After his apprenticeship as a type cutter and founder in Bologna, Francesco Griffo found employment with the respected Venetian printer Aldus Manutius. Manutius was 40 years old and about to embark on the most exciting project of his professional career.

In the Biblioteca Marciana, Manutius had access to a most extensive collection of Greek manuscripts, loot from the sacking of Constantinople in 1204. With a group of gifted typographers, he set about publishing the valuable texts. The necessary Greek type was cut for him by Francesco Griffo.


The font’s name-giver: Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) in a painting by Titian

In February 1496, Griffo designed a typeface for the essay “De Aetna” by the Italian scholar Pietro Bembo, which achieved great popularity under the name Bembo. In 1929, the British Monotype Corporation released a family of Bembo fonts. A 1524 pattern book by the Italian calligrapher Giovanni Tagliente provided a template for the italics.


The template for Bembo: the essay “De Aetna”, printed by Aldus Manutius in 1496