The general idea that roman type as we know it was derived from the humanistic script developed in Florence in the early 15th century, notably from Poggio Bracciolini’s handwriting, seems to be fairly deep-rooted. In fact some major scholars who have discussed the origin of roman type have made this claim — and here I am thinking of heavyweights like Berthold Ullman and Stanley Morison.

But if we consider Jenson’s roman as the archetype of roman type and we look at the work of scribes from the Venice and Padua area where Jenson operated, we may realise that a style of humanistic script was in development there following independent ideas from the Florentine masters. It was undergoing development when the earliest punchcutters started scouting the local scribe market to find models for their type, in the late 1460s, and it kept on developing in the following decades along with the production of early printing types.

Left: epigraphic (bilateral) serifs. Right: exit stroke that mimics the scribe’s exit from the letterform.

A definition of roman type

But first of all we need to define the expression ‘roman type’ so that it can be distinguished from other styles of type. The term is often used ambiguously and we cannot take its meaning for granted.

Rephrasing Carter — often the best source for type history — a type is called roman when the capital letters reproduce classical inscriptional models and the lowercase letters display lapidary (bilateral) serifs at terminations of the straight strokes [Carter, pp. 45, 48]. Although Carter did not specify what a classic inscriptional model was, he referred to Roman square capitals, or rather to capitals from the early Roman Empire (1st and 2nd century AD) which were very popular in 20th-century England. Then I asked James Mosley — whom Gerard Unger considers the greatest type historian of all time. After saying that he could not offer an exact definition, Mosley answered: ‘It seems to me that although Carter’s remarks are valid, it is the form of the minuscules that chiefly distinguish the roman type’.