Orlando furioso. /
Orlando furioso, Ariosto's Italian chivalric epic, published in Venice in 1556 by Vincenzo Valgrisi, with commentary by Ruscelli and Pigna, and illustrated for a learned Italian readership. The four woodcuts each sit inside a dense ornamental frame of putti, scrollwork and grotesques, showing crowded battle scenes, rows of soldiers, a palace courtyard and a figure on horseback. A designer could take from them the tightly packed compositions, the framed panel layout with decorative borders, and the crowded multi-figure staging of Renaissance narrative prints.
