Letter-hunting in Italy / 2
Historical inscriptions and more recent signs from all over the country
Here we are with another series of ten illustrated snippets concerning historical inscriptions and signs in Italy. The subjects come from eight different regions from north to south, and cover a timespan from the second century BC up to about the 1940s or 50s. Unlike last year’s totally un-chronological series (see Letter-hunting in Italy / 1), this time I’ve placed the subjects in a historical sequence because several of them are related to each other for stylistic similarities or for comparisons.
We start with a discussion on two Republican Roman sans serif inscriptions from the exceptional epigraphy collection of the Museo Archeologico di Aquileia. This is significant because among the many Italian museums that display Roman inscriptions, being a bit off the beaten track (an hour by car from Trieste), this one seems to be little-known by the international typographic community. These two Republican inscriptions are followed by a brief discussion on the letterforms of the inscription for the grave of the children of Sextus Pompeius on the via Appia Antica in Rome, which we compare with those of the inscription under Trajan’s column. The eight other pieces include one concerning Renaissance sans serifs, two from the nineteenth century and five from the twentieth.
Of the twenty inscriptions and signs discussed over these two years, the prevalence of stuff from the twentieth century is evident and the reason for this is that this century stands out for its extraordinarily rich variety of lettering ideas — despite the ongoing loss of many hand-painted shop signs. Furthermore I am aware of the absence of early medieval inscriptions and others from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and next year more attention will be dedicated to these periods.
With two exceptions (numbers 1 and 6) I wrote much briefer sketches on each subject for my weekly column in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica (2016–2019).
1. Two Republican inscriptions, Aquileia
2. Inscription for the grave of the children of Sextus Pompeius, Rome
3. Renaissance sans serifs, Fabriano
4. Nineteenth-century ‘acanthus’ relief letters, Ceglie Messapica
5. Nineteenth-century decorated relief letters, Milan
6. Art Nouveau relief inscription, Pescara
7. Painted Art Nouveau sign, Bormio
8. Carved and painted Lombardic letters, Bari
9. Art Deco glass sign, Bologna
10. Painted sign with fantasy letters, Venice
1. Two Republican inscriptions, Aquileia
Roman sans serifs, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Via Roma 1
The lion’s share of the many thousands of Roman inscriptions in Italian collections is made up of imperial letters from after the first century AD distinguished by serifs and alternated thick and thin strokes. Only a relatively small number of inscriptions are from the Republican period, before the first century AD, and the letters on them are usually simple monoline sans serifs.
Aquileia was founded in 181 BC and it has yielded more than 4000 inscriptions from the second century BC to the fourth century. Besides some grand Imperial inscriptions, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Aquileia has an exceptionally fine collection of Republican inscriptions. The two we have selected here are both v-cut into limestone.
1) Epitaph on the base of a lost monument to Titus Annius Luscus. Mid second century BC. The monoline sans serif letters in two sizes and six lines are well aligned except for O and Q which are slightly lower in height. Notable here — and typical of Republican letterforms in general — are P with a wide-open bowl and M with widely splayed legs; other features are wide A, Q with a tail terminating at the baseline, E with a short middle arm below mid-letter height and the bowl of R with a tight curve at the top and the tail meeting the bowl at the stem; of the five instances of S only the one in the first line displays a similarity to classical proportions. Four-pointed stars serve as inter-points.
2) Inscription on the tombstone of the freedman Lucius Albius. First century BC. This was dedicated to the freedman by his wife, who addresses him with the affectionate nickname Buccius (Buccio in this dative case). The six lines suggest a hierarchy by a subtle downward decline in letter height. The lines are not centred but ranged more or less alternately left and right and the dynamic effect produced must have been the result of a deliberate design decision; the lack of a margin on the left, however, might be puzzling to us but Republican and Imperial Roman lettercutters were not usually much concerned with margins.
Here, the most evidently different letterforms from the previous (Titus Annius) inscription — which may have been cut half a century earlier — are the more consistent proportions of S, narrower A, E with a slightly shorter middle arm above mid-letter height, R with the tail meeting the bowl but not the stem, and triangular inter-points. All of these details move in the direction of the proportions of Imperial letterforms (see below), and that alone ought to be enough to call for some research on Republican inscriptions in Aquileia and elsewhere — which is lacking. Was there a general process of evolution regarding these details before the introduction of serifs and alternated thick-thin strokes?
