# Decrees, Pope Innocent IV [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [MINIATURIST, Italian]() - Date: 1451-1500 - Technique: Incunable \(Mon. Typ. 1481, 2, 10\) ## Commentary Decrees, Pope Innocent IV 1481 Incunable \(Mon. Typ. 1481, 2, 10\) Landesbibliothek, Gotha In the fifteenth century a revolution was occurring in the world of books: the invention of printing using movable characters. A German, Johann of Speier \(in Italian Giovanni da Spira\), introduced printing into Venice in 1469; in a short time Venice had taken possession of it, to the point of becoming the principal Italian typographical centre and one of the most important in Europe. At first the new art did not deprive illuminators of work; the printed book maintained the structure and characteristics of the manuscript, and more cultured and ostentatious purchasers wanted the copies placed in their bookshelves to be as luxuriously ornamented as the codices. This is one of the printed books issued by the workshop of Nicholas Jenson, perhaps the greatest of the first generation of printers who worked before 1480. It bears rich ornamentation commissioned by the Agostini family. The picture shows folio 2 of this book with miniatures attributed to the Master of the Seven Virtues. ## Related artworks - [Alessandro Cortesi: Poem]() - [Antiphonary]() - [Antiphonary]() - [Antiphonary]() - [Antiphoner]() - [Antiphoner]() - [Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics]() - [Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics]() - [Armiranda]() - [Aulus Gellius: Noctes Atticae]() - [Averulino: On the Architecture]() - [Baldo Martorelli: Grammar]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()