Practica Teutsch/ Auff das M.D.LVII. Jare
A German almanac for 1557, the Practica Teutsch, published in 1556 and attributed to Anton Brelochs with revisions by Valentin Geißler, a prognostication volume for a general German-reading public. The two woodcuts are small single-figure cut-out style images, a fully armoured man with a plumed helmet and sword beside a ram, and a nude woman with a spear and a child-like figure beside a lion-like animal, both rendered in bold black line on cream paper. A designer could take from them the compact figure-on-plain-ground format, strong contour hatching, and the sixteenth-century habit of pairing a human figure with an emblematic animal.
