L' ARÉTIN

Autograph letter signed by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres to Charles Paillet, with autograph address and title "Honorary Expert Commissioner of the Royal Museums", with postal stamps. Usual fold marks. A marginal tear repaired without affecting the text.

Ingres provides descriptions and exhibition instructions for his two paintings Aretino and the Ambassador of Charles V and Aretino in the Studio of Tintoretto.

First edition of the French translation printed in 110 numbered copies on laid paper.
A small stain on the spine which also has two slight lacks at head, endpapers slightly toned.
Rare.

The rare first edition of this new French translation by François de Rosset, the work having previously been translated in 1540 by Vauzelles.
Eighteenth-century full citron morocco binding. Smooth spine decorated à la grotesque, red morocco title label. Wide gilt dentelle framing the boards. Gilt dentelle framing the cream paper pastedowns with gilt stars. All edges gilt. Two corners very slightly bumped, otherwise a very fine copy.
Aretino's translation is not actually a translation but rather a paraphrase, with reformulations that are amplified or conversely minimized, Aretino emphasizing certain scenes or feelings or conversely diminishing their intensity. Furthermore, it is indeed a manifest interpretation of the meaning of the psalms and a dramatic staging of them, Aretino seeking to demonstrate his main thesis of correspondence between divine mercy and the efficacy of penitence; he thus transforms diverse texts into a continuous unity by creating a narrator who speaks of David in the third person, and who allows him not only to give commentary but to frame the first-person text of the psalms: it is a form of literary recreation.

New edition, one of 150 numbered copies on Japon nacré.
Illustrated title and 12 coloured erotical engravings in and hors-texte.
A rare and very good copy.