Art work from old bible
 

One of my clients is liquidating much of her furniture and other valuables in a downsizing so she can rent out her toney hill home and move into an SF apt.

She has an Italian bible, circa 1898, in horrible shape, the binding anyway. It has a lot of relatively good condition prints of bible themed paintings, all 10.5" x 15". She thinks they can sell for a decent price, I'm not so sure. But maybe I'm way off. Anybody think these might have value? Most of them were apparently painted by Enrico Jenny, who does not come up in web searching.

http://s20.postimg.org/gjxcjv271/Sil...r_sale_062.jpg

http://s20.postimg.org/az7lawsm5/Sil...e_pics_002.jpg

http://s20.postimg.org/892urglb1/Sil...e_pics_003.jpg

http://s20.postimg.org/6ijtpz3rx/Sil...e_pics_004.jpg

http://s20.postimg.org/qeft5ikt9/Sil...e_pics_005.jpg

http://s20.postimg.org/5qh5qrzkt/Sil...e_pics_006.jpg

http://s20.postimg.org/i3tzxop99/Sil...e_pics_017.jpg

The title page says the pictures are cromolithographs. This is a process where the picture is drawn on a piece of limestone and then colored in. The Cromo denotes that several plates were necessary to get the results desired.

This is pretty high end stuff.

But the value is not in the bible itself, at least as far as I can tell. It is in the lithos.

You might want to contact Christies Auction House on this and see what they think. Their 'appraisal' service is usually free if all you need is an opinion. If you need something in writing for insurance reasons there is a charge depending on how much time they have to put into it.

They could also tell you how much it might bring at auction since this is their line of work. If one of these has sold in the past they would know about it.

And note that this was put together by a Czech guy and then translated into Italian. The Dr. listed in the credits is a pretty big deal in the Czech Republic so there might be some interest in this book over there.

That is excellent information. I now see the Italian (presumably) word for cromolithograph on the title page. I saw it before but it didn't register with me. I also see now reference to the University of Prague, presumably again - Universita di Praga.

I found that gentleman in searching but it's all Italian to me. I'll translate some pages later.

I'll research it as best I can. My client is perhaps too optimistic however - she thinks they can fetch $75 apiece.

The bible itself is in many pieces. Not sure how she obtained it but she's indicated that it was disassembled to get at the artwork before she laid hands on it.

cool stuff...