BLADO, ANTONIO. — Celebrated printer of the sixteenth century, born in Lombardy (Asolo or Piadena?) in 1490, died in Rome between 17 and 27 March 1567. He practised his art in Rome from about 1515 onward: the earliest work known to have issued from his presses is an edition of the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, dated 21 November 1516. At the behest of Paul III he founded a Greek printing house, whose activity continued until about 1550. In 1549 he was appointed papal printer, providing the first example of a printing privilege for the official acts of an institution. In this capacity, in 1557 and by order of the Holy Office, he published the first officially sanctioned Index of Forbidden Books, which was suppressed before publication; the second, from the following year, is also extremely rare. Rarer still (only one copy is known, in the Vatican Library) is an Index of the books censured by the theological faculty of Paris, which B. had printed as early as 1549. Another unique item preserved in the Vatican Archives is a valuable Instruction of the Inquisition concerning the Index of Paul IV (1559).
His fame is due above all to the publication of illustrated books, among which the Trattato di scentia d'arme, by C. Agrippa (in-4°, 1553), is particularly noteworthy, with copper engravings of uncertain attribution (Stradano? The school of Marcantonio Raimondi? The school of Leonardo?). The « editio princeps » of Machiavelli’s Principe, issued in 1532, is also very rare.
Outside Rome he printed the Statuta sive constitutiones civitatis Reatae (Rieti 1549), and the Theologicarum institutionum compendium of Cardinal Dolera (Foligno 1562). He favoured italic typefaces, and his device was a crowned eagle facing left, holding a pavese shield in its talons, with the initials A. B. on either side beneath its outspread wings. Annibal Caro evoked his figure in the character of the « Barbagriglia stampatore », publisher of Molza’s Ficheide, in the comedy Gli Straccioni. His work was continued by his sons Bartolomeo, Stefano, Orazio, and Paolo, until the latter retired in 1593, retaining ownership of the papal printing house until 1609.