Francesco Torniello da Novara (c. 1490 – 1589) was a

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

ese

typographer Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), an ...

, writer and

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the ol ...

who became known for applying geometric specifications to

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

capital letters

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

Life

Torniello was born between 1488 and 1491 in

Barengo Barengo (Piedmontese and Lombard: ''Barengh'') is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Novara in the Italian region Piedmont, located about northeast of Turin and about northwest of Novara. Barengo borders the following municipalities ...

, which was part of the

Duchy of Milan The Duchy of Milan ( it, Ducato di Milano; lmo, Ducaa de Milan) was a state in northern Italy, created in 1395 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, then the lord of Milan, and a member of the important Visconti family, which had been ruling the city sin ...

. He came from a noble family of the area. He studied

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

and mathematics. In 1519 he joined the

Order of Friars Minor The Order of Friars Minor (also called the Franciscans, the Franciscan Order, or the Seraphic Order; postnominal abbreviation OFM) is a mendicant Catholic religious order, founded in 1209 by Francis of Assisi. The order adheres to the teachi ...

as a preacher. In 1525 Torniello and his brother, Giovanni Antonio gained Milanese citizenship. He died in 1589 in the monastery of

Treviglio Treviglio (, Bergamasque: ) is a town and ''comune'' (i.e. municipality) in the province of Bergamo, in Lombardy, Northern Italy. It lies south of the province capital, in the lower territory called "Bassa Bergamasca". It's also part of the geog ...

in the Duchy of Milan.

Works

Torniello's works were focused on adopting the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

inscriptions as original as possible, while simultaneously improving their

geometric Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ca ...

conditions. His works were influenced by Luca Pacioli's ''Divine Proportione'' (''Divine Proportions'') and Sigismondo Fanti. These fonts were not then designed for usage in the printing press, but as a model for artistic inscriptions. Torniello designed a 18X18 grid which served as a

coordinate system In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The order of the coordinates is sig ...

for his geometrical fonts, which were designed for printing press usage. In his work ''Opera del modo de fare le littere maiuscole antique'', which was printed in 1517, Torniello enriched, calligraphically and geometrically, previously-existing fonts. Geometrical conditions were added to the letters "M", "R", "S" and "T". The letters "S" and "T" were also enriched calligraphically. In order to broaden the usage of his fonts in non-Latin texts Torniello added the letter "Z". He also was the first typographer to define the

point Point or points may refer to: Places * Point, Lewis, a peninsula in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland * Point, Texas, a city in Rains County, Texas, United States * Point, the NE tip and a ferry terminal of Lismore, Inner Hebrides, Scotland * Point ...

as unit of measurement in typography.

Writings

*''Opera del modo de fare le littere maiuscole antique'', 1517, Milan. Only four copies of the book exist today: one is located in

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...

, one in Milan and two in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Torniello, Francesco Italian male writers 1490 births 1589 deaths Italian typographers and type designers Italian Friars Minor