LE BÉ, GUILLAUME°

LE BÉ, GUILLAUME ° (1525–1598), French type cutter and designer. Le Bé, a native of Troyes, was trained in the type-foundry of Robert Estienne (1503–59), the Hebrew and Latin printer of Francis i, and became an outstanding cutter of Hebrew type. While in Venice (1545–50), he worked for Marco Antonio *Giustiniani. There Le Bé cut Greek and Roman punches as well as eight Hebrew fonts. Specimens of this work are preserved in two albums which are also filled with interesting marginal notes (now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris). After his return to France, Le Bé made more Hebrew fonts for the French typefounder Claude Garamond (d. 1561), and, from the mid-1560s onward, was the main supplier of the Antwerp printer Christophe *Plantin, typographer to Philip ii of Spain and publisher of the second Complutensian Bible (1568–72). At least five examples of Le Bé's work have been preserved in the Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp, ranging from the very large "Gros Hebrieu fort gros" (1566) to the minute "Hebrieu sur la Coronelle" (1570). Plantin, who also used Hebrew type provided by the older *Bomberg press in Venice, commissioned an "Hebrieu de la faceon de Venise" ("sur le Texte") and asked Le Bé to design and cut compressed and lengthened forms of many Hebrew letters, himself sketching suggestions for alef and bet. Even in his last years, Le Bé is known to have continued sketching Hebrew typefaces in block and cursive styles while trapped in Paris during the French wars of religion.

bibliography:

E. Howe, in: Signature, 8 (1938), 1–28; S.H. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing (1961²), 116, 167; H. Carter, in: International Wetenschappelijk Congres voor Boekdrukkunst en Humanisme, Antwerpen, Gedenkboek der Plantin-Dagen 1555–1955 (1956), 253n., 257–8n., 260–1, 263 (incl. specimen type sheet with Hebrew typefaces by Le Bé); C. Roth, Jews in the Renaissance (1959), 185–6n.

[Godfrey Edmond Silverman]