Venice · 1470 · Nicolaus Jenson

Epistolae ad Brutum, ad Quintum fratrem, ad Atticum, etc.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Illuminated opening folio
Opening of the letters to Brutus, "CLODIVS TRIBV. PLE. DESIGNATVS uualde me diligit…," set in Jenson's roman type and finished by hand for this copy with a full interlaced gold-and-colour border, illuminated initials, and an armorial coat of arms in a laurel wreath at the foot; the Bibliothèque Mazarine ownership stamps and the manuscript leaf-number "18" are visible (view 7).
Text page in Jenson's roman type
A typical text leaf showing the unbroken single column of Jenson's 1470 roman — the wide, even-coloured letterforms with restrained serifs that became the canonical model for humanist typography (view 8).
Letter opening with rubricated Lombard initial
A new letter begins with a large hand-painted red Lombard initial "M," the rubricator's red supplying the textual articulation that Jenson left blank in the printed text block (view 200).
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An early product of Nicolas Jenson's Venetian press, collecting Cicero's letters to Brutus, Quintus, and Atticus, with Petrarch's Epistola ad Ciceronem and Cornelius Nepos's life of Atticus appended. The edition is a showcase of Jenson's celebrated roman type, the model that shaped humanistic typography for centuries.

Details

Title
Epistolae ad Brutum, ad Quintum fratrem, ad Atticum, etc.
Author
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Printer
Nicolaus Jenson
Place
Venice
Year
1470
Format
f°
Language
Latin
Theme
typography

Facsimiles

IdF ↗

Images

Cicero, Epistolae ad Brutum, ad Quintum fratrem, ad Atticum, Rome 1470, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Inc 18 — CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 FR

References

ISTC ic00500000