The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Vulgarized Editions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Italy and Spain

This essay analyses the success of the vernacular, illustrated editions of Ovid's Metamorphoses published in Italy in the late 15th and early 16th century, starting with Giovanni Bonsignori's Ovidio Metamorphoseos Vulgare, written between 1375 and 1377 but published in Venice in 1497, and continuing with the translation drafted by Niccolò degli Agostini, published in 1522, again in Venice. For both of these editions, we analyse the impact of the text and images on artists, who would generally read editions in the vernacular and not in Latin. The second part of the essay focuses on the success in Italy and Spain of Lodovico Dolce's Trasformationi, published in 1553 in Venice by Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, analysing in particular the censuring of some images and an edition containing unusual annotations.