Giambattista, superintendent of the royal press at Parma, chief printer to his catholic majesty, member of various academies in Italy, and knight of several orders, was born in 1740, at Saluzzo in Piedmont, where his father owned a printing establishment. While yet a boy, he began to employ himself in engraving on wood; and his labours meeting with success, he at length went to Rome, where he was admitted as a compositor for the press of the Propaganda. By the advice of the superintendent, he made himself acquainted with the oriental languages, in order to qualify himself for the kind of printing required in them; and he was thus enabled to render essential service to the Propaganda press, by restoring and accurately distributing the types of several oriental alphabets which had fallen into disorder. About the year 1760, the Infanta Don Ferdinand having established in Parma a printing-house on the model of those in Paris, Madrid, and Turin, Bodoni was placed at the head of this establishment, which he soon rendered the first of the kind in Europe, and gained the reputation of having surpassed the most splendid productions of his predecessors. The beauty of his typography, indeed, as well as the whole management of the technical part of the work, leaves nothing further to be desired; but the intrinsic value of his editions is seldom equal to their outward splendour. His Homer, however, is a truly magnificent work; and, indeed, his Greek letters are the most perfect imitations that have been executed in modern times of the best Greek manuscript. His editions of the Greek, Latin, Italian, and French classics, are all highly prized for their typographical splendour, and some of them are not less remarkable for their accuracy. Bodoni died at Padua on the 29th of November 1813, aged seventy-three. Some years after his death appeared a magnificent work in two volumes quarto, entitled Manuale Tipografico, containing specimens of the vast collection of types which had belonged to this celebrated typographer, together with his portrait.