Manutius aldus biography of martin

Aldo Manuzio (Aldus, as he was usually known, from the Latin form of his name) was the first and most celebrated of the scholar-printers of the Renaissance, a role defined by H George Fletcher as follows:

'… a professional who printed his own works or had some hand in the editorial content of the books that issued from his press, either as editor, commentator, or translator; moreover, he was thoroughly trained in the classical languages and printed classical and Biblical texts from manuscripts that he himself edited, emended, or translated into Latin from Greek, occasionally writing commentaries on them; finally, he is someone whose reputation in typography is as great today as is his renown in scholarship.' (Fletcher, 'New Aldine Studies', p.19)

Many of the early printers, like the goldsmith Johann Gutenberg, had a background in the crafts necessary for the technological aspects of printing.

Of Aldus' predecessors in Venice, for inst Aldus Manutius - Wikipedia, den frie encyklopædi ZYWI