Francesco Torniello da Novara (c. 1490 – 1589) was a

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

ese typographer, writer and

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent Religious institute, religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor bei ...

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders in the Catholic Church. There are also friars outside of the Catholic Church, such as within the Anglican Communion. The term, first used in the 12th or 13th century, distinguishes the mendi ...

who became known for applying geometric specifications to

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

capital letters

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...

Life

Torniello was born between 1488 and 1491 in Barengo, which was part of the

Duchy of Milan The Duchy of Milan (; ) was a state in Northern Italy, created in 1395 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, then the lord of Milan, and a member of the important Visconti of Milan, Visconti family, which had been ruling the city since 1277. At that time, ...

. He came from a noble family of the area. He studied

geometry Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...

and mathematics. In 1519 he joined the

Order of Friars Minor The Order of Friars Minor (commonly called the Franciscans, the Franciscan Order, or the Seraphic Order; Post-nominal letters, postnominal abbreviation OFM) is a Mendicant orders, mendicant Catholic religious order, founded in 1209 by Francis ...

as a preacher. In 1525 Torniello and his brother, Giovanni Antonio gained Milanese citizenship. He died in 1589 in the monastery of Treviglio in the Duchy of Milan.

Works

Torniello's works were focused on adopting the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

inscriptions as original as possible, while simultaneously improving their geometric conditions. His works were influenced by Luca Pacioli's ''Divine Proportione'' (''Divine Proportions'') and Sigismondo Fanti. These fonts were not then designed for usage in the printing press, but as a model for artistic inscriptions. Torniello designed a 18X18 grid which served as a

coordinate system In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine and standardize the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The coordinates are ...

for his geometrical fonts, which were designed for printing press usage. In his work ''Opera del modo de fare le littere maiuscole antique'', which was printed in 1517, Torniello enriched, calligraphically and geometrically, previously-existing fonts. Geometrical conditions were added to the letters "M", "R", "S" and "T". The letters "S" and "T" were also enriched calligraphically. In order to broaden the usage of his fonts in non-Latin texts Torniello added the letter "Z". He also was the first typographer to define the point as unit of measurement in typography.

Writings

*''Opera del modo de fare le littere maiuscole antique'', 1517, Milan. Only four copies of the book exist today: one is located in

Seville Seville ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Spain, Spanish autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the Guadalquivir, River Guadalquivir, ...

, one in Milan and two in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Torniello, Francesco Italian male writers 1490 births 1589 deaths Italian typographers and type designers Italian Friars Minor