Typefaces: Bembo

When getting ready for work this morning, I grabbed my copy of The Prettiest Love Letters in the World: Letters Between Lucrezia Borgia and Pietro Bembo 1503 to 1519 (translated by Hugh Shankland). I have the book because I have long had an interest in Lucrezia Borgia—a fascinating woman, much maligned because of her father and brother—and I enjoy reading the letters and diaries of famous people. So, what does this have to do with a blog post that claims to be about typeface? Well, Bembo (the scholar, Cardinal, and half of the letter-writing team) happens to be the person the an early italic type was named after and the typeface that the letters are reproduced in (more or less—“Monotype Bembo” is what the book officially calls the font.. Okay, I confess I read those typeface blurbs in books that identify the typeface and paper, although the quality of paper is usually betrayed through the subtleties of its texture—I am such a nerd—although this tidbit of typographical trivia was also featured on the book’s back jacket. So, while I will leave the contents of the letters for the curious to discover on their own (save it to say they are very pretty letters, indeed), I will only say that Peitro Bembo was a classical scholar and friend of the printer Aldus Manutius, whose student trip up Mt. Etna, recounted in part in his De Aetna, was printed in 1495 in Francesco Griffo’s first Roman font, which in turn inspired the Bembo typefaces.

Incidentally, I noticed in Thinking with Type that two of my other favorite fonts, Garamond and Palatino, were linked with Bembo.