Tragedia
A 1546 Venetian printed book by Sperone Speroni, published by Vincenzo Valgrisi and held by the Getty Research Institute, a tragedy in the Italian Renaissance tradition. Both pictures are the same woodcut: a serpent coiled around a T-shaped staff, with two fleshy cloud-like hands gripping its base, rendered in crisp black line with heavy hatching. A designer could take from it the emblematic device of an entwined serpent and staff as a compact, symmetrical mark that reads clearly at small size.
