Nicolas Jenson
Nicolas Jenson (* 1420 in Sommevoire, France, † 1480 in Venice) was a French engraver, typographer, calligrapher, printer, publisher and bookseller.
Life
Nicolas Jenson was initially a painter, worked at the Royal French Mint Monnaie de France in Paris, possibly as an engraver, later he was Master of the Mint of Tours. He came in the fall of 1458 with a decree of the French king Charles VII to Mainz to learn at Johannes Gutenberg and so to make its inventions available for France.
From 1468 on, the year of death of Johannes Gutenberg, Jenson was in Venice and worked first for the brothers John and Wendelin von Speyer, whom he knew from his time in Mainz. There arose in 1470 as a first roman typeface, which was used for the printing of Cicero's Epistolae ad brutum (GW 6859 ). 1471 was followed by a Greek, by 1473 a total of five round black letters or Gotico - Antiquas. In addition to a print shop he operated from 1475 a book trading company. Here De proprietate latini sremonis was moved by Nonius Marcellus, among others, in 1476. When Nicolas Jenson died in Venice in 1480, he was a wealthy and respected man and the greatest printer - publisher of Venice in the period before Aldus Manutius. In the Venetian decade created a total of approximately 100 printing units.
Writings
The writings after 1470 mentioned can be clearly attributed to Jenson. The 1469 used by John of Speyer Antiqua for the book Cicero, Epistolae familiares that of Jenson is so similar that they may also stemmed from his workshop; Albert Kapr hypothesized that a copy of the printing of the convent of Marienthal could have also originated from Jenson.
The shapes of the resulting 1470 Jenson roman apply in its powerful aesthetics and vitality for many today as unmatched. Many Antiqua fonts that originated at the beginning of the 20th century, built on the character of Jenson roman or are almost exact copies. These are in particular the writings of the private presses: Kelmscott Press ( Golden Type ), Doves Press, Bremer Presse, Cranach Press etc.
Bruce Rogers developed the Centaur 1912-1914, from the 1928 version for the Monotype Corporation. arose, Morris Fuller Benton, the Cloister Old Style (1914 ) for the American Type Founders ( ATF). Modern versions created with the ITC Legacy ( Ronald Arnholm, 1992) and Adobe Jenson (Robert Slimbach, 1995); San Marco by Karl Georg Hoefer (1991 ) builds on the round black letters Jenson and is thus suitable for the font mix with the expressed roman typefaces.