BODONI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. — The most famous printer of the 18th century, born in Saluzzo on 16 February 1740, died in Parma on 30 November 1813. He worked as a compositor in the printing house of Propaganda Fide in Rome, where he cut all the type for composing in Oriental languages, from 1758 to 1766. In 1768 he moved to Parma, where he became director of the “Reale Stamperia” and, from 1791, also owner of a private workshop. Famous both as a punch-cutter and as a publisher, he brought typographic aesthetics to the highest expression of elegance, faithful to the principle that the beauty of a book should be achieved solely through typographic means, without recourse to illustrations. A follower, though not slavishly, of the French manner of Fournier, he brought it to such perfection that he succeeded in creating typefaces (especially the famous round or Roman ones) of a beauty still unsurpassed today, and of astonishing variety: his Manuale tipografico contained in its 1st ed. (1788) 150 samples of Latin type and 28 of Greek; in the 2nd ed. (published posthumously by his widow in 1818) 291 of Latin, 34 of Greek, 48 exotic, all cut by him. His name is also given today to a special style of binding, with cardboard boards without covering and a flat spine, devoid of mouldings.
B. received honours from all countries: Pius VI and Pius VII addressed him with briefs not stinting in praise; Charles III of Spain granted him the title of “Printer to His Catholic Majesty,” and his successor Charles IV assigned him a pension; another was granted him by Napoleon, who also decorated him with the order of the Réunion.
Among his editions, the following deserve special mention: the Epithalamia in exotic languages, with engravings by Cagnoni, Volpato and others (1775); the Greek Anacreon (1784); Tasso’s Aminta (1789); the Gerusalemme liberata (3 vols. in-fol., 1791); the Oratio dominica polyglotta, published at the exhortation of Pius VII (1806); the Greek Iliad (3 vols. in-fol., 1808); Fénelon (1812). Though they are not always philologically correct, they were eagerly sought after by bibliophiles even during B.’s lifetime, and have today reached hyperbolic values: a copy on vellum of the Iliad was purchased by the Italian government for the Palatine Library of Parma after the First World War at the price of 90,000 lire.