[Illustration: Fig. 70.--Title of the _Metanealogie_, engraved by Leonard Gaultier.]
Under Henri IV. and the minority of Louis XIII., two French illustrators received from the school of Antwerp their inspiration for the ornament of the Book. Thomas de Leu, probably from Flanders, was allied with the old Parisian painter and engraver of celebrated portraits, Antoine Caron, in furnishing the engraved plates for the _Images de Plate Peinture des Deux Philostrates, Sophistes Grecs_, Paris, Claude Cramoisy, 1609, folio; and Leonard Gaultier, his contemporary, collaborated with Jaspar Isaac and other artists in the Book. Leonard Gaultier contributed most to spread in France the Plantinian style, and his somewhat cold but characteristic talent suited this art more than that of any one else then could. He was an engraver of portraits, now rare and valuable, in the style of Wierix or Thomas de Leu; but, at the demand of publishers and booksellers, he composed other plates, at first historical figures representing the royal family and the nobles for the publisher Leclerc, in a simple and true manner; he also designed pious figures, recording a miracle or representing the ceremonies of a jubilee and other devotional things. But he made his great success in the composition of frontispieces to theological and pious works, printed for nearly all the booksellers. Leonard Gaultier had a fashion of his own with pilasters and Grecian columns, under which he boldly placed entire councils of cardinals and bishops; witness the heading of the _Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum_, into which he crowded nearly forty figures. He united also with a certain grace the sacred and the profane, placing among ideal saints the sinning fine ladies of the time, with their large collarettes and jewels falling on naked breasts. The work of Andrew Valladier, chaplain of the King, entitled _Métanéalogie Sacrée_, published by Peter Chevallier in 1609, was adorned with a title of this particular kind, in which Gaultier had no rival, and which preserves the precision of Flemish masters in the detail of ornaments of the toilet.
He was one of the first to work for Sebastian Cramoisy, printer and publisher, who had established his shop in the Rue St. Jacques at the sign of the "Stork." We shall have occasion to speak of him later in connection with the Royal Printing House, of which he was the first director; he is mentioned now because in 1611 Leonard Gaultier engraved for him the frontispiece of _L'Aigle Français_, a collection of sermons by Thomas Girault. The publisher used the same plate in 1618 for the sermons of Raymond de Hézèque.