GIAMBATISTA, 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 engrave on wood. He at length went to Rome, where he became a compositor for the press of the Propaganda. He made himself acquainted with the oriental languages, and thus was 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. The Infante Don Ferdinand having established at Parma, about 1750, 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. The beauty of his typography, &c., 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 faultless imitations of the best Greek manuscript. His editions of the Greek, Latin, Italian, and French classics, are all highly prized for their typographical elegance, and some of them are not less remarkable for their accuracy. Bodoni died at Padua in 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.