Christophe Plantin

Christophe Plantin, (circa 1520, Saint-Avertin, France—July 1, 1589, Antwerp, Belgium) was a French printer. He was founder of an important printing house and publisher of the Ant-werp Polyglot Bible. Plantin learned bookbinding and bookselling at Caen, Normandy. He moved to Antwerp as a bookbinder in 1549. A bad arm wound seems to have led him (about 1555) to turn to typography. His many publications were characterized by their excellent typography and the use of copper, instead of wood, engravings for book illustrations. His greatest project, the Biblia regia, which would fix the original text of Old and New Testaments, was supported by Philip II of Spain and appeared in eight volumes during 1569–72. After Antwerp was plundered by the Spaniards in 1576, Plantin set up a branch office in Paris and, in 1583, he moved to Leiden as the the typographer of the new university of the states of Holland. He left his much reduced business in Antwerp in the hands of his sons-in-law, John Moerentorf (Moretus) and Francis van Ravelinghen (Raphelengius). But in 1585 Plantin returned to Antwerp and Raphelengius took over the business in Leiden. After Plantin’s death, the Antwerp business was carried on by Moretus, but it declined during the sec-ond half of the 17th century. In 1876 the city of Antwerp acquired the buildings and their contents and created the Plantin-Moretus Museum.