Typefaces based on his work include Monotype Poliphilus roman, Bembo Book roman, Bembo *ling, Morris Fuller Benton's Cloister Old Style italic, Jack Yan's JY Aetna roman, Bitstream Aldine 401 roman, and Franko Luin's Griffo Cl*ico roman and italic more distant descendants include the romans of Claude Garamond, Giovanni Mardersteig's Dante, Robert Slimbach's Minion and Matthew Carter's Yale Typeface. This more personal form of type became widely popular in Europe. The italic type was designed to look like handwriting of the humanist scholars. Meggs wrote in A History of Graphic Design, 'Griffo researched pre-Caroline scripts to produce a roman type that was less artistic but more authentic than Jenson's designs'. His Romans show a degree of abstraction from calligraphy not present in the work of the earlier master Nicolas Jenson, while his italic and Greek types are notably cursive. Griffo's typefaces have been very influential.

4 Further reading Influence De Aetna 1495.

This is his last appearance in the historical record. In 1518 Griffo was charged with the murder of his son-in-law, who had been beaten to death with an iron bar. In 1516 he returned to Bologna where he began print publishing. It was with Soncino that Griffo's second italic type was cut in 1503. Griffo then went to work for Gershom Soncino, whose family were Hebrew printers. However, as Manutius had achieved a monopoly on italic printing and Greek publishing with the permission of the Venetian government, he had a falling-out with Griffo. Aldus gives Griffo credit in the introduction of the Virgil of 1501.

He cut Roman, Greek, Hebrew and first italic type. He worked for Aldus Manutius, designing the printer's more important humanist typefaces, including the first italic type. Francesco Griffo (1450–1518), also called Francesco da Bologna, was a fifteenth-century Italian punchcutter.

Bembo typeface francesco griffo