But, first of all, there is a preliminary question to be decided: Was Tory really a painter and engraver? In the first part of this book I said that he was, but I did not furnish proofs of the fact, and none of the historians of painting or of engraving have mentioned him in that connection. It is advisable therefore, first of all, to demonstrate the accuracy of my assertion. In order to solve this complicated question more easily, let us divide it.
Was Tory a painter?
That Tory was a painter-draughtsman, there can be no doubt, for he himself makes the assertion in express terms on each page of 'Champ fleury.' For instance, we read on folio 3 verso of that work, apropos of the Gallic Hercules:—
'I saw this same fable in rich painting within the city of Rome near the Sanguine tower, not far from the Church of Saint Louis, ... and the better to keep the thing in my eye, I made this drawing....'
In the collection of verses written by him on the occasion of the death of his daughter Agnes, Tory makes her speak thus from the urn wherein she is supposed to repose:—
MONITOR.
Who made for you this urn, set with brilliant gems?
AGNES.
Who? My father; famed in this art.
MONITOR.
Certes, your father is an excellent potter.
AGNES.
He practises industriously every day the liberal arts.
Thus Geofroy Tory himself informs us in 1523 that he industriously practised the arts. Now, if this were true, he could not have been ignorant of drawing, which is the first of all the arts. Moreover, it is plain that in those days an engraver (and we shall prove in a moment that Tory was one) could not fail to be a draughtsman. The artist was at that time an all-round workman, embracing all the special branches of his profession: painting, drawing, engraving, he took a hand at them all. Not until it became vulgarized, until it became a trade, was art subdivided—and greatly to its prejudice. In truth, one cannot but realize all that there is to be desired in the work of those mercenaries of the engraver's art, who, having no knowledge of the first elements of drawing, are bidden to reproduce, with the aid of the graving tool, lines which they do not understand.
We can therefore assert that, as a general rule, the engravings found in Tory's books were drawn by him.
But this is not all: I believe that we should also attribute to him the admirable miniatures[275] that have come down to us of the painter known by the name of 'Godefroy.' If, indeed, we compare the engravings in Tory's books with the designs of that painter, we readily recognize a similarity of execution which seems to establish the identity of the two men. This Godefroy, who signs his works sometimes with the full name, sometimes with a simple G, but always in roman letters,—a noteworthy thing at a time when the gothic was in its most flourishing state,—was no other than Tory, whose baptismal name, as we have seen, was in Latin Godofredus. We know how little was thought of family names in the old days. As late as the sixteenth century it was no uncommon thing to see persons designated by their baptismal names alone, or, at most, with the name of their native place added. We have seen[276] that the famous painter Jean Perreal, Tory's master and friend, was little known except by the name of Jean de Paris. Tory himself is called Godefroy the Berrichon (Godofredus Biturix) in some verses which his friend Gérard de Vercel composed in his praise in 1512.[277] Even at the close of the sixteenth century our two leading bibliographers, Antoine du Verdier and La Croix du Maine, who also bore geographical names, deemed it proper to adopt no other order than that of baptismal names in arranging alphabetically the authors who are mentioned in their books entitled 'Bibliothèque Françoise.' There is nothing extraordinary therefore in Tory's signing his first works with a baptismal name alone. It is true that that name is slightly different, orthographically speaking, from the one that he used later; but it is well to remember the change that took place about that time in our author's customs. Doubtless he signed 'Godefroy' before he had entirely shaken off the yoke of the classical languages,[278] and had adopted the more French form 'Geofroy,' which was about the year 1523.