Les Saintes Prieres de l'ame Chrestienne

Engraved title and 211 engraved pages of text and figure subjects of various kinds, each page with a fine border of flowers, fruits, arabesque and other designs, French brown morocco by Hardy, elaborately tooled with arabesque designs, central panel with representations of angels, one playing a lute, gilt edges, 8vo, Paris, Jean Henault, 1649

Exquisite example of fine engraving and printing.

Born around 1599, Pierre Moreau was the son of Gaspard Moreau, sergeant at the Châtelet in Paris, and Antoinette de Pars, daughter of Guy de Pars, attorney in Parliament.

Pierre Moreau was received into the Community of Master Writers on April 17, 1628 and published several works of calligraphy between 1626 and 1639. The collections he published in 1633 by Isaac Briot correspond to the official models developed the same year by Étienne Le Bé and by Louis Barbedor .

It seems that Moreau began around 1635 to work on the size and the font of characters which imitate handwriting. An act of January 2, 1642, describes him as an engraver,founder of characters, also a master writer and printer.

In 1643, Moreau became the king’s printer and between 1643 and his death in 1648 he published around thirty works with his characters, mainly devotional texts and poetic or dramatic texts. Their typographical uniqueness and the sharpness of their impression make them still sought after today.

On July 8, 1644 Moreau remarried to Jeanne Raoul, aged 25. There are two portraits of him, one at the age of 28. Moreau then lived on rue Gervais-Laurent in the Cité.

He died in 1648. His typographic fonts were then sold to the printer Denis Thierry, then passed to the printer Jacques Collombat. Some of these characters are still kept in the Hallmark Cabinet of the former National Printing Office.

Provenance: St. Genies with book plate