De mineralibus
A 1519 Augsburg printing of Albertus Magnus's treatise on minerals, issued by the publishers S. Grim and M. Wirsung for scholars and readers of natural philosophy. Its first picture is a decorative woodcut title border of foliage, vases and scrollwork framing the Latin title, while the second is a bookplate for Dr Ernst Darmstaedter showing a nude figure holding up a sun-ringed disc with planetary and zodiac symbols. A designer could take the dense, symmetrical border and the radiating sun motif as models for framed text pages or astrological emblems.
