Cuneiform: is the earliest known writing system in the world.

*Cuneiform writing emerged in the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq around the 34th century BC

*Cuneiform was the most widespread and historically significant writing system in the Ancient Near East.

The development of cuneiform writing was an evolution of an earlier Mesopotamian accounting system that had been used for five thousand years before. Clay tokens had been used for some form of record-keeping in Mesopotamia since perhaps as early as c. 8,000 BC, according to some estimates.

*Cuneiform documents were written on clay tablets, by means of a reed stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform ("wedge shaped," from the Latin cuneus, meaning "wedge").

Cuneiform script underwent considerable changes over a period spanning three millennia. In the course of the 3rd millennium BC the script became successively more cursive, and the pictographs developed into conventionalized linear drawings, the number of characters in use also refined from around 1,000 unique characters in the Early Bronze Age to around 400 characters in Late Bronze Age (Hittite cuneiform).

The original Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, and Urartian languages, and it inspired the Ugaritic and Old Persian alphabets. Cuneiform writing was gradually replaced by the Aramaic alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and by the second century of the Common Era, the script had become extinct.

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A cylinder seal is a cylinder engraved with a 'picture story', used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet clay. Cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC in the Near East, at the contemporary site of Susa in south-western Iran and at the early site of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. They are linked to the invention of the latter cuneiform writing on clay cylinders. They were used as administrative tool, jewellery and as magical amulets, later versions would employ notations with Mesopotamian hieroglyphs. In later periods, they were used to notarize or attest to multiple impressions of clay documents. Also Graves and other sites hoarding precious items such as gold, silver, beads, and gemstones often included one or two cylinder seals, as honorific grave goods.

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Hieroglyphs  was a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that contained a combination of logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood. Less formal variations of the script, called hieratic and demotic, are technically not hieroglyphs.

Greek for: "sacret writing" 

Translation made possible by Rosetta stone in 1799.

A rebus (Latin: "by things") is a kind of word puzzle that uses pictures to represent words or parts of words. For example:

H + [image] = Hear, or Here.

the walk park: walk in the park

The term rebus also refers to the use of a pictogram to represent a syllabic sound. This adapts pictograms into phonograms. A precursor to the development of the alphabet, this process represents one of the most important developments of writing. Fully developed hieroglyphs read in rebus fashion were in use at Abydos in Egypt as early as 3400 BCE.

The writing of correspondence in rebus form became popular in the 18th century and continued into the 19th century. Lewis Carroll wrote the children he befriended picture-puzzle rebus letters, nonsense letters, and looking-glass letters, which had to be held in front of a mirror to be read.

* Rebus letters served either as a sort of code or simply as a pastime.

The Utrecht Psalter:  is a 9th century illuminated psalter which is a key masterpiece of Carolingian art; it is probably the most valuable manuscript in the Netherlands.

*It is famous for its 166 lively pen illustrations, with one accompanying each psalm and the other texts in the manuscript.

*The psalter spent the period between about 1000 to 1640 in England, where it had a profound influence on Anglo-Saxon art, giving rise to what is known as the "Utrecht style". It was copied in full a number of times in the Middle Ages. 

*Written in rustic capital, it exhibits the revitalization of Roman style and art under Charlemange. 

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An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders (marginalia) and miniature illustrations. In the strictest definition of the term, an illuminated manuscript only refers to manuscripts decorated with gold or silver, but in both common usage and modern scholarship, the term is now used to refer to any decorated or illustrated manuscript from the Western traditions.

The earliest surviving substantive illuminated manuscripts are from the period AD 400 to 600, initially produced in Italy and the Eastern Roman Empire. 

* Most manuscripts important enough to illuminate were written on the best quality of parchment, called vellum.

Beginning in the late Middle Ages manuscripts began to be produced on paper. 

* Illuminated manuscripts continued to be produced in the early 16th century, but in much smaller numbers, mostly for the very wealthy.

*Manuscripts are among the most common items to survive from the Middle Ages; many thousands survive. They are also the best surviving specimens of medieval painting, and the best preserved. Indeed, for many areas and time periods, they are the only surviving examples of painting.

Insular script was a medieval script system originally used in Ireland, then Great Britain, that spread to continental Europe under the influence of Celtic Christianity.

