Giolito Press

   Venetian publishing firm of the 16th century, active from 1536 to 1606, founded by Giovanni Giolito (d. 1540). Especially in the time of its second director, Gabriele, the firm out-stripped competitors because of sensitivity to the changing tastes of consumers and strenuous efforts to keep prices low, symbolized by the adoption of a compact italic type font that reduced printing costs. The press sought a mass market by concentrating on vernacular publication. Its products included many editions of favorite Italian authors like Ludovico Ariosto, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio, and such popular contemporary authors as Pietro Aretino, Paolo Giovio, Ortensio Lando, and Lodovico Domenici. The press also published vernacular histories, sermons, and devotional works. Under the pressure of Counter-Reformation Catholicism, in the later 16th century it avoided "dangerous" titles and increased its production of devotional and liturgical books. It also undertook an economy-size series of translations of Greek and Latin classics into Italian.