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For the musical style, see viola bastarda.

Bastarda or bastard, also known as hybrid, hybrida, or Mongrel hand,[1] is a term applied to a variety of variant or altered scripts and typefaces originating in western Europe during the Renaissance. They were often used as business or court hands.[2]

Scripts

Handwriting model in de Iturzaeta’s Arte de escribir letra bastarda español

Bastard gothic constituted blackletter manuscript hands or gothic cursive hands used in various parts of continental Europe, mainly in France, the Netherlands, and Germany, during the 14th and 15th centuries, mainly to write vernacular narratives and common documents.[3] Similar English scripts of noncontinental Europe are sometimes distinguished as “bastarda Anglicana”.

The French bâtarde italienne was developed in the 17th century by writing master Louis Barbedor, combining the French Ronde with the Italian hand.[4]

Spanish bastarda, also was a modified form of Italic script which remained in use there until as late as the 1830s.[5] 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.[6]

Type

Bastarda type in Fry’s Pantographia

Early printers produced a variety of typefaces based on local gothic bastarda based on vernacular manuscript hands.[3][7]

Over time, most of Europe’s printers standardized on Antiqua (or “roman”) typefaces, and bastarda type fell out of use in most countries.[3] Despite this trend, the German variety developed into the national Fraktur type, which remained in use until the mid-twentieth century.[8]

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

See also

References

  1. ^ Brown, Michelle (2007). A guide to Western historical scripts from antiquity to 1600 (Repr ed.). Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press. pp. 80–81. ISBN 978-0-8020-7206-1.
  2. ^ Barrett, John (4 March 2008). Discovering Old Handwriting. Bloomsbury USA. pp. 41–43. ISBN 978-0-7478-0268-6.
  3. ^ a b c Febvre, Lucien; Martin, Henri-Jean (1976). The Coming of the Book : The Impact of Printing 1450-1800. London: Verso. p. 79.
  4. ^ Whalley, Joyce Irene (1980). The art of calligraphy : Western Europe & America. Internet Archive. London : Bloomsbury Books. ISBN 978-0-906223-64-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  5. ^ de Iturzaeta, José Francisco (1827). Arte de escribir letra bastarda española. Muñoz.
  6. ^ Osley, A. S. (1979). “Canons of Renaissance Handwriting”. Visible Language. 13 (1): 81. Retrieved 4 February 2026.
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ A.F. Johnson, Type designs, their history and development. Third edition. (London: 1966) pp. 21–23