*Irish missionaries also took the script to continental Europe, where they founded monasteries such as Bobbio.

*The scripts were in use also in monasteries influenced by English missionaries like Fulda. It is associated with Insular art, of which most surviving examples are illuminated manuscripts.

*The script developed in Ireland in the 7th century and was used as late as the 19th century, 

Works written in Insular scripts commonly use large initial letters surrounded by red ink dots (although this is also true of other scripts written in Ireland and England). Letters following a large initial at the start of a paragraph or section often gradually diminish in size as they are written across a line or a page, until the normal size is reached.

Within this system, the scholar Julian Brown identified five grades:

• Insular half-uncial, or "Irish majuscle", a majuscule script influenced by
• Insular Hybrid minuscule
• Insular Set
• Insular Cursive
• Insular Current.

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Drolleries : often called a "grotesque", are decorative thumbnail images in the margins of Illuminated manuscripts, most popular from about 1250 through the 15th century, although found earlier and later.

*Specifically images which appear as mixed creatures, either between different animals or between animals and human beings.

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TEXTURA LETTERING: "Gothic bookhand" or black letter.

*Today is the form most associated with "Gothic". 

*Gutenberg carved a textualis typeface – including a large number of ligatures and common abbreviations – when he printed his 42-line Bible. However, the textualis was rarely used for typefaces afterwards.

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Fraktur: refers to a specific sub-group of blackletter typefaces.

*Gothic Type style from around 1517.

*The word derives from the past participle fractus: (“broken”) of Latin frangere: (“to break”). 

The term Fraktur is sometimes applied to all of the blackletter typefaces.

Besides the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, and the ß (Eszett, IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt]) 

*Fraktur typefaces include the ſ (long s), sometimes a variant form of the letter r

* Most older Fraktur typefaces make no distinction between the majuscules "I" and "J" (where the common shape is more suggestive of a "J"), even though the minuscules "i" and "j" are differentiated.

*One difference between the Fraktur and other blackletter scripts is that in the small-letter o, the left part of the bow is broken, but the right part is not.

*The first Fraktur typeface was designed when Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (c. 1493–1519) established a series of books and had a new typeface created specifically for this purpose, designed byHieronymus Andreae. 

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CALLIGRAPHY: often called the art of fancy lettering 

*A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner" 

* A style of writing is described as a script, hand or alphabet

Letterform created by the Romans for monuments celebrating their military leaders and their victories. These letterforms were created from simple geometric lines, both thick and thin. Monumental Capitals are also the orgin of serifs. 

example: Trajan's Column in Rome

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Incunable:  is a book, pamphlet or even a broadside, that was printed — not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe.

*"incunabula", Latin for "swaddling clothes" or "cradle"-which can refer to "the earliest stages or first traces in the development of anything."

 A former term for "incunable" is fifteener, referring to the 15th century.

There are two types of incunabula in printing:

-The Block book printed from a single carved or sculpted wooden block for each page

- The typographic book, made with individual pieces of cast metal movable type on a printing press, in the technology made famous by Johann Gutenberg.

Examples of Famous incunabula include:

*The Gutenberg Bible of 1455

*The Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel, printed by Anton Koberger in 1493,

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, printed by Aldus Manutius 

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper.

Oldest example: Diamond Sutra AD 868.

The wood block is carefully prepared as a relief matrix, which means the areas to show 'white' are cut away with a knife, chisel, or sandpaper leaving the characters or image to show in 'black' at the original surface level. The block was cut along the grain of the wood. It is only necessary to ink the block and bring it into firm and even contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print. The content would of course print "in reverse" or mirror-image, a further complication when text was involved. The art of carving the woodcut is technically known as xylography, though the term is rarely used in English.

Intaglio  is a family of printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface, known as the matrix or plate.

Normally, copper or zinc plates are used as a surface, and the incisions are created by etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint or mezzotint. Collographs may also be printed as intaglio plates. To print an intaglio plate, ink is applied to the surface and then rubbed with tarlatan cloth to remove most of the excess. The final smooth wipe is often done with newspaper, leaving ink only in the incisions. A damp piece of paper is placed on top and the plate and paper are run through a printing press that, through pressure, transfers the ink from the recesses of the plate to the paper.

Intaglio techniques are often combined on a plate.

