De febribus commentarius
A 1555 Latin medical treatise on fevers by Jacques Dubois, with works by Galen and Hippocrates, printed in Venice by Andrea Arrivabene. The pictures are four small woodcut historiated initials, the decorated capital letters P, F, F and V, each framed and set among scrolling acanthus foliage. A designer could take from them the dense, ornamental Renaissance letterform style, with grotesque masks and leaf scrolls contained within square borders.
