Venetian Sunk-panel Bindings: A Sixteenth century Structure and Production

The topic of this research is the Venetian sunk-panel binding, one of the most elaborately decorated examples of luxury bookbinding ever produced in Venice. This thesis examines how Venetian sunk-panel bindings were manufactured, how their structure and finishing evolved over time, and the extent to which they can be considered standardised.

The contents of volumes bound in this manner are predominantly official manuscripts recording executive appointments within the Venetian Republic, known as dogali, alongside luxury editions of texts, some dedicated to foreign sovereigns.

This manufacture was developed during the late Renaissance, a period when Venetian craftsmanship reached the highest quality in the imitation of Islamic designs and crafts. Within the context of 16th-century bookbinding, this phenomenon produced sumptuous bindings that combined Western book structures, Venetian elements, and Middle Eastern decorative methods. The most striking feature of the decoration is the surface adorned with shallow recesses, called sunk panels, created by the treatment of the boards and arranged in various layouts to produce a distinctive design.

The Venetian sunk-panel binding serves as a valuable example of the level of decorative elaboration that bindings could reach, alongside the general assumption that fine Western bindings of the Modern Era are characterised solely by leather covers embellished with gold tooling.

The lack of a detailed study concerning the sunk-panel binding style and its variations in decoration offers an entirely new field of investigation.

The study begins with a systematic assessment of a corpus of 129 known surviving examples, conducted here for the first time. Data were collected in a purpose-designed database, designed to record a range of variables. After analysing the consistency of concept combinations in bindings with similar appearances, the bindings were organised into new categories within the Venetian sunk-panel style. This categorisation of decoration enabled the creation of a production timeline for each specific category, thereby facilitating the dating of previously undated bindings. This research contextualises the production by distinguishing it from contemporary Islamic bindings and by cross-referencing data with case studies from Venetian fine and applied arts, such as contemporary illuminations and Islamic-inspired lacquerware.

The results also serve as a valuable tool for dating other Venetian lacquered objects that share similar techniques and designs.