SKEUOMORPHIC BINDING WITH PAINTED ‘FURNITURE’

Avancini, Nikola: Vita et doctrina Jesu Christi, ex quatuor evangelistis collecta et in Meditationum materiam singulos totius Anni dies distributa. Coloniae urbiorum, Sumptibus Joannis Jacobi Horst. 1760.

Copy in an unusual painted binding of this rare edition of a popular set of daily meditations by Jesuit rector and playwright Nikola Avancini (1611-1686). The use of painted shadows on the spine is particularly striking, clearly intended to give a three-dimensional effect to the metal ‘furniture’ depicted thereon — including a large crucifix. Avancini’s ‘terse and pithy’ meditations (Weinreich 2022), first published in 1665, are his best-known work. This edition is in the original Latin, but the text was also translated into other languages.  

Details

Printed, one volume, 140 x 80 mms in binding, duodecimo, pp. [36] 491 [1]. 

Bound in eighteenth-century painted paper over brown leather boards, the covers with a complex vertical motif in pale brown resembling a decorative cornice plus a white and grey border line in crenelation shape, the spine evoking metal furniture including a crucifix, and with painted lettering (Avancinus Vita Jesu). Blue paper pastedowns (postdating and partially obscuring annotations to front free endpaper). Red edges. 

Provenance: 
1. Eighteenth-century notes, some on papal history, to front free endpaper (partially obscured by pastedown) and two further lines to rear endpaper.
2, 3. Occasional annotations and corrections in the text in pencil (see especially p. 351 but also  pp. 113, 123, 308, 393, 403, etc). 
Pfirsig(?) 1867 (verso of front free endpaper). 
4., 5. Capuchin convent in Strasbourg (purple stamp to front free endpaper and title page: Sig. Bibl. P. P. Capucinorum Strassburg).
Pencil shelfmark(?) to front pastedown (Asc.e.7). 

Condition (textblock): light browning and foxing, occasional stains and a few headlines shaved. Condition (binding): upper joint cracked towards tail, lower joint cracking, some fading and wear to paper. Remnants of a paper label(?) to rear cover. 

Bibliography: 
Backer-Sommervogel I 333. VD18 13937804. OCLC shows one copy outside Germany (Catholic Theological Union Chicago). 

Weinreich, Spencer, ‘Avancini, Nikola (1611-1686)’, in Andrew Louth (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).