A useful guide to the inscriptions displayed in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Aquileia is Giovanni Letich, Itinerari Epigrafici Aquilesi (Trieste, Editreg, 2003).
2. Inscription for the grave of the children of Sextus Pompeius, Rome
Imperial letterforms, via Appia Antica
The text of this fragmentary inscription on the via Appia Antica is an excruciating metric poem in elegiac couplets dedicated by a father to his children after their untimely deaths. The alternated long and short lines (hexameters and pentameters) required much expert design work prior to the lettercutting. Like other inscriptions along the via Appia Antica it was reassembled and set into a specially built brick wall in the mid-nineteenth century. Recently it has started to attract more attention from the typographic community than the vastly better known and traditionally venerated inscription under Trajan’s column.
The first difficulty with the Trajan inscription is to see it closely enough to be able to even distinguish the words, let alone the letters. This is because all touristic attention is directed to the high relief sculptures that wind around the column above; the Rome municipality does not allow the public to walk down the steps leading to the inscription. In fact, our familiarity with the Trajan letters often comes from photos of the several casts that were made of it or photos of the original.
On the contrary, the sixteen lines on the Sextus inscription can be studied ‘in the flesh’ from a relatively close distance, with the bottom line just above head height.
Despite the dirt, the fragmentation and the missing parts, the letters on the Sextus inscription are well preserved. They must have spent much of their nigh on 2000-odd years sunk into the ground, protected from further human depredation and also from meteorological damage — unlike the Trajan letters which have always been in their exposed position for a similar timespan. The v-cut of the Sextus inscription is much deeper than the notably shallow cut of the Trajan inscription and the letters are also bolder: two factors which produce a well-defined contrast of light and shade and allow a better perception for today’s observers. One difference of detail can be seen in the apexes of letters A, M and N which are pointed in the Trajan inscription and flat in the Sextus inscription — as in most Imperial inscriptions.
We see the same sophisticated elegance in the letters of both inscriptions, each of which show very fine serifs and matching proportions. Though both are the work of highly skilled craftsmen, those of the Sextus inscription are particularly strong, lively and sinuous. Despite their well proven brush-written origins, the Trajan letters appear delicate and even static in comparison.
3. Ospedale di Santa Maria del Buon Gesù, Fabriano
Renaissance sans serifs, Piazza Papa Giovanni Paolo II
Following the Renaissance inscription in Rome discussed in Letter-hunting in Italy / 1, here is another one on the facade of the late gothic Ospedale del Buon Gesù in Fabriano (1456). While the letterforms of the former are unique, the ones we see here belong to a group called Renaissance sans serifs or the ‘Florentine style’. And indeed, the main feature of many of the letters on early Renaissance inscriptions in Florence — but elsewhere too, and even as far away as Milan — is the absence of serifs. While accommodating much variation of letterforms this general style flourished from the 1420s to the 1460s. It fizzled out with Alberti’s inscription on the Santa Maria Novella facade of 1470, when the march towards ever closer imitations of the Imperial style was also certified by Jenson’s roman type which made its debut in the same year.
The designer of this inscription had the challenging task of fitting 254 letters (43 words) into a single line of 29 m running above the five arches of the facade. While having the letters of a sufficient height (about 12 cm), the solution to save space was to make them narrow and add a few nested letters under T and above L. Other space savers are the abbreviations while ligatures are absent even though they still appear on other Renaissance inscriptions. Besides much inconsistency in the quality of cut and letterforms, M always has a high central v and thick perpendicular stems. Both M and N often show diagonals that are virtually detached from the left and right stems. A has a pointed serif at its apex and tapering diagonals, as in V, while S occasionally leans backwards; the spiralling curve of G is a gothic remnant. These details are present in other Renaissance sans inscriptions but the crescent-shaped bowls of the best examples of B, P, R and D are original and attractive.
The inscription gives the year of construction, the names of the current pope, the local archbishop, and friar Jacopo, founder of the Ospedale. The building was damaged by a bomb in 1945 and this may explain some discrepancies in restored parts of the inscription. Today it hosts the civic art gallery of Fabriano.
