Hatching System - Origins

Origins

Hatching was a method of screening in the Renaissance painting. For the great copperplate engravers and artists such as Zangrius and Franquart it served as a natural method to designate tinctures of the arms. Thus, it can be concluded that this way to designate the tinctures originated by all probability from the artists (copper plate engravers) and not the heralds. As part of the techniques of hatching, artists used various lengths, angles, mutual space and other properties of lines.

The copper plate engravers were always seized of the problem of properly picturing the black (dark) and white (light) surfaces. They also dealt with the problem on producing the coloured illustrations. It is around the middle of the 17th century that the first tests of the colour in copperplate engraving were done by François Perrier (1590-Paris, 1650). According to some views, the multi-coloured copperplate engravings were invented by Abraham Bosse as described in his 1645 treatise.

Heralds did not like hatching, and the College of Arms gave preference to tricking even beyond the 17th century, sometimes even on the coloured and hatched images. It was so because tricking was a simpler way than hatching to designate the tinctures. Otto Titan von Hefner maintained that the first traces of hatching on the woodcuts began during the 15th and 16th centuries. Both tricking as well as hatching was applied by the Benedictine monk, philologist and outstanding historian Vincenzio or Vincenzo Maria Borghini (Florence, Oct. 29, 1515 – Aug. 18, 1580, Florence). He drew a difference between the metals and the colours on the woodcuts of his work by leaving the places blank on the arms for all metals; similarly all colours were hatched by the same way, as the colour vert is being used today. Besides this, tinctures were designated in the fields and on the ordinaries and charges by tricking: R–rosso–gules, A–azure–azure, N–nigro–sable, G–gialbo–yellow (or), and B–biancho–white (argent). Notably, the vert was not present on the arms presented by him.

During the 15-18th centuries, painting and graphics were on a very high level in the Low Countries. For this reason, it isn’t accidental that different hatching methods emerged in the system of heraldry in these territories. The earliest one and then the majority of these systems were developed in the Low Countries (mainly in the Duchy of Brabant) such as the method of Zangrius (1600), Franquart (1623), Butkens (1626), and de Rouck (1645). So, four out of the eight authors of the seven known hatching systems came from the Low Countries and the remaining four authors – de la Colombière, Petra Sancta, Gelenius, and Lobkowitz – also had close connection with the heraldists and artists of these territories.

The earliest hatching system was developed by the outstanding copper plate engraver, publisher, typographer and bookseller Jan Baptist Zangrius (†1606) of Leuven in 1600 and was seen at the armorial chart of Brabant. Inasmuch as the hatching systems of Petra Sancta and de la Colombière differ from the method developed by Zangrius only in the way of hatching of the colour Sable, as it almost seems evident that Petra Sancta or de la Colombière modeled their systems after Zangrius‘ hatching table.