In 1403 Poggio carried his new script to Rome, where he became papal secretary. Both his and Niccoli’s scripts were devoted to the service of classical literature, but there was a difference: Poggio, the professional notary, used his hand in a way that can be described as calligraphic, while Niccoli used his as a convenient aid to copying. Further differences are seen in the work of the two men: Poggio wrote on fine parchment, took care to make lines end uniformly (justified), and drew elaborate display capitals and initials; Niccoli usually wrote on paper, used the simplest of pen-made Roman capitals for titles, and focused on textual accuracy. An interesting parallel is found in books printed in Italy in the 16th century: grand Renaissance folios were set in fine roman types, while well-edited, inexpensive small books for scholars were set in italic type.
Although printing from movable type displaced many copyists after the middle of the 15th century, it also freed them from the tedious copying of books. (See also printing: History of printing.) The new breed of scribes turned out some of the finest manuscripts of any age; they are rightly considered calligraphers for their attention to the careful formation of letters and arrangement of text. In the last half of the 15th and the early 16th century the Paduan Bartolomeo Sanvito and the Mantuan Pierantonio Sallado, two of the region’s leading scribes, perfected both the roman and the italic hands and produced manuscript books of unparalleled beauty. Sanvito’s books on colour-stained vellum pages in humanistic book and cursive hands are also celebrated for pen-made inscriptional Roman capital letters in alternating colours of gold, blue, red, purple, violet, and green. Most of his surviving manuscripts are copies of works by Classical authors such as Horace, Virgil, Cicero, Juvenal, and Sallust, but he also wrote out a few religious texts such as a book of hours, gospels, and the Chronica of the Church Father Eusebius of Caesarea. Many of the manuscripts are also lavishly illuminated by Sanvito and others. The antica corsiva (as italic was called at the time), used by late 15th-century papal scribes for rapidly writing briefs issued from the Vatican chancery, also became the preferred style of polite correspondence.
Vatican chanceryChancery cursive, or italic, calligraphy.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
By the early 16th century the versatile lettera da brevi (“brief script,” i.e., script used for papal briefs) or cancellaresca (“chancery”), had become the common hand of both book and letter writing among scribes, scholars, and savants throughout Europe. Several characteristics contributed to the popularity of the script: it was lively yet disciplined in appearance; it was responsive to a variety of pen nib styles and tolerant of different writing speeds; and it was attainable by the novice and gratifying to the adept. Even Queen Elizabeth I of England wrote what Shakespeare called the “sweet Roman hand.”
Littera cancellaresca ascribed to Lodovico degli Arrighi, from a brief of Pope Leo X, 1519; in the Public Record Office, London (S.P. 1/19).By permission of the controller of H.M. Stationery Office, Crown copyright reserved
Sixteenth-century Italians were the first to publish books on the making of letters: Divina Proportione (“Divine Proportions”) by Luca Pacioli appeared in Venice in 1509, Sigismondo Fanti’s Theorica et practica (1514; “Theory and Practice”) was also published in that city, and Francesco Torniello’s Opera del modo de fare le littere maiuscole antique (“Work on the Way to Make Ancient Majuscule Letters”) came out in Milan in 1517. These books focus more on theory than on practice; Fanti’s even shows how to construct gothic rotunda minuscules using geometry.
Cancellaresca corsiva script attributed to Ludovico degli Arrighi, from a letter from Cardinal Bembo, 1516; in the Newberry Library, Chicago (Wing MS ZW).Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago
Ludovico degli Arrighi published the first practical manual on writing cancelleresca, the hand now usually called italic. His La operina (“The Little Work”), which, although dated 1522, was probably printed in Rome about 1524, became a prototype for subsequent writing manuals. Arrighi shows how chancery minuscule letters are made; he states rules for joining and spacing letters and for spacing words and text lines, and he supplies practice exercises. Almost simultaneously the Venetian writing master Giovanantonio Tagliente published Lo presente libro insegna la vera arte… (c. 1524; “This Book Teaches the True Art…”). Both books were printed from woodcuts that reproduced the writing of their authors; both promised results without the aid of a teacher; and both presented a cancelleresca script that varies somewhat from formal humanistic cursive writing. Whereas Sanvito and Sallado produced ascenders that terminated in serifs resembling bird beaks, both Arrighi and Tagliente presented flaglike terminals on the letters b, d, f, h, k, and l, as if a westerly breeze were blowing them over. Arrighi subsequently published Il modo de temperare le penne (“How to Sharpen Quills”), which was actually a copybook of various alphabets, including Roman capitals and black-letter minuscules. Tagliente’s manual also included the Latin alphabets and added Hebrew and Arabic alphabets.
In his introduction to La operina, Arrighi admitted that the printed woodcut examples could not compare to “the living hand,” and his manuscripts proved this to be true. He wrote that he published La operina to satisfy the large demand for copies of his script; no doubt he also hoped to attract pupils to his writing school in Rome. Whatever the drawbacks of reproduction, professional calligraphers did not avoid print. In fact, printing was embraced by many writing masters as a means for spreading both the art of writing and their reputation. Several 16th-century scribes, including Arrighi and Tagliente, even designed typefaces for printers. Thus, although printing may have put an end to the medieval scriptorium, it can also be said to have launched the era of the professional writing master. Writing manuals and copybooks (16th to 18th century)