Giambattista Bodoni. Valerie Lester
move; Ferdinando never succumbed to smallpox, but his father, who did not take advantage of Tronchin’s skill and Du Tillot’s advice, died of it in 1765.83 The death of Don Filippo and the young age of Don Ferdinando effectively meant that Du Tillot became the most powerful man in the duchy of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. A prestigious court press was now not a whim but an absolute necessity.
In fact, three other presses were already operating in Parma, but they were all dedicated to specific utilitarian purposes. One printed material for the state and for the bishops of Parma and other towns; a second printed material for the mayor; and the third produced scientific and literary texts.84 None of them aspired to the heights of grandeur that Du Tillot envisioned for the royal press. Although advised by early planners that the printing office could operate perfectly well with just one press, a small selection of type, and a few decorations,85 Du Tillot was adamant; he wanted far more. But first he sought Paciaudi’s counsel in the matter of a perfect, available, intelligent, expert printer who could set up and then run the printing office. It was then that Paciaudi had the brilliant idea of suggesting Giambattista Bodoni.
At the time of Bodoni’s arrival in Parma in 1768, Don Ferdinando was 17 years old. On his mother’s side, he was the favorite grandson of Louis XV of France, and from an early age he had been educated by French tutors. One of these was Baron Auguste de Keralio, a mathematician and military engineer. Ferdinando himself described him as a truly honest, but excessively severe, man to whom was owed what little value he possessed. The other tutor was Abbé Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, a philosopher, proto-psychologist, sensualist,86 friend of Rousseau, and key figure in the French Enlightenment. Ferdinando was more interested in what Keralio had to teach him than what the philosopher Condillac espoused; speculation was never Ferdinando’s strength, while physics and mechanics remained of interest for the rest of his life.87 It may have been the young duke’s resistance to serious philosphical thought, and his own insistence upon it, that drove Condillac to write his 13-volume Cours d’Étude pour l’Instruction du Prince de Parme, which was finally published in its entirety by Bodoni in 1782.
Limp, lame, plump, and squat, the young Don Ferdinando was certainly unprepossessing. In the early 1770s, Lady Mary Coke described him as having “a very handsome face, fair complexion, fair hair, and dark eyes, good teeth, and something agreeable in his countenance, tho’ not a look of sense. His figure bad, very short and thick.”88 Joseph II of Austria described him as being well-mannered, inexperienced, but having no genius and little intelligence, and “is as tiresome as it is possible to be, leaning on my arm and never leaving me alone for a step.”89
Don Ferdinando spent a great deal of time praying ostentatiously. Marzio Dall’Acqua points out: “He was religious to the point of bigotry, careful to present an external faith, which manifested itself in rites, vestments, collections of relics, trips to various sanctuaries, especially Loretto. Yet his character was also joyful . . . He loved performing in the little theatre at the court in Colorno, and loved celebrating holidays with the countrywomen . . .”90 Generally regarded as pious to a fault, the purity of his piety has been questioned by some. People in Parma still gossip about him as though he were alive. Gossip, like rumor, knows no bounds; a few say he liked to dress up as a shepherd and head out into the countryside to round up not sheep, but pretty young women.91
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