Guillaume Rouillé

He invented the pocket book format called the sextodecimo, printed with sixteen leaves to the folio sheet, half the size of the octavo format, and published many works of history and poetry as well as medicine, in addition to his useful compilations and handbooks.

Though he was a Frenchman, he served his apprenticeship in the Venetian printing-house of Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari, and retained his connections with Venice as a source of texts after his arrival in Lyon around 1543.

[3] Among his works was the French translation by Barthélemy Aneau of Andrea Alciato's pioneering emblem book, which formed part of a major publishing venture in Lyons by the team of Guillaume Rouillé and his printer Macé Bonhomme, 1549, which extended to translations in Italian and Spanish.

[5] Another work of iconography was the useful compilation of portrait types of Antiquity, Promptuarii iconum insigniorum à seculo hominum, subiectis eorum vitis, per compendium ex probatissimis autoribus desumptis (First and second parts, 1553, etc.)

On his title pages his emblem was prominently displayed: an eagle triumphant atop a globe on a pedestal, flanked by serpents with entwined tails.