Indice de caratteri con l'inventori, & nomi di essi, esistenti nella Stampa Vaticana

      p4to., 74 (i.e. 72) ff. [6-7 omitted in foliation], including title printed in red and black, and 4 leaves of printed music, of which one is printed in red and black. Bound in 18th-century full calf, spine elaborately gilt in 6 compartments, with red morocco lettering piece, also gilt, with fore-edges gilt as well. Discreet embossed armorial crest on title and preliminaries, discoloration in margin of title, and one small spot; small area of upper blank margin of title and final 4 leaves gnawed (?); inconsequential foxing in margin of a few leaves; otherwise excellent. Rare first and sole edition of the first type specimen of book length. Preceded in Italy only by Tolomeo Gianicolo's 1529 broadside demonstrating the types of Ludovico degli Arrighi Vicentino, and by a handful of single-page sheets in other European printing centres, Brogiotti's production is generally considered the "earliest type specimen book" (Kenneth A. Lohf in Journal of Library History, vol. 21, no. 4). Vervliet heralds it as "the second oldest [type specimen] known to us that displays the riches of Italy in the way of types" (p. 10). While some type specimens were produced by typefounders to demonstrate their work to printers, the more elaborate collections such as this were typically produced by printers "for reasons of prestige or to interest the public or else to inform customers of the types that can be used in the printing done for them" (Vervliet, p. 8). The Stamperia Vaticana, formed in the early 17th-century by combining the former Typographica Apostolica Vaticana and the Stamperia Camerale, possessed a sizeable collection of types, used to produce everything from broadsides, editions of the classics, music, and conciliar decrees, to bibles and liturgies in exotic languages. Andreas Brogiotti, director of the Stamperia Vaticana, was responsible for displaying them to impressive effect here. The Indice de caratteri is arranged in three parts, beginning with an introduction by Brogiotti and a dedication to the papal nephew Francesco Barberini (an important and discerning patron of art and science who would later found the Biblioteca bearing his name). The second section is an "instructive history" of 16 alphabets, with various archaic and exotic scripts represented by means of woodcuts. The main part of the work displays the 49 type-faces then in the possession of the papal printing offices. The woodcut alphabets in the second section were copied from the decorations of the walls of the room that then housed the Vatican library (today the Salone Sistino). (Vervliet p. 17) Brogiotti did not produce all of the blocks himself, reusing 6 images from another work on the library, Rocca's Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana a Sixto V... translata (1591), sawing the block in strips to make room for a Latin transliteration beneath every line. (The same alphabets, and their origins, were discussed by Domenico Fontana in his treatise on moving the obelisk.) Two of the alphabets in this section, the Indian (p. 26) and the Tabulae Eugubini (p. 25) appear here for the first time. The 49 typeset alphabets, many of which are attributed to the important punchcutter Robert Granjon, can be divided into the older, primarily French types, and the "newer faces of Italian origin which, Brogiotti informs us, he caused to be make at great expense" (Vervliet, p. 23). This vague claim may mean either that a new set of fonts were cast just prior to the production of the Indice, or alternatively, that Brogiotti wants to take credit for the complete refashioning of some of the older French types that took place at the Stamperia in the 1620s. While the history of the several overlapping institutional presses in Rome is complicated and has been little studied, Brogiotti takes care to identify the source of the various fonts as Vaticana, Camerale, etc. The Indice records the variety of types that were produced during one of the most prolific periods of Italian type production, from the 1580s onwards, which saw the rise of "a new indigenous school of punchcutters, with its own special character" (ibid.). Early antiquarian studies of this specimen book helped to correct the attributions of a number of works which had been previously incorrectly dated or ascribed to the wrong Roman printers. In the Indice, the forward-looking Vervliet sees the "spirit of Giambattista Bodoni already stirring... the truly original typefaces strick a new note that echoes down to the 18th century" (p. 29). Little is know about Brogiotti (or Brugiotti); an Oratorian, and he was at various points in his life was a bookseller and publisher, and later civic treasurer of Rome. Among his other published works are 2 volumes of verse, a collection of portraits of contemporary cardinals, and as editor, an edition of the vulgate in pocket format-which were all, like the Indice de caratteri, dedicated to the Barberini family. NUC lists Harvard. OCLC adds no US copies, but lists V & A and Wellcome. We have located copies at the Grolier Club and in the Robert Grabhorn Collection on the History of Printing at the San Francisco PL. Bigmore & Wyman I, p. 84; modern facsimile by Vervliet (1967); Kenneth A. Lohf, Journal of Library History, vol. 21, no. 4 (Fall 1986): 764-767./p