Giambattista Bodoni (February 16, 1740 in Saluzzo – November 29, 1813 in Parma) was an Italian engraver, publisher, printer and typographer of high repute remembered for designing a family of different typefaces called Bodoni.
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Bodoni came from a printmaking background, his father and grandfather both being in that trade.[1] He worked for a time as an apprentice in the Vatican's Propaganda Fide printing house in Rome. There, it was said he impressed his superiors so much with his eagerness to learn, studiousness in mastery of ancient languages and types, and energy of effort, that he was allowed to place his own name on his first books, a Coptic Missal and a version of the Tibetan alphabet.[1] With Baskerville in England and the Didot family in France, Bodoni was a leader in originating pseudoclassical typefaces. [2]
After a battle of malaria put Bodoni out of commission for a while, he was hired by the Duke Ferdinand of Bourbon-Parma to organize a printing house in Parma, to be one of the great houses of Italy, called la Stamperia Reale. Bodoni got to work publicizing the house with the creation of specimen books, which were very well received amongst the upper classes of European capitals.[1] Soon, fine editions of classical and respected works followed, such as Homer's works and Gerusalemme Liberata of Torquato Tasso. Eventually his success was such that he was permitted to open a printing house under his own name, Officina Bodoni.
Bodoni achieved an unprecedented level of technical refinement, allowing him to faithfully reproduce letterforms with very thin "hairlines", standing in sharp contrast to the thicker lines constituting the main stems of the characters. He became known for his designs of pseudoclassical typefaces and highly styled editions some considered more apt "to be admired for typeface and layout, not to be studied or read."[3] His printing reflected an aesthetic of plain, unadorned style, combined with purity of materials. This style attracted many admirers and imitators, surpassing the popularity of French typographers such as Philippe Grandjean and Pierre Simon Fournier.
Unflagged by his famous rivalry with Didot, in his life Bodoni designed and personally engraved 298 typefaces, and the various printing houses he managed produced roughly 1,200 fine editions.[4] After his death at Parma, 1813, his widow published Il Manuale tipografico (The Manual of Typography), presenting 373 characters, 34 Greek and 48 Oriental or exotic ones.William Morris considered Bodoni's mechanical perfection in typography the ultimate example of modern ugliness. On his chest, when examining his dead body they found the deep scar left by the bar of the printing press.
The Bodoni Museum, named for the artisan, was opened in Parma, Italy in 1963.[5]