Breviarium romanum, Venice, 1756, 3 volumes, contemporary calf elaborately gilt

Breviarium romanum

Pars verna; pars aestivalis; pars autumnalis. Venice: Nicolò Pezzana, 1756

3 volumes, 8vo (179 x 103mm.), printed in red and black, engraved vignettes on title-pages, contemporary Italian (probably Neapolitan) calf elaborately gilt, some sections with silver paint (now oxidised to black), spines gilt in compartments, gilt and gauffered edges, printed paper pastedowns, bindings slightly rubbed, a few small wormholes in spines; sold as bindings not subject to return

For a similar Neapolitan binding, see Davis Gift 380, with a very similar outer border. Bologna, Legature illustrates a mid eighteenth-century Roman binding with what appears to be an identical outer border (p. 145), as well as a Neapolitan binding with the same structure to the inner panels of the covers (p. 147).

This set should originally have contained a fourth volume for winter. Two of the volumes contain additional printed sections about Neapolitan saints bound at the end.

PROVENANCE:

Sale, Sotheby's, 22 November 1954, lot 76