La Métamorphose d'Ovide figurée (1557) — Gallery of Early Printed Books

Title page — Letterpress title within a dense woodcut strapwork border: "LA METAMORPHOSE D'OVIDE FIGVREE," with the Tournes device flourish, "A LYON, PAR IAN DE TOVRNES. M.D.LVII." and "Auec priuilege du Roy" (title leaf, f. A1r).

The creation of man — "La creacion de l'Homme" — Prometheus and the shaping of the first man, a Bernard Salomon woodcut framed in grotesque strapwork, the scene captioned below by its eight-line octain ("Chasque Element se rendoit habitable…").

The Age of Silver — "L'aage d'Argent" — labourers driving oxen in a landscape under Jupiter's newly shortened seasons, the Salomon cut and its octain set within the ornamental border ("Par laps de tems suruint l'aage d'Argent…").

Argus slain by Mercury — "Argus occis par Mercure" — Mercury, winged and lulling the hundred-eyed Argus to sleep before beheading him, beneath a frieze of swimming tritons; one of Salomon's most admired compositions, signed in the gathering as "b 4" (f. b4r).

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Jean de Tournes's celebrated octavo Ovid, illustrated with 178 woodcuts designed by Bernard Salomon, each paired with an eight-line octain (the verse often attributed to Barthélemy Aneau). The little book is a high point of Lyonnese book design — Salomon's elegant, crowded compositions set within delicate strapwork borders — and became the starting point for a long European line of illustrated and adapted Metamorphoses (USTC 41491; Cartier, Des Tournes no. 388).

Noted from Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800.

La Métamorphose d'Ovide figurée

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