Publius Ovidius Naso - Heroidum Epistolae. Amorum libri III. De arte amandi libri III. De remedio amoris libri II. - 1561

OVIDE (Publius Ovidius Naso). Heroides. Amores books III. The Art of Loving books III. The Remedies for Love books II. Lyon, Antoine Gryphe, 1571. In-16, 382 p., conservation binding mute on plain paper.

Ovid (43 BC–AD 17/18) remains, with Virgil and Horace, the Latin author most read in the humanist bookshops of the 16th century; his Heroides, Amores, The Art of Loving and The Remedies for Love formed the essential backbone of any library, as much for the elegance of the language as for the boldness of the subject which earned the poet his exile on the shores of the Pontus Euxinus.

The text is that established by the Venetian Andrea Navagero (1483-1529), humanist attached to the Aldine printing house, whose recension of Ovid’s love poems, originally dedicated to Andrea Torresani, called Asolano, father-in-law and continuator of Aldus Manutius, was adopted by the European book trade for several decades. Guy Morillon, secretary to Charles V and a correspondent of Erasmus, composed the arguments (argumenta) at the head of each of the twenty-one heroic epistles, fictitious letters from Penelope to Odysseus, Dido to Aeneas, Ariadne to Theseus, and other heroines to the absent lover, followed by the three books of the Amores, the three books of the Art of Loving and the two books of the Remedies for Love. The title page bears at the top a medieval manuscript ex-libris in brown ink, of uncertain reading. The printing comes from Antoine Gryphe’s Lyon presses (c.1527?-1599), son and continuator of Sébastien Gryphe (1493-1556), with the title bearing the griffin holding a cube on an winged globe, motto Virtute duce comite fortuna.

Conservation binding, traces and restorations on the title page, old manuscript notes on the back of the title page, faint halo on a large number of leaves, ancient handwritten pagination of stanzas on about fifteen leaves, other minor defects, overall condition medium to good.