Beschreibung:

ANEAU, Barthélémy (c. 1500-1565)]. Picta Poesis. Ut picture poesis erit . Lyon: Mathias Bonhomme, 1552.
ANEAU, Barthélémy (c. 1500-1565)]. Picta Poesis. Ut picture poesis erit . Lyon: Mathias Bonhomme, 1552. 8 o (155 x 95 mm). Woodcut printer's device of Perseus on title and 106 emblematic woodcuts (or metalcuts) in text (including two repeats), head- and tail-pieces including grotesques, colophon within cartouche. (Some leaves lightly toned, some separation along gutter margins in gathering H.) Contemporary flexible vellum. Provenance : Laurentius Jabana(?) (early signature on flyleaf); acquired from Seven Gables Book Shop, 1977. FIRST LATIN EDITION. The emblems, formerly attributed to Bernard Salomon are now believed to be principally the designs of Pierre Eskrich Some of the series had appeared earlier in a Rouillé edition of the works of Clément Marot (1550); the others appear here for the first time. The work includes a very early illustration of the game of tennis on p. 75. Spectators watch from the side-penthouse gallery, and the tennis "net"--no more than a rope across the court-- is included in one of its earliest depictions. The accompanying Latin poem, 'Magnus Labor Cassus' ('Great Labour in Vain'), is not entirely disapproving. Tennis benefits the different parts of the body through exercise, it stimulates happy emotions and dissipates anger, but the sweat produced has little end result and the hard work achieves nothing substantial. Brunet IV, 634; Landwehr Romanic 113; Fairfax Murray French 610; Praz p. 256; cf. Baudrier X, p. 227; Mortimer French 25.