Metamorphosis, dat is, Die herscheppinghe oft veranderinghe, beschreven vanden vermaerden ende gheleerden poet Ovidius; in onse Duytsche tale overgheset, ende met vele figueren verciert, elck tot sijn der historien dienende; seer profijtelijck, dienstbaer ende nut voor alle edele geesten, ende constenaers, als rhetoriciens, schilders, beelt-snijders, gout-smeden, ende eenpaer lijck alle liefhebbers der historien

by Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) | translated by Joannes Florianus

Antwerp: Printed by Andreas Bacx for Guillaume Lesteens, 1619

[8], 237, [3] leaves | 8vo | A-2H^8 | 158 x 100 mm

A later edition of Florianus’s Dutch prose translation, which first appeared in 1552, here with 176 woodcuts from the workshop of Virgil Solis, a few with his readily identifiable monogram. The audience for this illustrated vernacular classic was perhaps not too different than it was a century earlier. “They were meant for a special public, who could read and write, but were not so thoroughly schooled as to read Latin for their amusement. It may not be far wrong to surmise that the readers who the publishers of romances and of vernacular translations had in mind were mainly the noble ladies and the rich merchants’ wives, and that it was they who liked to buy them and to read them to their children and to explain the pictures” (Goldschmidt). Beyond women and their children, such vernacular translations, illustrated or not, might have equally appealed to merchants and craftspeople, literate but without formal schooling in Latin. ¶ These particular illustrations were first used in Johannes Spreng’s 1563 Metamorphoses, could be found in Florianus’s translation by 1566, and are themselves close copies (in reverse) of Bernard Salomon’s woodcuts from Jean de Tournes’s 1557 Lyon edition. The Solis woodcuts were themselves copied by 1612, albeit with reduced detail, when they appeared in Lamberg’s Leipzig Metamorphoseon. Solis’s complete cycle contained 178 woodcuts; “The Golden Age” (Book 1) and “Picus into a Bird” (Book 14) did not appear in this edition, nor even in the 1566 Florianus edition.

PROVENANCE: We’re hopelessly drawn to the combination of print and manuscript, and no less the recombination of print. This one does both. Our original leaf R8, the penultimate of Book 8, at some point was torn out. The missing text has been supplied in manuscript on a pale blue bifolium inserted in its place, itself augmented with the two missing woodcuts—in this case, the upper half of leaf O8 from the 1637 Florianus edition. And against all odds, this slight substitution even has its own colophon, signed by one P. Thiry, 1811, whose additional ownership inscription (Pierre Thiry) appears on a front fly-leaf. ¶ Old Dutch inscription on final blank page dated 1646.

CONDITION: We suspect this Pierre Thiry had it bound—a word we use loosely—and to a rather engaging effect. A contemporary sewing structure remains intact, and still holds the text block together, its old sewing supports rather crudely lashed to newer cords that fasten the boards to the text. The front board is partially covered with an old stenciled document, probably French (CHARGES…), while the rear paste-down is a leaf of manuscript ([com?]ités de Salut Public…de la Convention nationale). Note that not just ink bleed-through, but scored lines transferred from this sheet to the board itself. The rear board was actually cut from the cover of a larger volume—and likely the front board, too, similar handwriting just visible at the top edge under the CHARGES leaf. We suspect that volume’s content pertained to the work of the Comité de salut public, the French Revolution’s Committee of Public Safety, established in 1793 by the National Convention and essentially the executive force behind the Reign of Terror. ¶ While the inserted manuscript bifolium includes two empty frames for woodcuts, none is missing; the two supplied illustrations complete the cycle for Book 8. Text block edges stained red. ¶ Lacking original R8, replaced as explained above; 2A7 torn a couple inches up the outside edge of the type area, probably weakened from the pressure; scattered moderate soiling and minor marginal tears; text sometimes trimmed close. The binding a bit shaky, but attached the text block well enough, the joints doing their job; paper covering the spine torn and with some substantial loss; paper covering the boards soiled.

REFERENCES: USTC 1035461 ¶ E.P. Goldschmidt, The Printed Book of the Renaissance (Cambridge Univ, 1950), p. 48; Daniel Kinney and Elizabeth Styron, Ovid Illustrated: The Reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Image and Text, < https://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/ovidillust.html> (an exceptional resource for comparing these woodcut cycles); Walter S. Melion, “Ovidian Poetics in Hendrick Goltzius’s Landscape with Venus and Adonis of ca. 1598,” Ekphrastic Image-Making in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 (Brill, 2021), p. 556 (“Florianus…adheres punctiliously to the densely interwoven texture of Ovid’s poem”; also includes some history of these illustrations); Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Humanism,” The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge Univ, 1988), p. 121 (“The reading public of the Renaissance consisted not only of people who had received a humanist or university education and hence were able to read Latin, but also of many intelligent and curious people, especially merchants, craftsmen and women, who knew no Latin but were eager to tread not only poems and narratives but also works of varied instruction in their native vernacular. Many humanists catered to this audience.”)

Item #572