Antiqua

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A facsimile of Nicholas Jenson's roman type used in Venice circa 1470. The abstracted long "s" (resembling a barless "f") fell out of use centuries later.

Antiqua typefaces are those designed between about 1470 and 1600, specifically those by Nicholas Jenson and the Aldine roman comissioned by Aldus Manutius and cut by Francesco Griffo. Antiqua letterforms were modelled on a synthesis of Roman inscriptional capitals and Carolingian writing. They are also known as Venetian types.

Antiqua's Germanic opposite is blackletter, in which the letter forms are broken or fractured. In 19th- and 20th-century Germany, there was a dispute over whether German should be written in antiqua or the highly-developed Fraktur blackletter.

[edit] See also

• Bembo
• History of western typography
• Roman type
• Typography

[edit] References

• Nesbitt, Alexander The History and Technique of Lettering (c) 1957, Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-486-20437-8, Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 57-13116. The Dover edition is an abridged and corrected republication of the work originally published in 1950 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. under the title Lettering: The History and Technique of Lettering as Design.