JENSON, NICOLA. - Printer, b. at Sommervöre (Haute-Marne), d. at Venice in September 1480 or 1482. Having come to Italy in 1470, he opened his own workshop in Venice, later entering into partnership with Giovanni di Colonia. He cut very fine Roman typefaces and later Gothic ones as well; he was the first to use the 16mo format (Officium B. M. Virginis, 1474); he ensured the accuracy of the text by employing the humanist Ognibene Leoniceno as proofreader. In 1475 he received from Sisto IV the title of count palatine.
He printed about 150 works, among them the famous Epistole of Cicero, the Rhetorica and Justin (1470); the Decor puellarum (with the erroneous date 1461), Suetonius, Quintilian, Cornelius Nepos (1471); the De civitate Dei (1475); the Bibbia latina and Pliny’s Historia naturalis (1476).