Skip to main content
The Collation

The Single Vine Leaf, aka the "Aldine Leaf"

I have always been a devotee of the “Aldine leaf”, even long before I knew its exact name or where it actually came from, and I am still delighted spotting it in early modern typography or when it is expertly used in current printed material. As with most delicate things in life, it should be applied with moderation and with consideration of the right time and place. Often just one turns out to be a perfect number, but on occasion two or three may do the trick as well.

Title page (fol. A1r) of a 1527 Strassburg edition featuring one single vine leaf (left), and title page (fol. a1r) of a 1519 Louvain edition with three single vine leaves (right).

Title page (fol. A1r) of a 1527 Strassburg edition featuring one single vine leaf (left), and title page (fol. a1r) of a 1519 Louvain edition with three single vine leaves (right).

As Hendrik Vervliet points out in his latest masterpiece dealing with this typographical phenomenon, the term “Aldine leaf” is a misnomer, since the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius seem to have never use it in his own publications. 1 Other names for the fleuron are ivy leaf, hedera, or floral heart. But probably the best name is single vine leaf, the design of which has the property to cause an intellectual glow of happiness akin to the powers of that other fruit borne by the vine. 

  1. Hendrik D.L. Vervliet, Vine Leaf Ornaments in Renaissance Typography. A Survey. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press/Houten: Hess & De Graaf Publishers 2012, here p. 11.
  2. Vervliet, Vine Leaf Ornaments, nos. 1 and 2, both dating from 1505.
  3. For an overview, see Vervliet, Vine Leaf Ornaments, nos. 7 and 8. For Louvain, Vervliet only mentions a 1530 Clenardus edition published by Rutger Rescius, but the Folger holds a 1519 edition printed by Dirk Martens showing Schöffer’s vine leaf on Paragon/A, see BS2485 C5 F5 1519 Cage. For a description of that edition, see STCV 12916069 and bibliographic references listed there.
  4. The sample is not randomly selected: I started in volume one and processed entries no. 1 through 1,300. To what extend this may influence the results is not clear.
  5. Goran Proot, “De opmars van de romein: het gebruik van romein en gotisch in Nederlandstalig drukwerk uit de zuidelijke Lage Landen, 1541-1700”, in Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 19v (2012), 66-85.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *