(b Saluzzo, 16 Feb 1740; d 29 Nov 1813). Italian typographer. He was born into a family of typographers and at the age of 18 moved to Rome, where he was introduced to Cardinal Spinelli. In 1766 Bodoni set out for England, but illness forced him to return home. He started printing and received some local commissions; then, through the offices of Cardinal Spinelli's librarian, Paolo Maria Paciaudi (1755-1829), he was employed as head of the Stamperia Reale of the dukes of Parma. His early books show the influence of the types used by Pierre-Simon Fournier. He developed a dramatic, bold style, exemplified by the Epithalamia (1775), which celebrates the wedding of the sister of the French king Louis XVI. His mature style achieved a stark brilliance and Neo-classical purity, and from the 1780s he worked with his brother Giuseppe Bodoni (d 1825) to produce his own types. Bodoni made three main innovations in type design: he gave a vertical alignment to the sloped swellings in the bowls of the letters that derive from the down strokes in handwriting; he made all the horizontal serifs on the upper and lower parts of the letters very thin and uniform; and he increased the contrast between stems and serifs. His most celebrated books include Q. Horatii flacci opera (Rome, 1791) and the two-volume P. Virgilii maronis opera (Rome, 1793), whose giant-folio format complemented his typography. Bodoni cut a total of c. 300 fonts of type. In 1806 he exhibited 14 of his books at the Exhibition of National Industry in Paris, where he was awarded gold medals. In 1810 he was granted a pension by Napoleon and awarded the Order of the R?union. Notable late works include La Gerusalemme liberata (2 vols, Parma, 1794), the Iliad (3 vols, Parma, 1808) and F?nelon (2 parts, Parma, 1812). His major work on printing was the Manuale tipografico (Parma, 1788/R as 2 vols, 1818).
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