For further reading on Renaissance sans serifs see Nicolete Gray, A history of lettering (London: Phaidon Press, 1986) and Paul Stiff, ‘Brunelleschi’s epitaph and the design of public letters in fifteenth-century Florence’, Typography papers, 6 (2005), pp.67–114.
4. Carcere mandamentale, Ceglie Messapica
Nineteenth-century ‘acanthus’ relief letters, via Cappuccini, 1
Ceglie Messapica in the province of Brindisi is a small town of ancient origins with a medieval castle and a former ‘district prison’ or Carcere mandamentale. The two-storey building (1885) is sturdy, as befits a prison, simple yet dignified and unadorned save for a remarkable inscription and a municipal crest above the entrance.
The leafy decorated letters of the word carcere of the inscription seem to evoke a bucolic paradise rather than the dingy reality of a prison. And surely we can exclude such a paradoxical intention on the part of the architect who designed the building and, almost certainly, the letters on the inscription too. In the municipal crest above the inscription (see photo below) we see the same leaves above and below a panoply with a Corinthian helmet and two spears. To the right of this figure there is the word ΚΑΙΛΙΝΟΝ in Greek capital letters which refers to the name of the town during the Magna Graecia colonisation (Greek: Καιλία; Latin: Caelia). The foliage on the crest and the decorated letters below it are acanthus leaves, well known as decorations on Corinthian capitals. In compensation for the simplicity of the building and spurred by the Hellenic references in the crest, it may be that the architect was expressing his admiration for classical architecture with letters instead of Corinthian columns.
Skilfully designed and made in cement, these ‘acanthus’ letters are rare and perhaps unique, at least in architecture; furthermore on the whole they are well spaced — unlike the word mandamentale, below. Architectural sans serifs such as we see here, however, are also extremely rare for nineteenth-century Italy. These ones in relief anticipate the relief sans serifs preferred by the architects of public buildings half a century later.
5. Officina elettrica, Milano
Nineteenth-century decorated relief letters, Via Bramante 42
These cement letters are fixed to the facade of what was Milan’s second power station, built in 1897 to supply electricity for the growing fleet of trams. Like many other industrial buildings the place has been empty for several decades but work is nearly completed for its conversion into new offices and exhibition space for the ADI — Associazione per il Disegno Industriale. The facade was admirably restored in the autumn of 2019, possibly just in time before the letters of the inscription dropped down and broke on the pavement.
Clearly the public of our times is aware that today these fancy letters are unfit to represent something as technological as electricity. Likewise, an invitation for an audience with the Pope in Comic Sans or, at a different level of typographic awareness, a biography of Claude Garamond in modern type, would both be equally inappropriate. Though specific letterforms representing religions, national identities and the special case of the word carcere (piece number 4, above), had been in play for centuries, diversity of letterforms for products or services — such as electricity — is a twentieth-century marketing and graphic design concept.
During the run-up to Art Nouveau in the 1880’s and 90s, type founders (especially in the USA) were offering printers a plethora of new designs many of which had fancy decorations, and some of these were integrated into squarish letters similar to what we see here. It is highly unlikely that with the rectangular and curveless O and C the architect who designed the letters was giving a wink to the modern era of electricity. Furthermore, his able handling of the curved tail of R makes it improbable that he eschewed the normally curved O and C because he found them too difficult to design (which is certainly the case with many squarish letters designed for some Italian street nameplates and manhole covers). The other letters are less innovative and are hardly more than roman caps somewhat overburdened with the floral decorations.
The lettering is unequivocally fin de siècle and I’ve seen nothing like it anywhere else in Italy. It is good that this rare detail of Milan’s industrial heritage has been saved.
6. Teatro Michetti, Pescara
Relief Art Nouveau inscription, Viale Gabriele D’Annunzio, 26
What never ceases to amaze me about Art Nouveau lettering on buildings and signs in Italy is the infinite variety of letterform ideas. Classifying them seems impossible — and that may be one reason why historians have largely shunned them. However, several basic design ideas crop up quite frequently on signs and inscriptions.
