Antonio Ricardo

Antonio Ricciardi was born in Turin in 1532. His father Sebastiano Ricciardi came from Monticello d'Alba, and his mother Gigliani Pallodi was a native of Turin. He had a brother Pietro, who lived in Venice. Ricciardi worked with the printer Gerolamo Farina in Turin. Afterwards he went to Venice and Lyon, where he met Pedro Ocharte, one of the earliest printers in Mexico. Together they traveled to Valladolid and Medina del Campo, where they worked with the printers Del Canto.[1]

Ricardo emigrated to Mexico in presumably May 1570, where he worked in the shop of Pedro Ocharte. He also married Catalina Aguda in those years. He was a printer in Mexico City from 1577 to 1579, with his office in the San Pedro y San Pablo College of the Jesuits. In those three years, he printed at least twelve works, published in ten books.[1]

He moved to Acapulco in March 1580 and from there moved on to Callao, on the Peruvian coast, in January 1581. From there he travelled to Lima. He left his wife behind in Mexico City, presumably to deal with his creditors: one of those was Pedro Ocharte, who had supplied him with the necessary equipment to set up his own printing office. For three years, he tried to get the necessary royal approval to become a printer: finally, on 13 February 1584, the Jesuits gave him the permission to start printing texts for them, without having received the royal approval yet.[1]

The Third Council of Lima had ordered the production of a trilingual catechism in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara.[2] Ricardo received the order, thereby becoming the first printer in South America, and he remained the only one until his death.[3] He was granted official permission to set up a printing press in Lima from Philip II of Spain on 7 August 1584.[4] The first publication ever printed in Southern America was a four-page leaflet with the information about the new Gregorian calendar of 1582, which was immediately adopted by Spain, but which wasn't yet communicated to the colonies. The next publication by Ricardo, and the first book ever printed in Southern America, was the Doctrina Christiana. Between 1584 and 1605, Ricardo would publish at least 40 works.[1]

In 1605, Ricardo was summoned to appear before the Inquisition.[3] The same year or the next year, he died. His office was taken over by Francisco del Canto, a son of the Del Canto's from Medina del Campo, who had worked in Ricardo's workshop previously and who would hold the monopoly on printing in Peru until 1619.[1]

• José Toribio Medina. La imprenta en Lima (1584-1824) (in Spanish). Santiago de Chile – via HathiTrust. 1904-1907