Leather tooled in gold with the name Girolamo Morosini in Latin, double circle fringed with cross-shaped knots, frame of repeated lyre-shaped arabesques, fleurs-de-lys and ivy leaves.

The Mendoza Binder ran the leading Venetian bindery of the first half of the sixteenth century, producing both stock bindings for the book-trade and custom-made work for individuals. The decorative pattern and lettering of the name of the owner, Girolamo Morosini, and the date of his election as Captain of Brescia, on the book's upper and lower covers respectively, are typical of the elegant bindings the Mendoza Binder supplied for commissioni between 1530 and 1555. Named after his principal client, the Spanish bibliophile and ambassador to Venice, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the anonymous binder has been identified with a certain Andrea di Lorenzo of Verona.

Source: Anne-Marie Eze, Illuminating the Serenissima: Books of the Republic of Venice, special exhibition on view in the museum's Long Gallery, May 3 through June 19, 2011.

See the related artwork for another illumination by Master T.° Ve.

Illuminating the Serenissima: Books of the Republic of Venice

Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1903 from Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), American author, social critic, and professor of art history at Harvard College.

Select bibliography

Morris Carter. A choice of Manuscripts and Bookbindings from the Library of Isabella Stewart Gardner Fenway Court. Boston, 1922, pp. 36-37, 99.

Seymour de Ricci with the assistance of W. J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. 3 vols. New York, 1935-40, I, p. 933.

Helena Szépe. "Isabella Stewart Gardner's Venetian manuscripts" in Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle. Boston, 2004, p. 235.