Da Vienna con amore: il caleidoscopio delle calligrafie settecentesche e il caso Orfelin

From Vienna with love: the kaleidoscope of the eighteenth-century calligraphies and the case of Orfelin: In this paper the European calligraphy textbooks of the 18th c., with particular reference to the work of Zaharija Orfelin (1726-1785), are analyzed. In 1774 the Vienna Court had put J. I. Felbiger in charge of reforming the schools throughout the empire and his book on penmanship (1775) came to be the model for writing. When in 1776 the Court asked for a book on penmanship to be used specifically in the Serbian and Vlach schools it was Orfelin to answer this need (1778). Although Felbiger’s model exerted a great influence, the work of Orfelin modified that model in significant ways. Actually both of these works have their basis in Felbiger’s first book on penmanship published in Slesia in 1768. Other European calligraphies are also considered here as the possible models for earlier works by Orfelin (1759, 1776) and Orfelin’s own subsequent influence on calligraphic models is also discussed.