MANUZIO, FAMILY. - ALDO the ELDER, celebrated publisher and humanist, b. at Bassiano (Rome) in 1449. He studied at Rome and Ferrara, was tutor to the Pio princes of Carpi, whose surname he was granted permission to assume. From Carpi he moved around 1490 to Venice to found a printing house there. From 1494 to 1515, with some interruptions, he published about 130 editions, especially of Greek and Latin classics (27 "principes" editions). Famous are the Aristotle in 5 vols. (1495-98), the Aristophanes (1498), the Poliziano (1498), the Epistles of St. Catherine of Siena (1500), the Demosthenes (1504), the Plato (1513), dedicated to Leo X. From Aldo's printing house there also issued in 1499 what, for its stupendous woodcuts, was called the most beautiful book of the Renaissance, namely the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: an archaeological-allegorizing novel by Fr. Francesco Colonna. For the classical editions, some of which were of great philological value, Aldo associated with himself some of the greatest humanists of the age: Erasmus of Rotterdam, Scipione Forteguerri, Marco Musuro, Giambattista Egnazio, etc., whom he gathered into an Academy (1502), called Aldina after its founder. From 1508 the printer Andrea Torresano, whose daughter he had married in 1505, appears officially as his partner. He died worn out by his immense labor on 6 Feb. 1515.
A universally admired apostle of the diffusion of the classics and of the study of Greek in Italy and in Europe, Aldo made Venice the most important center of classical culture. He was also a brilliant innovator in the field of printing, above all for having devised the small octavo format ("enchiridii forma") with the elegant italic type (Aldine) cut for him by the Bolognese Francesco Griffi. The editions in this format and type: the Virgil and
IN ORATIONEM
CICERONIS
PRO P. SEXTIO
commentarius,
AD ANTONIVM, AELIVM,
POLAE EPISCOPVM.
(from Ch. H. Ktenkens, Die Kunst der Litter, Leipzig 19/6, p. 38)
MANUZIO, FAMILY - Title page of the Pro P. Sextio commentarius.
Edition of Paolo M., Venice 1559.
the Horace of 1501, the Dante of 1502, etc. had
enormous success and found admirers and counter-feiters (despite the papal and Venetian Senate privi-leges) even outside Italy. The celebrated Aldine
device of the anchor with the dolphin appeared for the first
time in the Poetae christiani veteres (1502).
As an author Aldo was above all a grammarian.
He wrote numerous prefaces to his own editions,
some Latin poems; he translated from Greek into Latin.
Bibliography8 works
PAOLO, humanist and printer, son of Aldo, b.
in Venice on 12 June 1512.
In 1533 he reactivated his father's printing house, publishing new editions of the classics, especially Latin ones.
In 1561 he accepted the assignment, procured for him by Cardinal
Girolamo Seripando, of coming to Rome to direct
a printing house desired by the pontiff Pius IV so that it
might publish corrected editions of the Fathers of the Church,
for the purposes of the anti-Protestant polemic. But after the
accession of St. Pius V the printing house, managed by the Popolo
Romano, limited itself more and more to the official
editions issuing from the Council of Trent (Canones et decreta,
Catechismi, Indici e Breviari). In 1570, weary, Paolo
obtained from the Pope the rescission of the contract. He returned to Rome
in 1573 and died there on 6 April of the following year.
A humanist and Ciceronian, Paolo M. always considered his activity as a printer secondary. The commentaries on Cicero, the studies on Roman antiquities, the
prefaces and Latin epistles, reprinted several times,
established his fame as a distinguished Latinist.
Bibliography5 works
ALDO the YOUNGER, scholar and printer, son of
Paolo, b. in Venice on 13 February 1547.
He collaborated with the Torresani in the Aldine printing house
from 1568 onward, and after 1574, following his marriage to Francesca Lucrezia Giunta, he associated
himself with the Giunta printers in various publishing ventures. Contemporaneously he taught eloquence in the Studium
of Padua, whence he moved in 1585 to Bologna, succeeding C. Sigonio, then to Pisa (1587) and finally to Rome
(1588), called there to occupy the chair left
vacant by the death of M. A. Muret. In 1590
the pontiff Clement VIII entrusted him with the direction
of the Vatican Printing House. With his death (28 Oct.
1597) the illustrious family of the M. died out.
Of a very precocious and lively intellect, but rhetorical, and
of an inconstant disposition, he left, together with many secondary writings
of philology and antiquarianism, the principal
works: Vita di Cosimo I de' Medici (1586), Le attioni di Castruccio Castracane (1590) and 300 Lettere
volgari (1592).