The Medici Aesop: Spencer MS 50 from the Spencer Collection of the New York Public Library

Aesop's animal fables spring marvelously to life in the tiny, jewel-like miniatures adorning the 15th-century illuminated Florentine manuscript splendidly reproduced here in 151 color illustrations. Rendered by a rare books curator at the New York Public Library, the translation of the hand-lettered Greek texts startles with its pithiness just when it threatens to sound too literal. The manuscript, now held by the New York Public Library, may have belonged to Piero de' Medici, the Renaissance Florentine autocrat who was banished and later drowned. Fahy, a scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, identifies the probable illustrator as Gherardo di Giovanni, a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli, who painted frescoes and panels. (Oct.)