Christian Friedr. Prangens, Magisters der Weltweisheit und der freyen Künste Entwurf einer Akademie der bildenden Künste: Geschichte der bildenden Künste
This 1778 German treatise by Christian Friedrich Prange, a master of philosophy and the liberal arts, sets out a plan for an academy of the fine arts and a history of those arts, written for scholars and students of art in Germany. Its pictures are small woodcut headpieces and vignettes: a seated allegorical figure with a cornucopia-like drapery, a symmetrical acanthus-and-flower ornament, a garland of roses and blossoms, and a still life of a lute, a rod and a stone pedestal under clouds. A designer could take from them a dense, period vocabulary of botanical scrollwork and emblematic arrangements suited to decorative borders and chapter openers.
