Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch, (1304-74) was an early renaissance scholar and poet whose influence on poetry and language has been profound. This 1553 edition of Il Petrarcha, printed by Domenico Giglio of Venice, is a collection of his poems with commentary by Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo.

Binding information

This was one of the books selected by Olwen Hedley in the 1960s as an example of fine bookbinding in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Hedley’s ‘Additional Bookbindings’ serves as a supplement to the catalogue of fine bindings compiled in 1893 by the Royal Librarian Richard Rivington Holmes.

The mottled brown calf-skin binding is from the late seventeenth-century, with restoration work carried out on the spine in 1998.

The design on the binding is identical on both sides: outer blind-tooled double fillet border; inner blind-tooled triple-fillet panel, with diamond-shaped sprouting flower tool on each of the outer corners; in the centre, gold-tooled arms of William III and Mary II (England, France, Scotland and Ireland quartered on an escutcheon of pretence billetty a lion rampant [Nassau]) surrounded by the garter and surmounted by a crown, with two unfurling ribbons to either side of crown; outer section of leather treated to create ‘mottled’ effect, inner section plain brown calf.

Spine restored; rubbing of original spine made in 1998, when spine was replaced and both sides re-backed: original spine divided into six compartments by raised bands; the second compartment tooled with the title: ‘PETRARCH’ and a flower-head roll (this section preserved on restored spine, see below); all other compartments tooled with swirling vine corner tools and a diamond shaped centre tool.

Restored spine divided into six compartments by raised bands, each tooled with sun-burst roll; second compartment contains piece of leather from original spine, gold-tooled with outer dotted roll border and, in the lower section, a flower-head and vine roll; in the centre, the gold-tooled title: ‘PETRARCH’; all other compartments restored, tooled with vine corner tools and a central diamond-shaped design built from several dotted and line tools, with a central quatrefoil flower. Restored tooling all in gold, but possibly purposefully worn to imitate seventeenth-century original.