type intended for body text, created by Garamond. was typeset with Garamond's
grecs du roi. The result is one of the most sophisticated pieces of printing in the history of metal type, quite unlike Garamond's structured, upright designs in the Latin alphabet. '' type, which remain owned by the French government. Garamond's early life has been the subject of some research and considerable uncertainty. Dates as early as 1480 and as late as have been proposed for his birth, the latter being preferred by the French ministry of culture. In favour of a later date, his will of 1561 states that his mother was then still alive and the fact that he may have apprenticed with Antoine Augereau, who started his career in 1530. He married twice, to Guillemette Gaultier (probably before 1535) and, after her death, to Ysabeau Le Fevre (in 1545). Garamond may have apprenticed with
Antoine Augereau and was perhaps also trained by
Simon de Colines. He seems to have started his career as a punchcutter in 1535 : his first type can be seen in Lyon in 1535. In 1536-1540, Garamond worked as a typefounder for
Charlotte Guillard. In her printshop, he met
Jean de Gagny, the French king's Almoner. In 1539, when
Francis I wanted to create a print shop in Paris to publish greek texts, Garamond was recruited to provide type for the printer
Conrad Neobar. The result is an immensely complicated set of type, including a vast variety of alternate letters and
ligatures to simulate the flexibility of handwriting. Garamond worked for a variety of employers on commission, creating punches for publishers and the government. Garamond's typefaces were popular abroad, and replaced Griffo's original roman type at the
Aldine Press in Venice. He also worked as a publisher and bookseller. While his italics have been considered less impressive than his roman typefaces, he was one of the early printers to establish the modern tradition that the italic capitals should slope as the lower case does, rather than remain upright as
Roman square capitals do. Although Garamond himself remains an eminent figure in French printing of the 16th century, historical research over the last century has increasingly placed his work in context. Garamond was one figure among many at a time when new typefaces were rapidly produced in 16th-century France, and these type designers operated within a pre-existing tradition defined by the work of figures such as
Aldus Manutius who were active over the preceding half-century. The period from 1520 to around 1560, encompassing Garamond's career as an artisan, was an extremely busy period for typeface creation, with a wide range of fonts created, some apparently for exclusive use by a specific printer, with others sold or traded between them. Many engravers were active over this time, including Garamond,
Robert Granjon,
Guillaume Le Bé,
Antoine Augereau,
Simon de Colines,
Pierre Haultin and others, creating typefaces not just in the Latin alphabet, but also in Greek and Hebrew for scholarly use. This period saw the creation of a pool of high-quality punches and matrices that would supply the French printing industry, to a large extent, for the next two centuries. The first book Garamond published was called, "Pia et Religiosa Meditatio" by David Chambellan. ==Garamond's death and aftermath==