Niccolò de' Niccoli

Niccolò Niccoli (* 1365 in Florence, † February 3, 1437 ) was an Italian merchant and important representative of Renaissance humanism. He took in his hometown a significant role in the field of cultural policy and created with the Humanist cursive the archetype of the Latin script and the conditions for the development of the first italic printing type.

Life

Niccoli studied with the force as an early humanist Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna, and was also a pupil of Manuel Chrysoloras. Approximately 1397 brought Coluccio Salutati him and Guarino da Verona to Florence. An admirer of the "new learning " was Niccoli a tireless collector of ancient manuscripts and copiers. He was a friend of Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni and Lorenzo Valla.

Niccoli, leaving not a single own work. After his death, Cosimo de ' Medici resolved to the 800 manuscripts from its creditors and brought them in 1444 in the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence, which thus became the first public library.

Pioneer of Latin cursive and italic roman type

Niccolò Niccoli made ​​a lasting contribution to the development of Latin cursive. With his rich experience as a calligrapher, he developed the rapid copying of many ancient manuscripts that were written mainly in Carolingian minuscule, a novel manuscript ( first 1423 shown ). She is ( italic german, french italique ) as humanistic cursive in the history of writing received. This publication, which had no role models, characterized by fluency and clarity. The slanted lowercase were characterized by a synthesis between the Italian forms of Gothic Italic and Carolingian script elements of humanistic minuscule. They were not built, but to write cage, one and often linked. The straight -standing capitals were taken from the Capitalis monumentalis. Thus formed the Humanist cursive as dynamically accentuated use writing a successful counterpart to the static point font, the Humanist minuscule ( forerunner of Antiqua ).

Niccolò Niccoli created with his handwriting the archetype of the Latin script. His cursive was adopted by many humanist scholars and artists ( Julius Pomponius Laetus had contributed to their dissemination ). At the same time Niccoli created the conditions for the development of the first italic printing type. With the stylistic perfection of the so-called Cancellaresca Scripture 1500 was cut by the engraver Francesco Griffo and used in 1501 by Aldus Manutius for letterpress printing in Venice. Thus you mold structure stabilized to a prototype of cursive, which was then varied only in detail. The French engraver Claude Garamond (1480-1561) was the first who succeeded to connect the cursive with just standing Antiqua an aesthetic unit. Since then, one of each font family of Antiqua Italic as the design of the typeface.

Handwriting of the poet Jacopo Sannazaro

The first italic Aldus Manutius for printing type in the Virgil edition from 1501

Antiquarian and Rare - Italic Garamond