Humane
The typographical characters of the family of the humanes were engraved at the beginnings of printing works in Italy in reaction against the Gothic script of the manuscripts. Inspired by the Tiny Caroline (supposed near to the Roman scripte) for the drawing of tiny, and by the epigraphic capitals of the Roman buildings for the capitals, they restored, in the spirit of the first printers, the writing of the Romans, that whom had known Cicéron and César.
The humanes present triangular footings, but contrast between downstroke and upstroke is still weak or non-existent. Moreover, the footings overload certain letters like the M and has (horizontal footing partly higher). There is also a great heterogeneity in this family: the printers worked still independently from/to each other, no printer not managing to impose its style until Alde Manuce. The Gothic characters (particularly the “letter of nap”) were preferred academics.
This typestyle practically disappeared from the modern edition: one finds it only in the books of the Renaissance. The police force “Hadriano”, of Frederic W. Goudy (1918), engraved for Linotype machine, recalls the principal features of them.
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