Border for Ercole d'Este and Boccaccio's Famous Women, 1849

A full Renaissance border of the Ferrarese kind, white vine scroll and blue and pink flowers studded with gold bosses, enclosing a miniature of men fighting with staves in a walled garden, with the arms of the house of Este in a laurel wreath at the foot. The sheet is lettered as the border of a book executed for Ercole d'Este, from a manuscript then belonging to the Baron d'Hervey de Saint Denys, together with a miniature from the Famous Women of Boccaccio in the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal.

The plate belongs to the second volume of Lacroix and Sere's Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance, Paris, 1849, a work that set out to describe the manners, trades, sciences, letters and fine arts of Europe between the fall of Rome and the end of the sixteenth century. Each sheet was drawn from the original object or manuscript and printed in chromolithography, a process still new in 1849 and here used with unusual richness.

Ercole d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, was among the greatest book patrons of fifteenth century Italy and his arms on a page are a mark of the highest quality of Italian illumination. The border is complete on all four sides, which is what a decorator wants, and the sheet works as well in a Renaissance interior as beside a modern painting.

Even age toning. Marked handling soiling along the right and top edges. Scattered light foxing in the margin. All four corners complete.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.