Les Amours de Cassandre Bicephale by Salvador Dali

Bicephale ( personnage a deux  tetes ) by Salvador Dali is from Les Amours de Cassandre, a suite of 18 original engravings inspired by  Pierre de Ronsard who wrote a collection of poems in 1552 to express his love for Cassandre Salviate, daughter of an Italian banker. They met in 1554 at a court ball in Blois ,France when she was fifteen and he was twenty-one but alas she married another man the next year. This suite became a classic in French literature. Bicephale ( person with two heads ) is a drypoint etching signed in pencil with the blindstamp on Japon papper. Limited edition E. A. (Épreuve d’Artiste) Commissioned by P.Argillet, Paris and  printed at the Atelier Robbe, Paris 1968.  Ref: Albert Field: “The Official Catalogue of the Graphic Works of Salvador Dali” 68-2 H

Pierre de Ronsard  ( 1524 – 1585 ) was chief among the French Renaissance group of poets known as La Pleiade and he himself became known as  the “prince of poets”.