Printers' Marks Part 5

S V SIMON VOSTRE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRANcOIS REGNAULT.

Le premier volume de la toison dor.

Compose par reuerend pere en dieu guillaume par la permission diuine iadis euesque de Tournay/ ab- be de sainct Bertin et chancellier de lordre de la Thoi son dor du bon duc Philippe de bourgongne Auquel soubz les vertus de magnanimite et iustice apparte- nans a lestat de n.o.blesse sont contenus les haulx ver- tueux et magnanimes faictz tant des tres chrestiennes maisons de france/ bourgongne et flandres que dau- tres roys et princes de lancien et nouueau testament nouuellement imprime a Paris.

c.u.m p[ri]uilegio

F R FRANCOYS REGNAVLT

-- Ilz se vendent a Paris en la rue sainct Iaques a lenseigne sainct Claude.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PIERRE REGNAULT.

P R CONCORDIA PARVE RES CRESCVNT DISCORDIA MAGNE DILABVNTVR PETRVS REGNAVLT]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GUY MARCHANT.

Fides Ficit]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DE MARNEF.

Le pellica E I G De marnef]

[Ill.u.s.tration: J. DU PRe.

I P]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PIERRE LE ROUGE.

.P. le Rouge]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PHILIPPE LE NOIR.

P N PHILIPPE LE NOIR]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THIELMAN KERVER.

T K THIELMAN KERVER]

In many respects Jean or Jehan Pet.i.t is one of the most remarkable of the early French printers, whilst from the time he started to the final extinction of his descendants as printers covers a s.p.a.ce of 336 years--a record which is probably unrivalled in the history of typography. Jehan Pet.i.t kept fifteen presses fully employed, and found a great deal of work for fifteen others. The family as a whole makes a good show with their marks, in which the founder is more extravagant than any of the others, having used, at one time or another, at least half-a-dozen more or less different examples. In addition to reproducing one of the finest, we give, on p. 9, also a reduced facsimile of a t.i.tle-page of a book, the joint venture of Pet.i.t and Kerver; the combination of the two names on one t.i.tle-page is distinctly novel and curious. He was on several occasions a.s.sociated with others in producing a book, his connection with Josse Bade extending from 1501 to 1536. Of Bade or Badius it will be necessary to give a few particulars. He was born at Asche, near Brussels, and was a scholar and a poet as well as a printer. About 1495-7 he was engaged as a corrector of the press for Treschel and De Vingle at Lyons. He left about 1500 for Paris, where he started a press in 1502, which he called "Prelum Ascensianum." In reference to this term, "the Ascension Press," the word "prelum" was applied to the ancient wine presses, after which, in fact, the earliest printing presses were modelled. His Mark, which he first used in 1507, is the earliest picture of a printing-press. Thirteen years after, he adopted another device with the same subject, but differing in many important particulars. In the second, the composing-stick used by the figure in the act of setting type is changed from the right to the left hand; the press shows improved mechanical construction, indicating greater solidity and strength. In the latter example also the figure sitting at the case on the right side of the engraving is intended to represent a woman, instead of a man as in the earlier ill.u.s.tration.

Contemporary with both Pet.i.t and Bade, Gilles or Gillet Hardouyn, 1491-1521, was both a printer and a bookseller, and used two Marks, of which we give the more striking. Germain Hardouyn, possibly a son of the preceding, confined himself more particularly to selling books during the first forty years of the sixteenth century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PHILIPPE PIGOUCHET.

pp.

PHILIPPE PIGOVCHET]

[Ill.u.s.tration: JEHAN PEt.i.t.

I P IEHAN PEt.i.t]

[Ill.u.s.tration: J. BADE.

Prelu Asc?sianu I B]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GILLET HARDOUYN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEOFFREY TORY.

