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Category	Serif
Classification	Old style
Designer(s)	Stanley Morison
Foundry	Monotype

Bembo is the name given to a 20th-century revival of an old style serif or humanist typeface cut by Francesco Griffo around 1495.

The typeface Bembo seen today is a revival designed under the direction of Stanley Morison for the Monotype Corporation in 1929.

It is considered a good choice for expressing classic beauty or formal tradition in typographical design and is generally held to be a good book face.

Distinctive Visual Identifiable Characteristics[link]

Characteristics of this typeface are the following:

lower case: double-storey a.

upper case: the capital Q's tail is centered under the figure, the uppercase J has a slight hook, and there are two versions of uppercase R, one with a straight tail and one with a curved tail.^{[citation needed]}

Bembo is a classic typeface that displays the characteristics that identify Old Style, humanist designs:

• minimal variation in thick and thin stroke weight
• small x-height
• ascender height exceeding cap height
• oblique stress
• short, bracketed serifs with cupped bases
• angled top serifs on lower case letters

History[link]

Type specimen by Aldus Manutius, from Pietro Bembo's De Aetna, 1495–96.

Griffo cut punches for the Venetian press of the humanist printer Aldus Manutius. The face was first used in February 1496 (1495 more veneto), in the setting of a book entitled Petri Bembi de Aetna Angelum Chalabrilem liber, a 60-page text about a journey to Mount Aetna written by the young Italian humanist poet Pietro Bembo, later a Cardinal and secretary to Pope Leo X.

Six years later Griffo was responsible for the first italic types, cut for Aldus.

A second version of the roman face followed in 1499 and this type was used to print the famous illustrated Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. This typeface served as a source of inspiration for typefaces of the Parisian typefounder Claude Garamond, for Voskens and many others, which were themselves the sources for Caslon types and many other European types of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.^[1]

Griffo was the first punch-cutter to fully express the character of the humanist hand that contemporaries preferred for manuscripts of classics and literary texts, in distinction to the book hand humanists dismissed as a gothic hand or the everyday chancery hand. The typeface called Bembo has a calligraphic feel that is particularly evident in the serifs. It has a delicate transitional curve that rises up into the stem of each letter. Many lowercase letters exhibit hints of sinuous curves reminiscent of those generated by hand-drawn letters; the termination of the arm of both the r and the e flare slightly upward and outward. The lowercase c has a subtle forward slant, a reversal of the oblique stress of the o. Characters h, m, and n have a slight returned curve on their final stem. Lowercase italic k has an elegantly curved stroke in the lower-right. One of the main characteristic that distinguished Griffo's types from earlier Venetian forms is the way in which the ascenders of the lowercase letters stand taller than the capitals. An infant variety also exists, which contains single-story versions of the letters A and G.

According to the authors of Typographic Specimens: The Great Typefaces, Bembo is noted for its ability to "provide a text that is extremely consistent in color and texture," helping it to "remain one of the most popular book types since its release."

Monotype history[link]

Monotype Bembo is generally regarded as one of the most handsome revivals of Aldus Manutius’s 15th-century roman type. However there is no italic cut with it. The rumor goes that Stanley Morison commissioned Alfred Fairbank (Born: Grimsby, United Kingdom, 1895, Died: Hove, Sussex, 1982), a renowned calligrapher, to design an italic for Bembo. This was released in metal type in 1929, but Fairbank claimed that he made the design independently and sold the drawings to Monotype.

Fairbank’s design—although very beautiful—was, however, not used at first with the Bembo roman. A more conventional italic was cut by Monotype and used to complete to the Bembo font-family.

Fairbank’s first design, which was based on the work of 16th-century writing master Ludovico degli Arrighi, was, however, made available in 4 sizes, named Bembo Condensed Italic.

Recently available fonts[link]

More recently, Bembo is the typeface used for volumes in the Everyman's Library series. It is also the principal typeface in the Rough Guides series of travel books.

Available matrices[link]

Large composition matrix-case with Bembo 270-16 roman, prepared for casting with a standard wedge S5-13.75 set.

