Figure 127
Types showing “modern” feeling, used in Poggiali’s Storia Letteraria di Piacenza: Orcesi, Piacenza
From a copy in Harvard College Library (facsimile), HathiTrust (scan)
1789
…we may examine Cristoforo Poggiali’s Memorie par la Storia Letteraria di Piacenza—printed at Piacenza in two quarto volumes by Niccolò Orcesi in 1789. This work is set in type of an even more “modern” cut, much more spaced and leaded than any we have hitherto seen. It is not an attractive type; still less the italic, which is mean and poor in cut; and the effect of the book is frigid and mechanical. Yet such type is a forecast of the later manner of much Italian printing.