Smaire ou epitome du liure de Asse fait par le commandemt du roy
A 1538 French treatise on Roman coinage and money, the Epitome of Budé's work on the as, written by humanist scholar Guillaume Budé and published in Paris by a bookseller at the sign of the elephant. The three pictures are small woodcut initials and a head-piece: one large ornamental capital A with fleur-de-lis and foliage on a dark ground, one partial ornamental capital E with leafy scrollwork, and a small woodcut of a study scene with a book, mortar, flowering plant and a seated figure. A designer could draw on the knotted foliage and inverted black-ground lettering of the initials, or the compact, framed scale of the study vignette.
