The company is named after 15th-century Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, and was founded by Jeremy Jaech, Mark Sundstrom, Mike Templeman, Dave Walter, and chairman Paul Brainerd.
It was adapted as the model for the italic typeface developed by Aldus Manutius in Venice, from punches cut by Francesco Griffo and first used in 1500 for the small portable series of inexpensive classics that issued from the Aldine press.
Important models for this early typesetting practice were the designs of Aldus Manutius in Venice, and those of Claude Garamond in Paris, who created the influential Grecs du roi typeface in 1541.
The best edition is by Moriz Wilhelm Constantin Schmidt (1858–1868), but no complete comparative edition of the manuscript has been published since it was first printed by Marcus Musurus (at the press of Aldus Manutius) in Venice, 1514 (reprinted in 1520 and 1521 with modest revisions).
In 1992, Italica produced its first book created entirely in Aldus Pagemaker; appropriately it was a tribute to the Renaissance scholar and printer Aldus Manutius.
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Italica also publishes a series of scholarly essays, "Studies in Art & History," with volumes dedicated to scholars such as Aldus Manutius, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eugene F. Rice, Jr., William S. Heckscher, Irving Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg Lavin and Sarah Blake McHam.
Another possible origin is ascribed to Aldus Manutius, a well-known Venetian printer of the Renaissance and founder of the Aldine Press, who was denounced by detractors for practicing the black arts (early printing was long associated with devilry).
Among its many details are piers anchoring three large bays which include four medallions with busts of printers: Benjamin Franklin, William Caxton, Johann Gutenberg, and Aldus Manutius.
It shows the beginnings of Western printing from the fifteenth century - including examples of the work of Sweynheim and Pannartz, Aldus Manutius, Johann Froben, the Estiennes and Christopher Plantin - to the twentieth century.
After having studied Greek in Venice under Marcus Musurus of Candia, he was employed for some time as a proofreader by the printer Aldus Manutius.