#title pages

Happy Title Page Thursday! This example introduces a 1757 edition of the Swiss anatomist and naturalist Albrecht von Haller’s Elementa Physiologiae Corporis Humani, a work of physiology and anatomy. While the book doesn’t have a full-page elaborate frontispiece, it does feature this thematically appropriate title engraving of two tiny cherubs showing off their anatomical drawings in front of what appears to be a rather unfortunate ungulate. 

Happy Title page Tuesday! The title pages of many early modern books included small woodcut illustrations, and this one, from Vosciscus Fortunatus Plemp’s Ophthalmographia,is no exception. If you look very closely, you’ll notice that this illustration features a musical score. The words read “Laudate dominum omnes gentes,” which is the opening line of Psalm 117 and translates to “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles.” The Psalms are often attributed to King David, and the figure kneeling before the music is dressed in the ermine robes associated with Renaissance kings and holds a harp, the instrument most closely associated with the Biblical David. In this instance, the image doesn’t relate to the intellectual content of the book; it was most likely associated with the printer, Hieronymous Nempaeus. 

Happy Title Page Thursday! We’re rather fond of this decorative vignette that appears on the title page of Carl Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae. This work deals with biological classification, so it is appropriate that it features all kinds of living creatures - we can see a good mixture vertebrates and invertebrates, mammals and reptiles and insects - with an allegorical representation of Nature - that would be the many-breasted woman - watching over the scene.

Happy Title Page Tuesday! This lovely woodcut title page comes from a 1551 edition of the Roman physician Galen’s commentaries on the aphorisms of Hippocrates. The imagery doesn’t seem to be directly related to the subject of the text, but it is still highly decorative. We’re particularly fond of the satyr playing his pan pipes on the bottom.

Happy Mythology Monday! Figures from Greek and Roman mythology were a popular decorative element in early modern books. This engraved vignette on the title page of Johann Jacob Baier’s Biographiae Professorum Medicinae features Athena, the goddess of wisdom, a fitting choice for a biographical work on the Professors of Medicine at the University of Altdorf. We can tell it’s her because of her shield, which carries the head of the Gorgon Medusa, and from the owl hovering just behind her.