Francesco COLONNA - Le tableux des riches ...- THE FRENCH POLIPHILUS - 181 magnificent woodcuts - 1600

RENAISSANCE; LITERATURE; ILLUSTRATED) Francesco COLONNA (1433/4-1527); François Béroalde DE VERVILLE (1556-1626)
Le tableau des riches inventions couvertes du voie des feintes amoureuses, qui sont representees dans le Songe de Poliphile Devoilees des ombres du Songe & subilement exposees par Béroalde A Paris: chez Matthieu Guillemot, au Palais, en la gallerie des prisoniers. 1600 [but after 1610]
§ 4to (264 x 176.), [19] (of 20: missing the last, blank, leaf), 154, [6] leaves. Engraved title-page, woodcut initials and head-pieces, 181 magnificent woodcut illustrations. Early XVIIIth century brown calf, gilt fillets on both plates, gilt spine, gilt title-piece on spine. The famous woodcut depicting Priapus (leaf 67R) often short-cut due to its size, is complete in this copy. A nice and well preserved copy.
Reprint of François Béroalde de Verville’s translation, first published in 1600; in the present edition the head-piece on *2 depicts the coat-of-arms of Louis XIII (thus giving a printing date after 1610) and there is no privilege. First published anonymously in Venice in 1499 under the title Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and attributed to the Dominican monk Francesco Colonna, the work is a mysterious arcane allegory in which the main protagonist, Poliphilo, pursues his love, Polia, through a dreamlike landscape. The first translation in French, by Jean Martin, was published by Kerver in 1546 and 1554. The woodcuts of the present edition are the same used for the Kerver’s edition of 1546; variously attributed to Jean Cousin the younger (1522 c. -1595) and Jean Goujon (1510 c. - 1565 c.) they are, according to the BNF, from drawings by Mantegna. Unlike the previous translation, Béroalde stresses the arcane and, above all, the alchemical aspects of the original. “...Béroalde admits here that he was mainly attracted by the hidden messages, particularly when in the Poliphile they are shaped like hieroglyphics in some illustrations. So he opens the way to an interpretation of the book as containing a secret philosophical message, enjoying what is obscure, so obscure that one might even doubt that it is obscure ...” (Fruno). François Béroalde de Verville was a French Renaissance novelist, poet and intellectual who wrote several works on various subjects.
 MORTIMER, Harvard French 148; USTC 12600 (1600 edition); MARTINE FRUNO, https://architectura.univ-tours.fr/en/livres-notice/cesr_4023c490/; BNF Catalogue collectif de France https://ccfr.bnf.fr/portailccfr/ark:/16871/0016852387