Cancellaresca von Giovanni Antonio Tagliente, 1524

Giovanni Antonio Tagliente (sometimes written ''Giovannantonio'') (c. 1460s – c. 1528) was a

calligrapher Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "t ...

, author, printer and

publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

based in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

during the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...

period. Tagliente began his life as a calligrapher and taught around Italy before returning to Venice in 1491. He worked for the Venetian Chancery and was given a sinecure by the senate, becoming a publisher late in life. Tagliente's publications were textbooks and self-help volumes. These included guides on learning to read, arithmetic, accounting, embroidery patterns, textile production and a book of model love letters. Some of his books were very popular and were issued in dozens of editions. They have come to attention of feminist and social historians for their promotion of reading for women and the uneducated; his textbook on reading aimed to teach reading "in a period of two months, more or less depending on the intelligence of the reader." He also wrote for a target market of potential civil servants. Tagliente published a writing manual, ''The True Art of Excellent Writing'' or ''Lo presente libro'', in Venice in 1524, with engravings and some text set in an italic typeface presumably based on his calligraphy. Tagliente's typeface was an inspiration for historically inclined typeface designers in modern times, becoming the inspiration for the italic of the popular 1928 book typeface

Bembo Bembo is a serif typeface created by the British branch of the Monotype Corporation in 1928–1929 and most commonly used for body text. It is a member of the " old-style" of serif fonts, with its regular or roman style based on a design cut ar ...

. Historian Alfred F. Johnson reprinted his work, along with his contemporary

Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi ( Cornedo Vicentino, 1475?–1527?) was a papal scribe and type designer in Renaissance Italy. Very little is known of the circumstances of his life. He may have started his career as a writing master in Venice, ...

References

External links

Lo Presente Libro
(

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

digitisation)
Page on Tagliente
by

Luc Devroye Luc P. Devroye is a Belgian computer scientist and mathematician and a James McGill Professor in the School of Computer Science of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Devroye specializes in the probabilistic analysis of algorithms ...

16th-century Venetian writers 16th-century male writers Italian typographers and type designers Italian printers Italian publishers (people) Italian scribes Italian non-fiction writers {{authority control