Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery
December 3-April 2
Faith and Legacy: The Hellenic World
from the Collections of The New York Public Library
Gallery hours :
Tues, Wed: 11am-7:30pm; Thurs-Sat: 10am-6pm
Closed Sun, Mon and public holidays |
 
The man who promised the impossible. In Aesop's Fables, f. 10r. Spencer
Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox & Tilden Foundations
The coal man and the fuller. In Aesop's Fables, f. 8v. Spencer
Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox & Tilden Foundations
Faith and Legacy: The Hellenic World from the Collections of The New
York Public Library will include a highly selective collection of approximately
25 important manuscripts and printed books in Greek and in other languages
as enduring reflections of contributions from Greece to the world in religion,
literature, philosophy, history, science, and art. Drawn from the Special
Collections of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, several of the
manuscripts and books will be on view for the first time at the Library.
Included in the exhibition will be a group of late Byzantine-style
illuminated manuscripts - a Greek Orthodox Lectionary of the Gospels,
probably written ca. 1250 in southern Italy, and an early 14th-century Psalter
with Canticles and Prayers, attributed by scholars to scribes and
artisans working in Constantinople. Also on display will be two manuscripts
in Greek of Aesop’s
Fables, probably the most widely disseminated book for teaching moral lessons
to children and adults: The first, a carefully written, simply decorated
version contains 127 fables from the early 15th-century; the second is
the lavishly illustrated, so-called Medici Aesop. Among other manuscripts
to be shown is a Latin translation of Geographia, by Ptolemy,
the 2nd-century Egyptian astronomer and geographer of Greek descent. The
volume was produced
in or near Florence ca. 1460 and is accompanied by 27 brilliantly colored,
large-scale maps of the known world.
Aldus Manutius (1450-1515), the famed Venetian publisher of ancient classics,
is represented by his edition of Aristotle’s Opera Omnia (in Greek),
the first major prose text printed in the original Greek (editio princeps)
using Greek type, issued in five volumes between 1495 and 1498. Other first
editions will include the Library’s copies of the first printed Homer
(Florence 1488-9), Sophocles (1502), and Plato (1513).
The legacy of Greek literature, history, and art, as well as modern-era
Greece itself, has continued to inspire creativity, the diversity of which
is merely suggested by the items displayed, including the autograph manuscript
of Oscar Wilde’s sonnet Impression du Voyage (ca. 1880);
French painter Georges Braque’s exquisite artist’s book Théogonie (Paris,
1955); and Neil Curry’s The Bending of the Bow: A Version of
the Closing Books of Homer's Odyssey (London, 1993), with photogravures
after drawings of Greek sculptures and an etched portrait of Homer by Jim
Dine.
Support for the Humanities and Social Sciences Library’s
Exhibitions Program has been
provided by Pinewood Foundation and by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.
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