Dialoghi familiari sopra la pittura : difesa, ed esaltata
Dialoghi familiari sopra la pittura is a 1788 Italian treatise on painting by the Capuchin friar Fedele da San Biagio, printed in Palermo by Antonio Valenza for an educated readership of artists and connoisseurs. Its two pictures are small woodcut-style ornaments: a historiated letter D framed by acanthus scrolls with a figure's head, and a horizontal tailpiece of C-scrolls, leaves and a central mask. A designer could take from them the compact, self-contained logic of early printed ornament, where a single motif fills a frame or a strip.
