Premier livre d'Amadis de Gaule;
Premier livre d'Amadis de Gaule is a French chivalric romance translated by Nicolas de Herberay, sieur des Essars, printed in Paris by Groulleau in 1560. The four pictures are decorative woodcut initial letters, E, F, G and I, framed in square borders filled with leafy foliage, thistle-like stems and fern fronds. A designer could take from them the dense, hand-cut botanical ornament typical of sixteenth-century French printing for building letterform frames and borders.
























































