Alciati, Emblemata, 1589 (Z5r)

Here we again see the emblem for Alciati's "In astrologos" again with Alciati's Latin text and an illustration of Icarus falling from the heavens. This edition also supplies lengthy commentary from Claude Mignault, also reproduced here.

Alciati, Emblemata, 1589 (Z5v)

This dense block of text is only the first page of commentary accompanying Alciati's emblem of "In astrologos," a sharp contrast to the spareness of the first edition.

Alciati, Emblemata, 1661, (2D8v)

In the 1621, a printer in Padua published an edition of the Emblemata that included commentary from a handful of writers---Claude Mignault, Francisco Sanchez de las Brozas, Laurentius Pignorius, and Federicus Morellus---as well as additional emblems. This 1661 edition is a page-for-page reprint of the earlier Tozzi edition, attesting to the volume's popularity.

Ames, Typographical antiquities, 1749 (4I4r)

Since intaglio plates were printed separately from letterpress sheets, books often included notes to the binder describing where the illustrations should go. As is typical, these instructions appear on the very last printed page of the book, here facing the subject index; you can see the ink from the index text off-set in the blank areas of this page.

Bible, Church Slavic, 1581 (fol. 78v)

The colophon identifies Ivan Fedorov of Moscow as the printer (his device appears just above the colophon) and that it was completed in 1581 on August 12 in Ostroh. Like the text above it, the colophon is in parallel columns of Greek and Church Slavic.

Bible, Polyglot, 1657 (T1v)

An example of a "polyglot" Bible---a Bible printed in its earliest languages and translations. On this leaf you can see texts in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Syriac, each in their own place and separated by hand-drawn red ruling.

Erasmus, Novum Instrumentum, 1516 (A1r)

Erasmus's translation of the Bible from Greek into Latin is appropriately presented in two parallel columns. Here, the initial page of his New Testament is set off with woodcut borders; the following pages are plain columns of text.

Erasmus, Novum Instrumentum, 1516 (Ff8r)

The last leaf of this work includes a colophon and printer's device as well as a register for the order of the book's gatherings. You can see that the preliminaries were printed after the rest of the work by how they're signed (aaa, bbb); you can also note that there are two series of double letters and that AA is not the same as Aa.

Patousas, Aesop, 1644 (sig. L4v)

A woodcut illustrating Aesop's fable of the fox and the crow, which in this book is printed to face the illustration (you can see the text here).

Patousas, Aesop, 1644 (sig. L5r)

A modern Greek translation of Aesop's fable of the fox and the crow; there is an accompanying illustration on the facing page