16th Century Typography: Girolamo di Manfredi’s Latin Work, Published 1564

Eccles. Liber, In Quo Omnia…(etc), 1564, by Girolamo di Manfredi
Typography by Giovanni Rossi
Scanned and posted by fromoldbooks.org at this address.

Wow. Just look at this find. This is classical typography at its best. In the above spread, you can see a variety of typographic approaches, all of which are harmonizing perfectly. The titling area (detail below) goes from bold upper and lower case to roman caps, then small caps with a smaller point size. The Drop capital (the large, illustrated C that begins the text) adds just a pinch of ornamentation to the page: just enough, not too much.

Additionally, the italic section dividers with small cap roman numerals look outstanding.

There could probably be a bit more leading as the lines look slightly crowded. However, this was probably a page count issue, and in the 16th century manipulating the point sizes and leading of the font wasn’t just a couple clicks with InDesign. Look at the letterspacing though: even though the text columns are justified, there are almost no spacing issues (when you have big clumps of empty space after periods and between words).

In this last example, observe the use of a foot note in the left margin. Obviously, this will interefere some with the perfect composition of the text blocks on these pages, however, it works, and it isn’t occuring on every page. Also notice here the use of a sub-title in the body, set in small caps with a large capital at the beginning. There are some word spacing issues on this example related to the justified column, but regardless, the type looks excellent.