Example: Rembrandt's prints are referred to as "etchings" for convenience, but very often they have engraving and drypoint work as well, and sometimes no actual etching at all.

Etching An Intaglio printing process-

a metal (usually copper, zinc or steel) plate is covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid.

 The artist then scratches off the ground with a pointed etching needle^[where he wants a line to appear in the finished piece, so exposing the bare metal.

The échoppe, a tool with a slanted oval section is also used for "swelling" lines.The plate is then dipped in a bath of acid, technically called the mordant (French for "biting") or etchant, or has acid washed over it. The acid "bites" into the metal, where it is exposed, leaving behind lines sunk into the plate. The remaining ground is then cleaned off the plate. The plate is inked all over, and then the ink wiped off the surface, leaving only the ink in the etched lines.

The plate is then put through a high-pressure printing press together with a sheet of paper (often moistened to soften it).The paper picks up the ink from the etched lines, making a print. The process can be repeated many times; typically several hundred impressions (copies) could be printed before the plate shows much sign of wear. The work on the plate can also be added to by repeating the whole process; this creates an etching which exists in more than one state.

Etching has often been combined with other intaglio techniques such as engraving (example: Rembrandt) 

Engraving

An Intaglio process-

 is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, copper plates, by cutting grooves into it with an etching needle.

The master of playing cards is known to have produced the oldest known copperplate engravings.

Drypoint 

Intaglio Technique.

is a printmaking technique in which an image is incised into a copperplate (or "matrix") with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point.

 Like etching, drypoint is easier for an artist trained in drawing to master than engraving, as the technique of using the needle is closer to using a pencil than the engraver's burin.

In printmaking, an edition is a number of prints struck from one plate, usually at the same time. 

All Copies of a book printed "from substantially the same setting of type."

Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation).

*The world's first known movable-type system for printing was created in China around 1040 AD by Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the Song Dynasty.

Neither movable-type system was widely used, probably because of the enormous amount of labour involved in manipulating the thousands of ceramic tablets, or in the case

*Around 1450-Johannes Gutenberg introduced what is generally regarded as an independent invention of movable type in Europe  along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin and antimony—the same components still used today.

Compared to woodblock printing, movable-type pagesetting was quicker and more durable for alphabetic scripts. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type, and printing presses rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance, and later all around the world. Today, practically all movable-type printing ultimately derives from Gutenberg's movable-type printing, which is often regarded as the most important invention of the second millennium.

The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved ancient law code, dating to ca. 1790 BC (middle chronology) in ancient Babylon. It was enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay tablets. The Code consists of 281 laws (skipping number 13), with scaled punishments, adjusting "an eye for an eye" as graded depending on social status, of slave versus free man.

*Uses cuneiform writing.

The Phaistos Disc  is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC). It is about 15 cm (5.9 in) in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols. Its purpose and meaning, and even its original geographical place of manufacture, remain disputed, making it one of the most famous mysteries of archaeology. This unique object is now on display at the archaeological museum of Heraklion.

The disc was discovered in 1908 by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, and features 241 tokens, comprising 45 unique signs, which were apparently made by pressing pre-formed hieroglyphic "seals" into a disc of soft clay, in a clockwise sequence spiraling towards the disc's center.

The Book of Kells (Irish: Leabhar Cheanannais) (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I. (58), sometimes known as the Book of Columba) is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing thefour Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables.

*It was created by Celtic monks ca. 800 or slightly earlier. .

*It is a masterwork of Western calligraphy and represents the pinnacle of Insular illumination. It is also widely regarded as Ireland's finest national treasure.

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The Lindisfarne Gospels is an illuminated Latin manuscript of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the British Library.

*Uses "carpet pages"

*The manuscript was produced on Lindisfarne in Northumbriain the late 7th century or early 8th century, and is generally regarded as the finest example of the kingdom's unique style of religious art, a style that combined Anglo-Saxon and Celtic themes, what is now called Hiberno-Saxon art, or Insular art.

* The manuscript is complete (though lacking its original cover), and is astonishingly well-preserved considering its great age.

The Lindisfarne Gospels are presumed to be the work of a monk named Eadfrith

 The Gospels are richly illustrated in the insular style, and were originally encased in a fine leather binding covered with jewels and metals made by Billfrith the Anchorite in the 8th century. During the Viking raids on Lindisfarne, however, this cover was lost, and a replacement made in 1852.

