De humani conceptus formatione, ac partus tempore
A 1604 Latin medical treatise on human conception and the timing of birth, printed in Pavia by Petrus Bartolus and written by the physician Giovanni Costeo. Its pictures are woodcut decorative initials and a printer's device, with a winged putto curling around an S, a lion-like creature inside a cartouche framed by masks, and a figure wrestling a beast within a D. A designer might take the dense, hand-cut ornamental letterforms and foliage borders as models for historical display type and framing.
