The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, Signed Custom Harcourt Binding

Binding Details:  Signed custom binding by the Harcourt Bindery, Charlestown, Massachusetts bound in morocco leather over complimentary cloth covered boards with raised bands to the spine, gilt titles and borders, and decorative gold gilt motifs. There are hand-sewn silk endbands, marbled endpapers, with the top page edges gold gilted. The Harcourt Bindery label appears on the bottom of the last free endpaper.

Book Details:  Originally printed at Officina Bodoni in Vernoa, this is the Heritage Press, New York published circa 1960 that was translated and edited by John Addington Symonds and features the wood-engraved illustrations of Fritz Kredel. George Bull wrote a wonderful summary on the book: “Benvenuto Cellini was a celebrated Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith - a passionate craftsman who was admired and resented by the most powerful political and artistic personalities in sixteenth-century Florence, Rome and Paris. He was also a murderer and a braggart, a shameless adventurer who at different times experienced both papal persecution and imprisonment, and the adulation of the royal court. Inn-keepers and prostitutes, kings and cardinals, artists and soldiers rub shoulders in the pages of his notorious autobiography: a vivid portrait of the manners and morals of both the rulers of the day and of their subjects. Written with supreme powers of invective and an irrepressible sense of humor, this is an unrivalled glimpse into the palaces and prisons of the Italy of Michelangelo and the Medici.”

Measures approximately 10.5” x 7.5” with 301 pages as well as an introduction by Thomas Craven, an Afterword on the Life of Cellini After 1562, Translator’s Notes, and an Index.

 Condition Report: The binding is in FINE condition. Internally, the book is very clean with no signs of previous ownership. Overall, this is a beautiful binding that houses one of the great works of literature.

A photograph of the binding appears in the photo section of the listing.