Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gliantichi
Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gliantichi is a 1556 Venetian mythology book by Vincenzo Cartari, printed by Francesco Marcolini for a general readership of Italian humanist scholars and artists. Its pages show large decorated initial letters beside Italian text blocks, each initial framed around a small woodcut townscape of hills, walls, towers and a river. A designer might take from them the idea of a historiated initial, with a miniature landscape set inside a capital letter beside dense columns of type.