A handsome copy of the illustrated, first French edition of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Filocolo, owned by a sixteenth-century French countess, Anne d’Humières (b.1565), with her inscription to the title page.
The French translation here of Boccaccio’s story of star-crossed lovers, Florio and Biancafiore - itself borrowed from the French medieval story of Floir and Blancheflor - is by Adrien Sevin, whose ‘epistre du translateur’ prefacing the text is dedicated to the powerful lady-in-waiting and mistress of King Francois I, Claude de Rohan-Gié, Contesse de Sainte Aignan (1519-79). Sevin’s epistre also fittingly recounts another romance, in order, he writes ‘to better encourage you [his readers] to love steadfastly’; that of Burglipha and Halquadrich. Sevin’s legend of two, doomed noble lovers appears to have Italian origins, in Masuccio Salternitano’s Mariotto e Ganozza, a text that would indirectly inspire Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet fifty years later.
The woodcut illustrations and their interchangeable borders here are from the blocks cut to illustrate another romance printed by Janot two years earlier, in 1540, the chivalric love story of Amadis de Gaula; they would prove a useful set to illustrate other romances printed around the same time (see Mortimer, French, no.18). Made imprimeur du roi in 1543, the oeuvre of prolific printer Janot included emblem books – such as Le Théâtre des bons engins by Guillaume de La Perrière (1534), as well as works produced by either side of the ongoing Querelle des Femmes.
Little is known of Anne d’Humières, comtesse de Chaulne (b.1565) who has inscribed her name on the title page. The daughter of Jacques d’Humières, Lieutenant General of Picardy and local leader of the Catholic League during the French Wars of Religion, her full title in this inscription dates her possession of the book to after her marriage to Louis d’Ongnies, Comte de Chaulnes (d.1604) in 1585. ‘Gouvernante’ may further date the inscription to after her husband’s death, and indicate her status as sole ruler of the region. There is a tantalising further note in her hand on the verso of f.3, ‘ou vas tu chere seur’, underneath, but seemingly unrelated to another note above in an earlier hand.
Charming inked sketches alongside/copied from woodcuts in two places.
Provenance: 1. Ownership inscription to title page: ‘Le livre apartiens a madame anne de humieres contaise de chaume gouvernante’; Anne d’Humières (b.1565), Comtesse de Chaulnes, possibly after 1604. Further note in her hand on f.3(verso), and in a different (earlier?) hand on the same page above. 2. Love poem in later hand to title page, addressed to a ‘Francois’; ‘je te prie, me monstrer un raion du soleil souz lequel mon ame est aservie’. 3. Ink stamp on title page and f.E1 of Armand-Charles-Daniel, Comte de Firmas-Periez. 4. Book label of Ambroise Firmin Didot, 1850 to front paste-down.
Mortimer, French, 105. Brunet I, 1014. BMSTC French, p. 71.
