Ovidio / Dolce - Le Trasformationi - 1553

THE METAMORPHOSES OF OVID IN OCTAVE VERSE – CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN THE GREAT ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS RENAISSANCE REWritings OF OVID
Important Giolito edition of 1553 of Lodovico Dolce’s Transformationes, published in Venice in the same year as the first complete imprint of the work. The frontispiece explicitly declares this new print run “newly reprinted, and corrected by him, and expanded in several places,” distinguishing it from the first Giolito edition issued shortly before. Dolce transforms Ovid’s Metamorphoses into a vast Italian poem in ottava rima, conceived not as a mere literal translation but as a refined rewriting intended for the educated Renaissance audience. The work is one of the major examples of Ovid’s fortune in the sixteenth century and helped spread the enormous repertoire of myths, gods, heroes, and metamorphoses in the vernacular, which nourished European literature and the visual arts for centuries. Of great fascination is the Giolito editorial apparatus, with a rich figurative frontispiece, numerous narrative woodcuts, decorative friezes, and historiated initials. The present specimen preserves the extensive illustrative corpus and is housed in an antique full-leather binding within an elegant case.

WHY TO BUY
GIOLITO – VENICE 1553! One of the great illustrated editions of Renaissance Venice.
OVIDI IN OTTAVA RIMA! The famous and highly successful Italian rewrite by Lodovico Dolce.
MYTHOLOGY IN IMAGES! A rich cycle of woodcuts accompanies gods, heroes and metamorphoses.
SECOND EDITION OF 1553, CORRECTED AND EXPANDED! The rare imprint “newly reprinted” immediately after the first Giolito.

MARKET VALUE
The illustrated sixteenth-century editions of Dolce’s Transformationes retain strong interest for collectors of Ovid, Italian literature, mythology, and Venetian typography. The second Giolito edition of 1553 is bibliographically clearly distinct and sought after, especially when it retains the woodcut apparatus. A complete and well-preserved specimen can roughly fetch a retail range of €1,000-3,000.

PHYSICAL / CONDITION
Pp. (2), 16 nn., 310, 10 nn., (2). Large illustrated frontispiece within an elaborate woodcut frame, numerous narrative woodcuts in the text, typographic friezes and historiated initials. Antique full brown leather binding, spine with raised bands and decorated compartments and a parchment manuscript label; speckled edges. Guarded within an elegant later-period case. Missing leaf f6, replaced by an accurate facsimile. Small loss to the lower cap, spine darkened, some foxing, creases and normal signs of time. As with all old volumes, minor flaws or restorations not expressly mentioned may be present.

FULL TITLES & AUTHORS
Lodovico Dolce (1508-1568).
Le Trasformationi di M. Lodovico Dolce, di nuovo ristampate, e da lui ricorrette, et in diversi luoghi ampliate. Con la Tavola delle Favole.
In Venetia: appresso Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari e fratelli, 1553.
SECOND EDITION GIOLITO OF 1553.
Rethinking in ottava rima of the Metamorphoses of Ovid.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Lodovico Dolce (Venice, 1508-1568) was one of the most prolific and versatile men of letters of the Venetian Renaissance: poet, translator, dramatist, art theorist, editorial corrector, and steady collaborator of the Giolito printing house. His activity was decisive in disseminating the great texts of classical and Italian tradition in the vernacular. He oversaw or reworked works by Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante, Ariosto and numerous ancient and modern authors, addressing a public far broader than that of the humanist specialists. The Transformationes of 1553 represent one of the most famous results of this endeavor. Dolce does not proceed with a strictly literal translation of Ovid, but recreates the Latin poem through Italian narrative ottava, adapting classical mythology to the literary taste of the full sixteenth century. The work thus wholly belongs to the Venetian editorial culture, in which translation, rewriting and illustration contributed to building a new audience for the classics.

RARITY
The 1553 edition saw two Giolito printings of the Transformationes in quick succession: the first complete edition and, shortly after, the present second edition, expressly defined as “newly reprinted,” corrected and expanded by the author. This circumstance testifies to the immediate success of the work and makes bibliographically important the distinction between the two issues. The second Giolito is cataloged by the main sixteenth-century repertoires and has been described in important international antiquarian collections. Complete exemplars with the rich pictorial apparatus retain particular interest because the woodcuts are an essential part of the editorial project and of the iconographic fortune of the work.

HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE
The Metamorphoses of Ovid were one of the major sources of mythology for Renaissance and Baroque Europe. Dolce’s rewriting helped transfer this enormous patrimony from Latin culture to the vernacular Italian, making stories of Apollo and Daphne, Narcissus, Phaethon, Orpheus, Perseus, and the countless figures of the Ovidian universe accessible to a broader audience. The work was produced directly within the Giolito editorial environment and enjoyed rapid success, with numerous subsequent reprints. The rich woodcut apparatus reinforces this cultural function: text and image work together to visually fix the myth, making the Transformationes not only a literary work but also an important iconographic repertory of the Italian Renaissance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
USTC 845803.
EDIT16, CNCE 54429.
Adams, Catalogue of Books Printed on the Continent of Europe, O-508.
Mortimer, Harvard College Library, Italian Sixteenth-Century Books, n. 342.
Brunet, Manuel du libraire et de l’amateur de livres, II, 789.
G. A. Pettas, The Giolito Press.
Lodovico Dolce, Le Trasformationi, Venezia, Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1553.
Repertori e studi dedicati alla fortuna rinascimentale delle Metamorfosi di Ovidio e alla produzione editoriale dei Giolito.