One of these that we see here is letter A with diagonals replaced by a curve on one side and a perpendicular on the other, together with a double crossbar (see also Letter-hunting in Italy / 1, piece number 6). In this case however, the architect came up with a strong and original design with his wide and flat apex on A as well as his two Es: both letters display three parallel and equidistant horizontal strokes. The double stroke idea is applied to H and also to R with its thin elongated bowl (like the P in the Pirelli logo); the diagonals of M are also treated successfully in the same manner, but the architect wisely avoided any temptation to repeat the idea with the two Ts on line 2 because that might have impaired legibility. The letter-spacing of the name Michetti is very shoddy, though this is mitigated by the distance from eye level on the street and the low colour contrast of the letters with the background.
The theatre was built in an eclectic style in 1910 by Vicentino Michetti, who also gave it his name, and it was rebuilt after a fire in 1944. Though restoration is currently going ahead problems with contractors, bureaucracy and funding have kept it closed since 2009.
For a discussion on Italian Art Nouveau signs and inscriptions see James Clough, Signs of Italy, Lazy Dog Press, 2015, pp. 31–49.
7. Sartoria militare, Bormio
Painted Art Nouveau sign, Via Roma 34
Every now and again letter-hunters find themselves charmed by surprising letterforms on a sign and it takes a while before the information that is being communicated is assimilated. This is particularly true in the case of this Sartoria militare (Military tailor’s shop) in the small Alpine town of Bormio. We might try to find some martial significance in those unusual letterforms with sharp angles in unexpected places, heavy horizontal strokes and rose-thorn serifs. Is there some arcane connection with camouflage canvas or uniforms for soldiers that escapes our understanding?
This sign was painted around 1915 by Fabio Zanoli, a local decorator and sign painter (information given to me by his grandson, Fabio Togni). Zanoli came up with these very personal but distinctly Art Nouveau letterforms without any consideration of ‘fitness for purpose’ — which in this case, with its military connection, might mean stencilled sans serifs for us today. The lettering we see here is in the broad Art Nouveau idiom just as the Officina Elettrica inscription discussed above is an interpretation of a decorative fashion of twenty years earlier.
The Sartoria militare is now a private condominium and Bormio is an important ski resort. But during World War I the town was a staging post for the Italian army fighting the Austro-Hungarians in the snow-clad mountains. It is possible that more soldiers died from hypothermia than from enemy action, despite the greatcoats that were distributed from this Sartoria militare.
8. Palazzo Ingami Scalvini, Bari
Carved and painted Lombardic letters, via Cairoli, 85
Among the early twentieth-century buildings in Bari the Palazzo Ingami Scalvini is notable for its eclectic architecture, a trend that was prominent in Italy and contemporary with the Art Nouveau movement from about 1890–1920, as seen above. What interests us though is the lettering of the Latin mottos on marble plaques discreetly integrated into various parts of the palazzo. The example above showing the year of completion (1924), is graphically the best of the six others on the building — despite the wobbly brushwork. On all of the plaques the letters were shallowly cut and painted — which is rare — in blue, with a few initials in red. They are further distinguished by adroit use of ligatures, some spiralled lower terminations on A, N, R, and S as well as ingenious sequences of high and low letters.
The revived so-called Lombardic style was international in scope and is connected with the Gothic revival that prevailed for most of the nineteenth century in England. Unlike revived Gothic architecture, which was never much of a phenomenon in Italy, Lombardic lettering was creatively interpreted by Italian architects in numerous personal styles. Besides this example on a private building, revived Lombardics can still be seen on many churches, a few theatres and schools and particularly on funereal monuments built up to the 1920s. The contrast between these ‘medieval’ letters of 1924 and the modernist sans serifs on the facades of Italian rationalist buildings and funereal monuments of just a few years later is a dramatic instance of change in lettering fashions.
9. Ristorante Donatello, Bologna
Art Deco glass sign, via Augusto Righi 8
The letterforms on the two identical glass signs above the windows of the Ristorante Donatello in Bologna, with their rigorous geometry and the long and slanted s, allow us to classify them as art deco though their various extraordinary features go well beyond that particular pigeonhole.
