EUSTATHE MACREMBOLITE - Les Adventures amoureuses d'Ismène e - Lot 398

EUSTATHE MACREMBOLITE - Les Adventures amoureuses d'Ismène et d'Isménie, histoire grecque d'Eustathius, mise en françois par le Sr Colletet. Paris, Toussainct du Bray, 1625. In-8, (8) ff. (front title engraved by Léonard Gaultier and one blank leaf included), 459 (3) pp. in 18th c. red morocco, floral dent. on boards, spine ribbed and decorated throughout without title, gilt tr. LEVER 27. First edition of Guillaume Colletet's translation. The editio princeps of this 12th-century Byzantine novel was published in 1617 by the scholar Gilbert Gaulmin, well versed in Greek and Oriental languages, with a Latin translation. In his preface, the young Guillaume Colletet confesses his indebtedness to this translation, which he has combined with the beauties of Lelio Carani's 1550 Italian translation: ''Where their explanations differ (he says) I have followed the one that seemed to me the most delicate and plausible. The young poet was thus offering the public a version more in keeping with his tastes than the outdated translations by Jean Louveau (1559) and Jérôme d'Avost (1582), based solely on Carani, and especially at the time of the Astrée triumph, of which the novel Ismene. et Ismenias is one of the sources. Léonard Gaultier's handsome frontispiece depicts a château preceded by an ordered garden of quadrilateral parterres that might be said to have been laid out by Androuet Du Cerceau. The portico framing the composition was also sometimes used to close Renaissance gardens. The elaborately carved fountain in the center of the garden evokes the marvelous fountain used to discover the secret of feelings, and which plays a key role in L'Astrée. The beginning of Eustathe's novel also features the garden, where the hero can admire a gallery of allegorical paintings. The dedicatee, the Duc de Nemours, who from 1616 onwards was a great organizer of fêtes and ballets, must not have been insensitive to Colletet's homage.