Breviarum Romanum

Printed in red and black. Woodcut figures of saints and Varisco device on the title, six full-page woodcuts, woodcut borders and historiated and ornamental initials.

8vo. [153 x 100 x 47 mm]. [20], 508 ff. Contemporary Venetian binding by the Arabesque Outline Tool Binder of dark brown goatskin over thin wooden boards bevelled inwards at the centre of each edge, the covers with a gilt and blind fillet border enclosing a design of open leaf tools, circles and dots. The spine with alternating single and double bands, tooled in blind and gilt, edges gilt and gauffered to a knotwork design. (Lacking two fore-edge clasps fastening on rear board, later free endleaf at the rear, minor repairs at spine ends and board edges, a few small wormholes). In a new cloth drop-over box. Stock no. ebc3059.
[Venice: Giovanni Varisco & co, March 1562].

Not in the BL or Adams. Single wormhole and a small marginal stain in last few quires, and lower margin of the last leaf cut away.

The Arabesque Outline Binder, a shop first identified by Schunke and dubbed the "Leermauresken-Meister", was active in the 1560s. Hobson cites nine ducal commissions, four other manuscripts and five printed books bound by the same shop, and Laura Nuvoloni has recently added another two works, extending the shop's activity to 1571.

Provenance:

1. Vettorio Sirigati (name on title, pasted-over).
2. J. W. Six de Vromade (booklabel); sale, The Hague, 16/11/1925, lot 70.
3. Michel Wittock (leather booklabel). Hobson and Culot, Italian and French 16th-Century Bookbindings, 16 (pp.46-47); sale, Christie's London, 7/7/2004, lot 22.