page_title: Giambattista Bodoni
section_title: Life and work in Parma (1768-1813)
hierarchical_section_title: Giambattista Bodoni / Biography / Life and work in Parma (1768-1813)
caption_attribution_description: English: Quosque tandem . . . The largest Bodoni font of all (in honor of Saluzzo).
context_page_description: Giambattista Bodoni was an Italian typographer, type-designer, compositor, printer and publisher in Parma.
  He first took the type-designs of Pierre Simon Fournier as his exemplars, but afterwards became an admirer of the more modelled types of John Baskerville; and he and Firmin Didot evolved a style of type called "Modern," in which the letters are cut in such a way as to produce a strong contrast between the thick and thin parts of their body. Bodoni designed many typefaces, each one in a large range of type sizes. He is even more admired as a compositor than as a type designer, as the large range of sizes which he cut enabled him to compose his pages with the greatest possible subtlety of spacing. Like Baskerville, he sets off his texts with wide margins and uses little or no illustrations or decorations.
  Bodoni achieved an unprecedented level of technical refinement, allowing him to faithfully reproduce letterforms with very thin "hairlines", standing in sharp contrast to the thicker lines constituting the main stems of the characters.
context_section_description: After convalescing in Saluzzo, Bodoni started working with his father again. Meanwhile, in Parma, the young duke, Don Ferdinando di Borbone (Duke Ferdinand of Parma), and the prime minister, Guillaume du Tillot, were making plans to start a royal press. They wanted someone hardworking and talented to set it up and run it. Father Paolo Maria Paciaudi, the librarian at Parma, who had known Bodoni in Rome, put the young man's name forward. In February 1768, with the permission of Duke Vittorio Amedo III of Savoy, Bodoni left Saluzzo for the court of Parma.
  He started work right away. The challenge was tremendous; he needed help, so wrote to two of his brothers to come from Saluzzo to assist him. One of them, Giuseppe, remained by his side at the press in Parma for over 30 years. In tandem with Du Tillot, Bodoni acquired everything necessary for a printing business of the highest order: presses, paper, ink, tools, and he ordered type from Fournier in France. He used Fournier's letters for early work published in Parma, gradually replacing it with his own imitations of Fournier, and eventually developing his own style.
  His first major publication at the royal press was the extravagant volume in celebration of the wedding of the duke of Parma to Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, "Descrizione delle Feste Celebrate in Parma per le Auguste Nozze . . ."As an example of its kind, it remains unsurpassed in its beauty and printing technique, and it showed the rest of Europe that the young Italian was a printer to be reckoned with.
  Several major presentation volumes would follow, along with the various publications required by the court: announcements, invitations, posters, and many sonnets written by those who wished their work to be printed by the great Bodoni. He also began a series of specimen volumes, the first of which, "Fregi e majuscule" (1771) was in direct imitation of Fournier. His Manuale tipografico of 1788 paved the way for his masterwork, the "Manuale tipografico" of 1818, published posthumously by his widow.
  Other cities tried to woo Bodoni away from Parma. Other patrons wished to oust the duke. The most formidable of these was José Nicolás de Azara, the Spanish ambassador to Rome. He felt Bodoni was wasting himself on unimportant work for the duke when he should instead be printing gorgeous editions of the classics. Bodoni was tempted by the offer to move to Rome, but in 1791, when the duke realized the seriousness of the threat, he offered Bodoni his own private press where he could print whatever he wished for whomever he wished. Bodoni had no desire to leave comfortable Parma, where he had just married (at the age of 51) Margherita Dall’Aglio, a local woman 18 years his junior. He remained in Parma for the rest of his life, running both ducal and private presses, and printing editions of the classics for Azara and other patrons.
  In the years following 1791, Bodoni produced much of his greatest work, including the great classics of Horace, Virgil, Anacreon, Tasso, and Homer, among others. Napoleon was so delighted with the gift of Bodoni's "Iliad" that he made him a Chevalier of the Order of the Reunion and gave him a pension for life.
  The duke of Parma died suddenly and mysteriously in 1802, the duchess fled to Prague, and the French swooped in to fill the vacuum. Bodoni, who lived to work, was apolitical and had no trouble in allying himself with the new régime.
  His fame became comparable to that of today's rock star. Visitors flocked to his print works on the banks of the river Parma, wanting a glimpse of him working in his studio. Benjamin Franklin, a printer himself, wrote a fan letter. In 1805, even the emperor Napoleon and empress Josephine visited the city and asked to see him; alas, that very day Bodoni was confined to bed with a disastrous attack of gout, a disease that was to plague him until the end of his life.
  On his trip to Paris to crown Napoleon emperor, Pope Pius VII had been impressed by a copy of Jean-Joseph Marcel's "Oratio Dominica," which contained the Lord's Prayer in 150 languages. Visiti
caption: Quosque tandem . . . The largest Bodoni font of all (in honor of Saluzzo).
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