Panfilo Castaldi (c. 1398 – c. 1490) was an Italian physician and "master of the art of printing," to whom local tradition attributes the invention of

moveable type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuation m ...

. He was born in Feltre but spent most of his life working in

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 ...

. The story as it has circulated through the centuries in Feltre is that Castaldi was given examples of early

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

block printing Woodblock printing or block 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. Each page or image is create ...

by Marco Polo, with which he experimented, eventually producing modern type. The story was largely unknown outside of Lombardy until it was reported in the 19th century by Robert Curzon, Baron Zouche, a diplomat. As Curzon tells it, Castaldi began with glass stamps made at Murano and eventually developed wooden printing blocks which he used in a printing press in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

in 1426. This would have been several years before

Johann Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its kind, earlier designs ...

's first experiments with metal type in the early 1430s. Curzon stresses the connection to Marco Polo, arguing that Castaldi's (undated) early work closely resembles Chinese printing, and also stresses Gutenberg's acquaintance with Venetian printing, thus suggesting that European printing did not emerge distinctly from the Chinese analogues but in imitation (a frequently debated question in any case). Since no more recent scholarship has suggested such an early date for Castaldi's printing, any relationship between Castaldi and Marco Polo, or any connection between Gutenberg and Northern Italy, the story has never received much credit outside of Feltre. In that city, however, it still attracts a fair amount of attention (the statue of Castaldi still stands) and was brought up once again on the occasion of Castaldi's sexcentennial in 1998; in a proposal for a municipal bill recognizing Castaldi, he was referred to as "il primo inventore dei caratteri mobili per la stampa" ("the first inventor of moveable type for printing"). What is clear is that by the 1470s Castaldi was a successful printer; there is a record of a print run of 300 copies of a

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...

epistle in 1471.Richardson, Brian. ''Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy'' (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 30. ''Panfilo Castaldi'' is the imprint of a 19th and 20th-century printing house in Feltre.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Castaldi, Panfilo 1390s births 1490s deaths People from Feltre Italian printers Printers of incunabula 15th-century Italian physicians 15th-century Italian businesspeople