Memoirs Of Early Italian Painters, Jamieson 1874. This exquisite book is titled “Memoirs Of Early Italian Painters, And Of The Progress Of Painting In Italy, Cimabue To Bassano. A New Edition, With Portraits.” by Mrs. Jameson, published in London by John Murray, Albemarle Street in 1874, and in a fine binding by L. Broga and C. E. Lauriat. The book has five raised bands, six gilt-ruled compartments, with a gilt title on a red label and elaborate gilt tooling on the spine, triple gilt-fillet borders with floral designs in the corners, wide gilt dentelles with marbled endpapers, the half title, a frontis portrait of Giovanni Cimabue, the title page, two pages of Contents, a two-page List of Portraits, an eleven-page Introduction, 328 pages of text, and all the edges are gilt. Anna Brownell Jameson (1794 - 1860) was a British writer born in Dublin. Her father was a miniature and enamel painter who moved to England in 1798 with his family and eventually settled in London. At sixteen, she became governess in the family of Charles Paulet, 13th Marquess of Winchester. During her career, she wrote about women’s rights, travel in Canada and America, and art history. She began taking careful notes of the chief private art collections in and near London, and the result appeared in her Companion to the Private Galleries (1842), followed by the Handbook to the Public Galleries in the same year. She edited the Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters in 1845, which had previously been serialized in the Penny Magazine, and she was connected to some of the most prominent names of the period, including Fanny Kemble, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and Robert Browning, and Lady Byron. The book is 8vo. and measures 7 1/2 x 5 3/8 in. wide, the binding is tight and the pages and text are exceptionally clean, and the only blemishes we could find were specks of rubbing at two tips. All books should be this attractive. #213 #1554