Christophe Plantin (1520-1589), French printer and humanist. Plantin was born near Tours and was apprenticed to a bookbinder in Caen. In 1549 he married and moved to Antwerp to set up his own business. In 1555 he opened his own printing works and soon became famous for the quality of his books. Around this time he started working on formalising his typography. It appealed particularly to King Philip II of Spain who supported Plantin's greatest project, the polyglot Bible of 1569-73. Philip was so impressed that Plantin was given the job of printing all of the liturgical works needed by the Church within Philip's states. Despite this apparent devotion to the Catholic Church, Plantin was a member of a sect of heretical mystics and many of their books were produced at Plantin's presses. This woodcut comes from van Opmeer's Opus chronographicum orbis universi published at Antwerp in 1611.