La spina : comedia
La spina is a 1592 Italian comedy by Lionardo Salviati, published in Ferrara by the printer Benedetto Mammarelli, with the title page and initials supplied by the Getty Research Institute's copy. The pictures are decorative woodcut initial letters, mostly capitals framed in strapwork and foliage, with the one in the first image set in a rectangular border and the later ones showing stiffer, more blotted impressions. A designer could take from them the compact vocabulary of Italian Renaissance initials, where a letter is built from interlaced scrolls and leaves.
