So, recapitulating... "bembo" refers to Griffo's cuts for Manutius, it appears in 1496. Petri Bembi de Aetna Angelum Chabrielem liber, the first use of italics (?) so, is Griffo responsible for the first italics? It seems so.
Bembo is,
1- kind of gothic,
2- kind of cursive,
3- influenced by the early 15th century miniscule by Niccolo de Niccoli known as cancelleresca corsiva "chancery hand." the trick is that the pen is held at a fortyfive degree angle for speed. the corsiva is akin to Humanist calligraphy. That is to say, the propagation of letters, knowledge in the form of literature.
a recent development in italics is the Zapfino by Herman Zapf.
What the type above lacks is what this one (by Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi) has.
you cannot expect that court-writing will not become more and more obscure as the practice gets stereotyped, until it was banned altogether in 1731.
Why?
it had become esoteric. it had stopped being functional.
to come back to muy point. what Zapfino lacks is something like this:
it's called character!
one needs to get into the geist of their epoch. each epoch has a type. you designers use types to translate your epoch!