NEW UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS ON BODONI'S ACTIVITY AND THE FUTURE OF BODONI'S TYPOGRAPHY

When we talk about Giambattista Bodoni we tend to emphasize how everything has already been said and studied. Because the historical importance and the absolute artistic importance of the typographer from Parma were well known to his contemporaries and therefore no detail of his rich production has ever been overlooked by scholars in the sector. Exhibitions, conferences, seminars, in Italy and abroad continue to celebrate the greatness of an innovator who, walking in the wake of tradition, revolutionized - especially from a graphic point of view - modern printing, marking a watershed between before and after Bodoni. Finding documents of this magnitude and importance, carefully collected by one of the last, immense Bodoni scholars, is therefore no small news. The collection is presented in various folders and envelopes, often bearing a generic but precise indication of the content. These are materials often collected with a view to publication, as can be read in one of the envelopes "for the Bollettino Bod.", intended for research to be published in a journal or perhaps for broader and more complete studies. A material that only Bodoni scholars will be able to adequately valorize and contextualize, because it is rich, heterogeneous but also complex, where even the single document would seem to reveal its crucial importance. An importance that, however, can only be grasped if placed in the right historical perspective, within the history of Bodoni and his typography.
The archive consists of two folders (one is a simple squared sheet of protocol paper) and a reused envelope. On the first folder, from the Centro di Studi Grafici, one can read in pen: “Widow's Inheritance – Attempts at Sale, with other annotations erased.” Inside, a subsequent sheet of paper collects what can be read at the top right: “Unpublished original documents on the sale of the Coll.Bod.” The documents inside are distributed in no particular order, sometimes gathered within other documents, other times in the form of simple loose sheets. Starting to read, the first note on a loose sheet dated March 17, 1795, in Bodoni's handwriting, reads: "Please forgive the delay I have placed in replying to you... I have understood from you that all those sheets that belonged to the pamphlets of the bishop of Antwerp have reached him together with your letter. Mr. Cantù, His Majesty's Courier, with whom I have an old acquaintance, should be passing by here shortly, and upon his return from Rome I will see to delivering to him the two volumes of Tasso that you wish to have with exact promptness. I have not otherwise printed the Telemaco, for which reason it has been assumed by Your Excellency that we need the permission of this Royal Court to obtain it. Would Condillac ever be in that place...". There follow 4 more sheets in Bodoni's handwriting, interesting and full of details that I presume are unpublished. The rest of the papers refer to negotiations on the sale of the Bodoni collection, conducted by the heirs, in the decades following Bodoni's death. It is difficult to give an account of them, unless after a careful study that can place them chronologically and historically. The second folder, made with a sheet of squared paper, reads at the top: Important Documents-Extracts… It opens with a letter from Bodoni, dated Parma 12 January 1808, addressed to the Mayor of the City of Parma. It is followed by a subsequent letter dated 26 January 1802 and addressed to the General and beloved Cousin. What follows is a note of incredible cultural value: "Your Excellency, learning the art of typography is not an easy thing to do, as inexperienced people are wont to believe, who classify the Professors of this wonderful invention among the Operators of a vile mechanism. To those who have offered to take a place in this royal establishment, over which I have the honour of presiding, I have made them reflect that without a previous study of Rhetoric they would never have succeeded as anything other than mediocre and inept composers. If then they had their sights set on the press, I have insinuated to them that they should begin in some other printing workshop, where on works of no consequence, such as the balettes for the form, or little books of no importance, they could experiment whether the considerable effort to which the press operator must daily be subjected had been burdened by other shoulders and not by them. If memory serves me, I seem to have repeated these same truths months ago to the appellant Giovanni Zerbini [?], that it is not clear why he did not continue in the career he had begun as a goldsmith and why he now wants to devote himself to a more difficult, longer and much less onerous art. (…)” A one-page letter in which all the value, all the awareness of a mission, but also all the difficulty of a complex and onerous undertaking is condensed. The dozens of papers that follow concern the negotiations for the sale of the Bodoni collection by Bodoni's widow and her children. The last envelope, addressed to the Dante Alighieri Society, contains a brown folder where it says: 29 pieces [in reality there are fewer] Protohistory of the Bodonian Collections attempted sales by the Widow and heirs... and various other annotations also inside the bifolio that collects the documents. The first Annotation reads: “Annotations. The observations from which an idea of the Bodoni typographical supplies can be drawn can be seen in the discourse and presentation that precede the Bodoni Typographic Manual printed in 1818 in two small-cut volumes. In addition to the Punches and Matrices described in this summary, the 147 (?) Forms of various sizes used for casting characters are considered to be part of the same Collection; as well as the entire series of tools and minor objects that are required for a well-stocked and regular foundry. (…)”. Following this is a bifolio taken from an agenda containing “Curiosities, Bodoni gleanings. Unpublished”, with several sheets of paper inside. Then follows what would appear to be the most interesting document among the many preserved in this small but dense archive. It consists of six pages written on half a sheet of paper, measuring 240 x 175 mm., by a single late eighteenth-century hand. I transcribe the first lines of the incipit: “First of all, for the erection of this new printing house, three presses of firm, seasoned wood are required, such as lyceum or elm, its three-toothed screw of iron or brass, the nut screw must necessarily be of brass, because it is cast on the screw itself; the surface will be of cast metal, very flat stone, a well-squared iron frame, with its division in the middle also of iron because if work has to be done in 4°, in 8° or in sheet, the composed material is clamped more securely, without the risk of ruining the form when removing it from the press, and the expense can amount to 60 sequins each. 2nd. To make 24 advantages useful for composing….(…)”. All the remaining pages analytically detail the purchases to be made of the respective components useful for establishing a printing house, specifying the various cost items. Is this perhaps the "founding" act of Bodoni's typography? This document cannot give a certain answer, but surely many clues would suggest a positive answer....
This, like everything else, is material to be studied in depth to perhaps open new chapters in the eternal history of Bodoni typography.