OVID IN THE AGE AND LANGUAGE OF CERVANTES
OVIDIUS Naso, Publius, and Pedro Sánchez de VIANA, translator and commentator.
Las transformaciones.
Valladolid, Diego Fernández de Córdoba, 1589.
Two parts in one vol., 4to, ff. [16], [2 (blank)], 179, [1]; 264, ‘295–314’ (i.e. 265–284), [4 (index)]; woodcut illustrations, one to each book, surrounded by cartouches, 14-line woodcut initial and many 4-line woodcut initials, woodcut device on second title-page, running titles; title-page stained and chipped with some tears and lower outer corner torn off and repaired at an early stage, text block trimmed close with a few headlines shaved, large ink stain on 2Q4v–5r, quire 2V misbound, upper corner of 2H1 torn with slight loss, large old repair on verso of dedication of second work affecting final few words, wormhole in gutter in the second part; contemporary Spanish limp vellum preserving two string loops, spine lettered in ink; edges soiled and a little worn, spine partially coming away from text block; seventeenth-century ownership inscription of Gabriel del Corral to title (struck through in ink) and to ¶3r, with c. 15 pp. of annotations to the commentary in the same hand, eighteenth-century purchase note to repaired corner of title, inscription (probably in Heber’s hand) on inside front cover ‘Bibl. Mayans, March 1829, Wheatley 579’, Bibliotheca Heberiana stamp, nineteenth-century armorial bookplate of Philip H. Calderon to front pastedown.
First edition, a copy of notable provenance, of perhaps the most successful early Spanish translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, by Pedro Sánchez de Viana (c. 1545–1619), a physician by training, published along with his substantial commentary.
In the age of Cervantes (another master of literary transformations), Ovid exerted wide and lasting influence on Spanish literature; uniquely able, among the Latin poets, to echo and clothe in myth and beauty the ambitions and anxieties of a generation of poets caught in a world of deep change. The re-elaboration of themes such as madness, desire, doubt, and self-knowledge in Cervantes and his contemporaries rely on Ovid’s imagery and language, and de Viana’s translation proved an important cultural transposition. Set out in hendecasyllables in alternate rhyme, the text itself is vivid and memorable.
It is the commentary, however, which especially commands attention: sources for interpretation range from classical writers to Medieval scholastics, to more recent philologists including Hebrew and Spanish thinkers; but this already considerable feat is crowned by de Viana’s attention to literary emulation over mere exegesis, and by his wholly humanistic rejection of moralising interpretations (which had been ubiquitous up until his generation) in favour of providing readers with the tools to develop their own views. Much of what is known of Sánchez de Viana is derived from the dedications to the translation and the commentary, both addressed to Hernando de Vega y Fonseca, president of the Council of the Indies, in whose house Viana had lived and worked in his youth.
Provenance:
1. The Spanish writer and priest Gabriel de Corral (1588–1652), with inscription on title-page dated 1608 and a few marginalia in ink in the commentary.
2. Eighteenth-century purchase note to repaired corner of title: ‘?Felicio Gilbert di Pisa / Fernández de Heredia’.
3. Lawyer and historian of sixteenth-century Spanish humanism Gregorio Mayáns y Siscar (1699–1781).
4. Sold at the Wheatley and Adlard auction of 10–13 March 1829 to Richard Heber (1773–1833), with Bibliotheca Heberiana stamp and inscription (likely in his hand) ‘Bibl. Mayans, March 1829, Wheatley 579’ on inside front cover.
5. Sold at Sotheby’s, 1 May 1834, lot 5194 to Riego.
6. Armorial bookplate of the artist Philip Hermogenes Calderon RA (1833–1898), perhaps best known for his 1856 painting Broken Vows, now at the Tate Britain.
Palau 207496 and 207497; USTC 340434; see Parrack, ‘Mythography and the Artifice of Annotation: Sánchez de Viana’s Metamorphoses (and Ovid)’ in De Armas ed., Ovid in the Age of Cervantes (2010), pp. 20–36).
