ALDUS MANUTIUS
(1450–1515)

U&lc XII/4, February 1986
author: Allan Haley

It’s an old problem: who owns the final product of a joint creative product? Is it the person responsible for the initial creative idea? The one who transformed that idea into a reality? Or the person who marketed the product and established its value?

Aldus Manutius and Francesco Griffo da Bologna faced this problem together. The two men formed a creative team that produced some of the communication industry’s most important and influential typeface designs. As in many close and intensely creative relationships, however, the two also quarreled and eventually parted over the issue of product ownership.

CREATIVE TEAM SPLITS UP

The break in the affiliation between Griffo and Manutius did not occur because of a personality clash, but because of a rapidly changing commercial environment. At the time they worked, the typographic industry was evolving from the pioneer age, when one person usually directed every stage of the type design process to a more regulated and structured environment. The organized and somewhat reliable industry of Garamond and Plantin, when a number of recognized and skilled punch cutters supplied the needs of established clientele, still lay in the future. Aldus and Griffo fell between the two extremes, of one person entrepreneurial shops and multi-employee printing business, and the lack of an established work pattern eventually caused their split.

Aldus was an entrepreneur, and his break with Griffo resulted from his trying to ensure the future of his company and protect its assets. The clumsy system of press-privilege popular in 15th-century Italy sought only to protect the interests of the investor, and that always meant the printer or publisher. Aldus was both. So when he tried to protect his company’s substantial investment with a privilege that outlawed all imitation of his type styles, he effectively, though perhaps unintentionally, prevented Griffo from selling his best and most popular designs to other printers. It is no wonder, then, that the two men quarreled. There is no doubt that Griffo was a creative genius, and that without his type designs Aldus’s accomplishments would not have been nearly so important. However, Aldus created the environment that made Griffo’s work possible and the conditions that made his typeface designs necessary.

A GREAT SCHOLAR-PRINTER

Next to Gutenberg, Aldus was perhaps the most important printer of the Renaissance and the first of many great scholar-printers. A successful publisher and businessman, Aldus produced some of the most beautiful and technically accurate books of the 15th century. The Aldine roman, the most popular type style of its time and the model for hundreds of other designs, was but one of his contributions to typography. The portable book and italic type faces are both Aldus innovations. Before Aldus’s time, all books had been much larger, and italics were used only as a writing style. Few have contributed as much or as widely to enrich our typographic heritage as did Aldus Manutius.

To accomplish his many goals, Aldus gathered some of the most creative and talented members of the European printing and publishing community. People like Erasmus, the famous Dutch philosopher, were commonly drawn to his shop. Technicians and laborers were recruited with offers promising high pay and exciting projects. Aldus went to extreme lengths to surround himself with the brightest and the best. It is therefore a little odd that he showed very little understanding of, or good will toward, those who worked so hard for him. Aldus rarely mentioned his co-workers or staff in any of his writings, even though they worked and lived on his property. What little is written about them is not laudatory. In the preface to one of his books, he once referred to his workers as his "damned runaway slaves," and in another piece he complained that “my hired men and workers have conspired against me in my own house… but with the help of God I smashed them that they all thoroughly regret their treachery.” Whether is was with the help of God or that of his principal partner, a member of Italian royalty, it is well recorded that Aldus dealt harshly and remorselessly with those who stood in his way. In personal and business matters, it is recorded that Aldus was capable of extraordinary insensitivity and malice.

INVENTION OF THE SMALL BOOK

Many historians tell us that Aldus first invented small books. He did not. Some say that his work with small publications grew out of an altruistic drive to supply learned text to the masses. This also is a misconception. Aldus was not altruistic; he was a shrewd and creative businessman driven by goals more pragmatic than benevolent.

Small books were printed before Aldus’s time, but the majority of printed material was large—the kind intended for libraries, bookstands, and oral reading. When Aldus began his work, the printing industry was less than 50 years old and still bound by the traditions of scribes and illuminated manuscripts. Small books, or octavos (made from single sheets folded three times, each sheet forming eight leaves, or sixteen pages about 6 × 9 inches), were published before Aldus’s time. As early as 1470, more than 30 years before Aldus’s first work, Nicholas Jenson had printed some small religious texts. There had been still others, but one very important aspect separates those earlier books from Aldus’s small texts. All the previous editions were of a religious or devotional nature. Prayer was considered the only occasion which required an individual to carry a book on one’s person. The scholar was expected to read from a large book sitting on a lectern. Aldus’s originality lay in applying what had previously been a specialized book form to a new and wider field. Aldus was a marketer, not a humanitarian.

