Cancelleresca Formata, Corsiva, Italica

Post 5 of 5 Marked by a wide variety of usage and style, Italic scripts such as Cancelleresca (Chancery) and Mercantesca (Merchant) developed in 14th century Italy for use among merchants, notaries, and public servants. Eventually, both scripts became common in Renaissance literary works. Wealthy merchants commissioned fine illuminated  manuscripts of vernacular poetry or prose in Cancelleresca Formata, and printers imported Italica into their new print culture. We see the Cancelleresca script in a 14th century Florentine manuscript (Morgan Library, MS M 289) containing Dante’s Divine Comedy, the definitive literary Italian vernacular work. But recipe books, sermons, and other secular texts throughout the Renaissance and Early Modern Period use this script as well, and in them we see the evolution of modern cursive styles.

Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Florence (ca. 1330-37), Morgan Library, MS M 289

By the second half of the 16th century, Cancelleresca Italica, a quasi-cursive script with longer ascenders and descenders, emerged from the growing need for private texts. Giovan Francesco Cresci’s Essemplare di più sorti di lettere (1560) set the standard for this new italic style in both script and print.

Giovan Francesco Cresci, Essemplare di più sorti di letterei, per Antonio Blado ad instanza del autore (1560), National Central Library of Rome

Maddalena Signorini, “Scripts and the Vernacular in Medieval and Renaissance Italy,” Italian Paleography, The Newberry. Handbook.

A. M. Piazzoni, “‘Cancelleresca’ Miniscule and Merchant Script,” Latin Paleography: From Antiquity to the Renaissance, The Vatican Digital Library. 17. “CANCELLERESCA” MINUSCULE AND MERCHANT SCRIPT | Latin Paleography - Thematic Pathways on the Web