Headpiece (page 129) from The Fables of Aesop
Thomas Bewick
British, 1753–1828
1818
A tiny oval wood engraving by Thomas Bewick that illustrates the fable “The Envious Man and the Covetous,” condensing its moral drama into a single narrative vignette to accompany the text.
What strikes you is the miniature’s theatrical energy— a wind‑blown, godlike figure poised above two pleading men, all rendered with dense, precise cross‑hatching and crisp outlines that make the little oval read like a classical cameo on the page.
Bewick helped reinvent wood engraving as a refined, expressive technique for book illustration, setting a standard for compact, narrative headpieces that reshaped nineteenth‑century publishing and visual storytelling.
Medium
Wood engraving from an illustrated book with 323 wood engravings and one etching and engraving
Dimensions
composition: 2 1/4 × 3 1/4" (5.7 × 8.2 cm); page (irreg.): 8 1/4 × 5 5/16" (21 × 13.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The Louis E. Stern Collection
Accession
680.1964.119
Palette
Exhibitions
