La Metamorphose d'Ovide
figurée
Gordon1557_O85
(Click
on the call number to view the digital facsimile of
the book.)
La Metamorphose d’Ouide Figuree
Combining the Renaissance fascination
for classical mythology with the popular emblematic
format, the Métamorphose d’Ovide
figurée is considered one of
the most beautiful illustrated books of sixteenth-century
France. 148 woodcut illustrations  of Ovidian myths
are each accompanied by a huitain, an 8-line poem
recounting the mythological tale in verse. Each is
surrounded by an ornamental border of arabeque designs
or grotesques and fantastical creatures.
Jean de Tournes, influential
Lyonnais printer, displayed his finest ornate and
arabesque borders and the elegant italic type of Robert
Granjon in this volume. The “action
figures” and detailed, graceful landscapes in
the woodcut illustrations are attributed to Bernard
Salomon, a master craftsman who deeply influenced
book decoration and illustration in France. De Tournes
and Salomon’s rich collection of representative
mythological figures and elegant typographical elements
made this book an iconographical manual of decoration
for artists and craftsmen of the era.
 Among the Ovidian myths pictured in this volume
that recur often in the poetry of the French Renaissance,
as well as in emblem books of the era are the story
of Theseus and Ariadne, the metamorphosis
of Actaeon into a stag, the tale
of Daedalus and Icarus flying too
close to the sun, and that of Narcissus
overcome by the beauty of his own reflection.
Internet Resources
Ovid Illustrated: The Renaissance Reception of
Ovid in Image and Text (Site constructed by Daniel
Kinney with Elizabeth Styron at the U.Va. E-Text Center):
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/about.html
Gallica (Bibliothèque numérique)
reproduction of the 1557 Jean
de Tourned edition in the Bibliothèque national
de France:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/
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