ABSTRACT
One of the most frequently found and best-known panels that occur on sixteenth-century calf bindings is one that originated in Louvain. It celebrates the three Christian-Catholic virtues, faith, hope and charity, and depicts a female figure in a billowing dress, her head touching the clouds from which emerges a cross with the words ‘Meritum Christi’. The word ‘Spes’ is beside her head, she stands on a pedestal inscribed ‘Fides’ and to the left of this is the word ‘Charitas’. A quotation from Psalm 70 fills the space to the left of the figure and the whole is surrounded by a border with the legend: ‘QVONIAM IN / ME SPERAVIT LIBERABO / EVM. PROTEG/AM EVM QVO &c PSAL. 90’.