Large composition matrix-case with Bembo 270-24 pt roman, 19.5 set

270: Bembo roman/italic

composition-matrices UA.91: 6D - 14pt ^[2]

variants: long and short descenders

large composition matrices: 14pt-24pt

display-matrices:

428: Bembo bold romein/cursief

composition-matrices: UA.368: 6D - 14pt ^[3]

groot-zetselmatrijzen: 14pt-18pt

display-matrices:

294: Bembo condensed Italic cursief

composition-matrices: UA.360: 4 sizes: 10pt - 16pt UA.361: 16pt ^[4]

428: Bembo Heavy (zie: 428 Bembo Bold)

509: Bembo semi-bold romein/cursief

composition-matrices: UA.91: 5.5pt ^[5]

370: Bembo titling romein/cursief

display-matrices:^[5]

See also[link]

• Antiqua
• History of western typography
• Typography
• Cardo

Notes[link]

References[link]

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (September 2009)

• Lawson, Alexander S., Anatomy of a Typeface. Godine: 1990. ISBN 978-0-87923-333-4.
• Meggs, Philip B. and Rob Carter.Typographic Specimens: The Great Typefaces. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: 1993. ISBN 0-471-28429-7
• Meggs, Philip B. and McKelvey, Roy.Revival of the Fittest: Digital Versions of Classic Typefaces. RC Publications: 2000. ISBN 1-883915-08-2
• Meggs, Philip B. History of Graphic Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: 1998. ISBN 0-470-04265-6

External links[link]

• Typowiki: Bembo
• Bembo Infant at Fonts.com

Caterina Caselli (born on 10 April 1946 in Modena) is an Italian record producer and former singer and actress.

In 1966 she debuted in the Sanremo Festival with "Nessuno mi può giudicare", a song discarded by Adriano Celentano, scoring a notable success. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.^[1] Caselli also had considerable success with an Italian cover of the David McWilliams song "Days of Pearly Spencer" called "Il Volto Della Vita".

She is also the president of Sugar Music, Andrea Bocelli's record label, since she discovered him in 1992.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Caterina Caselli at the Internet Movie Database

Pietro Bembo
Born	(1470-05-20)20 May 1470 Venice, Republic of Venice1
Died	18 January 1547(1547-01-18) (aged 76) Rome, Papal States
Occupation	Scholar, poet, literary theorist, Catholic cardinal

Pietro Bembo (20 May 1470 - either 11 January^[1] or 18 January,^[2] 1547) was an Italian scholar, poet, literary theorist, and cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch. Bembo's ideas were also decisive in the formation of the most important secular musical form of the 16th century, the madrigal.^[3]

Life[link]

Bembo was born in Venice to an aristocratic family. His father was an ambassador for the Venetian state, and while still a boy Pietro was able to accompany him on many of his travels; one of the places he visited was Florence, there acquiring a love for the Tuscan form of Italian, a love which was to prove so important in literary and musical history. He studied Greek for two years under the Greek scholar Lascaris at Messina, and afterwards went to the University of Padua. Further travels included two years (1497–1499) spent at the Este court in Ferrara, under the reign of Ercole d'Este I then a significant literary and musical center. While there he met Ariosto and commenced writing his first work, Gli Asolani, a dialogue on the subject of courtly love. The poems in this book were reminiscent of Boccaccio and Petrarch, and were widely set to music in the 16th century. Bembo himself preferred his poetry to be performed by a female singer accompanied by a lute, a wish which was granted to him when he met Isabella d'Este in 1505 and sent her a copy of his book.^[4]

Miniature portrait of Bembo in the mid-1530s by Lucas Cranach the Younger

In 1502 and 1503 he was again in Ferrara, and had a love affair with the notorious Lucrezia Borgia, who was the wife of Alfonso d'Este. He left around the time of Josquin des Prez's hire by Ercole I d'Este as composer to the chapel, and in time to avoid the plague which decimated the city in 1505, claiming the life of renowned composer Jacob Obrecht.

Between 1506 and 1512 he lived in Urbino, and it was here that Bembo began to write his most influential work, a prose treatise on writing poetry in Italian, Prose della volgar lingua, although it was not to be published until much later. In 1513 Bembo accompanied Giulio de' Medici to Rome, where he was soon after appointed secretary to Leo X. On the pontiff's death in 1521 he retired, with impaired health, to Padua, and there lived for a number of years, during which he continued to write, and in 1525 finally published his famous Prose della volgar lingua. In 1529 he accepted the office of historiographer to Venice, his native city, and shortly afterwards was appointed librarian of St Mark's.

