A history of alphabets from around the world
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A history of alphabets from around the world | |
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The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering by Frederic W. Goudy Chapter 4: The Development of the Roman Capital, page 2 For nearly two thousand years the roman capital has held the supreme place among all letters for beauty and character. The Italian typefounders in the fifteenth century sought out fine examples in MSS. as models for their minuscules; for their majuscules they studied & attempted to reproduce the capitals from the monumental Ronlan inscriptions. Their fine traditions have in large part been lost. Examples extant show that the earliest forms of the lapidary Roman capitals were roughly shaped and without the thick & thin strokes that add materially to their legibility and distinction. In the first century B.C. the increasillgly common practice of cutting monumental inscriptions led to more highly developed forms, & many even now show indications that the letters were first carefully outlined or painted in before cutting, afterward to be filled in with the same color as was used in the preliminary outlining - a conclusion suggested by the accuracy that is characteristic of inscriptions cut in bronze or stone. Letters cut in bronze were occasionally made more distinct by filling in the incised lines with white lead. Sometimes, on large public monuments, separate letters of bronze or lead were affixed to the stone with rivets, and for some of these it is only by the positions of the rivet holes remaining after the letters forming the inscription had fallen that it has been possible to restore the original text. Of all the examples remaining to us, the inscription at the base of the Trajan Column at Rome, cut about A.D. 114, is probably the finest in character. This column, one hundred forty-seven feet high, erected by the senate & people of Rome, is composed of thirty-four blocks of marble and is covered with a spiral band of bas-reliefs illustrating the Dacian wars, almost the only record of these wars surviving. When first erected, it was crowned by a statue of Trajan holding a gilt globe, but the statue had fallen long before Pope Sixtus V replaced it with the statue of St. Peter which now surmounts the column. The base forms a sepulchral chamber intended to receive the imperial remains, & it is believed by some that the ashes of the Emperor, in their golden urn, might even now be found buried in front of the column - which was put up while Trajan was still living, - as it was the custom to preserve the imperial ashes in such an urn upon an altar in front of the sepulchral chamber. Of the column itself, Hawthorne said, "It is a great, solid fact of the Past, making old Rome actually visible to the touch and eye; and no study of history, nor force of thought, nor magic of song, can so vitally assure us that Rome once existed, as this sturdy specimen of what its rulers and people wrought." An examination of the letters composing the inscription at the base of the column shows that the vertical, horizontal, oblique, and curved strokes vary considerably in thickness, and with no absolute regularity; they show also that the swelling of the curves occurs above and below centers, according as they are on the right or left sides, & that the letters vary considerably in their individual widths. This variety in width of lines was in no way made necessary by any demand of material or of cutting tool, but since the natural handling of pen or brush will actually produce just such variety of line, it is reasonable to assume that the use of pen or brush influenced very strongly the shaping of the lapidary characters, if indeed they did not really determine the actual forms. The shapes they take in general and their proportions are, therefore, those of the pen-drawn letters, but their character is that of the cutting tool used to produce them - a significant point to bear in mind. Continue to page 3 |
The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering by Frederic W. Goudy Introduction What Letters Are Letters in General The Development of the Roman Capital Letters Before Printing The National Hands The Development of Gothic The Beginnings of Types The Qualities of Lettering Some Practical Considerations Notes on the Plates |