Andreae Caesalpini Aretini ... Peripateticarum quaestionum libri quinque : ad potentissimum & felicissimum Franciscum Medicen Florentiae et senarum principem
A 1571 Venetian philosophical treatise by the Italian physician and botanist Andrea Cesalpino, dedicated to Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and printed by the Giunta press on Aristotelian questions about medicine and blood. Its historiated initials are framed capital letters, the large A and N, each filled with woodcut scenes of hunting, wild animals and figures in landscape, rendered in dense black line with hatched shading. A designer could take from them the idea of a letter built as a picture, with the figure and ground packed tightly into a strict square frame.