The two uppercase initials, the s and the other very narrow letters alternate more or less with the much wider circular ones and all work together to make a rare and effective design. While the t is abnormally tall, the thrice repeated o which looks like a cap Q rotated anticlockwise from 5 o’clock to 2 o’clock, is even quirkier. Readers may be puzzled by this o but it is probable that the sign painter who invented the letterforms was inspired by the ‘exit stroke’ on the upper right of a final o as in cursive handwriting, an idea which can also be seen on many logos. The sign painter whimsically applied the idea to his design here and got away with it entirely. In fact, we may even suspect that a normal o would not have produced such a successful design.
Furthermore, upon close inspection another extraordinary feature is revealed which concerns the technique used for the 3D effect with highlights and graduated shading of gold. The illusion of 3D is astonishing for its perfection. Working in the 1930s or 40s (according to the proprietor of the Ristorante Donatello) the sign painter has demonstrated uncanny skill in imitating the complexities of a v-cut by using gold paint. At the bottom right corner of one of the signs there is the name Pizzirani, with Bologna — Bari — Palermo in smaller letters on a second line. The fact that the sign has survived in nearly pristine condition is also remarkable and must be due to the protection afforded by the pane of glass covering the sign which is further protected by the typical Bolognese portico.
10. Trattoria al Vagon, Venice
Painted sign with fantasy lettering, Sotoportego del Magazen, 5597
Among the several hundreds of thousands of fonts available today (Myfonts alone offers more than 130,000 of them) there may be a few that are vaguely similar to these letters on the Trattoria al Vagon in Venice. But if not, it’s quite on the cards that sooner or later someone will snap them up and make a font out of them. Five out of the nine letters of the word trattoria, (two As, two Rs and one O) are the real actors here while the three Ts and one I are extras, albeit of some importance. The circular counters, letter R without a real stem and letter A like an arrowhead, are all attractive and original ideas.
Though the letters were painted, and repainted, with a slightly irregular outline — and that is perhaps part of their charm — we shouldn’t be tricked into thinking that the creative mind behind them did not also know about the art of lettering. In fact, several details suggest the sign came from professional hands: the bar of T is lighter than the stem, the apex of A pokes just above the cap height and the two smaller ‘nested’ letters under the bars of the Ts make for even spacing and rhythm.
The only information that the lady who owns the Trattoria could give me was that when her parents bought the place in 1952 the sign was already up. It is a joyful piece of lettering and we are confident that the proprietors will continue to look after it as they have done for well over half a century.
Transcription of the Sextus inscription
The original text completed by conjectures for the missing words is from Franz Bücheler, Carmina Epigrafica, Leipzig 1895.
Hic soror et frater viv[i sunt plag]a par[e]ntis.
aetate in prima saev[a rapin]a [tuli]t.
Pompeia his tumulis co[gnomi]ne El[euthe]ris
haeret et puer, inmites que[m rapuere] dei,
Sex(tus)Pompeius Sexti, praec[l]a[ro nomine I]ustus,
quem tenuit magn[o noster amore sin]us.
Infelix genitor gemina [sic morte coa]ctus
a natis spe‹n›rans qui ded[it ipse rog]os.
Amissum auxilium functae post [gaudi]a natae,
funditus ut traherent invida [fata [l]arem.
Quanta iacet probitas, pietas quam vera [sep]ulta est.
mente senes aevo sed periere [brev]i.
Quis non flere meos casus possitq(ue) dolere? [dolore on stone]
[qui d]urare queam bis datus ecce rogis?
S[i su]nt [di] Manes, iam nati numen habetis;
[P]er vos cu[r] voti non venit ho[ra] mei?
The following is the English translation, available online.
Here a sister and brother are the misfortune of their living parent.
A cruel act of robbery took them in early life.
Pompeia, with cognomen Eleutheris, is stuck in this tomb,
and a boy whom the harsh gods robbed,
Sextus Pompeius, son of Sextus, with the famed name Iustus,
whom my lap held with great love.
Unhappy (is their) father who, forced by a twin death,
himself gave the pyres which he hoped (to receive) from his children.
My support [= son] (was) lost, later the joy of my daughter (was lost)
when she died so that the envious fates could drag my house to the ground.
How much decency is lying, how much true love for their father is buried (here).
They (were) old in mind, but perished after a short life time.
Who can’t weep over my misfortunes, who can’t feel pain for them?
How can I endure it, I who have been given to the pyres twice?
If there are gods of the departed, you already have divine power;
why doesn’t the hour of my wish come with your help?
