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Humanistic Script

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The origins of the humanistic reform of script go back to Petrarch (mid-fourteenth century) who expressed a clear desire for increased legibility in the tracing and disposition of individual letters, even if the actual letter forms remain essentially Gothic.

From around 1400 we can speak of a fully formed humanistic script: a round, upright, formal book-hand characterized by spaciousness, avoidance of abbreviation and of fusion of letters, and reformed spelling. It soon became known as litterae antiquae or lettera antica, in modern terms humanistica rotunda or formata. It looked back not directly to antiquity but to the first great revival of antiquity in Carolingian times, and specifically to Italian manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries;

See:
Derolez, A. “Le livre Manuscrit de la Renaissance.” In El libro Antiguo Espanol. Actas del Segundo Coloquio Internacional, 177-192. Madrid, 1992.

Kraye, Jill, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.