Jérusalem délivrée poëme du Tasse

TASSO, Torquato. Jérusalem délivrée, poëme du Tasse. Nouvelle traduction. Paris: Musier fils, 1774. 2 volumes, 15 × 24 cm. (2) leaves, viij, 341 pp.; (2) leaves, v, 328 pp., (4) leaves.

First edition of Charles-François Lebrun's anonymous prose translation of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, illustrated with the celebrated compositions by Hubert-François Gravelot, originally produced for the Italian edition of 1771.

The illustrations comprise two fully engraved title-pages by Drouet, each with an ornamental vignette, two frontispieces with medallion portraits of Tasso and Gravelot, twenty engraved plates, twenty headpieces depicting the principal characters of the poem, and twenty-eight tailpieces, twelve of them full-page. The plates were printed from the copperplates originally engraved for the Italian Gerusalemme liberata, published in Paris by Delalain, Durand and Molini in 1771.

A deluxe copy on Holland paper, with generous margins, handsomely bound in contemporary full red morocco. Smooth spines decorated with four large gilt urns and alternating thick and thin gilt fillets, green morocco lettering- and numbering-pieces, covers framed by elaborate gilt dentelle borders with additional fillets, gilt rolls to the board edges, gilt inner dentelles and all edges gilt.

Spines uniformly faded, with slight rubbing. A minute cut and traces of a small nick at the head of the first volume, together with an approximately 8 mm perforation along its upper joint. Small losses of leather to one upper corner of each volume. Internally very fresh, apart from occasional spotting caused by the tissue guards in the margins of the engravings or on the facing pages. A handsome copy, whose generous margins and richly decorated binding provide an especially attractive setting for the extensive series of illustrations.

First published in its complete form in 1581, Torquato Tasso's (1544–1595) Gerusalemme liberata profoundly reshaped Renaissance epic poetry. Taking the First Crusade and Godfrey of Bouillon's conquest of Jerusalem as its subject, the poem combines Christian heroism with the enticements of love, enchantment and the conflicting passions of its characters. Against the discipline of its epic purpose stands a more troubled sensibility, in which the claims of duty repeatedly confront the impulses of the heart.

It was above all the romantic and supernatural episodes that secured the poem its extraordinary artistic afterlife. The loves of Rinaldo and Armida, of Tancred and Clorinda, the enchanted gardens, battles and scenes of recognition provided painters, composers and designers with an almost inexhaustible repertoire of subjects. As early as 1686, Philippe Quinault drew upon the story of Armida for the libretto of Lully's tragédie lyrique; Gluck returned to the same subject in Paris in 1777, three years after the publication of the present translation.

By the eighteenth century, Tasso's poem had become one of the great storehouses of artistic subjects, comparable in this respect to Ovid's Metamorphoses. Its episodes offered illustrators opportunities to depict the violence of battle, the splendour of palaces, the allure of magic and the torments of love. Such variety was particularly suited to the talents of Gravelot (1699–1773), whose work combined assured draughtsmanship, graceful figures and a remarkable understanding of narrative composition.

Having contributed, alongside several other artists, to the celebrated illustrated edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses published between 1767 and 1771, Gravelot devoted one of his last major illustrative undertakings to Tasso. Conceived for the Italian edition of 1771, his designs recast the heroic world of the Renaissance in the graceful, theatrical idiom of French Enlightenment book illustration. Gravelot gives particular prominence to the love episodes, enchantments and passions of Tasso's poem, finding in them subjects especially suited to his gift for dramatic composition and the expressive elegance of his figures.

The engraved plates develop the principal episodes, while the headpieces introduce the characters of each canto and the tailpieces extend the narrative through a succession of complementary scenes. Together they form a remarkably coherent illustrative programme, their variety reflecting the changes of tone throughout Tasso's poem. The portraits themselves are significant: the first volume opens with a medallion of the poet, while the second honours Gravelot with his own likeness, a tribute already present in the edition of 1771, two years before the artist's death.

The French translation of 1774 brought these illustrations to a new readership, now accompanying the prose of Charles-François Lebrun (1739–1824). Intended to make the Italian epic accessible in an elegant and sustained French style, the translation reflected the eighteenth-century taste for presenting the great works of foreign literature in French prose.

The translator's subsequent career lends this literary undertaking an unexpected historical interest. Long before becoming Third Consul of the French Republic alongside Bonaparte and Cambacérès, and later Duke of Piacenza, Lebrun had served as a close collaborator of Chancellor Maupeou, drafting, among other documents, the texts accompanying his judicial reforms. His influence was such that Louis XV is said to have remarked: "Que ferait Maupeou sans Lebrun?" The Jérusalem délivrée appeared in 1774, the year of Maupeou's fall from power, which Lebrun shared before withdrawing to his estate at Grillon, near Dourdan. He continued his literary pursuits with a translation of Homer's Iliad in 1776 and later the Odyssey, never entirely abandoning letters during his subsequent political career.

The conjunction of Lebrun's translation and Gravelot's illustrations thus represents two characteristically Enlightenment approaches to a great Renaissance poem: renewing its language for French readers and interpreting its episodes according to contemporary artistic taste. The 1774 edition brings together one of Gravelot's last major illustrative achievements and the early literary career of a man destined to play a prominent part in French history.

Nearly two centuries after its creation, Jerusalem Delivered continued to inspire painters, composers and illustrators. In Gravelot's hands, Tasso's epic finds a new expression in the art of the Enlightenment, whose taste for grace and sensibility brings a fresh interpretation to its heroes and their loves.