"...though, I was struck by the variety and virtuosity of Alunno`s work. It became a yardstick in my mind by which to measure these characteristics in the work of his contemporaries. Actual manuscripts by Italian writing-masters of the sixteenth century are not common. Only one sheet definitely attributable to the oldest, Giovan Antonio Tagliente, survives. More examples exist of the work of Ludovico degli Arrighi, who started as a professional writer of manuscript books and papal briefs and only later devoted a fertile mind to printing and the production of the first professional illustrated manual of writing in different scripts. The third, and junior, of Alunno`s contemporaries, Giovan Battista Palatino, left two manuscripts, as well as many copies of the printed manual by which he is better know. Like tagliente and others before him, he was interested, as was Alunno, in the geometrical structures, on which classical roman capitals might be based. These structures all stemmed from the Divina proportione (1509) of Fra Luca Pacioli, the contemporary of Leonardo daVinci who was, like him, interested in perspective in all its forms." From the preface by the author.