employed them in the production of some of the most brilliant Greek impressions Europe has ever seen.[117] During the seventeenth century the Royal Greek punches and matrices lay for the most part idle; but in 1691, Anisson, Director of the Imprimerie Royale, rescued them from obscurity, and caused new punches to be cut and matrices struck, to supply what were missing, by Grandjean, the famous Parisian founder. In the Low Countries, as early as 1501, Thierry Martens, at Louvain, had Greek types with which he printed occasional words. He produced an edition of _Æsop_ in 1513, and in 1516 a _Grammar_ of Theodore de Gaza’s, and a little book of _Hours_, in Greek. The latter is considered an excellent piece of typography. Greek printing attained to considerable celebrity in the Low Countries. The Greek fount used in Plantin’s _Polyglot_, in 1569–72, is said to have been cut by the famous French founder and engraver, Le Bé. Spain claims a prominent place in the history of early Greek printing in Europe, as it was at Alcala in that country that the famous _Complutensian Polyglot_ of Cardinal Ximenes was printed in 1514–17,[118] including the entire text of the Bible in Greek. The fount employed in the New Testament is very grand and imposing, and is said to have been cut specially for the work on the models of Greek manuscripts of the eleventh or twelfth century. Before the completion of this great work, Germany had secured the honour of producing the first entire _Greek Testament_ at the press of Froben of Basle. Froben’s Greek is somewhat cramped and stiff. Oporinus, who printed in the {60} same city in 1551, besides using a fount identical with that of Froben, introduced a smaller and much neater letter at the same time. Numerous printers produced Greek works in Germany at this period, perhaps the most famous being Andrew Wechel, who began at Paris with types inherited from his father, but in 1573 established himself at Frankfort, where he printed several very fine works in a new and most elegant Greek, said to have been acquired from the Estiennes, to whose letter it bears the closest resemblance.