taimatsu | Typography again

Here, have a handout on a Renaissance printer I wrote for my Typography class a few weeks ago. It went with a presentation, but this is the coherent version. The body of it is 1000 words, but the additional bits increase that a lot.

The University of Reading

Department of Typography & Graphic Communication

TY1HG, Introduction to the History of Graphic Communication

Lucy Kennedy, 16 January 2006

Aldus Manutius: “The Master-Printer of Venice.”

Origins:

Aldus Manutius (c.1449-1515) was a printer and publisher in Renaissance Venice. We know little about his background, save that he was born near Rome and educated there. His studies were lengthy and he moved between several cities, meeting many well-known Renaissance scholars.

He became a professional teacher, and made aristocratic contacts which gained him the support necessary to set up in the printing business, a venture which was planned from about 1490, when he was in his forties, but which only began to issue books from 1494.

Associates:

Printing had come to Venice around 1469; the industry soon grew enormously, changing the intellectual and business environment of the area dramatically. By the turn of the century more than 4000 titles had been produced by about 150 presses, the greatest published output of any European city of the period. There was cut-throat competition, and the start-up costs were significant, particularly the acquisition of type. Aldus' ducal support made this substantial capital investment possible.

As well as his ducal backers Aldus had assistance from a contact familiar with the trade. Andrea Torresani had worked for Jenson in the 1470s, learning his trade with one of the greatest predecessors of the Aldine enterprise, and met Aldus in 1493. When Aldus began his own printing work in 1494, Torresani supported the new press. In 1505 Aldus married Torresani's daughter, and the two printers soon combined their businesses.

Aldus is rarely mentioned without a reference to his punchcutter. Though he is often named as Francesco Griffo, his name and origins are uncertain – some scholars identify him as a Francesco Bononi or da Bologna. If we identify him with Griffo, he had been a goldsmith, and was documented as a letter-engraver from 1475 onwards. He was responsible for all the types used by the Aldine press. Sometime in the early 1500s he left the Aldine press and is not definitely heard of thereafter.

Educational publishing:

The first dated book from the Aldine press is a Greek grammar with Latin translation, dated 1494. Aldus was aware that teaching materials for those learning Greek were poor-quality and hard to find, so he made a point of publishing better works and wrote some pamphlets of his own for use by tutors.

Italics:

The major innovation associated with the Aldine press is the use of italic type. Cut by Griffo, the Aldine italic is based on a style of handwriting called 'cancellaresca' script. This was a quickly-written informal script, used by educated people copying texts for friends and associates - a style with connotations of personal learning.

The works published in the new type were carefully selected. They encompassed important scholarly texts of Latin authors, and significant works in Italian. They were prepared by respected academics and were noted for their accuracy. Their 1502 edition of Dante's Divine Comedy was prepared by the eminent Pietro Bembo, who vastly improved the text's grammar and punctuation, and had access to an important 14th-century manuscript version of the poem on which to base the edition; it became the authoritative version for the next 300 years.

The compact forms of italic type saved space, and permitted the publication of physically smaller books. Books were sized based on divisions of a standard printers' sheet; most were published as quartos, the size of the sheet folded in four. The Aldine press brought out their collection of classic works as octavos, half the size of the standard library editions. The new books were pocket-sized and portable.

Before this point the only small, portable books used for everyday reading were religious works. The idea that one might want to carry about the works of the great Latin authors in the same way as a prayerbook was a “revolution in publishing”. Earlier editions of the classics were often available only in folio editions, which required a reading desk to use. Because of the high quality, low cost and portability of the octavo books, these editions, and the italic type in which they were printed, were instantly popular and became associated with learned humanism.

The popularity of italic type inspired many imitators; it eventually encroached significantly on Roman type in Italy and to an extent in the remainder of Western Europe. The books themselves were also imitated – Aldus was granted government protection for his innovation in 1502, but in 1503 had to issue a leaflet explaining the differences between his genuine octavo editions and their inferior copies.

Publishing in Greek:

Aldus is noted for his devotion to Greek scholarship. Before he began publishing in Greek in 1495 such works were very hard to find. Demand was not great, Italians with Greek learning were rare, and Greeks themselves rarely had the money to start presses of their own. The Venetian firm of Laconicus and Alexander published a couple of books in 1486, but soon failed.

It was very difficult to transform Greek script into type. Latin handwriting had been simplified over many years to arrive at the forms used in typefaces; Greek script had not, and it used many ligatures, contractions and diacritical marks which made producing a technically and aesthetically appealing font a great challenge. Laconicus and Alexander's font contained over 1300 sorts.

