Nicolas Jenson's roman type
Tipos romanos de Nicolas Jenson
- Date
- 1470 · confidence high
- Place
- Venice, Veneto, Italy
- Credited to
- Nicolas Jenson
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
The first highly influential roman type, used in the 1470 edition of Eusebius, with harmonious proportions and humanist features. It set the pattern for roman typefaces for centuries.
Jenson, a French engraver trained in Mainz, was not the first to cut a roman type (Sweynheym and Pannartz, 1465), but he perfected it.
What it led to
- a model for Garamond and other Renaissance romans
- 19th- and 20th-century revivals such as William Morris's
- a benchmark of printed text legibility