Photo: Maurizio Piacenza. Maurizio Piacenza. License: All Rights Reserved. Artwork by Maurizio Piacenza.

This artwork was born as a cover for theParmigiano, a typeface that is a tribute to Bodoni. Galileo Galilei is set inDic Sans.

Caratteruzzi means "small characters", and the quote is about their power. English translation:

But surpassing all stupendous inventions, what sublimity of mind was his who dreamed of finding means to communicate his deepest thoughts to any other person, though distant by mighty intervals of place and time! Of talking with those who are in India; of speaking to those who are not yet born and will not he born for a thousand or ten thousand years; and with what facility, by the different arrangements of twenty characters upon a page!