AESOP Vita Esopi.

HR 354; GW 445; IGI Corr. 115A; Essling 611; Sander 61; Accurti, Ed. saec. XV, p. 108; Goff A-110; Schäfer /von Arnim 5. 

First separate edition of the Vita , previously published as supplement to the  Fables. First issue of the 24 magnificent woodcuts.

This edition gives the text of Francesco del Tuppo’s Naples, 1485 edition of the life of Aesop. Francesco dell Tuppo provided a new Italian translation of the text, basing his life of Aesop on the Latin translation of Rinucius of Arezzo and his fables on an anonymous 12^th century verse version.

With the exception of the title woodcut and the border cuts, used by Bonelli for the Fabulae printed in 1492, the WOODCUTS APPEAR here for the first time; they are the work of the same artist who  designed Bonelli’s Fabulae cuts, and are loosely based on the Neapolitan cuts of del Tuppo’s edition.

Essling called the Bonelli cuts “worthy of comparison to the best Venetian engravings of the end of the XVth century” (III, p. 78).  Their stylistic similarity to the woodcuts of the Malermi Bible has often been noted; Hind suggested that they may have been designed by the same artist (Introduction to a History of Woodcut, pp. 413-14).

Along with the scattered references in the ancient sources regarding the life and death of Aesop, there is a highly fictional biography now commonly called The Aesop Romance (also known as the Vita or The Life of Aesop or The Book of Xanthus the Philosopher and Aesop His Slave), “an anonymous work of Greek popular literature composed around the second century of our era … Like The Alexander Romance, The Aesop Romance became a folkbook, a work that belonged to no one, and the occasional writer felt free to modify as it might suit him.” Multiple, sometimes contradictory, versions of this work exist. The earliest known version “was probably composed in the 1st century AD”, but the story “probably circulated in different versions for centuries before it was committed to writing”certain elements can be shown to originate in the 4th century BC.” Scholars long dismissed any historical or biographical validity in The Aesop Romance; widespread study of the work began only toward the end of the 20th century.

Copy carefully washed and a little short of head margin, tiny central crack on ¾ of the work restored, top corner of last leaf restored touching a few letters.

Only 4 copies in the US.