An Illuminated Manuscript of One’s Own : MIRA CALLIGRAPHIAE MONUMENTA or, MODEL BOOK OF CALLIGRAPHY <i> (J. Paul Getty Museum: $125; 412 pp., 170 color plates) </i>

You can’t touch Van Gogh’s “Irises” or Pontormo’s “Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici” at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu. But that’s only a minor deprivation, because you can stand and look at the paintings to your heart’s content.

The Getty’s illuminated manuscripts are quite a different matter. You can see only two facing pages of bound volumes at a time, and even this limited view is restricted to periodic exhibitions.

For all those who have suffered this frustration in the museum’s manuscripts gallery, the publication of a facsimile of “Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta” offers relief. Here is a high-quality copy of one of the museum’s most beautiful illuminated books, a 16th-Century calligraphic manuscript inscribed by Georg Bocskay and illuminated by Joris Hoefnagel. You can not only hold it, you can turn the pages. This simple act reveals what might have been expected: page after captivating page of exquisite script enhanced by jewel-like illustrations of flora and fauna.

The facsimile is the first in a projected series from the museum’s collection. “Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta” was an inspired--and perhaps obvious--choice for the inaugural volume because of its visual appeal, but it is also of considerable scholarly interest. In art-historical terms, the multifaceted book links Flemish manuscript illumination with natural-history illustration and Netherlandish still-life painting.

The original version of “Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta” was composed in 1561-62 as a virtuoso model book of calligraphy by Bocskay, at the request of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I. With no apparent concern for the content of the text, Bocskay compiled a vast collection of scripts and re-created samples of them in an extraordinary handwriting manual. He did not intend the book to be read; this is a display piece that presents handwriting as fine art.

Thirty years later Bocskay’s triumph was transformed by illustrations. Emperor Rudolf II, Ferdinand’s grandson, commissioned Hoefnagel to illuminate the pages of calligraphic script. Hoefnagel, a renowned Flemish artist, responded by filling open spaces with illusionistic likenesses of flowers, fruits, vegetables, nuts, shells, insects and small animals. His style might be described as realism after the rain. The sun has come out and the delicate colors of freshly washed insects and flowers fairly sparkle. While the pictures have nothing to do with the text, they create an intriguing counterpoint to the script. To the credit of both artists, every page offers a new delight without sacrificing a sense of unity.

The spell is broken about 100 pages from the end, however, when you discover that the facsimile is actually two books in one. Rudolf also commissioned Hoefnagel to illuminate an alphabet book by an unknown artist, which was appended to the calligraphic manual. While Hoefnagel’s illumination of Bocskay’s script produces a spidery lyricism, the alphabet book presents single, black letters boldly drawn on graphs and decorated with imaginative melanges of architecture, functional objects, animals and human faces. The alphabet book itself is split in two distinct sections: Roman upper-case letters in classical settings and Gothic lower-case characters surrounded by grotesque masks and evil-looking animals.

What does it all mean? Introductory essays by Lee Hendrix, associate curator of drawings at the Getty, and Thea Vignau-Wilberg, curator of Netherlandish Prints and drawings at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, offer interpretive possibilities along with historical context and biographical information about the artists.

The combination of Bocskay’s handwriting manual and the alphabet book is a veritable encyclopedia of Western writing as it was known in the 16th Century. That may seem a bit late for the intelligentsia to care about artistic handwriting, but it was actually a golden moment. The invention of movable type had freed scribes from the dreary task of preserving knowledge and propelled them into a lively discourse with artists. This unique artistic creation carries on an animated relationship between word and image that is typical of the best illuminated manuscripts. Bocskay proved his virtuosity as a scribe, while Hoefnagel enhanced his reputation as a superb pictorial illusionist.

The Getty Museum has organized an exhibition in conjunction with the publication of the facsimile. “Art and Science: Joris Hoefnagel and the Representation of Nature in the Renaissance” (to Jan. 17) displays the Hoefnagel original with related manuscripts by other artists.