. Mr. W. Blades, in his _Biography and Typography of W. Caxton_, gives a plate of woodcut initials from Caxton’s books, two of which are of French origin--Dupré and Vérard--the A of the _Order of Chivalry_, Italian in style, whilst an O with a grotesque face is the Q given in our series with the tail cut off. There is also an H with a profile on the left, evidently inspired by the P given here.

Of our remaining reproductions, the large S is to be found in books published by Jacob van der Meer of Delft. The P of nearly the same size belongs to a series of five large initials which comprises also the profile A, already mentioned, of Thierry Martens. These letters, together with a smaller alphabet in the style of the letters of Godfrid de Os, are to be found in editions of G. Leeu at Antwerp, as is also the D of pine-cone pattern copied from the alphabet of Israel von Mecken. The large initial with a portrait, which is said by Holtrop to be that of Philip le Bel, is by Godfrid Back of Antwerp.

The P representing the miracle of St. Veronica is to be found in a book by an unknown printer of Schiedam, _Johannis Brugman Vita almae virginis Lydwinae Sciedammitae_. The G given here with the same subject is evidently copied from this letter, and ornaments a leaf of an early black-letter English prayer-book, found in the binding of a sixteenth-century volume.

Louvain initials of any interest are extremely rare, and the only historiated one that we have seen is an N of a fifteenth-century missal, all the other capitals of which are painted by hand.

The calligraphic G and the H, both with grotesque profiles, are early specimens of initials of Antwerp from the title-pages of books. The G is from a Belial, _circa_ 1500, the H from a small Leyden tract of the same date.