Opening Page of Didot’s Racine, Paris, 1801
Text Page of Didot’s Racine, Paris, 1801
FIRMIN DIDOT, 1730–1804
From Engraving by Pierre Gustave Eugene Staal (1817–1882)
The large quarto volumes contain nearly five hundred pages each. The type was designed and cut by Firmin Didot in conjunction with, or possibly in collaboration with Giambattista Bodoni, of Parma, Italy. So closely do the two faces match that the similarity of their design could scarcely have been a coincidence (see page [81]). There is a peculiar charm in the unusual length of the ascending and descending characters; there is a grace in the slender capitals in spite of the ultra-refinement; there is satisfaction in having the weight of the Italic letter approach that of the Roman, thus preventing the usual blemish which the lighter faced Italic gives to an otherwise perfectly balanced page. The figures, really a cross between the old style and the modern, have a distinct individuality entirely lost in the so-called “lining” figures which those who have copied this face in America have introduced as an “improvement.”
The Racine contains magnificent steel engravings, of which one is reproduced at page 253. The handmade paper is a return to the beautiful sheets of the fifteenth century, and the presswork—the type just biting into the paper without leaving an impression on the reverse side—is superbly characteristic of the best French workmanship. The vellum copies show the work at its best. The engravings stand out almost as original etchings. The ink is the densest black I ever saw. Didot succeeded in overcoming the oil in the vellum without the chalk surface that is given to the Morris vellum, the ink being so heavy that it is slightly raised. I was particularly interested in this after my own experiments in printing my humanistic Petrarch on vellum.
At the Exposition of 1801, in Paris, the Racine was proclaimed by a French jury the “most perfect typographic product of any country and of any age.” Is this not too high praise? To have equaled the Italian masterpieces of the fifteenth century would have been enough glory for any printer to claim!