François Langlois dit Chartres

The recorded working language is French. Places of work recorded in the authority are Paris. Work by François Langlois dit Chartres is recorded in the collections of Nationalmuseum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, Musea Brugge and Rijksmuseum.

François L’Anglois was born in Chartres and baptised there on 12 May 1589. He visited Italy on several occasions: Rome in 1613 and 1614 and Genoa, Florence, and Rome again in 1621. On these trips he met Anthony van Dyck and Claude Vignon, who both painted his portrait. He also became acquainted with the engravers Stefano della Bella and François Collignon. It was probably around this time that he acquired the nickname of Chartres (Ciartres in Italian). In 1624–1625 he was associated with Vignon as an art dealer (paintings) and acted as a print collector for Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel, and Charles I of England. He is also known for his 1620 book Livre de Fleurs, a compendium of garden flowers, birds and insects. He designed the title page for Livre de Fleurs and had the botanical plates engraved by the German, Léonard Gaultier (1561–1641), also resident in Paris, Claude Savary, and Barthélémy Gaultier, the editor being Jean Le Clerc. The remaining plates were drawn and engraved by L’Anglois. In 1629, on his way to Italy, he collaborated with Matthieu Fredeau, a painter from Antwerp, on the Rosary altarpiece of the Dominican church of Aix-en-Province. About this time he began his career as a print publisher, producing illustrated books in collaboration with Melchior Tavernier, and becoming a master in the bookseller's guild on 26 October 1634. He set up his own business at the sign of the 'Colonnes d'Hercule' on the rue Saint-Jacques, Paris, shortly before his marriage to Madeleine de Collemont in 1637. L’Anglois also published Pierre de Sainte-Marie Magdeleine's Traitté d'horlogiographie in 1645, a treatise on timekeeping, methods for determining the time both by day and by night, the timing of tides, how to cut geometrically regular shapes from stone or wood, and all aspects of measurement and projection. Nicolas Langlois (1640–1703), the son of François, published another edition of the book in 1657 in Paris. François L'Anglois died in Paris on 13 January 1647.