Xenophon, La Cyropedie, Lyon, 1555, French inlaid-strapwork binding

Xenophon. La Cyropedie de Xenophon, de la Vie & Institucion de Cyrus Roy des Perses. Traduite de Grec par Iaques des Comtes de Vintemille Rhodien, Conseiller du Roy au Parlement de Dijon. Lyon: Jean I de Tournes, 1555

A French translation from the Greek of the Cyropaedia, an idealized, pseudo-historical account of the Persian monarch Cyrus the Great as a paragon of kingly goodness, the most important of Xenophon’s writings on princely rule and a classic text of the mirror-of-princes genre. The translation was first printed in 1547 (Paris: Étienne Groulleau for Vincent Sertenas) with a dedication to Henri II and verses “en faueur du Translateur” by Guillaume Desautels (both reprinted here). A third edition was issued in 1572 (Paris: Vincent Normant).

The translator, Jacques de Vintimille (Vintemille, Ventimiglia), was born at Lango (Kos) in 1512, the son of a Ligurian nobleman and Senasti Palaiologos. After his father was mortally wounded during the Siege of Rhodes, the ten-year-old Jacques was taken in by family friends, the brothers Georges and Jean de Vauzelles, brought to Lyon, afterwards sent to study in Paris, Toulouse, and in 1532 at Pavia. When François I was passing through Lyon (October 1537 or April 1538), Jacques was presented to the court, and later commissioned by the King to translate the Cyropaedia. François had been introduced to the text by his tutor, François Demoulins, who had made for him a French translation from the Latin of Lorenzo Valla (L’Institucion, condicion ou instruction moralle de Cirus; Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1863), and he apparently desired one based on the original Greek. Vintimille also made a French translation (from the Italian) of the best-known of the specula principum, Machiavelli’s Il Principe (1546; Chantilly, Musée Conde, Ms 315) and a French translation (from the Greek) of Herodian’s Roman history (six editions, 1554–1599), both dedicated to Anne de Montmorency.

No presentation copy of this edition can be identified. A sumptuous copy in a citron morocco binding with the arms and cypher of Catherine de’ Medici (as Reine mère) was probably bound around 1570 (Newberry Library, Case 5A 167; the Syston Park — Guyot de Villeneuve — Lebeuf de Montgermont — Rahir — Cortlandt Bishop — Louis Silver copy). Another copy, bound for her daughter, Marguerite de Valois (1553–1615), in red goatskin with her device “au soleil souriant et aux coquilles,” was bound in the 1580s; it is now in the collection of Nicolas Ducimetière.

The present binding is somewhat mysterious: much of the strapwork design consists of inlays, but they are the same color as the basic binding, so there seems no obvious point in going to such laborious and expensive efforts. The design incorporates empty tablets for inscriptions; perhaps the binding is either unfinished or was never claimed by, or delivered to, the collector who commissioned it.

4to (250 x 161 mm). Roman type, 41 lines plus headline, italic shoulder notes. collation: A–C⁴ a–z⁴ A–I⁴: 140 leaves. Title within woodcut border with grotesque heads, woodcut printer's device on I4v, woodcut initials (historiated, floriated, criblé), woodcut headpiece, type-ornament tailpieces. Ruled in red. (Some light marginal soiling.)

binding: French calf (255 x 168 mm), ca. 1555, richly tooled and inlaid, large arabesque oval block in center within a gougework architectonic cartouche, large corner-pieces of cornucopia with floral motifs in negative against hatched ground, surrounding central oval an interlaced strapwork design, portions inlaid, gougework leaves and scrolls, spine with 5 full and 2 half bands, azured trefoil in compartments, edges gilt. (Extremities worn and restored, loss to top spine compartment.)

provenance: Ambroise Firmin-Didot (1790–1876; exlibris; Maurice Delestre & Adolphe Labitte, Paris, Livres précieux, manuscrits et imprimés, faisant partie de la bibliothèque de M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot: Théologie, jurisprudence, sciences, arts, lettres, histoire, 11–16 June 1883, lot 470), purchased by — unidentified owner (FF 45). acquisition: Purchased from Librairie Paul Jammes, Paris, 1998.  

references: FB 51629; USTC 30053; Gültlingen, IX, pp. 186–187: 326; Cartier, de Tournes, no. 316; Mortimer, French, no. 557; for Jacques de Vintimille’s early life and royal translation commission, see Simonin, “Autour de Jean Martin: Denis Sauvage, Jacques de Vintimille et Théodore de Bèze,” in Jean Martin un traducteur au temps de François Ier et de Henri II (Paris, 1999), pp. 33–42 (pp. 37–38); Delaruelle, “Un diner litteraire chez Mellin de Sainct-Gelays,” in Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France 3 (1897), pp. 407–411 (p. 410).