Pope Paul III in 1539 made him a cardinal, and Bembo went back to Rome. While there he continued to write and revise his earlier work, in addition to studying theology and classical history; he received as reward the bishoprics of Gubbio and Bergamo. He died in Rome in his 77th year.

Works and influence[link]

As a writer, Bembo attempted to restore some of the legendary "affect" that ancient Greek had on its hearers, but in Tuscan Italian instead. He held as his model, and as the highest example of poetic expression ever achieved in Italian, the work of Petrarch and Boccaccio, two 14th century writers he assisted in bringing back into fashion.

In the Prose della volgar lingua, he set Petrarch up as the perfect model, and discussed verse composition in detail, including rhyme, stress, the sounds of words, balance and variety. In Bembo's theory, the specific placement of words in a poem, with strict attention to their consonants and vowels, their rhythm, their position within lines long and short, could produce emotions ranging from sweetness and grace to gravity and grief in a listener.^[5] This work was of decisive importance in the development of the Italian madrigal, the most famous secular musical form of the 16th century, as it was these poems, carefully constructed (or, in the case of Petrarch, analyzed) according to Bembo's ideas, that were to be the primary texts for the music.^[6]

Other works by Bembo include a History of Venice from 1487 to 1513 (published in 1551), as well as dialogues, poems and essays. His early Gli Asolani explains and recommends Platonic affection, somewhat ironically considering his affair with Lucrezia Borgia, married at the time to his employer.^[7] His edition of Petrarch's Italian Poems, published by Aldus in 1501, and the Terzerime, which Aldus published in 1502, were also influential. Printer and composer Andrea Antico, active in Rome, was also influenced by Bembo; the early composers of the Venetian School, such as Adrian Willaert, helped to spread his theories among composers during that period of quick change. Willaert's collection of madrigals, Musica nova, show a close connection with Bembo's ideas.^[6]

In his clerical vocation as Bishop and Cardinal Bembo is credited with reaffirming and promoting the Christian perfection of classical humanism. Deriving all from love (or the lack thereof) his^[8]schemas were added as supplements^[9] in the newly-invented technology of printing by Aldus Manutius in his editions of Dante's Divine Comedy dating from early in the 16th century. His refutation of a culturally predominate puritanical temptation to a profane dualistic gnosticism is elaborated in the redemptive third book of his prose text Gli Asolani reconciling fallen human nature in a Platonic cosmic transcendence, mediated by reconciling Trinitarian love, and dedicated to Lucretia Borgia. A similar framing structure was used by Karol Wojtyla in his 3-act play The Jeweller's Shop illustrating his phenomenological personalism derived from humanism's insights found in the natural law.

The typeface Bembo is named after him.

Bibliography[link]

• Raffini, Christine, "Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione: Philosophical, Aesthetic, and Political Approaches in Renaissance Platonism", 1998. ISBN 0-8204-3023-4

References[link]

• Atlas, Allan W., ed. Renaissance music: music in western Europe, 1400-1600. NY: Norton, 1998. ISBN 0-393-97169-4
• James Haar, "Pietro Bembo." Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed December 30, 2007), (subscription access)
• James Haar, Anthony Newcomb, Massimo Ossi, Glenn Watkins, Nigel Fortune, Joseph Kerman, Jerome Roche: "Madrigal", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed December 30, 2007), (subscription access)
• This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
• The character Pietro Cardinal Bembo also features prominently in Baldassare Castiglione's work The Book of the Courtier where he speaks about the nature of "Platonic" love.

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Pietro Bembo: Historia Veneta, Venice 1551; facsimile, CAMENA Project
• Bembo, Pietro: Carmina, in: Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum Bergamo 1753; facsimile, CAMENA Project
• Borgia, Lucretia; Pietro Bembo, Lettere di Lucrezia Borgia a messer Pietro Bembo,1859 Biblioteca ambrosiana, digitised by Oxford University Apr 13, 2007 contains 9 letters to Bembo authored between 1503-17
• ThisWriteLife blog entry on association with Lord Byron in 'discovery' of the archived letters illustrated by Titan portrait, lock of hair