South by East: Notes of Travel in Southern Europe (page 1/3)

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Decorative Chapter Head

A decorative panel above the opening of Chapter VI. A man and a woman—more properly a merman and mermaid—meet in the centre. And don’t tell me the man isn’t gay with that wrist, darlings! [more...]

The Catacombs at Palermo

At the end of a long dark corridor, lined with coffins, chests, skulls, and the standing dead, we see an archway, and, through the arch, an old man, a monk, standing in a pool of light. This is a very cinematic engraving, even though it predates [...] [more...]

Milan Cathedral

A very fine engraving of the exceptionally beautiful Milan Cathedral; the scaled-down versions don’t do it justice.

Decorative chapter head with styilized birds and green men

A decorative woodcut used above a chapter title at the start of the book. The image is a “foliate border” because it contains vines and leaves, but there are also two bird heads and two heads [more...] [$]

Ornate initial letter “W” with silhouettes of naked women

This ornate capital letter W has a long vertical tail or stem of trellis-work beneath the letter, which is an “inhabited initial” with two women inside it. One of the women, who are drawn as dark shaded silhouettes and face each other, is holding a large shallow bowl. The other woman pours a jug or ewer of liquid into the bowl. it is possible that behind the jug there is a pomegranate. The other initials in this series are religious in nature, so I suspect a libration is involved.

In the book, the large black letter W is five lines of text high, and the stem is another eight and a half lines, giving a total (of course) of thirteen and a half lines. The [more...] [$]