Jenson, Nicolas (1420–1480)

French printer, active in Venice from about 1470. He experimented with a roman typeface (first used in Strasbourg and Rome by 1467) following a littera antiqua script. In the following decade he issued about 70 books, mostly Latin or Greek classics including, for example, an edition of Pliny's Historia naturalis/Natural History (1472).

Jenson was born at Sommevoie, near Troyes, and moved to Venice after learning to print in Germany, perhaps at Mainz. Though Jenson was noted for his use of roman type, he certainly did not use this exclusively. Indeed, after 1473, he appears to have decreased the number of editions printed with this typography, using instead a Gothic typeface. At the same time, he was one of the first printers to have a Greek font, which may have been influenced by the interest of Francesco Filelfo. The attempt with his various fonts was to make his printed books look as much like a manuscript as possible.

Many of his books were illuminated and decorated by hand, as though they were manuscripts, and special copies of some were printed on vellum. However, they had potential disadvantages to manuscripts. Though hand-written copies were naturally liable to individual errors, printed copies were in danger of replicating mistakes on a larger scale. In particular, Jenson's books sometimes relied on earlier printings and perpetuated the errors already made.