In 1707, the correspondent began his letter with an elaborate salutation in French: “Monsieur Mon Cousin,” he wrote, then explaining to the recipient, in effusive and flattering terms, that a small gift was en route. He ended the note with a simple signature in his native Cyrillic script: “Peter.” As in Peter I, Peter the Great, Peter the Tsar, Peter the Emperor, the polymath genius who by military and diplomatic turns, both brilliant and cruel, all but founded modern Russia. His hand, his attention, his touch all right there in a few strokes of a pen nib. He’s not the great man of history here; just Peter, signing off. You can almost hear the scratch of the pen across the parchment. Three centuries later, this talisman from another time rests on a table in the Manuscript Division reading room, a stunning autograph in the John Davis Batchelder Collection, a litany of more than 1,800 signatures from bold-faced names who helped define Western politics, painting, philosophy, science, music and culture from the Renaissance to the mid-20th century. Napoleon, Beethoven, Debussy, Rodin, Voltaire! Henry VIII, Catherine II (aka Catherine the Great), Louis XIV (aka The Sun King), King Frederick II of Prussia…
Creative
Napoleon, Henry VIII, Beethoven, Poe: The Amazing Autograph Collection of John D. Batchelder
Source: Library of Congress Blogs — US Government, Public Domain