While the character which you read shall remain stamped in brass, while neither length of days nor the cruel fates destroy it, Cremona shall not lack a continuance of glittering fame. By this craft Bartolommeo surpasses the ivory of Pheidias. Give place, ye writers in brass; your number is a thousand, but he alone fashions the well-known models.
In 1472, when Nicolò Truno was ruling Doge of Venice, this book was successfully printed.
“Chalcographi,” which I have rendered literally as “writers in brass,” is, of course, no more than “typographers,” which means literally “writers with type.” But what exactly were the “notas archetypas,” the well-known models? And how did Bartolommeo of Cremona use them so as to distinguish himself from other “chalcographi”? For a moment the obvious answer appears to be that Bartolommeo is claiming credit for himself, not as a printer, but as a type-founder. The explanation, however, cannot stand in any sense which would differentiate Bartolommeo from his fellows in the way in which a modern type-founder differs from the printers who buy their types of him. For we know that Bartolommeo was himself a printer; and, on the other hand, it was the rule at this period for every printer to cast his own types, so that in doing this he would not be accomplishing anything exceptional. If he had been a type-seller in the modern fashion, we may be assured that he would have addressed the chalcographers, his presumable customers, much more respectfully. I can only imagine, therefore, that the “notas archetypas” was simply a good font of type which Bartolommeo thought that other printers were likely to copy.
In the editions of Virgil which he printed at Padua in 1472 (unless there is a mistake in the date), and again in 1473, Leonardus Achates announces himself very concisely:
Urbs Basilea mihi, nomen est Leonardus Achates:
Qui tua compressi carmina, diue Maro.
Anno Christi humanati M.CCCC.LXXII. Venet. Duce Nicol. Trono.
Basel I have for my town, for my name Leonardus Achates,
I who have printed thy lays, Virgil, thou poet divine.
In the year of Christ’s taking our manhood 1472. At Venice, Nicolò Trono being Doge.