Bastarda

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Bastarda or bastard is a term applied to a variety of scripts and typefaces originating in western Europe during the Renaissance.

Contents

Scripts

Handwriting model in de Iturzaeta's Arte de escribir letra bastarda espanol Spanish bastarda handwriting model.png
Handwriting model in de Iturzaeta's Arte de escribir letra bastarda español

One form of bastarda is "bastard Gothic": the blackletter manuscript hands used in various parts of continental Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, mainly to write vernacular narratives. [1] Similar English scripts are sometimes distinguished as "bastarda Anglicana" or simply "Anglicana".

Spanish bastarda, by contrast, was a modified form of Italic script which remained in use there until as late as the 1830s. [2] The paleographer A. S. Osley characterized this bastarda as the "true successor" of the Italic hand, which had been supplanted by an early form of copperplate script outside Spain. [3]

Type

Edmund Fry - Pantographia (1799).jpg
Bastarda type in Fry's Pantographia

Early printers produced a variety of typefaces based on local bastarda blackletter. [1] [4]

Over time, most of Europe's printers standardized on Antiqua (or "roman") typefaces, and bastarda type fell out of use in most countries. [1] Despite this trend, the German variety developed into the national Fraktur type, which remained in use until the mid-twentieth century. [5]

British typeface designer Jonathan Barnbrook has designed a contemporary interpretation of these early typefaces titled Bastard.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Febvre, Lucien; Martin, Henri-Jean (1976). The Coming of the Book : The Impact of Printing 1450-1800. London: Verso. p. 79.
  2. ↑ de Iturzaeta, José Francisco (1827). Arte de escribir letra bastarda española. Muñoz.
  3. ↑ Osley, A. S. (1979). "Canons of Renaissance Handwriting". Visible Language. 13 (1): 81. Retrieved 4 February 2026.
  4. ↑ Derolez, Robert (2003). The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books From the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 16. ISBN   978-0-521-80315-1 . Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  5. ↑ A.F. Johnson, Type designs, their history and development. Third edition. (London: 1966) pp. 21–23
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