Dante is a mid-20th-century

old-style serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...

Giovanni Mardersteig Giovanni may refer to: * Giovanni (name), an Italian male given name and surname * Giovanni (meteorology), a Web interface for users to analyze NASA's gridded data * ''Don Giovanni'', a 1787 opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, based on the legend of ...

, originally for use by the

Officina Bodoni The Officina Bodoni was a private press operated by Giovanni Mardersteig from 1922. It was named after the great eighteenth-century Italian typographer Giambattista Bodoni. The Officina Bodoni is known for printing books of the very highest quality ...

for books. The original type was cut by Charles Malin. The type is a serif face influenced by (but not directly indebted to) the types cut by

Francesco Griffo Francesco Griffo (1450–1518), also called Francesco da Bologna, was a fifteenth-century Italian punchcutter. He worked for Aldus Manutius, designing the printer's more important humanist typefaces, including the first italic type. He cut Roman, Gr ...

between 1449 and 1516. Mardersteig had become acquainted with Griffo's type in the design of his previous typeface, called Griffo. One of the primary objectives in designing Dante was in keeping a visual balance between the roman and italics (in Griffo's time typefaces were cut in roman style and italic style, but not both). The name of the typeface comes from the first book in which it was first used,

Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian people, Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanism, Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so we ...

's ''Trattatello in Laude di

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...

'', published in 1955 by the Officina Bodoni. The book used types cut by Malin between 1946 and 1952. The date of the typeface is sometimes given as 1954. Dante would become one of the most used types by Mardersteig. Originally Dante was cut for use on the private handpress, but

Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix (printing), matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to ac ...

had already expressed interest in issuing Dante for machine composition before 1955. This was about the same time that Malin died, and Monotype was also interested in adding a semibold weight to the Dante family.

Matthew Carter Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is a British type designer.Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="y Christophe Plantin">y Christophe Plantin' in typography's golden age was in perfect condition (some muddle aside) long withPlantin's accoun ...

, in his twenties at the time, was recruited to cut some of the initial punches of the semibold. Monotype issued its Dante in 1957. Dante was redrawn for digital use by Monotype's Ron Carpenter in 1993.

References

{{Monotype typefaces Digital typefaces Letterpress typefaces Monotype typefaces Old style serif typefaces