Anacreon, Odae, in Greek & Latin, presentation autograph manuscript on vellum by Estienne, [Paris, 1552-1554], red morocco gilt

ANACREON. Εκ των Ανακρεωντος του Τηιου. Anacreontis Teii Odae. [Paris, 1552-1554]

A charming small format autograph manuscript in Greek and Latin by Henri Estienne, containing a selection of Odes by Anacreon, seemingly written shortly before their first publication by Henri Estienne in 1554 (which was, incidentally, the first book published by him). Estienne had seen a manuscript containing these Odes in Louvain in 1551, in the possession of John Clement (married to Sir Thomas More's adopted daughter), and he identified them as being by Anacreon, a Greek lyric poet of the sixth century BC, from Teos on the Ionian coast. (The manuscript is now known as the Palatine Anthology, its two volumes are in Heidelberg and Paris.)

This volume starts with a preface by Estienne to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1529-1589), explaining that Estienne has also included his own Latin versions of some of the Odes, but only the ones he considers genuinely by Anacreon rather than one of his followers. (Though he did not include the first poem in the sequence, which indicated that all the poems were imitations rather than genuine.) The ordering of the poems was also rearranged to fit Estienne's ideas so that the first poem seems to introduce the whole collection. The two-page poem by Jean Dorat, who had taught poetry to the young Henri, praises Cardinal Farnese as the only suitable recipient for verses like these.

Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589), cardinal-nephew of Paul III (1468-1549), was at the French court in Paris in 1552-1554, which must be the time when he received this manuscript from Estienne. The Farnese library contained a substantial number of Greek manuscripts, a total of 233 in the inventory of 1567, collected for the most part by Paul III and his nephew Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who was actively acquiring Greek manuscripts in the 1550s. According to Laurent Pernot (“La collection de manuscrits grecs de la maison Farnèse”, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome 91 (1979), 457-506, p. 498), a manuscript of Anacreon, described in the 1567 inventory simply as “Anacreon in 16”, disappeared from the Farnese library between 1641 and 1747; Pernot conjectures a link with Phillipps MS 9127, the present manuscript. There was no other separate manuscript of Anacreon circulating between 1551, when Estienne saw the manuscript in Louvain, and 1554, the date of the printed edition.

Anacreon proved very influential on contemporary French poetry; his use by Ronsard and others is well attested, and only made possible through Estienne's publication. This was the first of many Greek editiones principes produced by Henri Estienne.

The elegant binding, attributed to the Wotton Binder C, can be dated to the early 1550s; a binding made by him and dated 1552 (H.M. Nixon, Sixteenth-century gold-tooled bindings in the Pierpont Morgan Library, no. 27) uses the same tools though in a different pattern.