Iconologia del cavaliere Cesare Ripa, perugino
Cesare Ripa's Iconologia, the standard handbook of allegorical personifications, reissued in Perugia in 1764 by Piergiovanni Costantini with commentary by Cesare Orlandi, for artists, poets and emblem-makers needing fixed attributes for abstract ideas. Alongside figure plates of personified virtues, vices and concepts identified by their emblems, the volume carries repeated letterpress woodcut headpieces: a winged nude raising laurel branches between herm busts on scrolled brackets, usable as symmetrical rules, tailpieces and cartouche frames.
