Читать книгу Geofroy Tory. Painter and engraver; first royal printer; reformer of orthography and typography under François I онлайн

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But, I repeat, the principal purpose of my work is to make Tory known as one of the most skilful engravers we have ever had. Of course I cannot forget that he was the learned editor of the 'Cosmographie du Pape Pie II,' the 'Itinéraire Antonin,' etc.; the publisher, of rare taste, who put forth the Hours of 1525, 1527, etc.; the accomplished printer of the 'Sacre de la Reine Eléonore,' and the distinguished philologist of 'Champ fleury,' to whom, as we shall see, we owe the invention of the orthographic forms peculiar to the French language.[7] But what has especially attracted me in Tory is his work as an engraver. In that rôle he was without predecessor or rival, for those persons who may be represented as such may have been his pupils, nothing more. Jean Duvet alone might quarrel with this limitation; but, although he was Tory's contemporary, he was not his teacher; for Tory had gone for his schooling in the art to the very fountain-head, to Italy, before Duvet produced anything. As for Jean Cousin, de Laulne, du Cerceau, Léonard Gauthier, and the rest, they did not come until after Tory. The honour of revivifying the art of engraving in France belongs to Tory alone, bestriding two centuries, the fifteenth and sixteenth; indeed, some of his productions are pure gothic. This I propose to demonstrate in the third part of my book, after I have, in the first part, narrated the general facts of our artist's life, in which we may observe also the development of a revolution in the matter of philology; for Tory was a devoted partisan of the classic tongues before he became one of the sturdiest champions of the French language.