(Painted Book Bindings) | A pair of decorative book covers with old master portraits, painted armorials and town views, mid seventeenth century

(Painted Book Bindings)

Painted upper and lower book covers. Saxony, mid seventeenth century

A pair of book covers from a folio volume (each cover 386 x 255mm.), the inner panels painted with a portrait of Paulus Müller von Roth, his and his wife’s armorials, and town views of Dresden, Königstein and Torgau, surrounded by calligraphic inscriptions in gold ink on a black ground containing quotations from the Bible, the covers of red morocco tooled in gilt and blind, with metal clasps and cornerpieces; rubbed.

A striking pair of painted book covers with finely executed views of Königstein, Dresden, and Torgau. Beneath the armorials, inscriptions identify Paulus Müller von Roth an der Röknitz, in Marggrafthumb Onoltzbach [Margraviate of Ansbach?], and his wife Anna Elisabeth Müllerin, née Moserin von Torgau, dated 1648.

The covers incorporate vibrant orange vellum flyleaves, which overlay the painted boards, an unusual and playful feature that may indicate their function as a commemorative or decorative item, perhaps to mark their wedding, rather than a traditional bookbinding for a printed text. The absence of the spine prevents identification of the book.

The decorative tooling, while typical of the mid-seventeenth century, is not sufficiently distinct to attribute the binding to a particular workshop, but the style and the provenance suggest a likely origin of Dresden.