NON PLVS]

Geoffrey Tory resembled many others of the early printers in being also a scholar; but he was also an artist and an engraver, taking up and carrying on the great work inaugurated by Vostre and Verard. He was born at Bourges in 1480, and one of his earliest works, which was published by Pet.i.t and printed by Gilles De Gourmont, was an edition of the "Geography" of Pomponius Mela, 1507, and between this time and his death he produced a number of Books of Hours, the decoration of which can only be described as marvellous. One of the most beautiful is undoubtedly the "Heures de la Vierge," executed for Simon De Colines. What interests us most, however, is the Mark which he adopted when he entered into business as a printer and bookseller; it is perhaps the most elegant that had been up to that time designed. This Mark of the broken pitcher, with the motto "Non plus," first appeared at the end of a Latin poem issued in 1524, is regarded as a _memento_ of the death of his little daughter in 1522, and is thus explained: the broken pitcher symbolizes her career cut short; the book with clasps her literary studies; the little winged figure her soul; and the motto "Non plus," "Je ne tiens plus a rien." He gives his own interpretation of this Mark, however, in that curious medley of poetry and philosophy which he called "Champfleury," 1529. It may be mentioned that on some of the bindings of his quarto volumes the broken pitcher is transversed by the wimble or _toret_--an obvious pun on his name.

The Estienne or Etienne family is probably the most important and interesting of the sixteenth century printers of Paris. Silvestre reproduces twenty Marks which one or other of the Estiennes employed, and a description of these might very well form a distinct chapter. But a condensed review of the family as a whole must suffice. Henry, the first of the name and chief of the family, was born at Paris about 1470; he started in 1502 a printing and bookselling business in the Rue du Clos-Bruneau, near the _Ecoles de Droit_; he adopted the device, "Plus olei quam vini"; and twenty-eight works are catalogued as having been printed by him. He died in 1521, leaving a widow and three children--Francois, Robert, and Charles. Francois I. continued the profession in company with Simon De Colines, who had been a.s.sociated with his father, and who married the widow of Henry: his Mark is given as an initial to this chapter. Robert I., the second son of Henry, was born in 1503, and is probably more generally known as a Greek, Latin, and Hebrew scholar than as a printer. For several years he, like his brother, was a.s.sociated with De Colines; he married Petronille, daughter of Badius "Ascensius," and was a Protestant; in 1526 he established a printing-press in the Rue St. Jean-de-Beauvois at the sign of the Olive.

His editions of the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics were enriched with useful notes, and promises of reward were offered to those who pointed out mistakes. He used the types of his father and De Colines until about 1532, when he obtained a more elegant fount with which he printed his beautiful Latin Bible. In 1552 he retired to Geneva, when he printed, with his brother-in-law, the New Testament in French. He established here another printing-press, and issued a number of good books, which usually carried the motto: "Oliva Roberti Stephani." His Marks are at least ten in number, of which seven are variations of the Olive device, and three (in as many sizes) of the serpent on a rod intertwined with a branch of a climbing plant. With the exception of Francois the other members of the family used the Olive mark, sometimes however altering the motto, and adding in some instances an overhead decoration of a hand issuing from the clouds and holding a sickle or reaping hook. He died in 1559. The third son of the founder, Charles, after receiving his diplomas as a doctor of medicine, travelled in Germany and Italy, returning to Paris in 1553, and started in business as a printer. Among the ninety-two works which he printed, special mention may be made of the "Dictionarium historic.u.m ac poetic.u.m, omnia gentium, hominum, locorum," etc., Paris, 1553, reprinted at Geneva in 1556, at Oxford in 1671, and London, 1686. He possessed the opposite attributes of being the best printer and of having the worst temper of the family, and he alienated himself from all his friends and relations; he was confined in the Chatelet in Paris, and died there after two years in 1564. Henry II., son of Robert I., was born in Paris in 1528; after leaving college he travelled on the continent and visited England. He returned to Paris in 1552, when his father was leaving for Geneva. In 1554 he started a printing-press; in 1566 he published a translation of Herodotus by Valla, revised and corrected, defending, in the preface, the Father of History against the reproach of credulity. Charles, brother of Robert I., established a printing-press in 1551, and died crippled with debts in 1564. Robert II., second son of Robert I., was born in 1530, and, refusing to adopt the new religion, was disinherited by his father; he started a printing-press on his own account when his father retired to Geneva, and issued forty-eight books, some of which possessed the mark of the Olive; he was the royal printer in 1561, and died in 1575.

