La pentesilea : tragedia
A 1614 Italian tragedy by Francesco Bracciolini, printed in Florence by Giovanni Donato and Bernardino Giunti, held by the Getty Research Institute. The four pictures are small woodcut decorative initials and a printer's ornament, with one historiated letter showing a seated figure and another a standing warrior beside a serpentine form. A designer could take from them the compact framed letter-box format and the mix of knotted scrollwork with narrative vignettes typical of early seventeenth-century Florentine printing.
