MAGNIFICENT ITALIAN JEWELED BINDING
(BOOK ARTS) (BINDING). Jeweled missal binding (binding only). Possibly Florence, 18th century. Folio, brown morocco backstrip holding gold-painted beveled wooden boards grounded in red gesso, blue and gold flower-and-tendril hand-painted borders, covers mounted with silver repouusé plaques each encrusted with semi-precious gems, conical brass corner bosses. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
Splendid jeweled missal binding in the Florentine manner, with repoussé silver plaques depicting the Virgin Mary and St. Augustine, encrusted with semi-precious stones, including carnelians, malachites, and lapis lazuli.
This beautiful jeweled binding is in keeping with those found on European church service books since the 6th century. Later, jeweled bindings were also commissioned by royal and noble patrons. With covers painted in gold, enhanced with mounted engraved gold or silver plaques and studded with semi-precious stones, these magnificent books were “carried in procession and kept in the church sacristy, not in the monastic library. The use of the costliest materials was an act of piety, not ostentation, and even the colors of the gems were symbolic, each associated with a mystical meaning” (Glaister, 262). The two silver plaques on this particular binding are executed in repoussé with engraved floral side compartments and protected by brass corner bosses. The front cover-plaque bears in high-relief the event of the Assumption of Mary, on a starry background, supported by one of her principal attributes, “the moon under her feet” (Revelation 12:1). The rear plaque depicts St. Augustine, attired in bishop’s habit and mitre, with Confessions in hand (in the manner of paintings by Bartolo). The 15 (of 16) gemstones, including carnelians, malachites, and lapis lazuli, are set in metal cups affixed to the plaques in an oval design. The Florentine tradition of silversmithing, from which this splendid early 19th-century binding appears to come, dates back to the 14th century.
One stone lost, leather backstrip reinforced, small vertical crack to front board, not affecting soundness. A beautiful specimen.