Figure 197
Canon d’Espagne from Plantin Office
From Specimen des Caractères employés dans l’Imprimerie Plantinienne (facsimile), Antwerp, 1905, Specimen characterum (scan)
1905
Another “document” on Plantin’s types is the publication of the Plantin-Moretus Museum entitled Specimen de Caractères employés dans l’Imprimerie Plantinienne, issued in 1905. Forty-eight characters used by Plantin are displayed, although the basis on which the selection was made is not indicated. The monumental canon d’Espagne—a large, round gothic letter intended for liturgical books, and, I believe, cut for a Spanish Antiphonary ordered by the King of Spain but never printed—is a very good example of the black-letter peculiar to Spain at that period.