Riverside, CA: Bo Press Miniature Books, 2018. Hardcover. Limited to 10 copies. "When Duke Albert V of Bavaria commissioned his court painter, Hans Mielich, to make an inventory of the jewels belonging to him and his wife Anna in 1552,  he may not have expected the over-the-top manuscript Meilich finally produced two years later. The jewelry wasn't the half of it. The 110 gouche on paper paintings showed the back and front of each piece of jewelry, life-sized, and each was surrounded by a different elaborate frame. The manuscript is a riot of cartouches, strapwork, acanthus, foliage, flowers, grotesques, and caryatids, and yet each jewel shines forth as an individual masterpiece. The book remained in the private ducal and electoral Chamber of Artifacts for almost three centuries—long after the originals of the jewelry depicted had been lost. Only in 1843 was the work presented to the Bavarian State Library by King Ludwig I. I have tried, in my presentation of the Jewel Book, to reproduce in miniature some sense of the outrageous Renaissance ostentation that makes the original such a brilliant and worldly example of wretched excess. My favorite page is the frontispiece of the Duke and Duchess playing chess, as though their real pursuits were intellectual, surrounded by their bored courtiers and a couple of puppies. This miniature copy of the Jewel Book of Anna of Bavaria is limited to ten copies. It is set on OldStyle1 and Palatino Linotype, and printed on Monarch Superfine paper with a Canon Pro-100 inkjet printer. The book is bound in gilded snakeskin with a beaded and embellished front panel of celadon snakeskin. The tri-fold box is bound in a gold on black Indian silkscreened paper with a raised rectangle on the front bound in a textured Japanese metallic gold paper. The interior of the box is lined in a Japanese chiyogami feather print. A small pocket on the front of the box holds a booklet containing information on the Jewel Book and its patrons. Both are of the same gold paper" (Pat Sweet). The book is 2 5/8" x 2" and the box is 3" x 2 3/8" x 1" 136 pages. ARTB/120219. Fine.

Item #33441

Price: $345.00