Description

Folio (305 x 210 mm). [10], CLXXII ll. Collation:᛭¹⁰ A-X⁸ Y⁴. Title page printed in red and black within an elaborate woodcut frame featuring the portraits of many illustrious classical poets and writers and, at the bottom, a depiction of an hortus conclusus, an enclosed garden with fountains that represents the purity of knowledge. Below the title is an epigram by the Venetian poet Giacomo di Museo. Woodcut historiated initials and several woodcut vignettes (60x85 mm ca.) in the text. Text printed in two or three columns (Greek, Latin and gothic types). Recently rebound in 17th-century stiff vellum, spine with raised bands and gilt title on morocco lettering piece (original flyleaves preserved). Manuscript dedication to the nobleman Marco Antonio Lambardi on one of the front flyleaves; other contemporary manuscript notes on the back flyleaves. Copy lightly stained and foxed; warm track to the lower outer corner of about 40 leaves only occasionally slightly affecting a few letters of text.
Published in Venice in 1540 by Bernardino Bindoni, this lavish edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses is a nice example of how the Renaissance studied classical myths. Instead of just printing Ovid's poetry, Bindoni surrounded the text with the commentaries by several scholars including Raphael Regius (ca. 1440-1520), Lactantius Placidus (ca. 350-400), and Petrus Lavinius (fl. 15th-16th cent.), who helped readers understand both the language and the deeper philosophical meanings of the stories. Raphael Regius' commentary was the absolute standard of the Renaissance for understanding Ovid's philology and rhetoric; Lactantius Placidus provides the arguments and mythological summaries at the beginning of each book; Petrus Lavinius adds a more philosophical and allegorical commentary (which at the time served to "justify" pagan myths in a Christian light).
Born in Sulmona, into a wealthy equestrian family, Ovid was educated in rhetoric and law but soon abandoned a political career in favor of poetry. Writing during the reign of Emperor Augustus, he became the youngest and most stylistically innovative member of the great generation of Augustan poets that included Virgil and Horace. Ovid first achieved fame through his sophisticated and playful elegiac poetry, especially the Amores (“The Loves”), a collection of witty poems exploring romance, seduction, jealousy, and the theatrical nature of love. He expanded this literary persona in the Heroides, a remarkable series of fictional letters written in the voices of mythological heroines such as Penelope, Dido, and Medea, giving psychological depth and emotional agency to women from classical myth. His most controversial work was the Ars Amatoria (“The Art of Love”), a mock-didactic poem offering advice on seduction, relationships, and erotic intrigue in urban Roman society. Clever, ironic, and highly sophisticated, the poem clashed with Augustus' moral reforms promoting traditional family values. Ovid later claimed that this work contributed to his downfall. His masterpiece, however, is the Metamorphoses, a monumental narrative poem in fifteen books that recounts over 250 myths of transformation drawn from Greek and Roman mythology. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Julius Caesar, the poem links stories through the theme of change. Among its most famous episodes are the tales of Daphne and Apollo, Narcissus, Pygmalion, Orpheus and Eurydice, Daedalus and Icarus, and Perseus and Medusa. Ovid also composed the Fasti, an unfinished poetic calendar describing Roman religious festivals, customs, and myths month by month. The work combines antiquarian scholarship with vivid storytelling and offers invaluable insight into Roman religion and civic life. After his exile, In works such as the Tristia (“Sorrows”) and the Epistulae ex Ponto (“Letters from the Black Sea”), he lamented his isolation from Rome, pleaded unsuccessfully for pardon, and reflected on memory, loss, and