Luca Pacioli's Alphabeto Dignissimo Antiquo; a geometrical reconstruction

Abstract. The humanists of the Renaissance believed that their mission was to revive the magnificence of the classical age, such as that of Latin literature and of Roman architecture and statuary. In particular, in the first decades of the fifteenth century, elaborate lettering which resembles the ancient Roman capital letters began to appear in stone inscriptions. Later, with the discovery and the study of previously unknown ancient inscriptions and an improved historical sensitivity, many artists, craftsmen and architects demanded the lettering style to remain consistent with the classical style as much as possible. Many Renaissance scholars thus proposed various lettering styles, associated both to a geometrical construction and to a theoretical approach. A synthesis of Mathematics, Architecture and Lettering occurs in an encyclopaedic text written by Luca Pacioli in 1498. We felt that this beautiful alphabet needed to be known to students and in general non-specialists in the history of lettering. To this aim we present here an accurate replica of Pacioli's alphabet with the program GeoGebra, following the author's original instructions which are, however, not always complete.