Griffo
NAME: Griffo, Francesco
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Italian calligrapher and type-cutter who designed and cut the first italic font
NICKNAME/ALIAS: also known as Griffi
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: c. 1470, at Bologna, Italy
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 1518/19, at Bologna, Italy. Aged around 50
DISCIPLINE: Calligrapher and type cutter
FIELD: Calligraphy and type-cutting
LANGUAGE: Italian
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LIFE AND TIMES:
Francesco Griffo (or Griffi) was born probably at Bologna, Italy, around 1470, but very few details concerning his life survive.
Probably from the early 1490s, Griffo was employed at Venice as a type designer and cutter by <employed by> Manutius*, who was in the process of establishing the Aldine Press, which was soon to become famous throughout Europe for its affordable,
high-quality editions of Greek texts.
Griffo, who was already clearly a talented and experienced type-cutter, must have spent these first years experimenting with the first Greek designs, and then during the late 1490s Manutius commissioned and used 12 type-fonts in three different languages:- six round or "Roman" Latin types, and the famous italic; four Greek cursive font, similar to each other in basic conception, but different in detail; and one Hebrew font - all of which were Griffo's workmanship.
Around 1498, Griffo developed and cut the new Roman font which later became known as italic cursive, and which was based on the calligraphy of <based work on that of> Niccoli's* school of copyists and was of particularly graceful design and proportions.
The first text in which this new italic font was used was in Manutius's edition of Virgil, printed in 1501. The success of the Aldine Press meant that Griffo's Roman italic fount became known and admired across Europe.
In 1502, after a disagreement with Manutius (probably over commercial ownership of the type designs), Griffo left Venice and began working in the service of Gerolamo Soncino of Fano, for whom he designed a Latin italic font the following year.
By 1516 Griffo had established his own press, with which he published an edition of Petrarch's 'Canzonieri'. This independence was short-lived, however, as in May 1518 he attacked and killed his son-in-law with an iron bar, faced a murder charge in Bologna with unknown results, and was dead by October 1519.
ASSESSMENT: Designed the first Roman italic font.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Francesco Griffo, who designed the italic font
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Lowry, Martin, The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979.