Phaedri, Aug Liberti Fabularum Æsopiarum Libri V
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Authors
Hoogstratanus, David
Phaedrus
Issue Date
1701
Type
Book, Whole
Language
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Abstract
One of the jewels of this collection. I am so delighted to have found this book! Hobbs describes it accurately when she uses its fifth plate to open her little essay Five Hundred Years of Illustration and Text. There are eighteen such plates with six medallions apiece, and they are wonderful! That fifth plate and the twelfth (92) are particularly beautiful; among the best individual illustrations are I.IX (the sparrow and the hare), I.XII (the deer admiring its horns), II.II (2W), II.VI (the eagle, the turtle, and the crow), III.X (the wife-suspecting man who kills his son in bed), IV.XXIV (Simonides saved from an earthquake), and V.IX (the bull in the doorway). Individual medallions do an excellent job of portraying in several planes the several phases of a given story or both the fable and its exemplification in life. Even the initials are beautiful, particularly that for the prologue to Book I. There are other designs, some repeated, throughout the book, particularly involving Bacchanalia. The folded-in portrait of the Prince of Nassau is torn and repaired. Book IV is off twice in relation to Perry's numbering, since Perry 4.1 and 4.13 are missing. Thus Hoogstraten 4.1-11 are Perry's 4.2-12, and Hoogstraten's 4.12-24 are Perry's 4.14-26. Hoogstraten's 4.13 does not have the usual Latin title in the circle around the medallion; this image (of a woman with a bird seated on a crocodile) seems to have nothing to do with the fable's subject of a woman's tongue and private parts. There is an appendix of five fables from Marquardo Gudio, the illustrations for the fourth and fifth of which are misnumbered. Hobbs mentions moral indexing that I cannot find here. I do find an AI of Latin titles just before the fables begin and, at the end, indices (1) of all vocables and (2) of items in the notes worthy of observance. Hoogstraten was a classics scholar. Some pages (e.g., 57 and 157) have a square cut out of the lower outside corner. Is the ribbon as old as the book? Michael mentioned that he had had the book rebound in Europe.
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Citation
Publisher
Ex Typographia Francisci Halmae
Francois Halma
Francois Halma