Reading Pictures: Sixteenth-Century European Illustrated Books

Document to accompany the exhibition "Reading Pictures: Sixteenth-Century European Illustrated Books." The exhibit surveyed European book illustration during the sixteenth century. Examples all come from Penn’s rich collections of sixteenth-century European printing. Their wide variety of styles and subjects illuminate what early modern book illustrators provided readers in an environment visually far less rich than the one we take for granted. Religion, labor, science, warfare, costume, medicine, portraits, exotic places, and more — all these topics found their way not only into words but also into pictures.