A NOTE ON THE TYPE

The text of this book was set in a digitized version of Arcimboldo, a typeface long attributed to the Italian engraver and silversmith Paolo Arcimboldo, who lived in Parma in the first half of the eighteenth century. However, it has been suggested that these types are actually the work of Arcimboldo’s next-door neighbor, Giancarlo Condulmaro, who studied in Amsterdam under the renowned type founder Hendrick de Bruyn. According to available records, Condulmaro designed at least two hundred other known typefaces, while Arcimboldo’s entire typographical oeuvre is limited to Arcimboldo and a second face, Ciottolo, which consists of pebbles arranged in a shallow bed of sand and viewed from the top of a tall tree, from which distance they look like type, a method that is relatively unwieldy in practical printing. Also contributing to the theory that Arcimboldo may have appropriated one of Condulmaro’s typefaces is an unfinished letter written by Condulmaro and found among his possessions after his mysterious disappearance in 1723. The first half of the letter, which was intended for Condulmaro’s son Eduardo, who was studying to be a painter in Rome, busies itself with Parman gossip, noting that “a cow walked into town and died” and that “Donatella Pitellini, the younger of the two Pitellini sisters, has begun to invite men into her home in the evening and not release them until the early hours of the morn.” After a brief bit of advice for his son (“When you paint, dear Eduardo, paint only things larger than a hat, and please remember that this category does not include hats”), the elder Condulmaro turned to the thornier matter of his neighbor. “Arcimboldo has been bothering me again,” Condulmaro wrote. “I saw him in the market yesterday, and he would not leave me alone. He told me that he plans to kill me, make my death look like a mysterious disappearance, and steal my new typeface, which he and I agree is so elegant that it rivals the finest Dutch faces of Bruyn, Voskens, and Janson. I do not know what these vague threats of Arcimboldo’s can possibly mean. Oh! I must go now. One of the Lollobrigida boys is here, and he has just told me that another cow has walked into town and died.” The type is a rare example of an Italian type that has proven, over the years, to be as influential and sturdy as the Dutch types of the time. No less a judge than William Caslon declared Arcimboldo “mucho excelente.” 

©2001 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas