The printing industry in Lyon during the Renaissance is characterized by the importance given to illustrations. The number of books printed in the sixteenth century is around 25000, of which at least 2000 are illustrated. Printers of the city published the first illustrated book in France, namely the Mirouer de la Redemption de l’Umain Lignage (1478), which was translated into French by the monk Julien Macho. The early printers who worked in the city, such as Barthélemy Buyer, Mathieu Husz and Jean Syber used German woodblocks at first, but they soon started to commission new illustrations for different types of books (among which books of emblems, bibles, herbalia, descriptions of exotic countries, anatomical illustrations, astronomical schemata, and so forth).

Funded by the Equipex Biblissima (CNRS) and in cooperation with the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, the Warburg Institute, and the Bodleian Libraries, the project Le Livre Illustré à Lyon 1480–1600 aims at identifying and gathering the illustrated editions printed in the city during the sixteenth century, collecting the corpus of images and indexing them iconographically. In between history of books and art history, this project opens up a wide range of research questions: which types of books were first illustrated, and how? Which iconographic subjects became popular during the century? How did printers and artists exchange printing material, and how did their printing techniques change and improve during the early modern period?