A story has evolved that Aldus created the small book for those who could not otherwise afford to purchase literature. Because smaller books cost less to produce, the reduced costs were thus passed along to the consumer. However, Aldus never stated that his books were inexpensive. He often said that they were beautiful, that they were technically perfect, and that they were convenient, but never that they were inexpensive or meant for a mass audience. It has been suggested that Aldus would probably “writhe in his grave” if he knew that many printing scholars credit him as being the originator of the paperback.

Aldus worked for the benefit of the wealthy and the successful. His octavos were intended for busy people of worldly affairs—those who crisscrossed 15th- and 16th-century Europe on the errands of nobility and the business of state. Aldus created his small books for the secular intellectuals of Renaissance Europe, for the people who filled the growing number of universities to prepare for employment as government officials and public servants. These were the people of the educational revolution in 16th-century Europe.

Even though Aldus’s small books were not intended to expand the knowledge of the masses, it still remains that they were a vital development in the emancipation of the uneducated. The “fairy tale” of books for everybody may not be true, but the fact of his small books’ importance, worth, and influence certainly is. With this contribution alone, Aldus could be remembered and revered. He made reading convenient and learning “user friendly.” He set a precedent for personal books of high caliber. And he created texts that were portable yet possessing all the beauty and quality of the larger, library editions.

INVENTION OF ITALIC TYPE

Another typographic tale concerns Aldus’s invention of italic type. Whether true or not, the story is told that Aldus paid Griffo to develop a space-saving cursive type for his small books. It is said that Aldus’s goal was to cut paper costs and thus make his publications less expensive. Then, as now, paper was expensive, but saving paper was not Aldus’s goal in creating italic type.

Early 16th-century printers spoke of “writing” a typeset page as if it were a letter to a friend. As this somewhat unusual terminology, by today’s standards, implies, the typeface provided a much closer link between printer and reader than it does today. Certain styles of type were reserved for specific groups of readers. Aldus was trying less to save space than to appeal to the educated, worldly, and wealthy.

Aldus’s italic type evolved from a popular writing style used by the educated. Its heritage can be traced back to Niccolo de Niccoli, an Italian scholar of the early 15th century. De Niccoli started to oblique and add flourish to his letters when “he wished to write in a faster, more relaxed fashion than usual.” By midcentury other scholars began to imitate his writing style, and by the late 1400s, italic became the official writing style of the learned and of the professional scribes of southern Italy. In fact, the style came to be called cancellaresca because of the large volume of work produced in this type for the city chancelleries.

The cursive style of writing had been developed by the same scholars and learned government officials for whom Aldus created his books. In adapting the style to print, he and Griffo were making their books more appealing to their intended audience. Today, we would call this tactic creative marketing. What is important is that Aldus took an exclusive writing style—almost an art form—and turned it into a typeface, a product that would appeal to, as well as benefit, a growing and eager audience.

PROTECTING THE INVESTMENT

Like any other astute businessperson, Aldus was very aware of the potential value of his product. In an effort to defend his exclusive right to its use, he sought the first known patent privileges for a type style. This was breaking new ground. Previously, only specific book titles were protected, but Aldus had friends in high places and in 1502, the Venetian senate granted his italics official protection. Still unsatisfied, Aldus sought additional, and what he believed was maximum, security from theft. He even had his types protected by papal decree. Aldus was one of the best protected publishers and type developers of his time, and perhaps of all time.

Unfortunately, his efforts were to little avail. Aldus’s italics were copied almost immediately. First they were copied by Griffo, who felt that the design was, after all, his own; later they were copied by contemporary Italian and French printers. The Italians called the design “Aldino,” at least referring to its originator. Others called it “italic,” after Italy. When he could, Aldus fought those who copied his design—some through legal means; others through aggressive business tactics.

Aldus was swift and ruthless. Unfortunately, he was also for the most part, unsuccessful. His italic type became the model for generations of cursive designs. Aldus gave the typographic community one of its most important and beautiful tools, but not entirely willingly.

