BODONI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. — The most famous printer of the eighteenth century, born in Saluzzo on 16 February 1740, died in Parma on 30 November 1813. A compositor in the printing house of Propaganda Fide in Rome, where he reorganized all the punches for composition in Oriental languages, during the years 1758–66 he moved to Parma in 1768, where he became director of the «Reale stamperia» and, from 1791, also the owner of a private workshop. Celebrated both as a typecutter and as an editor, he brought typographical aesthetics to the highest expression of elegance, faithful to the principle that the beauty of a book should be achieved through typographical means alone, without recourse to illustrations. A non-servile follower of Fournier’s French manner, he brought it to such perfection that he succeeded in casting types—above all the famous rotondi or romani—of a beauty still unsurpassed today, and of astonishing variety: his Manuale tipografico contained, in the first edition (1788), 150 specimens of Latin type and 28 of Greek, and, in the second edition (published posthumously by his widow in 1818), 291 of Latin, 34 of Greek, and 48 exotic types, all engraved by him. His name is also used today to designate a special type of binding, with cardboard boards without coverings and a flat spine devoid of moldings.
B. received honors from every country: Pius VI and Pius VII addressed briefs to him, lavish in praise; Charles III of Spain granted him the title of «tipografo di Sua Maestà cattolica», and his successor Charles IV assigned him a pension; he received another from Napoleon, who also conferred upon him the order of the Réunion.
Among his editions, particular mention should be made of: the Epithalamia in exotic languages, with engravings by Cagnoni, Volpato, and others (1775); the Greek Anacreonte (1784); Tasso’s Aminte (1789); the Germaleone liberata (3 vols. in-fol., 1791); the Oratio dominica polyglotta, published at the urging of Pius VII (1806); the Greek Iliade (3 vols. in fol., 1808); and Fenelon (1812). Although they are philologically deficient, since they are not always accurate, they were highly sought after by bibliophiles even during B.’s lifetime, and today have attained exorbitant values: a parchment copy of the Iliade was acquired by the Italian government for the Palatine Library of Parma after the First World War, at a price of 90,000 lire.