Panfilo Castaldi

Panfilo Castaldi (c. 1398 – c. 1490) was an Italian physician and "master of the art of printing", to whom local tradition attributes the invention of moveable type.

The story as it has circulated through the centuries in Feltre is that Castaldi was given examples of early Chinese block printing by Marco Polo,[2] with which he experimented, eventually producing modern type.

The story was largely unknown outside of Lombardy until it was reported in the 19th century by Robert Curzon, Baron Zouche, a diplomat.

Curzon stresses the connection to Marco Polo, arguing that Castaldi's (undated) early work closely resembles Chinese printing, and also stresses Gutenberg's acquaintance with Venetian printing, thus suggesting that European printing did not emerge distinctly from the Chinese analogues but in imitation (a frequently debated question in any case).

[6] What is clear is that by the 1470s Castaldi was a successful printer; there is a record of a print run of 300 copies of a Cicero epistle in 1471.