This volume came from the ancient monastery of Oliva, near Dantzig.
1522
I. We may place under this date two other frontispieces signed with the Lorraine cross. The first is a large engraving divided into four compartments, and representing armies in battle array, with cannon. The two upper compartments are connected by the shield of France, surmounted by a crown and encircled by the order of Saint-Michel, from which branches of rose-bushes depend on either side. In each compartment there is a cartouche. Tory's mark is at the foot of the lower left-hand compartment, in which the banner of France is seen waving. This engraving appears in the 'Rozier historial de France,' a folio printed in gothic type, at Paris, for François Regnault, February 10, 1522, before Easter; that is to say, 1523 new style. In the cartouches the following words are printed in red, in gothic type: 'Bataille ronde,' 'Bataille de pointe,' 'Bataille de feu,' 'Bataille de fourche.'[325] It appears in another edition of the same book, printed in 1528 for the same bookseller; also, in a translation of Cæsar's 'Commentaries,' printed by Pierre Vidoue, in 1531, for the booksellers Poncet Le Preux and Galiot du Pré. This translation is a folio volume divided into two parts, the first translated by Étienne Delaigue, called Beauvoys, the second by Robert Gaguin. The plate in question is at the end of the first part, folio 95 verso. The whole book is printed in black, both text and engraving. I am indebted for my knowledge of the engraving to M. Robert-Dumesnil fils.
II. The second engraving, in the form of a border (folio size), representing a number of grotesque and licentious subjects, appears in an edition of the 'Histoire du saint Graal,' published by Philippe le Noir, sworn bookseller and binder to the University of Paris, on October 24, 1523. The bookseller's initials are in the compartment at the top of the border.[326]
In this book, as well as in those last described, there are other engravings; but they are not the work of Tory, to whom only the important pieces were assigned. These other engravings had, doubtless, appeared elsewhere.
As for the engraving executed by Tory (which reappears in many other works printed by Philippe le Noir), it is a copy of a plate engraved by Urs Graf, dated 1519, and used by Pierre Vidoue, printer at Paris,[327] particularly in a Virgil of 1529, folio, which is now in the Bibliothèque Mazarine. The four principal subjects of this engraving, placed at the four corners of the border, represent: (1) Men lighting torches at a woman's posterior; (2) A woman carrying off a man in a basket[328]; (3) The death of Pyramus and Thisbe; (4) The judgement of Paris.
1523
While working for others, Tory busied himself with a long series of engravings intended for books of Hours to be published by himself.[329]
'It is upon turning over these plates,' says M. Renouvier,[330] 'that one appreciates to the full his style—rich, diversified and immeasurably clever in ornamentation, distorted out of proportion, diabolic in the drawing of faces, descending too often to downright awkwardness in the carriage of the head and to a habit of bellying out draperies; and, finally, overweighted by a sort of heaviness in the forms. The artist's greatest facility is shown in the arrangement of his figures, and in the decoration of his porticoes. Whatever he may say, it would seem that what he studied at Rome with the best results were the baths of Titus and the arabesques of Giovanni da Udino.'
1524-1525