![]() ![]() ![]() Griffo’s script stood apart because his lowercase ascenders rose above the capitals. Griffo was a talented craftsman known for his precision, who designed the first italic type, as well as many of Manutius’ type faces. Manutius is said to have perfected the humanist book.įrancesco Griffo was a master punchcutter that worked for Manutius and was known only as Francesco da Bologna until his real name was discovered in 1883. Pietro Bembo (14701547) Aldus Manutius (c. This chapter explores some of the ways in which Etna is imaginatively portrayed in the Greco-Roman literary tradition on which Bembo so conspicuously draws in composing De Aetna: just as Pietro gradually progresses from Messina to the foothills from which Etna eventually rises, so our journey through the literary past in this chapter is designed to lead up to, and artistically to contextualize. ![]() Manutius commissioned the first italic type, a slanted typeface that resembles cursive script, enabling the printer to fit more letters on a line. He ultimately achieved a monopoly on italic printing, a style that is still in wide use today. This brief Latin dialogue by Bembo narrates the author’s ascent of Mount Etna (accompanied by his father Bernardo), undertaken between 14, while Bembo was studying at Messina. He brought many innovations to the art of printing and became one of the most prolific printers in Renaissance Italy. This book is centered on the Venetian humanist Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), on his two-year stay in Sicily in 1492-4 to study the ancient Greek language under one of its most distinguished contemporary teachers, the Byzantine émigré Constantine Lascaris, and above all on his ascent of Mount Etna in 1493. The 1929 typeface Bembo is based on and named for Griffo’s design used here.Īldus Manutius (1449-1515): Manutius was a famous humanist publisher that set up his Aldine Print shop in Venice, Italy in 1490. In 1530 when Paris became the leader of typographic arts, french punch cutters were all copying Griffo’s italic from De Aetna. Considered a masterpiece, it is said to be the most significant Roman typeface in the history of printing, having influenced typeface for generations. ![]() The typeface became wildly popular, mimicking the script of the finest scribes of the day. The De Aetna of Pietro Bembo (1496): Aldus Manutius’ first printed an italic style typeface in this otherwise rather insignificant essay written by the poet and cleric Pietro Bembo. The addition matches an authorial amendment that can be found on leaf B5 recto of the 1530 edition.Pietro Bembo, Incipit of De Aetna, Venice, Aldus Manutius 1495-1496. Leaf C7 recto shows the insertion of the word “pater” above line 15 a line in the space between lines 14 and 15 signals the insertion of a two-line addition to the text supplied in manuscript in the lower margin (now very faint): “neq enim puto huius ignarum rei tamq dormientem / spectatorem sic te ex eo spectaculo redijsse”. In addition they were all included by Bembo in the second revised edition of his text published in 1530. The copy here shows authorial corrections and additions to the text: their hand matches Pietro’s in two fifteenth-century manuscripts of Horace’s Carmina originally in his father’s library and now in Cambridge libraries (MS CUL Dd.15.13 and MS King’s College 34, both also in this exhibition). The text was a fictitious dialogue between the author and his father relating to Pietro’s trip to Mount Etna in Sicily during an eruption, while he was studying Greek with Konstantinus Lascaris in Messina. Pietro’s first Latin work, De Aetna, was also the first Latin literary text printed by Aldus. Il De Aetna (titolo completo: De Aetna ad Angelum Chabrielem liber) un saggio in latino, scritto da Pietro Bembo al ritorno. A well-known humanist, Pietro collaborated with Aldus and played a pivotal role in the edition of a number of classical and humanistic Greek, Latin and vernacular texts by providing ancient or authoritative manuscript exemplars. Aldus was in close contact with the learned Venetian patrician and diplomat Bernardo Bembo (1433–1519) and his son Pietro. ![]()
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