Aldus

Early this morning at the library where I work in San Francisco I was looking at a 1995 catalog from the Morgan Library in New York: In Praise of Aldus Manutius : a quincentenary exhibition. H. George Fletcher wrote the text explaining that Aldus Manutius issued the first book from his Venetian printing press in 1495, and the Morgan Library wanted to mark the 500th anniversary of that date by showing off its "Aldines" (as collectors are prone to call the books Manutius printed).


Several generations continued to print under the name of Aldus Manutius and they all used variations on the press mark Aldus himself selected. A logo, in other words, sometimes printed on the title page but more often appearing in the colophon at the back of the book. Aldus chose a design from the reverse side of a Roman coin – a silver denarius of the Emperor Vespasian – with the Emperor's profile on the face and on the other side a dolphin twining around an anchor. "One interpretation of the contemporary significance of the emblem for the Romans is as a prayer to Poseidon to prevent the recurrence of an earthquake or tidal wave," says H. George Fletcher. "The Renaissance connotation of these symbols was the fusion of graceful speed (the dolphin) with stability (the anchor)."

The Renaissance motto that went with the dolphin and anchor emblem was Festina lente, or Make haste slowly.