Written between 1348 and 1353, Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece The Decameron, in French usually titled Contes de Boccace (Tales of Boccaccio), is a monumental cornerstone of European prose literature. The collection is cleverly structured around a sombre framing narrative set during the devastating outbreak of the Black Death in Florence. To escape the horrors of the plague, a group of seven young women and three young men flee the city, seeking refuge in a secluded countryside villa. Over the course of ten days this elegant company passes the time by sharing stories, with each youth taking a turn as the day's ruler to dictate a unifying theme. This narrative device neatly binds together a rich tapestry of exactly one hundred diverse novellas.

Through these varied tales, Boccaccio holds a vivid mirror up to fourteenth-century society, championing human ingenuity and earthly pleasures over medieval asceticism. The stories flow seamlessly across a spectrum of human experience, famously celebrating sensual love, passion and erotic wit. They also function as sharp social satire, regularly mocking the hypocrisy of corrupt clergymen and false devotees who crumble under the weight of their own human desires. Within this world, blind fate and fortune are constantly challenged by human intelligence, ordinary people who triumph over adversity using quick wit, sharp rhetoric and clever ruses.

The enduring charm and vivid imagery of The Decameron have captivated artists and translators for centuries. André Collot's plates for this edition of Boccaccio are colour etchings printed in soft, atmospheric inks. The handling is loose and painterly, the aquatint tones doing much of the work.

The narrative range Collot draws on is wide and varied. A woman in a ship's cabin clings to her companion while the sea heaves through a porthole; a naked woman rises from a forest pool, watched from the bushes by two ridiculous heads; a man straddles a high branch, peering down in dismay; a hunted woman is brought down by hounds in a pine wood; cowled monks gather around a propped-up figure in a gothic interior. Violence enters as freely as comedy – a candle held over a corpse on a bed, a strangling on a beach beside a spilled bag of coins, a man raising a club over a cowering woman. The familiar contrast between idealised young women and grotesque older men runs through the portfolio, but is used sparingly, and the women here are softer in modelling than in Collot's later work.

The Collot-illustrated Contes de Boccace was published by Paul Cotinaud, Paris, in a limited and numbered edition of 331 copies.