Figure 145
Italic in Cousin’s Livre de Perspective: Le Royer, Paris
From a copy in the Boston Public Library (facsimile), Internet Archive (scan)
1560
An exquisite book is the folio Livre de Perspective de Jehan Cousin Senonois, Maistre Painctre à Paris, printed at Paris in 1560 by Jean Le Royer, originally an engraver, but appointed by Henri II Imprimeur du Roy ès Mathématiques. Its title-page with an elaborate and sumptuous printers’s mark is followed by a great decorative engraving, presenting the five Corps Réguliers de Géométrie in a magnificent encadrement.… The preface and the author’s and printer’s addresses to the reader are composed in a beautiful, lively italic.