La Bendita Tierra by Quintero, Serafin Alvarez and Joaquin Alvarez Quintero - 1927

Madrid: Editorial Voluntad, 1927. de Azpiazu, Salvador. Quarto. (vi), (121)ff., + 120 plates. Each plate shows a drawing by de Azpiazu, who in each captures the beauties of Spanish architecture, life, and landscape. The Quinteros provide commentary for each, and Serafina Alvarez Quintero contributed the frontispiece portrait of de Azpiazu. The book is a sumptuous and costly production on its own, but to this copy has been added a binding and wraparound fore-edge painting, both executed by Josefina Diaz Lassaletta in 1947. The binding, according to a bookplate added by Lassaletta, is a reproduction of one found at the Capilla de los Reyes Viejos in the cathedral in Toledo: full green morocco with incredible floral gilt motifs to both covers, dentelles, and turn-ins. "Josefina 1947" stamped in gilt to tail of spine. Silk doublures.

Lassaletta's wraparound fore-edge painting echoes the court paintings of Goya. The figures at the upper and lower edges tend to both play and poise, while behind them cascades a pleasant pastoral vista. The figures at the outer edge—the formal foreedge—are children climbing an inconveniently limbless tree. Lassaletta's skill here is without question; her gilt application to the covers is, on the whole, precise, and her gift for fore-edge painting translates the Spanish style in a manner nostaligic rather than anachronistic, and her color palette successfully renders the warmth of the Iberian Peninsula.

Trace rubbing to corners, few abrasions to leather, including one slight surface-loss to lower corner of upper cover, else near fine.