An Italian Painted and Gilded Wooden Portfolio, After Pinturicchio.

A striking Italian painted and parcel-gilt wooden portfolio, or book-form case, the upper cover finely painted with a copy of Pinturicchio’s celebrated fresco in the Piccolomini Library of Siena Cathedral depicting the meeting of the Emperor Frederick III and his bride Eleonora of Portugal. Constructed of wood with a soft leather spine and fabric ties, the interior lined in rose silk damask. The painted vignette is set within an elaborate gilt and deep-blue border of scrolling foliage, rosettes, and shell ornament in the Italian Renaissance manner, the lower cover bearing the black-and-white arms of Siena, the city’s motto LIBERTAS, and a painted tablet inscribed in Italian, “Federigo III sposa Eleonora di Portogallo — affresco del Pinturicchio nel Duomo di Siena” (“Frederick III weds Eleonora of Portugal — fresco by Pinturicchio in the Cathedral of Siena”). Most likely executed in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century in the Florentine decorative tradition, and evidently made to hold a manuscript, album, or loose leaves. In very good condition with rubbing and wear to the gilt, and a few small losses to the spine. A decorative and unusual object, reproducing one of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance.