Abravanel, Philosophie d'amour, Lyon, 1551, contemporary French polychrome strapwork binding for "Marguerite"

ABRAVANEL, JUDAH LEON. Philosophie d'amour de M. Leon Hebreu, traduicte d'Italien en Françoys, par le Seigneur du Parc Champenois. Lyon: Guillaume Rouillé and Thibaud Payen, 1551

FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST FRENCH TRANSLATION OF THE DIALOGHI D'AMORE, IN A CHARMING STRAPWORK BINDING.

Judah Leon Abravanel (c. 1460-1530) was a Portuguese-Jewish philosopher, poet and physician. His Dialoghi d'amore, written around 1502 but first published posthumously in Rome in 1535, came to be one of the most important and enduring philosophical works of the time. This treatise on Platonic love takes the form of three dialogues, drawing on neo-Platonic philosophies emerging in Hispano-Jewish communities. The work engaged with and contributed to contemporary humanist debates which would shape art and literature for centuries. It is likely that Abravanel was influenced by a wave of humanist writings on the subject of love, including Mario Equicola's Libro della natura d'amore (1495; lot 1676) and Pietro Bembo's Gli Asolani (1505; lot 1601). Dialoghi d'amore, in its Italian original, was one of the first original philosophical works to be published in the vernacular.

Two French translations of Abravanel's Dialoghi appear in 1551: one by Pontus de Tyard, published in Lyon by Jean de Tournes, and the present, translated by Denis Sauvage ("le Seigneur du Parc Champenois"), translator, editor, philologist and historiographer of Henri II.

This elaborate binding features the name "Marguerite" on the covers, with a long-stemmed marguerite and an initial "M". One Marguerite who stands out among the sixteenth-century Lyonnaise literary milieu is Marguerite de Bourg (c.1510-1573; Marie-Madeleine Fontaine, "'Un cœur mis en gage' Pontus de Tyard, Marguerite de Bourg et le milieu lyonnais des années 1550", Nouvelle Revue du XVIe Siècle, 2 (1984), pp. 69-89). After the death of her husband in 1546, Marguerite de Bourg became the muse of contemporary humanists including Pontus de Tyard, the translator of the other 1551 edition, and Guillaume Rouillé, printer and publisher of this edition. Various works published between 1550 and 1561 are dedicated to her (see Appendix II, pp. 86-87). Her studio, preserved in the words of contemporary writers, was adorned with paintings and rich in works of philosophy, mathematics and the liberal arts in various languages (p. 82); perhaps this volume could be found among them.