JENSON, NICOLA. - Printer, b. at Sommervöre (Haute-Marne), d. at Venice in Sept. 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 beautiful Roman typefaces and later Gothic ones as well; he was the first to use the 16mo format (Officium B. M. Virginis, 1474); he took care to ensure the accuracy of the text, employing the humanist Ognibene Leoniceno as corrector. In 1475 he received from Sixtus IV the title of count palatine.

He printed about 150 works, among which are famous the 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 Latin Bible and Pliny's Historia naturalis (1476).

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: R. Folin, Documenti per servire alla storia della tipografia veneziana, Venice 1882; C. Castellani, La stampa in Venezia dalle sue origini alla morte di Aldo, ibid. 1889; H. P. Brown, The venetian printing press, London 1891; E. Pastorello, Bibliografia storico-analitica dell'arte della stampa in Venezia, Venice 1933.

Alessandro Pratesi

@incollection{ec7_jenson_nicola, author = {Pratesi, Alessandro}, title = {Jenson, nicola}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VII}, pages = {575--576}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/jenson-nicola} }

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Jenson, Nicola

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