When the Aldine press prepared its own Greek font, they did not choose any formalised academic Greek script but a handwriting model, which required many ligatures and complex letterforms; the result does not match the clarity of their Roman and italic fonts. The first font included over 330 separate sorts.

The Aldine press' major achievement in Greek publishing was their “monumental” edition of the works of Aristotle. This was published in five volumes between 1495 and 1498. It included most of the works of Aristotle and some writings by his associates. Aristotelian philosophy was central to academic study of the time, and the Aldine edition prompted a return to his work unadulterated by commentary and imprecise translation. In itself it numbered more pages than all other works previously printed in Greek, and its publication has been described as “the greatest publishing venture of the fifteenth century.”

Greek publishing continued throughout Aldus' lifetime, and at his death only one major Greek author, Aeschylus, remained unprinted by the press. His successors rectified this in 1518. Overall, Aldus' Greek publications “transformed the face of learning in Europe.”

Other notable work:

Aldus' most famous Roman type was first cut for use in Bembo's De Aetna in 1496. It is notable as the first type to be clearly based on typographic principles rather than any similarity to manuscript - it was “decisive in shaping the printer's alphabet.”

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Poliphilo's Struggle for Love in a Dream) was probably written by Francesco Colonna, and was published by the Aldine press in 1499 with remarkable woodcut illustrations, still a new idea at the time. It predates the Aldine italic, but represents the second appearance of the De Aetna Roman, which was recut for the Hypnerotomachia, today regarded as an outstanding example of Venetian incunabula.

Aldus died in 1516; the business was carried on by Torresano, until his younger son Paulus Manutius was old enough to take charge. He was succeeded by his own son, also Aldus, but on his death in 1597 the business folded.

Chronology:

1450	1490	1494	1498
Birth	Arrival in Venice	First publications	Works of Aristotle completed

1499	1501	1516	1597
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili published	Italic first used	Died	Press closed

Images: (Please examine these at full size)

Cancelleresca script, handwriting of Antonio Sinibaldi c. 1481

http://www.phil.uni-passau.de/histhw/TutMA/palaeographie.html

Dante's Divine Comedy, Paradise, page 1, printed 1502 by Aldus Manutius, edited by Pietro Bembo. The font is interesting in that it is half-way between a cursive and a sloped roman, having a single-story 'a' but a double-story 'g' (but compare the latter to the 'g' in the handwriting sample above). The capitals separated from the text look odd to us but were less unusual at the time.

http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/text/1502.venice.html

Double-spread from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, printed 1499 by Aldus Manutius. Note typographical experimentation here in the shaping of the text, and the two woodcut illustrations which form a unified whole (showing a triumphal procession)

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/feb2004.html

Terminology:

incunabula - the earliest printed books, those produced before 1501.

cancellaresca - “chancery” script. The word 'chancery' can refer to church administrative divisions. The cancellaresca or chancery style of handwriting was developed in the Papal chancery during the 1400s and spread to secular scholars of the time. It was quick and informal yet legible.

Renaissance humanism – Between c. 1400-1650, a re-examination of the literature of ancient classical cultures led to the development of a philosophy and way of life based on secularism, the pursuit of pleasure, and a prioritising of individual freedom of expression. There was a focus on leading a happy and successful life in this world, in contrast to the previous religious emphasis on ensuring one prepared correctly for the afterlife. This philosophy combined with technological advances to produce a great flowering in all the arts and sciences.

Bibliography:

Books:

Bühler, Curt Ferdinand, The fifteenth-century book : the scribes, the printers, the decorators (Philadelphia/London: University of Pennsylvania Press/Oxford University Press, 1960) pp. 28-32

Carter, Harry, A view of early typography up to about 1600 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp 71-76

Davies, Martin, Aldus Manutius: printer and publisher of Renaissance Venice (London : British Library, 1995)

Lowry, M. J. C., The world of Aldus Manutius: business and scholarship in Renaissance Venice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979)

Robertson, Edward, Aldus Manutius: the scholar-printer 1450-1515 (Manchester: JRUL, 1950)

Websites:

(All accessed 9-14 January 2007)

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/feb2004.html

An interesting illustrated discussion of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili which outlines the work's story and examines some of its typographical features and history.

http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/text/1502.venice.html

On the Aldine edition of the Divine Comedy.

http://hbllmedia2.lib.byu.edu/~aldine/

Comprehensive site accompanying Brigham Young University library exhibition on the Aldine press

http://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/collections/specificcollections/specialcollections/proj/aldus.htm

Another comprehensive university library exhibition site.

http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/humanism.html

Useful outline of Renaissance humanism