Francois II., third son of Robert I., printed in Geneva from about 1562 to 1582. Robert III., elder son of Robert II., died in 1629. Paul, son of Henry II., was born in 1566, and, after a brilliant scholastic career, travelled on the continent, and started a printing-press at Geneva in 1599, where he issued twenty-six editions of the cla.s.sics which were particularly notable for their correctness and notes. He died in 1627, and his son Antoine, born 1594, established himself at twenty-six years of age as a printer in Paris, reverted to Roman Catholicism, was appointed printer to the king and to the clergy, dying at the Hotel Dieu in 1674. The number of editions which this celebrated family, starting in 1502 and finishing in 1673, issued, reaches the very large number of 1590, thus cla.s.sified: theology, 239; jurisprudence, 79; science and arts, 152; belles lettres, 823; and history, 297. Of the eleven members of this family, one died in exile, five in misery, one in a debtor's prison, and two in the hospital--"Lecteur, que vous faut-il de plus?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIMON DE COLINES.

S D C S DECOLINES]

[Ill.u.s.tration: R. ESTIENNE.

NOLI ALTVM SAPERE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT ESTIENNE.]

Although in France, as elsewhere, we have to look to the printers of the fifteenth century for originality and decorative beauty, some exceedingly interesting Marks occur in the sixteenth, and are well worth studying. We have only s.p.a.ce for the enumeration of a few of the more important. Of these, Pierre Vidoue comes well in the first rank. He was one of the most distinguished of the early Parisian Greek typographers, besides being a person of learning and eminence, and was issuing books up to the year 1544; his edition of Aristophanes, 1582, published by Gilles De Gourmont, is described as "a singularly curious impression,"

whilst ten years later he printed Guillaume Postel's "Linguarum XII.

characteribus differentium Alphabetum," which is described by La Caille as the "first book printed in oriental character," a statement, however, which is incorrect so far as relates to the Hebrew. He had at least three Marks, all more or less similar, in one of which, however, the motto "ardentes juvo," is supplemented by "par sit fortuna labori." Of the six Roffets who were printing or publishing books in Paris during the sixteenth century, the most notable is perhaps Pierre, whose name frequently occurs in the bookbinding accounts of Francis I.; of their seven Marks, nearly all more or less of the same "rustic" character, the most decorative is that of Jacques (see p. 30). In their separate ways, the Marks of Mathurin Breuille, 1562-83 (p. 33), and Louis Cyaneus, 1529-46, each possesses a pleasing originality, the latter of which is inscribed with the motto "Tec.u.m Habita." The two Wechels, Andre and Chrestien, were among the most eminent of the sixteenth century Parisian printers, and between them employed over a dozen marks. All those of Andre were variations of one type, namely, two hands holding a caduceus between two horns of plenty surmounted by Pegasus. This had also been used by Chrestien, of whose other Mark a reproduction is here given, and of which there were several variations. Regnault Chaudiere's shop was in the Rue St. Jacques, at the sign of "L'homme Sauvage," which he adopted for his Mark: this he appears to have changed for one emblematical of Time when he took his son into partnership, and which, Maittaire thinks, he may have borrowed of Simon De Colines, whose daughter (and only child) he married. We give the largest of the examples used by Guillaume Chaudiere, 1564-98 on p. 28. Sebastien Nivelle, who was working during the latter half of the sixteenth century until the third year of the seventeenth century, is a very interesting figure in the typographical annals of Paris. He was, at the time of his death at the age of eighty years, the _doyen_ of the trade. His books were, for the most part, beautifully printed. His shop was in the Rue St. Jacques at the sign of the Two Storks, which he adopted for his exceedingly beautiful Mark, the four medallions representing scenes of filial piety. His daughter was the mother of Sebastien Cramoisy, "typographus regius," who inherited the establishment of his grandfather. Of the somewhat crudely drawn Mark--an evident pun on his surname--used in or about 1504, by Guillaume Du Puys, the sign of the shop being the Samaritan, a much more decorative example was used, in various sizes, by Jacques Du Puys (p. 10), who was a bookseller, 1549-91, rather than a printer. Equally fine in another way is the tripart.i.te example, given on page 130, used by Guillaume Merlin in partnership with Guillaume Desboys and Sebastien Nivelle, in 1559, and also with the latter in 1571. The Mark is the interpretation of the four lines:

"Veniet tempus meissionis.

Non oderis laboriosa opera.

h.o.m.o nascitur ad laborem, Vade, piger, ad formicam."

[Ill.u.s.tration: P. VIDOUE.

AVDENTES IVVO P. VIDOVae]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOUIS CYANEUS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANDRe WeCHEL.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRESTIEN WeCHEL.

VNICVM ARBVSTV NON ALIT DVOS ERITHAGOS]