Johann Elias Ridinger (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). Fabul 17-20. Group of the four supplementary sheets (all). Etchings with engraving by Martin Elias Ridinger (1731 Augsburg 1780). After 1767. Inscribed: J. E(l). Ridinger. inv(./:) et del. / M. El. Ridinger. sc. et exc(:/.) A. V., otherwise in German, Latin, and French as below. 33.6 x 24.7 cm.
Thienemann + Schwarz 781-784; Metzner-Raabe, Illustr. Fabelbuch, 1998, vol. II (Bodemann), 123.I. – Sheets 17-20 of the Fables. – 3 sheets with figurative and typographic watermark resp. – With fine white platemarks and paper margins. In the left one old traces of stitching. – Especially 18-20 in wonderful to really marvelous impressions.
The Innocence is saved often through the Hatred of the Evil – Servitude taken up for Love of Splendor one shall endure with Patience – Foolish Conceit about Foreign Beauties deserves reasonable People’s Contempt – The Innocence suppressed by an Invent Pretext.
The extraordinarily rare four supplementary sheets of the intellectually as optically exceedingly charming 20-sheet “Instructive Fables from the Animals’ Kingdom for Improvement of the Manners and especially for Instruction of the Youth” of which Johann Elias himself, however, has published only the first sixteen. Accordingly then the 1889 catalogue of the Coppenrath Collection on the 20-sheet copy: “Fine chief set … Rare”. And in 1900 Helbing qualified in his 1554-item Ridinger catalogue (XXXIV): “The last (4) numbers are of highest rarity”. And while except for 12 + 13 he owned besides a complete copy multiple single copies of the first sixteen while of the last four only 17 + 19 in one additionally copy each. On the market till today then almost only the 16-sheet basic set.
Ridinger’s fable image a highly momentous milestone within the “basic corpus of about 900 editions of illustrated fable books” (Metzner-Raabe) up to Chagall’s Lafontaine folio with its 100 etchings worked 200 years later as downright a glaring light for the immortality of the fable illustration.
Offer no. 14,129 / price on application