Object details
Accession number
2.c.2.2
Creators
Full title
Commission of Doge Francesco Donato to Girolamo Morosini as Captain of Brescia
Creation Date
17 July 1547
Object Case
Dante Case
Language
Latin
Publication Place
Venice
Binding Description
Brown leather with gold-tooled sides
Description
ff. 114 (2 leaves): vellum, ill.; 22 x 148 (148 x 92) mm (bifolium)
Provenance
Collection of the scholar and critic Charles Eliot Norton (1827–1908), Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from Charles Eliot Norton on 3 July 1903 for $2,500. (with 18 other Venetian manuscripts)
Marks
Inscribed on binding (recto): "HIERONYMI MAVROCENO"
Inscribed on binding (verso): ".M.D.XLVII."
Inscribed in pencil: "Girolamo Morosini died 1570.v.Cicogna. Inscr. Venez. 6. 594. Francesco Donato born 1468, Doge 1545, died 1553. v. Cicogna. I. 60." [hand of Charles Eliot Norton]
Dimensions
24 x 17 x 4.5 cm (9 7/16 x 6 11/16 x 1 3/4 in.)
Display Media
Paint, gold paint and ink on vellum with tooled leather
Web Commentary
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.
Permanent Gallery Location
Long Gallery
Bibliography
Isabella Stewart Gardner. A Choice of Manuscripts and Bookbindings from the Library of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Fenway Court. (Boston, 1922), pp. 36-7, 99.
Seymour de Ricci and W.J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Vol. 1. (New York, 1935), p. 933, no. 18.
Hilliard Goldfarb. Imaging the Self in Renaissance Italy. Exploring Treasures in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum III. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1992), pp. 32, 46.
Helena Szépe. "Isabella Stewart Gardner's Venetian manuscripts" in Elizabeth Anne McCauley et al. Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Venice: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, 2004), p. 235.
Anne-Marie Eze. "Italian Illuminated Manuscripts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum." Rivista di storia della miniatura (2012), p. 91.
University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts, no. 42823, accessed 4 November 2016. http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/schoenberg/record.html?q=42823&id=SCHOENBERG_42823&
Helena Katalin Szépe in Jeffrey F. Hamburger et al. Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Newton: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Library, Harvard University, 2016), pp. 91, 94, 241, 249, 250-51, no. 207, ill.
Anne-Marie Eze. "'Safe from Destruction by Fire': Isabella Stewart Gardner's Venetian Manuscripts." Journal for Manuscript Studies (Fall 2017), p. 192, fig. 2.
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