 *The text is written in insular script.

*The Book of Durrow: is a 7th-century illuminated manuscript gospel book in the Insular style.

*It was probably created between 650 and 700, either in Ireland at Durrow.

 * It is the oldest extant complete illuminated Insular gospel book,- predating the Book of Kells by over a century.

*The text includes the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, plus several pieces of prefatory matter and canon tables.

*Made of Vellum, and has carpet pages.

* The page size has been reduced by subsequent re-bindings.

*The original programme of illumination seems to be complete, which is rare in manuscripts of this age.

The Bayeux Tapestry : The earliest known written reference to the tapestry is a 1476 inventory of Bayeux Cathedral, but its origins have been the subject of much speculation controversy

*long embroidered cloth — not an actual tapestry — which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England as well as the events of the invasion itself.

*The tapestry is annotated in Latin.

*It is exhibited in a special museum in Bayeux, Normandy called Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux

The Biblia pauperum ("Paupers' Bible") was a tradition of picture Bibles beginning in the later Middle Ages.

*They sought to portray the historical books of the Bible visually. Unlike a simple "illustrated Bible".

*Words spoken by the figures in the miniatures could be written on scrolls coming out of their mouths. 

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Ars moriendi ("The Art of Dying") is the name of two related Latin texts dating from about 1415 and 1450

*Offered advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, explaining how to "die well". 

*Told people to leave their wealth to the church not families.

*It was written within the historical context of the effects of the macabre horrors of the Black Death 60 years earlier and consequent social upheavals of the 15th century.

*It was very popular, translated into most West European languages, and was the first in a western literary tradition of guides to death and dying.

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Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (from Greek hypnos, ‘sleep’, eros, ‘love’, and mache, ‘fight’),

*in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna and a famous example of early printing.

* First published in Venice, 1499, in an elegant page layout, with refined woodcut illustrations in an Early Renaissance style, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili presents a mysterious arcane allegory in which Poliphilo pursues his love Polia through a dreamlike landscape, and is at last reconciled with her by the Fountain of Venus.

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The word paper derives from the Greek term for the ancient Egyptian writing material called papyrus, which was formed from beaten strips of papyrus plants. The immediate predecessor to modern paper is believed to have originated in China in approximately the 2nd century AD, although there is some evidence for it being used before this date.

* Papermaking is considered to be one of the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China, since the first pulp papermaking process was developed in China during the early 2nd century AD by the Han court eunuch Cai Lun. China used paper as an effective and cheap alternative to silk, letting them sell more silk, leading to a Golden Age.

The use of paper spread from China through the Islamic world and entered production in medieval Europe in the 13th century, where the first water-powered paper mills were built and mechanization of papermaking began.

* The industrial production of paper in the early 19th century caused significant cultural changes worldwide, allowing for relatively cheap exchange of information in the form of letters, newspapers and books for the first time.

*In 1844, both Canadian inventor Charles Fenertyand German inventor F.G. Keller had invented the machine and process for pulping wood for the use in paper making.

*This would end the nearly 2000-year use of pulped rags and start a new era for the production of newsprint and eventually all paper out of pulped wood.

Vellum (from the Old French Vélin, for "calfskin") is mammal skin prepared for writing or printing on, to produce single pages, scrolls, codices or books. It is generally smooth and durable, although there are great variations depending on preparation, the quality of the skin and the type of animal used.

 veal = vellum

Parchment is a thin material made from calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin, often split. Its most common use was as a material for writing on, for documents, notes, or the pages of a book, codex ormanuscript.

*It is distinct from leather in that parchment is limed but not tanned, therefore it is very reactive with changes in relative humidity and is not waterproof. The finer qualities of parchment are called vellum.

a German goldsmith and printer who introduced modern book printing. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period.

* It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation and theScientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses.

*Gutenberg was the first European to use movable type printing, in around 1439, and the global inventor of the printing press. Among his many contributions to printing are: the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil-based ink; and the use of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period. His truly epochal invention was the combination of these elements into a practical system which allowed the mass production of printed books and was economically viable for printers and readers alike. Gutenberg's method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type.

His major work, the Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible), has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality.

Albrecht Dürer German  21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528 was a German painter, printmaker and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since. His well-known works include the Apocalypse woodcuts, Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation. His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.

