Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini was a man of many virtues. He was a writer, an early humanist, and even served under the reign of seven popes at the Vatican.
He was a man that loved to read, and a well-educated one as well. Among the many things he did, he was able to recover a huge number of Latin manuscripts that were decaying and forgotten in several libraries throughout Europe.
One special attribute this man had was his handwriting. People considered it elegant, pleasing, and easy to read. People loved his handwriting, and this made him want to improve it while working in Florence as a manuscript copyist.
This way, he invented a formal script that eventually leads him to “Roman” fonts. Today’s Roman fonts (Times New Roman, for example) are all based on Poggio’s handwriting.
