Die deutsche bücherillustration der Gothik und Frührenaissance (1460-1530)
Richard Muther's 1884 German survey, published in Munich and Leipzig by George Hirth, covers book illustration from the Gothic period through the early Renaissance, roughly 1460 to 1530, for scholars and collectors of incunabula. The pictures are wood-engraved historiated initials and ornamental letters: one shows a framed capital with dense interlaced scrollwork on a dark ground, another a vintage woodcut scene of figures with grapes before a walled town. A designer could take from them the strong black-and-white contrast of knotted foliage filling a letter form.
