The first translation of the Alcoran

Geoffrey Tory, L’ art & science de la vraye proportion des lettres attiques. Paris: for Vivant Gautherot, 1549. 8vo.

The first edition of Champ fleury was in folio (1529); for this second edition, in octavo, most of the woodcuts were re-used, which detracts from the original beauty of the typography. Intended for such artists as painters and stone masons, Tory’s book is, however, not suitable for typographers. His purpose was rather to outline the underlying theories concerning the relationship between the shape of the letters and the ideal, divine proportions. The guiding principle is the idea, so familiar in hermetic thought, of a correlation between macrocosmos and microcosmos as it is expressed in nature, in the human shape and also in the shape of letters.