Abstract

Although Paolo Giovio’s Historiae sui temporis enjoyed wide circulation and was among the Italian historical texts most widely translated into different European languages during the 16th century, it was in subsequent centuries to be harshly criticized or forgotten altogether. The French translation of Giovio’s Historiae was the earliest, printed between 1552 and 1555 by the publisher Guillaume Rouillé who, although working in Lyon, had apprenticed at Giolito’s printing house in Venice. Through analysis of the text and of the figures of some of the translators and printers, the essay aims to reconstruct the cultural and political context in which this publishing operation matured, determined also by precise commercial needs and networks of transnational professional relationships