Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
illuminator to work unaided. In most of these late editions only the
pages with cuts have borders, and these of the nature of picture frames,
as contrasted with the old historiated borders.
In 1525 Geoffroi Tory, a native of Bourges (born about 1480), who at
this period of his life was at once a skilled designer, a scholar, and a
printer, completed a Horae which, though somewhat thin and unsatisfying
compared with the richer and more pictorial work of Pigouchet at his
best, far surpassed any edition produced at Paris for the previous
twenty years. Part of the edition was taken up by the great publisher of
the day, Simon Colines, and while the body of the book was only printed
once, differences in the titlepages and colophons and in the arrangement
of the almanac and privilege constitute altogether three different
issues. Whereas the best earlier editions had been printed in gothic
letter this is in roman, and both the borders and the twelve
illustrations aim at the lightness and grace necessary to match the
lighter type. The vase-like designs of the borders are meaningless, but
the pictures, despite the long faces and somewhat angular figures, have
a peculiar charm. They were used again, with some additions, in a Horae
completed 20 October, 1531. An edition of 1 October, 1527, described by
Tory's chief biographer, Auguste Bernard, as printed, "chez Simon de
Colines en caracteres romains avec des vignettes de meme genre, mais
beaucoup plus petites," I have never seen. Three weeks later Tory
printed in gothic letter a Paris Horae with borders of birds and fruits
and flowers rather in the style of some of the Flemish manuscripts. In
February, 1529, he produced a much smaller Horae in roman type without
borders, but with some very delicate little cuts, used again by Olivier
Mallard, who married his widow, in 1542. Tory appears to have died in
1533, and attributions of later work to him on the ground of its being
marked with a "cross of Lorraine" (i.e. a cross with two transverse
strokes) should be received with caution, unless the cuts are found in
books by Tory's widow or her second husband. It is not quite clear that
the cross is not the mark of a wood-cutter rather than a designer, and
if it really marks the designer we must believe that it was used by
others beside Tory, so various is the work on which it is found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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