1682 Rare Latin Vellum Book - Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Ovidii Metamorphoseon
This book has been sold, but we regularly acquire comparable copies.
An attractive 1682 Venetian edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, preserving the complete fifteen books in Latin in a handsome contemporary vellum binding.
Author: Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid).
Title: Publii Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoseon Libri XV.
Publisher: Venice: Typis Stephani Curti, 1682.
Edition: Seventeenth-century Venetian edition.
Language: Latin.
Pages: 360 pages, with preliminary index of fables and notable subjects.
Size: 5.5 x 3.5 inches.
Binding: Very good contemporary full vellum binding, with raised edges and the title Ovidio Metamorf. written in an early hand along the spine. The vellum remains firm and attractive, with expected age toning, spotting and surface marks, the spine somewhat darker as shown, and a small early manuscript marking to the rear board. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content, complete through page 360, clean and well preserved for a volume more than three centuries old. Expected age toning and scattered spotting throughout, with occasional minor staining and handling marks, but the text remains strong, crisp and highly legible. Includes the extensive preliminary Index Fabularum, atque aliarum rerum memorabilium, followed by the full fifteen books of the Metamorphoses.
Illustrations: Woodcut printer’s device to the title page, together with large typographic initials, ornamental headings and decorative typographical elements throughout.
Estimate: $300–350 USD.
The book:
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is one of the foundational works of Western literature, a vast mythological poem composed in fifteen books and encompassing more than 250 stories of transformation drawn from Greek and Roman mythology. Beginning with the creation of the world and continuing through the age of Augustus, the work includes such enduring episodes as Daphne and Apollo, Phaëthon, Narcissus and Echo, Pyramus and Thisbe, Perseus and Andromeda, Orpheus and Eurydice, Daedalus and Icarus, and Pygmalion.
This compact Venetian edition was printed in 1682 by Stefano Curti and presents Ovid’s Latin text accompanied by an extensive index of myths, characters and notable subjects. Its small format, dense but remarkably clear typography and contemporary vellum binding make it an appealing example of the portable classical texts produced for scholars and readers in seventeenth-century Italy.
The author:
Publius Ovidius Naso, better known as Ovid (43 BC–AD 17/18), was one of the great poets of Augustan Rome, alongside Virgil and Horace. Celebrated during his lifetime for works including the Amores, Ars Amatoria and Heroides, he was later exiled by Augustus to Tomis on the Black Sea, where he spent the final years of his life.
The Metamorphoses became his most influential work. Its extraordinary sequence of myths shaped medieval and Renaissance literature and supplied subjects to generations of writers and artists, including Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Titian, Rubens and countless others. Its survival in editions such as this seventeenth-century Venetian printing reflects the continuing centrality of Ovid to European literary and classical culture.