Lucantonio Giunti

Lucantonio Giunti
The Florentine giglio, printer's mark of Lucantonio Giunti, from a missal printed in Venice in 1521
Born	1457 Florence
Died	3 April 1538 Venice
Resting place	Santa Maria Novella, Florence
Nationality	Florentine
Other names	List Luceantonius de Gionta Luceantonius De Giunta Lucas Antonius de Giuntis Lucantonio Degionta Lucantonio Deionta Lucantonio Dezunta Lucantonio Fiorentino Lucantonius Florentinus Lucas Antonius Florentinus Luc Antoine Giunta Lucantonio Giunta Lucas Antonius Giunta Luca-Antonio Giunta Luca-Antonio Giunti Luc'Antonio Giunti Lucaantonius Iunta Lucæantonius Iunta Lucaantonius Junta Luce Antonius Junta Luceantonius Junte Lucantonio de Zonta Lucas Antonius de Zontis Lucantonio de Zunta

Lucantonio Giunti or Giunta (1457 – 3 April 1538) was a Florentine book publisher and printer, active in Venice from 1489,^[1] a member of the Giunti family of printers. His publishing business was successful, and among the most important in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.^[2]:20 Through partnerships, often with members of his family, he expanded the business through much of Europe. At about the time of his death in 1538 there were Giunti presses in Florence and Lyon, Giunti bookshops or warehouses in Antwerp, Burgos, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Medina del Campo, Paris, Salamanca and Zaragoza,^[1] and agencies in numerous cities of the Italian peninsula, including Bologna, Brescia, Genoa, Livorno, Lucca, Naples, Piacenza, Pisa, Rome, Siena and Turin, as well as the islands of Sardinia and Sicily.^[3]:174

Life

Lucantonio Giunti was one of the seven sons of Giunta di Biagio, a weaver. He was born in the parish of Santa Lucia d'Ognissanti in Florence in 1457. With his brother Bernardo, he left Florence in about 1477 for Venice, where he set up as a stationer.^[1][4]:337 In 1489 he started book publishing with three titles: the works of Ovid; an anonymous translation into the volgare of the Transito de sancto Hieronymo, partly by Eusebius Cremonensis; and a translation of the Imitatio Christi, authorship of which he attributed to Jean Gerson. For all three he employed the printer and typographer Matteo Capcasa.^[1] From 1491 Giunti was constantly active as a publisher, and later as a printer too; he issued some 410 titles during his lifetime. He did not have his own printing workshop until about 1500; until that time, he employed independent typographers, most frequently Johan Emerich of Speier.^[1]

References

1. Massimo Ceresa (2001) Giunti, Lucantonio, il Vecchio (in Italian). Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, volume 57. Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana. Accessed January 2016.
2. Mary Kay Duggan (1992). Italian Music Incunabula: Printers and Type. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520057856.
3. William Pettas (1997). The Giunti and the Book Trade in Lyon. In: Libri, tipografi, biblioteche. Ricerche storiche dedicate a Luigi Balsamo. Biblioteca di bibliografia italiana, 148. Firenze: I. Olschki. ISBN 8822245040. p. 169–192.
4. William A. Pettas (1974). An International Renaissance Publishing Family: The Giunti. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 44 (4): 334–349. (subscription required)