Beneventan Calligraphy

Beneventan Calligraphy

Beneventan (pronounced benny - ven - tan) calligraphy was developed in the the Monte Cassino abbey, to the southeast of Rome. It’s not one of the most renown styles of calligraphy, but it’s very unique and lovely to write. There are numerous letterforms that you won’t find in any other script.  That's one of the most appealing aspects of this style of calligraphy: the fact that it’s quite unusual, very appealing to the eye and … sometimes downright difficult to decipher !

This class will begin with some historical background. Following that, we’ll do some exercises to understand the bases of Beneventan letter formation before going on to study each letter individually. One of the particularities of Beneventan is that there are quite a number of ligatures - so we’ll take a look at those, too.

There are several projects for you to do, too, including a sampler that contains a message, an enveloppe to address and a sentence to write, superposed on the word “love”.

This class will appeal to you if you’ve already done some calligraphy. You don’t need to be an expert by any means, but you should have a grasp of basic letter formation. It’s been designed for a 3mm broad nib, so make sure you have one of those on hand.

Southern Italian-style

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What you will learn

• Master the technical aspects of Beneventan calligraphy (letter-height, pen-angle ...)
• Write all 26 letters and more than a dozen ligatured letters, Beneventan-style
• Benefit from the meditative and relaxing aspects of calligraphy

Rating: 5

Level: All Levels

Duration: 1.5 hours

Instructor: Mary-Jane Roussel