463 Some Notes on the Print History of Illustrated Italian Editions of Apuleius’ Golden Ass Marc Schachter i I n 1518, Niccolò di Aristotele de’ Rossi da Ferrara called lo Zoppino (fl. 1503–1544) and his compagno Vincenzo di Paolo da Venezia (fl. 1518–1525) published the first edition of Matteo Maria Boiardo’s (1441–1494) Italian translation of Apuleius’ second-century Latin novel: the Metamorphoses, better known as The Golden Ass. 1 An octavo volume, it included 32 woodcuts made specifically to depict scenes from the novel. The following year, lo Zoppino published an expanded edition with 31 more illustrations that established the basic canon of images found in Italian-language editions of The Golden Ass for over 150 years. 2 As early as 1520, Giovanni da Tridino called Tacuino (ca. 1482–ca. 1541) printed an edition of Boiardo’s translation of The Golden Ass with woodcuts copied from those previously published by lo Zoppino, and as late as 1675 most of the actual woodblocks from 1518 and 1519 were still being 1. See Apuleius, Apulegio volgare, tradocto per el Conte Matheo Maria Boiardo, Venice, Nicolo daristotele da Ferrara & Vincenzo de Polo da Venetia, 1518. On the print history of illustrations of Italian editions of The Golden Ass, see Mariantonietta Acocella, L’asino d’oro nel Rinascimento. Dai volgarizzamenti alle raffigurazioni pittoriche, Ravenna 2001. On the history of Boiardo’s text, see Edoardo Fumagalli, Matteo Maria Boiardo volgarizzatore dell’ “Asino d’oro”. Contributo allo studio della fortuna di Apuleio nell’umanesimo, Padua 1988. Other important recent studies, with further bibliography, include Julia Haig Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and the Golden Ass: A Study in Transmission and Reception, Princeton 2008, and Robert H. F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Oxford 2007. 2. See Apuleius, Apulegio uolgare: diuiso in undeci libri, nouamente stampato & in molti lochi aggiontoui che nella prima impressione gli manchaua, & de molte piu figure adornato, et diligentemente correcto: con le sue fabule in margine poste, trans. Matteo Maria Boiardo, Venice, Nicolo D’Aristotele da Ferrara & Vincenzo de Polo da Venetia, 1519.