De claris mulieribus

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), the Italian Renaissance poet and writer, became world famous for his collection of stories written in Italian, Il Decamerone. There is no fifteenth-century Dutch edition of it. However, translations in German, French and Spanish were published in the fifteenth century. The first, incomplete, Dutch translation, made by Coornhert, was not published until 1564 under the title 50 lustige historien.

Around 1362, Boccaccio wrote his book De claris mulieribus in Latin, in which he describes the lives of famous women in 104 short biographies. The work has been handed down in numerous manuscripts and was first printed in 1473 in Ulm by Johan Zainer, then also in Strasbourg and in 1487 by Aegidius van der Heerstraten in Leuven.

In the Netherlands, Boccaccio's work on famous men was only published in a French translation in the fifteenth century by the Bruges printer Mansion. Dutch translations of both works were not published until the sixteenth century by Claes de Grave in Antwerp: in 1525 that of the famous women and in 1526 that of the famous men.

Woodcuts

This edition is a richly illustrated work with 76 woodcuts, all of which, except for that of Eva, were copied with some freedom from those of Zainer. Among the famous women are many queens, such as Semiramis, queen of Assyria, Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons and Hecuba, queen of Troy. Also the even more famous Helen of Troy, Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, the poetess Sappho of Lesbos, and the pope Joanna. 

The image next to this text shows the last Egyptian queen Cleopatra. After the fall of Alexandria in the year 30, her lover, the Roman general Mark Antony, killed himself with the sword. Cleopatra also chooses suicide: in her arms she holds the poisonous snakes that will end her life.

References

• De vijfhonderdste verjaring van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden. Brussel 1973, nr. 189a
• Der Frühdruck im deutschen Südwesten 1473-1500. Stuttgart 1979, p. 76, nr. 9.