#arrighi

— Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century

the lower section of the illustration displays lettera bollatica. bollatica is a  gothic bastarda (cursive) evolved in the vatican scriptoria for express purpose of inditing papal bulls—the most formal class of ecclesiastical communication, authenticated by an attached leaden seal (bulla). «As late as the pontificate of Leo X, it was thought a graceful compliment to him, when the exquisite neo-classical poet, Marcantonio Casanova, lost in the sack of Rome, presented to the Pope the manuscript of his ‘Heroica’ now in Naples, written in bollatica;» [james wardrop, The Script of Humanism, at the clarendon press, oxford, 1963, p5].

Four hundred year old bitching about the disappearance of the middle class. Who'd have thought.

illustration abstracted from St John on the Island of Patmos [engraving] by martin schongauer [Catalogue of the Sixth Annual Exhibition of Engravings, Woodcuts, Etchings of the XV and XVI Centuries, m. knoedler & co., new york, 1930, p66]; collection of the met & the public domain. schongauer flourished just before the potinficate of alexander vi, he died in 1491. schongauer appears in vasari’s The Lives [giorgio vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori, torrentino, florence, 1550].

demetrius’ words in shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, act 3, scene 2. set in trattatello, apple’s own, abbreviated, yet still well appointed, version of p22 operina. designed by james grieshaber, operina is not adapted from printing types but rather from xylographic exemplars [probably the work of ugo da carpi] depicting the chancery cursive as practiced by a 16c scribe in the apostolic chancery, ludovico degli arrighi, & appearing in the first printed specimen of cursive calligraphy, La Operina di Ludovico Vicentino, da imparare di scriuere littera Cancellarescha [rome, 1522]. arrighi, also publisher, had proprietary types cut after his designs—for details of a modern recutting vide ‹o lovely hand›.

set in digital reissue of monotype centaur italic—vide ‹o lovely hand›.

opening line set in digital reissue of monotype poliphilus—vide ‹poor poliphilo›. body set in digital reissue of monotype blado; small-caps from poliphilus roman are fitted to the blado italic to attain period compositional style—renaissance typographers sought to recreate scribal custom; they adapted the scripts of humanist scribes.  blado is the 1923 recutting [english monotype 119] of antonio blado’s larger italic adapted from the 2nd italic of ludovico degli arrighi da vincenza, & first shown in the Apologi IIII of petrus collenucius, printed by arrighi, rome, 1526 [stanley morison, A Tally of Types, cup, 1973, p53]. «It originated in Rome in 1526 but it was the Vita Sfortiae of Paolo Giovo printed by Antonio Blado in 1539 that served as the basis for the recutting in 1923.» [ibid., p60].  (2nd illustration.)  separator is a line of monotype digital reissue of their recutting [uk monotype 280]—vide ‹granjon arabesque?›.

(di Dimitri Domenichella)