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Source Description
This edition of Aesop’s Fables was created soon after the invention of the printing press around 1455 and would have been very expensive. The delicate paper pages were sold without a binding. In this example, a 12th-century parchment page from a large Talmud, a legal text that explains how the commandments in the Torah are to be carried out, was reused to create a sturdy binding and flyleaves to protect the new book. It is likely that the binder could not read the Aramaic text and simply regarded the page as a strong and decorative material. Today this is recognized to be a rare early fragment of a Talmud, making the binding more precious than the book it encases.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
14510
label
Aesopus moralisatus
core
obj
dtoType
object
citationUrl
pageCount
9
Source metadata
id
14510
sourceUrl
contentType
object
stage
normalized
title
Aesopus moralisatus
description
This edition of Aesop’s Fables was created soon after the invention of the printing press around 1455 and would have been very expensive. The delicate paper pages were sold without a binding. In this example, a 12th-century parchment page from a large Talmud, a legal text that explains how the commandments in the Torah are to be carried out, was reused to create a sturdy binding and flyleaves to protect the new book. It is likely that the binder could not read the Aramaic text and simply regarded the page as a strong and decorative material. Today this is recognized to be a rare early fragment of a Talmud, making the binding more precious than the book it encases.
provenance
Acquired by Henry Walters, Baltimore; by bequest to Walters Art Museum, 1931.
date
Printed book: 1495; Parchment binding: ca. 1200
citationUrl
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
genreSpecific
incunabula
imageCount
9
pageCount
9
source
import
dimensions
units
cm
width
20.3
height
15.7
dimensionsRaw
Page H: 8 × W: 6 3/16 in. (20.3 × 15.7 cm)
Source extras
med
ink on paper bound with parchment
creator_ids
2925
4760
collection_ids
MSS
exhibition_ids
3363
Page inventory
seq
1
type
photo
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ff5a6227272cf6ab
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no
hasDescription
no
seq
2
type
photo
mediaId
f37f45b8f97dbbd9
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
3
type
photo
mediaId
180d27df36e2123b
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no
hasDescription
no
seq
4
type
photo
mediaId
9c633d37a9b91d1c
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no
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no
seq
5
type
photo
mediaId
01b41cfce603967d
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
6
type
photo
mediaId
eb067aa14f84cbdd
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
7
type
photo
mediaId
78f9ef52534cedc9
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
8
type
photo
mediaId
d2554f4a9f7ecd05
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
9
type
photo
mediaId
ae4ffb4db143918e
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no