Beschreibung:

SADELER, Aegidius, artist. Theatrum Morum , in Italian: Favole d'Esopo . Manuscript on paper. [18th-century]. 4° (215 x 151mm). Engraved title in German and 139 half-page engravings by Sadeler and Isaac Major; 3-page address to the reader and explication of the plates written in an early 17th-century Italian hand, 2-page index in Italian added in the 18th-century, later foliation in red chalk. (Title trimmed at fore-edge and mounted, some light staining, title lightly soiled.) 18th-century calf gilt, 18th-century mottled paper slipcase with title-label in Italian (a little worming at spine, slipcase lightly rubbed). An Italian manuscript translation of the Theatrum morum , with Sadeler's engraved plates, representing either an unrealised Italian edition or a specially commissioned manuscript. The Theatrum morum is known only in a German text edition, printed in 1608. The present manuscript has the same engravings, but the text is supplied in carefully written manuscript in a polished, sophisticated translation into Italian. The only discrepancy in text is that the printed edition has a short poem and index; the poem is absent in the manuscript and the index is supplied later. Whereas in the printed edition the engravings appear on the left-hand page of an opening, followed by the text below and opposite, in the manuscript the engravings appear on rectos, and the text follows below and on the verso. Therefore the sheets do not belong to the German edition but were produced specially. The impressions of the plates is strong and fresh. 126 plates are copies in reverse of those used by M. Gheeraerts in Esbatiment moral des animaux (1567), but 14 engravings have no known models in earlier fable illustration; these 14 have been ascribed to Sadeler's pupil, Isaac Major No other use of these engravings is recorded. Cf. Landwehr, German 592; Illustrated Bartsch, 7201.380; Prag um 1600 , 1988, no. 333.