Second edition in French of this influential emblem book, the first with the substantial ‘discursive essay’ in the vernacular on each emblem, nearly tripling the size of the volume compared to the first French edition.
In the French editions Bonhomme uses a wider variety of woodcut frames and also omits the long prose treatises of the Latin edition and translates only the poetry and devices. The frames are of great variety and charm; there are allegories, grotesques, flowers, animals, and ornaments of all kinds. The woodcuts and borders are attributed by Baudrier to Pierre Eskrich (or Vase) as designer. The French edition is far rarer than the Latin.
Praz notes that Lyons was important as a link between the Italian and the French Renaissance and that the publisher of Cousteau's Pegma, Bonhomme, was also the publisher of Alciati and Aneau. He continues, "the title Pegma is a synonym of 'emblem'. The volume is very similar to Alciati's, and not only the title but also the contents have an Alexandrian flavour: thus the first emblem illustrates the image of Justice according to Chrysippus, the second that of Justice in the Zodiac according to Nigidius Figulus, another is dedicated to the statue of Jupiter, another is derived from the Spartan custom of making maidens go naked and matrons clothed (the plate of this emblem makes one think of Titian's emblematic picture which goes under the name of Sacred and Profane Love), another is based upon Apelles' picture, Calumny, and so on."
Alison Saunders comments that the Latin edition "... marks a significant structural development in the evolution of the early emblem book. Aneau had already introduced short commentaries into his French translations of Alciato's emblem book in 1549, but Cousteau takes this process much further by accompanying each emblem in his original Latin Pegma of 1555 by a very substantial 'narratio philosophica' running to two or even three pages in length, which goes far beyond simple commentary. The 'narrationes' are fully worked-out self-contained discursive essays on the subject (very Montaigne-ish in style), complementing rather than glossing the short Latin verse of the emblem proper. When Lanteaume de Romieu produced a first French translation of the work in 1555, he did not include these ‘narrationes’, but clearly he or Bonhomme had second thoughts about the wisdom of this, and in this second edition of 1560 [offered here] French ‘narrations philosophiques’ accompany each emblem, thereby making the structure and content of the French version conform to that of the original 1555 Latin version’ "
The translator Lanteaume de Romieu was an antiquary from Arles, a poet and a coin collector.
Loosely inserted in this copy is a letter from Robert Brun (author of Le livre illustre en France au XVIe siècle (1930) and librarian at the Réserve of the Bibliothèque Nationale), dated 12 February 1938, casting doubt on the attribution of the woodcuts to Eskrich.
Title-page slightly stained and frayed at head, traces of worming in a few blank margins but generally a very good copy in its original binding.
Praz p. 309; see also p. 46. Adams, Rawles & Saunders French Emblem Books, F.202. Baudrier, X, p. 262. Von Gültlingen VIII, Macé Bonhomme 264.
