Description

La Flammette Amoureuse, containing, in a gentle invention, all the platitudes and passions of love, in Italian and translated into French by G. C. D. T.

ORIGINAL EDITION OF THE TRANSLATION by Gabriel Chappuys de Tours and first complete edition.

A handsome bilingual edition with carefully designed typography, by the Parisian publisher Abel l'Angelier, dedicated to the Noble and Virtuous Ladies.

For a long time, the anonymous 1531 translation for Jean Longis was considered to be the first French translation of the Flammette, until the discovery in 2010 of a copy of a 1526 edition by Claude Nourry.
These incomplete translations - the one of 1531 stops at chapter VI - were only improved in 1585 with Gabriel Chappuys's high-quality and complete translation, with its clearly didactic aims: "Made in French and Italian, for the benefit of those who wish to learn both languages"..

An extremely active translator in the second half of the 16th century (from 1574 to 1613), Gabriel Chappuys, a Touraine scholar and historiographer of France, made a major contribution to the spread of Italian literature in France (Doni, Ariosto, Castiglione, etc.).

A fine copy in 17th century gilt vellum bearing unidentified Spanish arms. Those on the first plate contain a shield decorated with three flowers and a feathered helmet surmounted by a sphinx-shaped crest bearing a banner with the word "clavo" (nail). On the second plate, in a cut-out leather cartouche encircled by laurels, is a bird perched on a tree, facing the sun, with the motto "sepas sufrir pues que mirar supiste" (know how to suffer because you have known how to look).

W. Kemp, The Paris and Lyon editions of La Complainte de Flammette (1989)
Serge Stolf, "Traductions et adaptations françaises de l'Elegia di madonna Fiammetta", Cahiers d'études italiennes, 8, 2008, 177-194.
Brunet I, 1010; Gay p. 436; Jean Balsamo & Michel Simonin, "Abel L'Angelier & Françoise de Louvain, 1574-1620", Travaux d'humanisme et Renaissance, Librairie Droz, 2002, no. 130.