Osservazioni sulla Chirotipografia ossia Antica Arte di Stampare a Mono

 8vo. 210 x 130 mm.  (7 ¾ x 5 inches).  (2), 106 pp.  Contemporary vellum; vellum uniformily soiled, title in ink on the spine.  

Only edition.  Interesting work which discusses the development of hand formed letters during the Medieval period and hypothesizes that many manuscripts from that time were actually printed long before Gutenberg's invention of the black art.  Requeno examines the uniformity of letter forms designed that appear in early manuscripts and tries to demonstrate  that as early as the 10th century letter forms were engraved and pressed by hand onto sheets of vellum and paper by scribes work in the various monasteries in Germany and Italy.  A new edition  of his Chirotipografia was published in 2020, with an introductory essay by Antonio Castronuovo.  In his essay Castronuovo suggests that Requeno's devotion to the classical world, blurred his understanding of the great strides in art and printing that had taken place during the Renaissance and led to make unfounded pronouncements about art processes, especially printing, that upon closer examination proved false. 

Vincenzo Requeno (1752-1811) was born in Zaragoza study with the Jesuits and after their expulsion from Spain in 1767, he moved to Italy and was ordained a priest in Modena in 1769.  His academic work was focused on classical subjects, especially art and music.  He also experimented with early art techniques and wrote a treatise on encaustic brush painting that reintroduced this technic into the art vocabulary of the time. 

Rare: OCLC lists copies at Princeton and Library of Congress only.

Brunet, Manuel des Libraire,  IV p. 1244. Bigmore and Wyman, Bibliography of Printing,  II, p. 253.  Not in Besterman.  Vincenzo Requeno. Osservazioni sulla chirotipografia ossia antica arte di stampare a mano, a cura di Antonio Castronuovo, premessa di Edoardo Barbieri. Macerata: Biblohaus, 2020.