Le historie del Biondo, de la declinatione de l'imperio di Roma, insino al tempo suo (che ui corsero circa mille anni)
A 1543 Venetian printing of Flavio Biondo's history of Rome's decline, published by Michele Tramezzino and written in Italian for readers of Europe and Italy's medieval history. The first picture is a woodcut title page with a robed female figure holding a book beside open volumes and a scroll labelled with lettering, while the second shows a historiated initial with a figure in a decorated capital letter above a dense column of black-letter text. A designer might take the bold framing of the initial, the balance of image and type, and the crisp black-on-cream contrast of the scroll lettering.