Dürer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, have secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatise, which involve principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions.

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William Caxton (ca. 1415~1422 – ca. March 1492) was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer.

*He was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England.

*He was also the first English retailer of printed books (his London contemporaries in the same trade were all Dutch, German or French).

Erhard Ratdolt  1442–1528, printer in Venice from 1476 to 1486 and in Augsburg from 1487 to 1522.

*A sheet showing specimens of his sizes and designs of type, dated 1486, is the earliest known specimen sheet.

*Ratdolt's ornamental initials and borders, replacing the work of the illuminator, are still admired. His printing influenced that of William Morris.

String with time keeper

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Tory, Geofroy  c.1480–1533, Parisian printer, typographer, and author.

*His Book of Hours, which first appeared in 1525, introduced type design free from dependence on handwriting and established book designing as an art in France.

*His part in establishing French 16th-century printing of superb quality was recognized by his appointment as printer to the king (Francis I). Tory's writings include Champfleury (1529), wherein he explains and illustrates the theory governing his designs of roman capitals.

*Tory advocated the use of the French language; he introduced accents, the apostrophe, and the cedilla into the printing of French.

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Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters are written in either Greek, Latin, or Gothic.

*Early uncial script is likely to have developed from late Old Roman cursive.

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*Subtitled “The Art and Science of the Proportion of the Attic or Ancient Roman Letters By: Geofroy Tory.

According to the Human Body and Face” is the most famous example of the Renaissance pursuit of an ideal proportion between humanity and the letters in which its achievements were recorded.

Perspective, the Golden Section, classical mythology: all were called in aid by its author, Geofroy Tory (ca. 1480-1533), to show how letters should be made.

*He used a square grid that foreshadows the pixels of today’s digital letterforms, a grid on which the perfect shape of a human face or body could also be set out.

 *Tory was the prototypical Renaissance man, at once a scholar, editor, scribe, illuminator, and bookseller, and Champ fleury reflected his everyday experiences. His idea of “letters,” for instance, included language and literature as well as the construction of letterforms and their visual presentation.

*The poetic title of his book translates literally as “flowery fields”; written as a single word,champfleury is an old French idiom for “paradise.”

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(born c. 1460, Hammelburg, Franconia — died October 1527, Basel, Switz.) German-born Swiss scholar and printer active in Basel. His first publication was a Latin Bible (1491).

By 1515 he and three partners owned four presses, and later seven. His contributions to printing in Basel included popularizing roman type, introducing italic and Greek fonts, experimenting with cheaper and smaller books, and employing talented artists, such as Hans Holbein, the Younger, as illustrators. About 250 of his publications are known.

French

His contributions to printing were his creations of initials and ornaments, his design of letters, and his standardization of type sizes. He worked in the Rococo form, and designed typefaces. Fournier worked to develop the 1st standard in printing. He devised the original point system (later revised by Didot)

Giambattista Bodoni was the fourth son of a master printer. He was made director of the Royal Printing House of the Duke of Parma. No printer was more acclaimed in his own lifetime than Giambattista Bodoni. He did away with old-style letters and introduced a new clear simple type - the Modern typeface. The roman letter he cut in 1798 is usually what we mean by a Bodoni.

His type was characterised by a severe simplicity. In his influential Manuale Tipografico of 1818, he laid down the four principles of type design "from which all beauty would seem to proceed", which were: regularity, cleanness, good taste, and charm.

His masterpiece was Homer's Iliad, which was dedicated to Napoleon who made him a Chevalier. He died while at work on his Manuale. Bodoni's influence was enormous and his design held sway throughout the 19th century. In 1907, Morris Fuller Benton recut Bodoni  which is still in use today.

William Blake (28 November 1757–12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language".

His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced".

Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Dutch) July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669- was a Dutch painter and etcher.

*He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history.

*His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age.

Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, his later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, and for twenty years he taught nearly every important Dutch painter.

* Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible.

His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity.

*In both painting and printmaking he exhibited a complete knowledge of classical iconography, which he molded to fit the requirements of his own experience; thus, the depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt's knowledge of the specific text, his assimilation of classical composition, and his observations of Amsterdam's Jewish population.

* Because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called "one of the great prophets of civilization."