Alciati and Giovio
ALCIATI, Andrea.
Les emblemes … mis en rime francoyse & puis nagueres reimprime avec curieuse correction. Paris, Chrestien Wechel, 1539.
[bound after:]
GIOVIO, Paolo. Ragionamento … sopra i motti, & disegni d’arme, & d’amore, che communemento chiamano imprese. Con un discorso di Girolamo Ruscelli, intorno allo stesso soggetto. Venice, Giordano Ziletti, 1556.Two works in one vol., 8vo, Giovio: pp. [xvi], ‘236’ (recte 232), Alciati: pp. 245, [1, blank]; Alciati without the final leaf Q4 (printer’s device only); with 113 woodcut illustrations, woodcut printer’s devices to titles, woodcut initials, Alciati printed in parallel Latin and French on facing pages (in italic letter and in lettres bâtardes respectively); staining to corners of Giovio A8v–B1r and marginal damp-staining to last 4 ff. with a few thumbprints, Alciati title slightly soiled, some light scattered staining, but very good copies; bound in eighteenth-century Italian vellum over boards, yapp fore-edges, early nineteenth-century gilt red glazed paper lettering-piece to spine, edges speckled blue (from an earlier binding) with manuscript lettering to tail-edge; early seventeenth-century doodles and inscription ‘baccho’ to woodcut of Bacchus to Alciati p. 144 and early ownership inscription ‘Francisco Cortiso patrono(?)’ to p. 161.
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Les emblemes … mis en rime francoyse & puis nagueres reimprime avec curieuse correction.
Third edition of Jean Lefevre’s French verse translation of Alciati’s Emblematum liber, bound with the second edition of Giovio’s Dialogo dell’imprese, the first to include Girolamo Ruscelli’s supplementary and substantial Discorso on emblems and mottos.
The first French translation of Alciati’s Emblemata by Jean Lefevre was first published (also by Wechel) as the Livret des emblemes in 1536, only a few years after the Latin original of 1531. ‘Le Fevre has not constrained himself to make an exact translation. He renders the thought of each emblem, but he enlarges or abridges it just as he pleases … [Le Fevre] commonly renders each emblem by eight lines of eight syllables. He deviates from this rule only in the translation of about ten emblems, where the facility which he had of rhyming very badly and of speaking a language almost barbarous, has carried him altogether beyond the boundaries which elsewhere he had presented to himself’ (Green, p. 129).
Giovio’s dialogue on imprese, written as a conversation between himself and Lodovico Domenichi, was the first separate work on the subject. It first appeared in 1555, three years after the author’s death, and in the following year two issues appeared almost simultaneously in Venice, each with an additional discourse by one of Giovio’s closest friends. Our edition of the Ragionamento, printed by Ziletti with a dedication to Giovanni Matteo Bembo dated 15 February 1556, is the first to include Ruscelli’s lengthy and influential discourse on emblems, devices and mottos; it was produced at the same time as the 1556 Giolito edition, which had a discourse by Lodovico Domenichi and a dedication to Clemente Pietra dated 28 March 1556. There appears to have been no competition between the two friends in honouring Giovio’s memory: Ruscelli mentions his knowledge of the version compiled by Domenichi in his dedication, describing him as ‘most virtuous’ and his ‘dearest and most revered true brother’ (trans.). Our edition includes a discussion of Bembo’s own impresa not included in the Giolito edition.
Giovio: EDIT16 CNCE 21204; USTC 833209; Landwehr, Romanic 332 (‘Edition by Domenichi very likely published after Ruscelli’s edition’). Alciati: BP16 109141; USTC 43386; Adams, Rawles & Saunders F.007; Green, Alciati 12; Pettegree & Walsby, French Vernacular Books 428.