De proprietate latini sermonis

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De proprietate latini sermonis

Printer Nicolaus Jenson, Venice

Binder Kalthoeber, London

Author Nonius Marcellus (Roman, 4th century CE)

Place of OriginVenice, Italy

Date1476

DimensionsLeaf: 27.9 × 19.7 cm (11 × 7 3/4 in.)

Mediumprinted book, ink and pencil on blank sheet; crimson Morocco binding

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1922.99

Not on View

Label TextAmong the earliest printers in Venice, Nicholas Jenson was the most skillful. Much of his fame rests on the beauty of his Roman type. He selected and improved the Roman letters of his time and produced a model that for a long period was unexcelled. Many of the Jenson characteristics exist today. Jenson printed from 1470 to 1480. Jenson ranks among the most skillful of the early printers in Venice. This beautiful sermon book is an excellent example of the masterful printing Jenson achieved. Much of his fame rests on the beauty of his Roman type, as can be seen here and from Jenson's Pliny text (exhibited nearby). Jenson was a great success. both financially and artistically. He produced superb books in roman, gothic, and greek types of the greatest distinction. Indeed, Jenson's roman type, distinguished for the clarity of lerrer forms and their arrangment on a page, became the model for what is used today. Renaissance readers were eager to obtain classic texts and thus broaden their knowledge of the world. Pliny (23-79 A.D.; he died as a result of the Mount Vesuvius eruption) compiled a massive encyclopedia on natural history, which remains one of the great litrary monuments of first century Roms. For centuries this text was regarded as the chief authority on scientific matters; its inaccuracies were not challenged until 1492.