Giovanni Battista Palatino

He was born in Rossano, Calabria, but moved to Rome as a young man.

Palatino's Libro nuovo d'imparare a scrivere is the best-known Renaissance treatise on calligraphy.

He dedicated it to the Academia dello sdegno (Academy of the Disdainful), of which he was secretary.

[1] As a calligrapher, Palatino was fascinated by ciphers and generally by the metamorphosis of the alphabet.

[2] The serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf and released in 1948 was named after Giambattista Palatino.