Subiaco
CAST · Claudio Vincoletto · 2018
A revival of a revival, tracing the letterforms of the Ashendene Press back to the first books printed in Italy in 1465, produced using Metafont by Claudio Vincoletto.
About
The typeface reconstructs the Ashendene Press Subiaco type of around 1900, which was itself drawn from the proto-roman cut by Sweynheym and Pannartz at the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco. Vincoletto used Metafont to define the ductus of a virtual pen, overlaying grids on photographic enlargements of printed pages to establish geometric coordinates for each letterform. The result carries low contrast, long ascenders and descenders, blunt exit strokes and a substantial set of OpenType features including ligatures, scribal abbreviations and historical alternates that allow typographers to move between the two source revivals.
Classification
Subiaco traces its lineage directly to the hybrid proto-roman of Sweynheym and Pannartz (1465), combining formal humanist script traits with calligraphic qualities; this places it firmly in the humanist serif tradition, predating the fully developed roman but distinct from gothic or blackletter forms.