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Until now nothing was known about the life of the Parisian engraver Benard, despite the fact that he signed 60% of the Encyclopédie engravings and took part in other monumental editions, like Cook’s voyages or the Encyclopédie méthodique, for which he directed a team of 60 people. Thanks to research in the Archives nationales, in the parish records of the Seine Saint-Denis archives, as well as in the manuscript records of the longitude office, we have been able to collect many facts about his life; and this major artisan of the Encyclopédie can now be definitely identified as Jacques Renaud Benard, who was born in Rosny-sous-Bois in 1731 and died in Paris in 1794.