Joris Hoefnagels beautiful nature illustrations of calligraphy

There is a free collection of his prints to download on the site.

In the Mid 16th-Century Georg Bocskay designed the calligraphy letters, and thirty years later, Hoefnagel added beautiful illustrations of fruit, flowers, and insects to them.

Hoefnagel’s paintings pay careful attention to nature. He looked at all the details of the dragonfly – from its wings to its body to its legs – and used all that info to make it look super realistic.

He carefully coordinated his illustrations with the script already on the page.  Hoefnagel painted a pear, caterpillar, centipede, and hoverfly in colours that harmonized with the texts.

Joris Hoefnagel was a seminal artist of the late Renaissance period, and his work influenced the Dutch masters with his attention to detail, symbolism and interest in nature.

You can see Joris's influence with this Dutch master, Jan Davidsz de Heem Vase of flowers 1645.  There are lots of insects illlustrated within the painting.

Joris Hoefnagels most famous work is the Four Elements where he painted miniture art paintings of the natural world.  Including a whole section on Insects for the fire element.

There are illustrated guides to the constructions of letters in the Latin alphabet.  These are also illustrated with symbolism by Hoefnagel. 

If you visit the site you can download and print 46 of these beautiful pages.  They are all in the Public Domain and therfore copyright-free.