Vivaldi in San Marco album art
This Vivaldi album was recorded in Venice’s Basilica di San Marco, performed by the chorus and orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice. The cover image has a depiction of the church that’s more than half a millenium old: it’s a detail from Procession of the True Cross in Piazza San Marco, painted in 1496 by Gentile Bellini. 182 years later, in 1678, Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice.
The title typeface looks like it might date from the 14th or 15th century, but it’s not quite that old: conceived by Herman Ihlenburg, Filigree was patented in 1878. The specific font in use probably is the phototype adaptation made by Headliners and shown in 1964 as part of their Morgan Press Collection. The ornamented bifurcated caps were separated from the groundwork, for a two-color printing.
The second typeface on the front cover is the Bold weight of ATF Garamond (1920), Morris Fuller Benton’s interpretation of the types cut by Jean Jannon in France in the 1600s – a Renaissance typeface, but stylistically more than a century removed from the types used by Nicholas Jenson in Venice.
Text on the back is set in Optima. Hermann Zapf’s 1950s design was inspired by lettering he spotted on 15th-century tombstones in the cemetery of an Italian church – not St Mark’s in Venice, but the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence.
Detail showing the two-color setting of Filigree
