It's true that people had formal and informal hands (sometimes three hands).
John Dee is an excellent example. Three hands: calligraphy, regular, and fast-notehand. But... one can see the similarities between them, even though the calligraphy hand is very nice and his fast-notehand is a complete scrawl, there are still discernible similarities.
The de Tepenecz "legal signature" has quite a few differences from the others. The slant, the balance of the upper and lower, the style of the & symbol (much less angular), the style of the T, the style of the loop on the k, the wider n, are all different, and all the other signatures except the legal signature are written Jacobi or Jakuba. The legal signature doesn't have the vowel at the end. Also, the p on the Jakuba signature is quite different from the p on the Jacobi signatures. I've never quite been able to reconcile so many differences.
I don't think I've put out any suggestions as to why this might be. I did mention my "first impression" on seeing the legal signature (I wondered if it were a notarial hand, someone with power of attorney to sign for him, the first time I saw it, which was after I saw the scans from folio 1r and before I had read that it was confirmed to be his hand).
I may also have wondered out loud whether the Ex Lib markings (or perhaps the catalog numbers) on the other books were by an aid (someone cataloging his books) since they don't match the notarial-style hand. But even these are enigmatic because one of them varies from the others more.
I have also pondered whether the outlier (Jakuba) was done at a much later date and whether that might account for the difference in the handwriting and spelling, the main difference being the way the "p" is written.
The idea that the signature was forged on 1r never crossed my mind (I tend not to have a diabolical mind, which means I often miss the more sinister possibilities).
To try to understand the markings better, I have been keeping an eye out for more examples from his library (I frequently see books from this era scanned into Google Books) and have also collected samples of handwriting that are similar. These are longterm needle-in-a-haystack projects but since I'm searching for other things anyway, I keep an eye out for these also. I've been tracking the "p" in particular, to see if the style of "p" varied from one decade to the next during this time (which might account for an earlier p being quite different from a later one).
I don't feel I have enough data (or have spent enough time studying them) to have anything definite to say about them yet.
John Dee is an excellent example. Three hands: calligraphy, regular, and fast-notehand. But... one can see the similarities between them, even though the calligraphy hand is very nice and his fast-notehand is a complete scrawl, there are still discernible similarities.
The de Tepenecz "legal signature" has quite a few differences from the others. The slant, the balance of the upper and lower, the style of the & symbol (much less angular), the style of the T, the style of the loop on the k, the wider n, are all different, and all the other signatures except the legal signature are written Jacobi or Jakuba. The legal signature doesn't have the vowel at the end. Also, the p on the Jakuba signature is quite different from the p on the Jacobi signatures. I've never quite been able to reconcile so many differences.
I don't think I've put out any suggestions as to why this might be. I did mention my "first impression" on seeing the legal signature (I wondered if it were a notarial hand, someone with power of attorney to sign for him, the first time I saw it, which was after I saw the scans from folio 1r and before I had read that it was confirmed to be his hand).
I may also have wondered out loud whether the Ex Lib markings (or perhaps the catalog numbers) on the other books were by an aid (someone cataloging his books) since they don't match the notarial-style hand. But even these are enigmatic because one of them varies from the others more.
I have also pondered whether the outlier (Jakuba) was done at a much later date and whether that might account for the difference in the handwriting and spelling, the main difference being the way the "p" is written.
The idea that the signature was forged on 1r never crossed my mind (I tend not to have a diabolical mind, which means I often miss the more sinister possibilities).
To try to understand the markings better, I have been keeping an eye out for more examples from his library (I frequently see books from this era scanned into Google Books) and have also collected samples of handwriting that are similar. These are longterm needle-in-a-haystack projects but since I'm searching for other things anyway, I keep an eye out for these also. I've been tracking the "p" in particular, to see if the style of "p" varied from one decade to the next during this time (which might account for an earlier p being quite different from a later one).
I don't feel I have enough data (or have spent enough time studying them) to have anything definite to say about them yet.