Historia del illustriss. et ualorosiss. capitano don Ferdinando Cortes marchese della ualle, et quando discoperse, et acquisto la Nuoua Hispagna.
This is a 1556 Italian printing of Francisco López de Gómara's history of Hernán Cortés and the conquest of New Spain, issued in Rome by the Dorici brothers for an educated Spanish- and Italian-reading readership. The pictures are small woodcut historiated initials, framed letters containing figures, set beside Italian and Spanish text blocks. A designer could take from them the compact, figure-filled letterform style of 16th-century Roman printing, where a single narrative image is packed inside a square capital.
