Aesopica

Vernacular translation became popular in 13th-14th century Italy. It is a translation or, more properly, an adaptation of original Latin and French texts into 'volgare', the vernacular spoken in Italy that was to become Italian. The first works in volgare were chivalric romance and texts from the Latin and Greek tradition. Among these last ones, we find the adaptation of Aesopus moralisatus, a heterogeneous collection of Greek and Latin fables, with elements from the Ancient Near East tradition. These adaptations had a very strong impact on the culture of the time for the vast success they had, as they spread to a large audience, of different social and cultural backgrounds.

Accio Zucco was a 15th-century Italian writer, known for his translation of Aesop's fables. This version had great success, as well  as the adaptation of the Aesopus moralisatus by Francesco Del Tuppo, a famous Neapolitan writer and typographer. The so-called Esopo Zuccarino was reissued 15 times between 1479 and 1498 and 4 more times during the 16th century. On display we see the Bonino Bonini edition, printed in Brescia in 1487.

In Accio Zucco's translation, the 67 fables are in Latin verses, followed by two sonnets in volgare. Each fable is decorated with a woodcut illustration.As sources of his adaptation, Accio relied on the issue of the Aesop's Fabulae, commonly attributed to Gualterio Anglico (the so-called Anonymus Neveleti).

The structure of the work follows that of the exempla, a literary genre which was very popular between the 13th and the 14th century. The exempla are short stories in which the protagonist, behaving properly in a certain situation, achieves as a result the salvation of the soul. The great diffusion of such stories can be connected to the rise of the mendicant orders.

Ment for an illiterate audience, exempla usually responded to a few rules, aimed at easily capturing attention and arousing interest in morals. The stories were short, the facts presented as true, the goal was to teach and to entertain. To obtain greater credibility, the preachers used sources that were trusted by the audience, such as the Holy Scriptures, but also the authors of the ancient Greek and Latin literature, such as Aesop.

The presence of illustrations also facilitated the understanding of the stories. For this reason the pages were adorned with detailed woodcuts  that interpreted the content of the text.Bonino Bonini's edition of the Esopo Zuccarino opens with a full-page illustration that depicts Aesop with a wayfarer in c. a2r. The title of the work is inscribed in a Roman altar in c. A3V. The edition is enriched by 65 woodcuts whose purpose was to illustrate the content of the tales with images.