JENSON, NICHOLAS. - Printer, b. at Sommervoire (Haute-Marne), d. in Venice in Sept. 1480 and 1482. Having come to Italy in 1470, he opened his own workshop in Venice, later associating with John of Cologne. He cut some very beautiful Roman typefaces and later also Gothic ones; he was the first to use the 16mo format (Officium B. M. Virginis, 1474); he ensured textual accuracy by employing the humanist Ognibene Leonceno as proofreader. In 1475 he received from Sixtus IV the title of Count Palatine.
He printed about 150 works, including the famous Epistles 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 Latin Bible and Pliny’s Historia naturalis (1476).