Bodoni's apotheosis

Born in 1740 and descendant from a family of printers, Giambattista Bodoni is remembered as "the prince of printers" of the Enlightment era. Bodoni arrived in Parma in 1768, called by the minister Du Tillot to direct the Royal Printing House: here, some of the most beautiful books of the time were made and Bodoni’s work made the city one of Europe’s main centres of typographic art. Bodoni was an extraordinary craftsman: engraver and font smelter, printer as well as publisher and merchant of his typefaces. He knew how to achieve the neoclassical ideals of "noble simplicity and calm grandeur" in every aspect of his work, combining technical excellence and aesthetic perfection and earning the acclaim of a cultured and refined public: "prince of typographers", therefore, but also "printer of princes”. Among his admirers there were rulers from every country, from Gustav III of Sweden to Paul of Russia son of Catherine the Great, from the sovereigns of Naples to Napoleon Bonaparte and again Parini, Alfieri, Foscolo, Benjamin Franklin and Stendhal showed great respect and appreciation for Bodoni, not least Franco Maria Ricci, who proclaims himself Bodoni’s spiritual heir. This work belongs to Ricci’s art collection and it’s the first version of a subject replicated in the well-known version of the Palatine Library in Parma.