Summer sees an increase in poultry, game, and other birds, including songbirds. Beans, cauliflower, cabbage, and onions appear, along with peaches, plums, apricots, figs, currants, mulberries, melons, and pears. Autumn brings a bounty of fish, meat, cool weather vegetables and fruit, with the welcome addition of nuts, olives, and a huge variety of grapes. The lean winter months of December, January, and February, see an increase in the consumption of dairy products and dried and preserved food.
Even in 1766 Italians were already preoccupied with the preparation of coffee. The author insists that the beans be fresh and not vitiated by seawater (presumably on their perilous voyage from the Levant), should not smell moldy, and should be freshly ground. An ounce and a half of coffee per pint of water was the correct proportion, and if served with milk, that liquid had to be steaming before being poured on top of the coffee. How tempting, but forbidden, the local cafés must have been for the young Bodoni, and how delightful to celebrate the last of his schooldays by heading out to a previously forbidden café to celebrate with friends.
Yes, good food was certainly available for the growing boy. Wine, too. The area around Saluzzo was, and still is, rich in a variety of autochthonous vines, and is nowadays a center for the preservation of these ancient varietals. One light, sweet wine, pellaverga, was very popular in Bodoni’s day and has an interesting history. Every year, one of the marchionesses of Saluzzo, Margherita di Foix, would send thirty bottles to Pope Julius II, who appreciated the wine so much that in 1511 he made Saluzzo an episcopal seat.
Religion also played its customary part in the life of the Bodoni family, and Saluzzo’s dashing patron saint, the aforementioned San Chiaffredo, loomed large in the children’s lives. He was easy enough for them to recognize because of his attributes of sword, standard, elm, and military attire. His handsome portrait by Hans Klemer hung in the cathedral, and his shrine in nearby Crissolo attracted pilgrims in search of miracles. Legend has him born in Egypt and a soldier in the famous Theban legion, most of whose members were Christian. In 285 A.D., the co-emperors Maximian and Diocletian, wanting to quell a revolt in Gaul, shipped the entire Theban legion, 6,600 strong, from Egypt to Rome, and then marched it north through Italy and over the Saint Bernard pass into Switzerland. After successfully crushing the revolt, the soldiers camped in nearby Agaunum (now the Swiss town of St. Maurice-en-Valais) and were ordered to celebrate their victory with sacrifices to the Roman gods. To a man, the Theban legion refused, whereupon they were decimated (that is, a tenth of them was slaughtered). When the remaining troops still refused to comply, another tenth was slaughtered, and so on. Chiaffredo escaped. He made his way back over the Alps, finally reaching Crissolo, about 30 kilometers due west of Saluzzo, where he met eventual martyrdom.
In about 522, a man fell over a precipice near Crissolo and landed miraculously unhurt. The local populace attributed the miracle to his having fallen on the very spot where a skeleton had been plowed up by a peasant, its bones attributed to San Chiaffredo. The cult of San Chiaffredo is still very much alive today, and the sanctuary in Crissolo contains his relics and a vast number of votive offerings.
AT SOME TIME during Bodoni’s teenage years, just when he was finishing his course in “philosophic studies,”12 his brother Nicolino died. Nicolino, nine years older than Giambattista, had shown enormous promise. Not only had he taken holy orders, but he had become a doctor of law, on top of which he received high honors in the public examination at the University of Turin. These achievements opened the door to his becoming tutor to the children of the marquis of San Germano. His death occurred just a year after he entered the marquis’s household.
Giambattista, until then committed to the study of philosophy, immediately changed his mind in favor of following his brother into the Church. This plan was summarily scotched by the bishop of Saluzzo, who was well aware of Bodoni’s overwhelming liveliness [la soverchia sua vivacità13]. After talking things over with the bishop, the youth decided to enter his father’s business and train as a printer, a natural decision considering his early prowess. He also showed exceptional skill making wood engravings, often using San Chiaffredo as his subject. Everyone, but in particular the bishop, was astonished by the ease with which he accomplished his designs and how quickly he achieved results. Giambattista, too, was well satisfied with his work and, always ambitious, decided he needed a wider market than Saluzzo. Off he went to Turin, where his prints found ready buyers. He stayed for a while in that city, pleasing his father by furthering his education under the guidance of the printer Francesco Antonio Maiaresse.
Ambition had taken hold of him. Turin was all very well, but Rome would offer him greater opportunities for glory — glory for himself, for his family, for Saluzzo, for Italy. Hadn’t grandfather Gian Domenico already paved the way? Bodoni returned to Saluzzo to make preparations for travel to Rome, determined to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. The bishop endorsed his plan and encouraged him to acquire training in engraving while he was there, recommending that he seek instruction from the engraver Lucchesini.
As a traveling companion, Giambattista chose his friend Ignazio Cappa, a discerning and capable young man who had also worked with his own father, a specialist in wrought iron. Bodoni beguiled him into joining the adventure, but just before they were ready to leave, Cappa lost his nerve. This did not deter Bodoni. He quickly assessed the rest of his comrades, and his eye lit on Domenico Costa, a young man destined for the Church, for whom the idea of Rome had a strong attraction. Costa turned out to be a better choice than the anxious Cappa, being filled with a soaring ambition that more than matched Bodoni’s. While Bodoni intended to become the pride and joy of all Italy, Costa saw himself as an exemplary shepherd of souls and the pride and joy of God. Both came from that breed of Piemontese whom their fellow Italians described as tough and self-reliant, and both certainly lived up to this reputation.
The young men raised money for their journey however they could. Bodoni went into a frenzy of wood engraving and printing, producing a series of vignettes and decorations to sell when they arrived in Rome. He and Cappa were breezily confident about finding accommodation with family members. Costa had an uncle who was secretary to Abbot Lagnasco, the Polish ambassador to the Pontificate, and Bodoni counted on his uncle Carlo, then living in Rome, and the same priest who had baptized him.
Giambattista and Domenico chose to leave Saluzzo on Ash Wednesday, which in 1758 fell on 8 February.14 The day before, martedì grasso, the Bodoni family would have prepared an enormous farewell meal that would hold Bodoni over for a lean Lent, and they would also have made sure that his knapsack was stuffed with cheese, salted anchovies, and bread for the journey.
“Dopo aver asciugato coi loro baci le lacrime delle rispettive mamme . . .”15 [After having dried with their kisses the tears of their respective mammas], they said goodbye to the rest of their families. Giambattista embraced his brother Domenico, who would work for most of his life in the family printing business in Saluzzo; his sister Benedeta, just married to Angelo Lobetti (she was the only member of that generation of the Bodoni family to produce heirs); his brother, the mysterious Felice Vincenzo, about whom nothing is known; his sister, Angela; and Giuseppe, the brother who would work shoulder to shoulder with him in later years.
Then Bodoni and Costa turned their backs on Saluzzo. Giambattista was not yet eighteen years old.
IT IS ANNOYING not to know precisely by what means the boys traveled. The possibilities were: foot, horseback, diligence (a public stagecoach), and private coach, this last being extremely unlikely due to its cost. The most likely choice would be a local diligence to Turin before a long-distance diligence from Turin to Genoa, then a sailing vessel from Genoa to Civitavecchia, and another diligence from there to Rome. “Viaggio lungo, faticoso, interminabile”16 says Carlo Martini. Yes — long, exhausting, and seemingly interminable for two eager young men.
The entire journey lasted from at least eight days to as much as two or three weeks, depending on the length of their stay in Genoa and their means of transportation.