Vitae illustrium virorum
This is a Latin incunable of Plutarch's Lives, printed in Rome around the 1470s by Ulrich Han and edited by Giannantonio Campano for scholars and humanist readers. The four pictures show initial letters in blue and gold with interlace knotwork and leafy white vine-like scrollwork extending into the margin beside dense black-letter text. A designer might take the interlaced geometric letterforms and the bracketed vine borders as models for historical ornament and framing devices.
