Felice Feliciano, Alphabetum Romanum

Emerging from the same northeastern Italian cultural milieu as the work of Andrea Mantegna, Felice Feliciano’s Alphabetum Romanum represents the first systematic and most influential attempt to recover from ancient inscriptions the correct proportions of classical Latin epigraphy. Antiquarians knew that bronze lettering had been affixed to monumental inscription; but the prismatic capital letters depicted here went on to have a great influence not only on epigraphy, but also on the book, in which context they are often called ‘litterae mantinianae’ (after Mantegna).  Humanist manuscripts were largely written in a minuscule hand, modelled on the early medieval Caroline minuscule in which many ancient texts were found, and this is the foundation of the Roman lower-case letters we use today.  The fact that we employ a mixed system, using Roman capitals for our upper-case letters, is a legacy of this epigraphic research.

Credit: Oren Margolis (July 2018)