An attractive copy of an extremely rare edition of the fables of Aesop, printed in Brescia, and illustrated throughout with 66 wonderfully lively, characterful woodcuts. We have found just two other copies worldwide: one in Rovigo, Italy, and the other at Beinecke, Yale. This edition is not listed in the usual bibliographies.
The story of each fable is printed here with an explanatory interlinear gloss in two sizes of gothic type, and accompanied by a woodcut illustration - in brilliantly strong impression - of the main action in the story, along with a one to three line summary argumentum. The same printer, Breton, issued an edition in 1532 (Sander I:99, Adams A296; just one copy at Trinity, Cambridge), expressly produced for children with the interlinear gloss in vernacular Italian, rather than Latin, as here. Perhaps by the present edition, Latin was deemed most appropriate for the ‘adolescentuli’, young men, named on the title page.
H.E. Smith also mentions 1522 and 1542 editions by the same printer, and the supplement to Sanders adds 1545 and 1560: of those four editions together, we have found just one copy of the 1545 printing, at John Rylands in Manchester. All are extremely rare.
A little browned, trimmed close at head, occasionally affecting first line of text, otherwise very good condition.
Not in Adams, Brunet, BMSTC Italian, Mortimer or Sander (whose entry I:99 is for the 1532 edition: ‘page du titre, encadrement provenant du Comesius, Rome, 1531’, with mention of further editions in 1545 and 1560). H.E. Smith, ‘An Early Italian Edition of Aesop’s Fables’, Modern Language Notes 25.3, 1910, p.65-67.
