Aldus Manutius

Aldus Pius Manutius, Aldo Manuzio, the Elder, (* 1449 in Bassiano; † February 6, 1515 in Venice) was a Venetian printer and publisher.

Life

After studying in Ferrara, Rome and Verona, he taught at the age of about 40 years in Venice a printing a whose products would revolutionize the world of books. In the local Biblioteca Marciana the most extensive collection of Greek manuscripts was available ( from the sack of Constantinople in 1204 ). With a circle of talented typographers he made the publication of this manuscript. His spending, the so-called Aldine, were innovative, inter alia, by its small, the octave approximately corresponding book format that could be produced relatively inexpensively. From about 1494 the first prints of the world appeared to him in Greek letters. With its printing of Greek and Latin works of antiquity and humanist Pietro Bembo and authors such as Petrarch Manutius made ​​a significant contribution to the development of humanism in Europe and the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance.

It has sometimes been claimed that he had died of the consequences of an assassination plot, while others report that he had suffered as a result of revision of an illness from which he died after a few months. Also, the death date is specified differently (5th, 6th or Feb. 8, 1515 ).

After his death his brother led away printing and publishing until in 1533 his son Paul could take the lead.

Work

Manutius was a driving force in the rediscovery of ancient literature through the Renaissance and made simultaneously from the craft an art.

He entertained (also called the Academy ), which took care of the editors of these texts in his house a learned society. Significant humanists, including Jerome Aleandro, Pietro Bembo, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Johannes Reuchlin, were among his friends. From 1495, he moved five books of Aristotle, followed by works of Theocritus, Aristophanes, and Virgil, Juvenal, Petrarch, Martial, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Herodotus, Euripides, Homer, Pindar and Plato. His most famous print was probably the Hypnerotomachia of Francesco Colonna Poliphili ( 1499 ) with excellent woodcuts. In 1502 he moved the Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri.

Even as a typographer Manutius had significant influence on the fledgling art of letterpress printing. The in the printing of the 15th century in northern usual so-called Gothic script, derived from the manuscripts texture, he replaced with new, elaborate letters - the aldi African types, now called Antiqua. In the edition of Virgil in 1501 he first used the italic font ( Anglo-Saxon italic ), the invention, then, is complaining that his signature cutter Francesco Griffo for itself after it was in 1502 divorced in dispute of Manutius and his rival Girolamo ( Gershon ) Soncino changed.

For the typographical design of a punctuation his editions of the works of Bembo and Petrarch including through the regular use of the fixed point at the end of a sentence and by the shape of the comma to mark periods within the set were groundbreaking.

From Hieromonk Makarije, who ran the first printing of South Eastern Europe, it is believed that he had worked in the printing of Manutius and acquired his knowledge there.

Printer character

The sign of the printer Aldus press showing an anchor and a dolphin: The anchor is a symbol of the slowness of the dolphin for speed. The symbolic importance was known to the educated reader of the then extremely popular emblem books. The missing here Festina lente motto is (Ludo ). It is attributed to Augustus and is preserved in Suetonius' biographies and the Noctes of Aulus Gellius Atticae.

Aldus ' Signet, which stood for the care and beauty of his prints, has been repeatedly copied from other printers in Europe.

Others

End of the 20th century was Aldus Manutius still a late honor: the Aldus Corporation, a company that layout program PageMaker brought in 1985 to the market and thus desktop publishing (DTP ) paved the way, was called by the Venetian printer. In September 1994, Aldus merged with Adobe Systems and is thus now also history.

Works

• Institutionum grammaticarum libri quattuor / Aldi Manutii Romani. -. Digitized by 1507 edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf