- First name
- Jean Antoine
- Last name
- Tournes, de
- Date of Birth
- 1624
- Date of Death
- 1682
- Born in
- -
- Died in
- -
Jean Antoine de Tournes and his brother Samuel I de Tournes came from a noted family of bookdealers and printers that moved from Lyon to Geneva during the second half of the sixteenth century. The De Tournes dynasty focused in the production of Latin and French editions of works by the Italian humanist Giovanni Andrea Alciato (1492–1550). For the De Tournes family: Cartier, 1937–8, vol. 1, esp. pp. 6–32.
Information about any selling price of Renati Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I et II; Cogitata Metaphysica is unknown. It is tempting to assume that most copies were mainly distributed and sold in the Netherlands, but some of them apparently found their way abroad. It is at least known that copies were offered for sale in Switzerland. That becomes evident from a catalogue published in 1670 by the Genevan Huguenot bookdealers and printers Jean Antoine and Samuel de Tournes. Their Catalogus universalis lists under the category ‘Miscellanei’: ‘De-Spinoza Bened. Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae demonstrata. 4. Amst. 1663’. It is completely unknown how many copies of the book got to Switzerland and whether the De Tournes brothers perhaps had business relations with Jan Rieuwertsz Sr. Historical evidence confirms that copies of Spinoza's digest of Descartes were no longer sold by booksellers in about the late 1690s.