Davinci font

Use the following links to track down commercial versions of the da Vinci handwriting font. I am not aware of any freeware versions.

http://www.p22.com/products/davinci.html

http://www.will-harris.com/faces98/html/da_vinci.html

Thanks for the input, bparnes, but the font I,m looking for is a little different. It has longer ascenders and descenders, and the baseline of the letters are almost pointed. Very calligraphic. Very Florentine. The spacing of the letters is very tight. I would also like to find a freeware, down-loadable version.

The Museum of Science in Boston has created its own da Vinci font that sells for $11.00.  Details at http://st1.yahoo.com/museumshop/msbch0023.html

Is there an example of the font somewhere that I could look at? Do you know for sure that there is a font, or are you assuming there must be something to match what you are looking at?

There is a font called "Fiorenza II" that comes close but the spacing is screwed up.

That's  the same font as the one pbarnes refers to. The font I'm referring to is typical Florentine Renaissance handwriting with large flourishes and skinny pointy letters.

I have looked around on the Net, and it seems that Bill Gates, yes, of all people, has created a font based on Da Vinci's handwriting, using samples from Seattle's art museum of/or something. To interpret the text yourself, try:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/embedding/demos/9/about9.htm

Yes, this is commercial and not even offered online (not that I know of) so I am posting this as a comment because I have not helped your search at all.

Actually, the Gates/Microsoft stuff uses the DaVinci font from P22 that I pointed to at the start of this hunt.

Here's another da vinci font I ran across. At $9.95 it isn't freeware, but it's close. I don't think this is what you are looking for, but it doesn't hurt to post it here.

Is there anything I can look at that would give me a better idea of what you would like to find?

How close does the following come to what you are looking for?

http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/P/P_437.html

If it is Florens you are after!

Give me your mail address and I'll send it to you!

If it is the font on the p22 site I'll find it for you!


The Flava

While there is another (commercial) DaVinci interpretation available called DaVincian from Digital Download at http://www.killerfonts.com/ - I sense this isn't what you are after.

In this case I see three issues to look at to sole your problem:

1) re-examine P22 Da Vinci - all 5 weights that are available - while certainly not free - the P22s are among the most historically correct fonts you can find. Richard Kegler and his associates develop their faces in conjunction with museums and/or private collections of the highest callibre.

2) It is extremely unlikely that you saw a non-Adobe font on the Adobe web site. In fact, extremely unlikely may be not forcefully enough said. Of any company - Adobe is a play it by the rules, if not invented here it is second rate, etc. etc.. There is nothing within the Adobe library that I nor anyone with basic font expertise would describe as a long descender DaVinci typeface.

3) and the best option is to get the commercial version of David Nalle's Fiorenza. Yes I know you don't like the letterspacing in what you found and the fact that it will cost you all of a few dollars - you most likely viewed the  freeware version. Nalle is one of those types that sends out crippled 'shareware' versions of his commercial fonts - but does not bother to relabel them. This is an absurd practice that legitimate foundries never pursue. When a crippled font is released it should ALWAYS be clearly labelled DEMO, BETA, or the like. Nalle plays games instead - stripping kerning, letterspacing, and extra characters. His fonts are not expensive - and my only real problem with them are the deception of which ones are legitimate. Anyway, the latest commercial Fiorenza I am aware of is Fiorenza II v 3.3 - the letterspacing is tight, the descenders long. I can't help you out on the freebie version - it doesn't exist.

zeetree-
I guess that's what I am looking for. I have some version of Fiorenza II and the kerning is really screwed up but the letters themselves are beautiful. Where can I find the real version?

Here's one place you can buy it:

http://ragnarokpress.com/scriptorium/calligraphy/


A trial version numbered 4.0.3 can be downloaded from:

http://www.ccsi.com/~graball/scriptorium/fiorenza.zip

Florens is not what I am looking for. Thanks, anyway. I must give the points to bparnes. Repost and it will be so. Thanks to all for your help in this tedious matter.

Great story bp... thanks for the help!