With Trajan’s column just a few meters away, Bodoni could simply roll out of bed in the morning, let himself out the back door of the palace, and come face to face with bas reliefs of the Dacians and the Romans fighting their way up the column. A few steps more, around to its front, he could read the inscription, cut in large Roman capitals, strong and pure, those famous letters that have imprinted themselves on the minds of generations of type designers.
Bodoni had landed on his feet. Living in a cardinal’s palace suited him very well and, as Carlo Martini so charmingly concludes, the Propaganda Fide press was the springboard for his immortal flight.34
Meanwhile, Costa gave up on finding his way in Rome, but he did not give up on the church. He returned to Piedmont, became a parish priest, and remained in close contact with his friend.
The inscription at the base of Trajan’s column.
The press buzzed with activity. It was housed in the building owned by the Propaganda Fide, itself an organization established by Pope Gregory XV in 1622 as a means of strengthening and uniting the various missions that were spreading the Catholic faith throughout the world. This missionary work was particularly important in the battle for souls in Africa and Asia, where Protestantism was beginning to take hold as a result of Dutch and British commerce and colonialism. Naturally, Catholic missionaries going to those fronts needed weapons — bibles and missals printed in the vernacular — and this requirement meant the Propaganda Fide had a steady need for types cut in non-Latin alphabets in various sizes. Fortunately, it already owned punches and matrices for 23 languages, including an Illyrian face, a gift from Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (1578-1637).35 For its printer’s mark, the press used the armorial bearings of the Propaganda Fide: a globe, a cross, and the words from Saint Matthew 28:19, “Euntes docete omnes gentes.” [Go and make disciples of all people.]
The building is even now located at the north end of the Piazza di Spagna.36 In shape, it is a raffish rhomboid, thanks to its challenging site, to the work of various architects, to additions over time, and to Borromini’s high baroque, curvy brilliance. With its shortest side on the Piazza di Spagna, it widens between the Via della Propaganda Fide and the Via Due Macelli. The site was originally occupied by the Palazzo Ferratini, which in 1633 was donated by its owner, a Monsignor Vives, to the Congregation. In the subsequent 30 years, it underwent considerable alteration and construction, overseen at first by the great architect and sculptor Bernini, who added a small, oval chapel to the existing building and redesigned the short façade on the Piazza di Spagna, while the architect Gaspare de Vecchi redesigned the whole east wing. Out went Bernini and in came his rival, Borromini, who designed a flamboyantly original façade on the Via della Propaganda Fide, which is difficult to appreciate because of the narrowness of the street. Then, in an act that was true to his art but grossly unkind, Borromini knocked down Bernini’s chapel and replaced it with a larger, rectilinear building of his own design, the Rei Magi chapel (said to have been given that name in honor of the three kings who were Christianity’s first converts). Poor Bernini. Each day he had to suffer the ignominy of the destruction of his chapel and the erection of Borromini’s, all of which he witnessed from the palazzo he had built for himself one street away.
Bodoni started work at the Propaganda Fide press one day near the end of 1758.37 By chance, it was a perfect moment to arrive. Cardinal Spinelli, the prefect, was deeply committed to spreading the Catholic faith and enlarging the press. On 1 September 1758, he had appointed the indefatigable Costantino Ruggieri as superintendent. Ruggieri hailed from Santarcangelo, a small town on the Via Emilia in Romagna, not far from Rimini. He was a philologist, a man of intelligence and erudition, who had the respect of a range of scholars, among them the pope himself.38 He was also referred to as a tipo cupo, a gloomy chap. He came to Rome from Padre Martini’s enormous music library in Bologna to work in the library of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667-1740). Here was a cardinal devoted to music, art, architecture, and sexual congress. (It is said that his bedroom sported portraits of his mistresses dressed up as saints, and that he fathered between 60 and 70 children.)
Ottoboni had a particular task in mind for Ruggieri. As cardinal-bishop of Portus, he had become interested in Saint Hippolytus, an earlier bishop of that town, and he needed someone to write a dissertation on the saint, proving for all time Hippolytus’s connection with Portus and not Aden (on the southwest tip of the Arabian peninsula) as had been claimed. Ruggieri proved to be the perfect man for the task. Already an antiquarian, an accomplished scholar, and a scrupulous researcher, and with Ottoboni’s huge collection of books and historical material at his disposal, he set to work with enthusiasm. By 1740, the dissertation was deemed ready for printing by the Vatican press. Just before this could happen, Ottoboni fell sick of a fever and died, and the dissertation languished for decades before it was published. The sensitive Ruggieri sank into a spell of deep melancholy. However, his reputation for competence and scholarly exactitude preceded him, and his melancholy lifted when Cardinal Spinelli invited him to Rome to run the Propaganda Fide press.
Piazza di Spagna. The Propaganda Fide is the building in the central background and the Spanish Steps are on the left.
With the return of physical and intellectual vigor, Ruggieri began to breathe new life into the establishment. He quickly recognized that a great deal of hard work was necessary to bring the press back to its former glory and capacity after years of decline. He was the new broom sweeping clean; he had grand ideas for the press, and they required talented helpers.
BODONI, THE YOUNG MAN preparing to step across the threshold of his new life, was tall, virile, well proportioned, and so agile that, during his years in Rome, he was nicknamed “the deer.”39 He had a head of rich, reddish-brown hair; his forehead was wide; his nose was rather long (but dignified); his eyes were moderately large, keenly expressive, and contained the glint of ambition; his mouth was ready to smile.40 Think, then, of a dashing Bodoni with that glint in his eye striding through Borromini’s enormous entrance, with the chapel of the Rei Magi to his left, the grand staircase to his right, and the enormous courtyard facing him. The place was alive: missionaries, functionaries, librarians, servants, and proto-priests from all over the world bustled around. Bodoni sought out the press and found it on the opposite side of the courtyard, established in two dark, cramped rooms on the ground floor.41 The setting was far too small to contain the superintendent’s ambitious plans.
Ruggieri was determined that the compositors and printers should have space and light so they could do their work with exactitude. He ordered new presses, and in January 1759, shortly after Bodoni’s arrival, he moved the printing house to five spacious, light-filled rooms on the fifth floor, allotting one room to the two compositors, and the rest to the three casters, four punchcutters, an engraver, and the presses themselves.42 The book store remained on the first floor where it attracted street trade, while customers could visit a room on the second floor to browse through examples of all the publications published by the Propaganda Fide press. Arriving just as Ruggieri’s new broom was sweeping clean, Bodoni’s timing was impeccable. He soon became indispensable both as a technician and an artist, fulfilling any task he was given with confidence and skill: assistant, printer, compositor, and woodcutter of letters and decorations. Passerini, writing in 1804, notes that the woodcuts Bodoni made there “are still today jealously guarded and saved because they are of a fineness just less than if they had been made on copper.”43
The prefect and the superintendent kept a close eye on Bodoni, noticing his skill and his enthusiasm for typesetting in foreign languages. They quickly recognized that he would be the man for a finicky job that was long overdue. Stuffed away in the nether regions of the Propaganda Fide were boxes and boxes of punches (see Appendix 1, “Cutting a Punch”) in a wide variety of languages, all jumbled up,