Figure 102
Opening of Paolo Giovio’s Historiarum sui Temporis: Torrentino, Florence
From a copy in Harvard College Library (facsimile), Internet Archive (scan)
1550
A folio edition of Paolo Giovio’s Historiarum sui Temporis in two volumes, printed at Florence in 1550–52 by Lorenzo Torrentino, Ducal Typographer (to Cosimo de’ Medici), is a very different and very imposing work. Its great pages of roman types are splendid, and the type-setting (although not so solid as in earlier volumes) is still careful.… The title-page is arranged in six sizes of roman capitals combined with some striking lower-case roman, and also italic, letters.