CASTALDI, PAMFILO. - Italian physician and printer, b. in Feltre c. 1398 (22 Sept.?), d. perhaps in Venice after 1479. The scant information available on him allows only a few certain dates to be established: in 1461, and certainly until 1464, he was in Capodistria and practiced medicine there; in 1469 he was in Venice, in 1471 in Milan as a printer “cum privilegio” of Galeazzo Maria Sforza; in 1472 he renounced the privilege; in 1474 he was again in Venice.
A legend, based on a late chronicle by Fr. A. Cambruzzi (Storia di Feltre, Feltre 1674) and on the erroneous interpretation of some archival documents, sees in C. the inventor of printing: but such a tradition, formed in the second half of the 19th century, has been shown by criticism to be unfounded and is now entirely abandoned. What may still be considered possible (if the notice of two little sheets that he allegedly printed in Capodistria c. 1461 is true) is that C. was the first Italian typographer: nor can it be excluded that he in a certain sense “reinvented” printing on the basis of news coming from Mainz, without having direct knowledge of Gutenberg’s experiments and method.
It seems certain that works issued from his press, in collaboration with A. Zarotto, include the De verborum significatu of Festus, the Cosmographia of Pomponius Mela, and the work of L. B. Alberti, published anonymously in Milan in 1471. Probably also due to his work is the edition of Cicero’s Epistolae that appeared in Milan in March 1472 under the name of Filippo di Lavagna, who had associated with C. during that period.