From Vatican archives to Microsoft Word: Michelangelo’s lettering lives on
How do you create a digital identity for something as storied as St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome? The Fabbrica di San Pietro, or St. Peter’s Factory, which is the institution in charge of maintaining the...
How do you create a digital identity for something as storied as St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome? The Fabbrica di San Pietro , or St.
Peter’s Factory, which is the institution in charge of maintaining the basilica, turned to Michelangelo Buonarroti, the architect of the building’s dome, sculptor of the Pietà (which resides in the basilica), and painter of the frescoes on the ceiling of the nearby Sistine Chapel.
“This project grew out of a question: ‘How can the Fabbrica di San Pietro preserve a heritage while also making it part of how we communicate today?’” says the communications office of the Fabbrica di San Pietro. “There’s kind of a geometry, there’s kind of use of empty and filled spaces, his impatience, his precision, his energy are in his calligraphy.” Image courtesy of Studiogusto: Stefano Caliandro, creative director of Studiogusto.
In connection with the 400 th anniversary of the consecration of the basilica, with a ceremony on Nov. 18, the Fabbrica decided to create a digital typeface inspired by Michelangelo’s handwriting. Called Michelangelus, the typeface will be used for digital and printed materials as well as for signage inside the basilica.
The Fabbrica decided to share Michelangelus with the world by contributing it to the library of fonts in Microsoft 365 applications. For those who would like to use it outside of the M365 applications, it will also be available to download . “A typeface, a visual identity or a digital experience can tell a story.
And that can represent culture, research and tradition,” says Mimmo Berterame, CEO of Studiogusto , the Italian design agency that did the research and artistic and technical work to turn handwriting into a digital script. Turning a master’s penmanship into a modern typeface Berterame and Stefano Caliandro, the studiogusto team , visited the Vatican archives to examine Michelangelo’s original manuscripts.
“There’s kind of a geometry, there’s kind of use of empty and filled spaces,” Caliandro says. “His impatience, his precision, his energy are in his calligraphy.” However, the goal was not to imitate Michelangelo’s handwriting but to adapt it through design into a modern tool. The designers identified “rules” inside the calligraphy, “and we try to reply to this invisible grid, architectural grid of this alphabet,” Caliandro says.
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They did keep some of Michelangelo’s flourishes, such as the small dot at the top of the ‘h’ or the bottom of the ‘y’. Michelangelo often wrote to his nephew, Lionardo Buonarroti, whose handwriting was a frequent source of frustration. In one letter, Michelangelo complained, “Do not write to me again: every time one of your letters arrives I get an attack of the fever because of the trouble I have to read it!
I cannot think where you have learned to write. I believe that if you had to write to the greatest donkey in the world, you would write with more care than you do to me. Therefore do not add another to the troubles I have already.” (Lionardo kept writing and Michelangelo kept complaining. ) For Michelangelo, “writing was not just about expression,” Berterame says.
“For him, it was about clarity and respect for the reader. So, beauty was important, but it also needed order. Our typeface needs character and personality, but it also needs to be clear and easy to read.” Finding Michelangelo in every letter The designers began with the lowercase italic letters, basing them closely on Michelangelo’s hand.
The regular font and uppercase letters are largely derived from the artist’s inscription on the Pietà sculpture of Mary holding Jesus’s dead body, as well as some inscriptions inside St. Peter’s. In fact, the inscription on the Pietà, carved by Michelangelo, resembles a condensed typeface, in which letters are stretched slightly higher than usual, a style that is fashionable at the moment.
For the uppercase letters, Studiogusto began with M, because it is so present in the texts — Michelangelo’s name begins with it — and because it’s the largest letter. The team didn’t find any examples of numbers written by Michelangelo, so they had to base them off the letters. The number one, for example, is based on the letter I.
In all, Studiogusto produced more than 500 characters per style: regular, italic, bold and bold italic. From St. Peter’s Basilica to screens everywhere Using Michelangelus in the Fabbrica’s communications “allows that history to continue in the language of nowadays, and it brings the heritage of St.
Peter’s into the messages we share every day with the world, with everybody, and on paper and on screens as well,” the Fabbrica’s communications office says. “Sharing it with everyone gives them a chance to form a personal connection with the history of the Basilica and of Michelangelo.
If the typeface also makes people want to know more about the history, it will have achieved something important for us.” Michelangelus builds on the broader collaboration between Microsoft and the Fabbrica di San Pietro to use technology to help preserve and share the cultural heritage of St.
Peter’s Basilica with people around the world. By bringing Michelangelus to Microsoft 365, the Fabbrica hopes to create another way for people to connect with the history of St. Peter’s Basilica and the artist whose vision helped shape it.
Read more Catherine Bolgar writes about AI and innovation at Microsoft, from advances in quantum computing to how AI is helping ordinary people. Previously, Catherine wrote about technology and business for a number of publications, and she was an editor at the Wall Street Journal in New York and Brussels.
She taught high school math in Kenya, where she learned Swahili. She currently lives in France. You can contact Catherine on LinkedIn .
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