Jacob Faber - Life

Life

Faber was born in France or Lorraine, the latter information coming from a reference in a letter by Erasmus of 1524. Possibly after training in Paris, he was in Basel in Switzerland working for Johann Froben by March 1516, and remained there until returning to France in 1524, to Paris and perhaps later Lyons, where he was used by the local publishers in the 1540s. He was associated with major Reformation figures, and may have become a Huguenot himself, which would agree with a move to Lyons, unlike Paris a city with a strong Huguenot presence. He may be the "Jacques Lefèvre, dit le tailleur d'histoires" ("called the cutter of stories") accused of heresy in Paris in 1534-35, but unlike 17 others at the time, not executed. He seems to have lived until about 1550.

The "enterprising" and mobile Faber undertook a variety of roles, but all were essentially within the book publishing industry; almost all his images are for books. He produced illustrations himself in all three techniques then used for book illustration: woodcut, engraving and metalcut, but appears always to have used the designs of artists, except perhaps for decorative work. He was the main producer of metalcut plates for the important publisher Johann Froben in Basel. He acted as a middle-man for larger publishers, according to Peter Parshall, and "eventually operated as an independent agent commissioning and trading blocks and plates with French and Swiss publishers". In this capacity he worked with Hans Holbein, Hans Lützelburger, and others. He was "also in close contact with major figures in the Reformation movement".

His habit of signing merely with his initials ensured that his identity sank into obscurity, until he was identified again in the mid-19th century and eventually recognized as the major interpreter of the younger Holbein's designs in the medium of metalcuts, though when left to his own devices, his abilities as a designer were mediocre - "wretched stuff", according to Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints at the British Museum.