[daretorant]

Fascinating! Perhaps the woodcut illustrations of Mantegna, a renaissance Italian painter?

I did not find a book of fables of Mantegna’s illustrations, but I did find a painting of a fable (The Boy and the Filberts). It is possibly credited to Aesop, but not confirmed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_and_the_Filberts

Also worth nothing: During the same period and area, another artist named Verona illustrated a book of Aesop’s fables: “It was also in Verona that the first illustrated edition of the fables of Aesop was published in 1479 (21.4.3), with woodcuts designed by Liberale da Verona, one of the city’s leading painters.” (https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wifb/hd_wifb.htm)

Do you recall any of the stories or characters in the book you read? Or anything about the book that left an impact on you?

[HellDunkel]

I recall seeing the goose and the golden egg. The illustrations were more 17th centuryish. The name Jean de La Fontaine has been suggested to me a couple of times and this would certainly be fitting but strangely i cannot find the book following this name anywhere. It was a very fine print, hardcover, very elegant with full page illustrations.

Thank you for the link, wonderful illustrations.

[daretorant]

Ah! The plot thickens. The Fables of La Fontaine are well known, but I hadn’t heard of Montaigne before. Apparently there is a link!

First there is this: https://www.jstor.org/stable/458505 “Montaigne as a Source of La Fontaine's Fable: La Mort et le Mourant” It notes major similarity and possible link between Montaigne’s philosophical essay and Fontaine’s fable.

But even more interesting is this: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1659-essays-michel-de... It’s two books—essays of Montaigne side by side with illustrated (by Hooghe) fables of Fontaine. Not a single book as you described, but interesting to see that there is clearly some connection between the two!