Descrizione delle Feste celebrate in Parma l’anno MDCCLXIX per le auguste Nozze di Sua Altezza Reale l’Infante Don Ferdinando colla Reale Arciduchessa Maria Amalia

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813)
Parma, Stamperia Reale, 1769. In folio, Laid Paper. Illustrated

One of the finest European books commemorating a wedding, this publication was produced at the behest of the Court of Parma to celebrate the wedding of Don Ferdinand of Bourbon and Maria Amalia of Austria. The volume is sumptuously embellished with etchings and begins with two frontispieces preceded by the title page: the first one features an illustration designed by Ennemond Alexandre Petitot and engraved by Giovanni Volpato, the second, printed, frontispiece alternates roman and italic type in different fonts and with different spacing and is adorned with the Bourbon coat of arms, designed by Petitot and engraved by Volpato. The direction of the work was entrusted to Benigno Bossi, who availed himself of the work of Petitot and Bodoni, who became involved as Director of the Royal Printing House. The typographer, who was not yet famous, had given "proof only of taste and symmetry in arranging the typefaces of others", namely those of Pierre-Simon Fournier, of which several sets were purchased in Paris. He typeset the page in two bilingual columns, Italian and French, kerning them so that the two texts occupied the same amount of space.