For all Aldus’s efforts to protect his italic font, he never sought to protect any of his roman fonts. Because he did not actively promote the books he set in these designs, it can be gathered that he cared little for them.

Perhaps he cared so little because, in 15th-century Italy, important works were seldom set in roman type. Most scholarly work was set in Greek. (Aldus was very proud and protective of his Greek type.)

He used his roman types seldom, and only for pieces sponsored by wealthy clients or academic friends. As a consequence, many of his roman types were considered poorly designed—all but one.

In February 1496, Aldus published a rather insignificant essay by the Italian scholar Pietro Bembo. The type used for the text became instantly popular. So famous did it become that it influenced typeface design for generations. Posterity has come to regard the Bembo type as Aldus’s and Griffo’s masterpiece.

A WATERSHED DESIGN

The design was lighter and more harmonious in weight than earlier romans. Text that was set in Bembo type was inviting and easy to read. The basic design was further enhanced by the introduction, three years later, of a font of corresponding capital letters. (The Bembo roman was initially produced as only a lowercase font with capitals pulled from other faces.) The capitals are not quite as tall as the ascenders and they blend exceptionally well with the lowercase. Bembo has a more pronounced weight than previous romans; it is more even in color; and the serifs are lighter and more delicate. Aldus’s and Griffo’s original Bembo design looks somewhat like the romans used today.

This face, which was modestly launched in a 60-page favor to a friend and became eminently popular in Italy, soon found its way to France. The design came to the attention of Garamond, the famous French type founder, and through his efforts to duplicate it the design eventually spread its influence to Germany, Holland, and the rest of Europe. The Aldine roman was to become the foundation of new typeface designs for hundreds of years.

Aldus entered printing rather late in life—after age 40. There is much conjecture among type scholars as to why Aldus left a life of comparative ease as a successful scholar with a noble constituency for a life of toil, labor, and the financial uncertainty of establishing a printing press and publishing business.

A TRUE RENAISSANCE MAN

Little is said of Aldus in history books, except those dealing with the specialized fields of Venetian or Italian life in the 15th and 16th centuries. Yet it is said that without him, or someone like him, the Renaissance in Italy and Europe would not have spread so rapidly. It was Aldus who put the classics into the hands of the new middle class, which had acquired new wealth and sought the same privileges and cultural opportunities for themselves as possessed by the nobility. Aldus produced well over 1,200 titles, some still in existence.

If you were to ask Aldus he would have told you that publishing the Greek classics was his most important accomplishment. More than 90 percent of his production was devoted to this area. It is said that he made a rule that nothing but Greek should be spoken in his shop during the work day so as to create a more classical atmosphere. Aldus’s contributions to the heritage of printing and typography go far beyond the publishing of Greek texts. They are both numerous and conspicuous. He was an eminent scholar-printer, one of the first and most influential. Others were more commercially successful, but few have had the lasting impact made by his Dolphin Press. The prestige of the press grew almost spontaneously. It survived attacks in his lifetime, and not only survived, but flourished, in the four and a half centuries since his death.

Aldus’s roman type, which inspired the work of Garamond and countless other designers, is a milestone in typographic achievement. Few typeface designs have had such a profound and long-lasting influence on succeeding development efforts. The Aldine italic design, although fashionable to criticize by current standards, became the model for most subsequent italic types. When first shown, it met with great and almost instant success. Although its creation was motivated more by business than altruistic reasons, the final product displaced all previously designed cursives and added an important, valuable tool to typographic communication.

THE REAL CONTRIBUTION

Aldus holds a firm position as an advocate of education and a catalyst of social improvement. Even though his books were not produced as inexpensive volumes for less fortunate readers, his decision to enter the printing and publishing trade and to give up the secure and comfortable life of a well-patronized scholar, must have arisen out of a goal to bring education and learning to a wider audience. His work meant that eventually students would no longer have to rely on manuscripts and libraries of the wealthy. Because of Aldus’s work that dependence became a thing of the past. Education became more accessible to individuals. Before Aldus, students gathered around their “masters” to listen as manuscripts and large, expensive books were read aloud. Aldus’s legacy is that of students poring over texts of their own or peopling a library, taking advantage of vast quantities of books and making individual interpretations about what they read.

Aldus died in 1515 at the age of 65. It is said that as he lay in state, his prized possessions—his books—were grouped around him.