Opere drammatiche e componimenti poetici
A collected edition of the dramatic works and poems of Pietro Metastasio, printed in Milan in 1748 by Giuseppe Cairoli for readers of Italian opera librettos and verse. The pictures are not figurative: they are typographic ornament bands, rows of stylised fleurons, scrolls and foliate borders set between section headings, printed in dark ink on cream paper. A designer could take from them a repeatable border vocabulary of symmetrical rosettes, lily-like motifs and curling tendrils for pattern and frame work.
