![[Life of Aesop: Aesop interpreting an inscription on a tomb, thereby discovering a treasure.]](jpegs/68293.jpg)
[Life of Aesop: Aesop interpreting an inscription on a tomb, thereby discovering a treasure.] [How poore is man whom sordid interest sways...]
Tho: Dudley fecit [after Francis Barlow.]
[Amsterdam: Etičnne Roger, 1714.]
Proof etching, text verso. Sheet 205 x 165mm (8 x 6˝") Trimmed within plate, mounted on album paper.
Aesop agrees to decypher an inscription and find the treasure in return for his freedom. After he digs it up, Xanthus reneges, but Aesop tricks him into giving Aesop half the trove. Plate 19 of thirty-one illustrations added to the second edition of Barlow's "Ćsop's Fables, With His Life", to illustrate the translation of Planudes's Life of Aesop, which was unillustrated in the first edition of 1666. This example comes from an Amsterdam edition, 'Les Fables d'Esope', with the printing plate trimmed down. All of the plates were designed by Barlow: they were etched c.1678-9, only five by Barlow; the rest, including this one, by Thomas Dudley. Originally the plate extended down with a title verse (possibly written by Aphra Behn, who wrote new verses for the fables), but for this non-English edition the verse was trimmed off and new borders engraved. Little is known of Dudley: on one plate of this series he signed himself as a student of Wenceslaus Hollar; and in 1679 he went to Lisbon, where he is known to have made further prints, and he is not supposed to have returned to England thereafter. He etched some portraits but these prints after Barlow are his most important work.
BM: 1871,0812.250, described as a proof state.
[Ref: 68293] £95.00
[Amsterdam: Etičnne Roger, 1714.]
Proof etching, text verso. Sheet 205 x 165mm (8 x 6˝") Trimmed within plate, mounted on album paper.
Aesop agrees to decypher an inscription and find the treasure in return for his freedom. After he digs it up, Xanthus reneges, but Aesop tricks him into giving Aesop half the trove. Plate 19 of thirty-one illustrations added to the second edition of Barlow's "Ćsop's Fables, With His Life", to illustrate the translation of Planudes's Life of Aesop, which was unillustrated in the first edition of 1666. This example comes from an Amsterdam edition, 'Les Fables d'Esope', with the printing plate trimmed down. All of the plates were designed by Barlow: they were etched c.1678-9, only five by Barlow; the rest, including this one, by Thomas Dudley. Originally the plate extended down with a title verse (possibly written by Aphra Behn, who wrote new verses for the fables), but for this non-English edition the verse was trimmed off and new borders engraved. Little is known of Dudley: on one plate of this series he signed himself as a student of Wenceslaus Hollar; and in 1679 he went to Lisbon, where he is known to have made further prints, and he is not supposed to have returned to England thereafter. He etched some portraits but these prints after Barlow are his most important work.
BM: 1871,0812.250, described as a proof state.
[Ref: 68293] £95.00