Augustissimo Ioanni IV. Lusitanorum regi.
A 1677 Portuguese legal treatise by Tomé Vallasco (ca. 1553-1612), printed in Coimbra at the university press of Manoel Dias and dedicated to King João IV of Portugal, covering the administration of justice. The pictures are small woodcut ornaments: a flower vase, a basket of flowers, and decorated initial letters D and N, with the body text beside the initial. A designer might take from them the dense black-and-cream botanical woodcut vocabulary and the lettering of a historic printed initial.




