page_title: Grecs du roi
hierarchical_section_title: Grecs du roi
caption_attribution_description: English: Page from Robert Estienne's edition of the New Testament, Paris 1550, printed in Claude Garamond's typeface Grecs du roi. Shown: Beginning of the Gospel of John. Page digitalized by Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. [1]
context_page_description: Les grecs du roi are a celebrated Greek typeface designed by Claude Garamond in 1541 and containing a very large number of ligatures.
  The grecs du roi were ordered by Robert Estienne on behalf of King Francis I of France. The design was based on the handwriting of the Cretan copyist Angelo Vergecio, and include a vast variety of alternate letters and ligatures to achieve this. Arthur Tilley calls the resulting books "among the most finished specimens of typography that exist".
  The grecs du roi design placed significant demands on printers, since it requires a choice among the many possible types for every word, in contrast to Latin-alphabet general-purpose typefaces which do not attempt to simulate handwriting as closely. Most following typefaces for Greek have been much simpler. Gerry Leonidas, a leading expert on Greek typesetting, has commented that Vergecio's handwriting "has all the marks of a script that is unsuitable for conversion to [printing]. That it was the model for the widely-copied grecs-du-roi was, with hindsight, unfortunate."
context_section_description: Les grecs du roi are a celebrated Greek typeface designed by Claude Garamond in 1541 and containing a very large number of ligatures.
  The grecs du roi were ordered by Robert Estienne on behalf of King Francis I of France.  The design was based on the handwriting of the Cretan copyist Angelo Vergecio, and include a vast variety of alternate letters and ligatures to achieve this. Arthur Tilley calls the resulting books "among the most finished specimens of typography that exist".
  The grecs du roi design placed significant demands on printers, since it requires a choice among the many possible types for every word, in contrast to Latin-alphabet general-purpose typefaces which do not attempt to simulate handwriting as closely. Most following typefaces for Greek have been much simpler. Gerry Leonidas, a leading expert on Greek typesetting, has commented that Vergecio's handwriting "has all the marks of a script that is unsuitable for conversion to [printing]. That it was the model for the widely-copied grecs-du-roi was, with hindsight, unfortunate."
caption: Estienne's 1550 edition of the New Testament was typeset with Garamond's grecs du roi.[1]
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