The example of Ratdolt at Venice, who in 1476 printed a Calendar of Regiomontanus with woodcut borders and an imprint on the first leaf, was not followed by contemporary printers. Even this solitary case hardly presents a title page in the form in which we know it, since the leaf, in place of a title, has a poem in praise of the book. Of the fully developed title page, giving title, author and full imprint, Dr. Haebler, the German authority on incunabula, knows of only one instance in the fifteenth century, a book by Johannes Glogoviensis printed by Wolfgang Stöckel at Leipzig in 1500; the title itself, however, is cut on wood.
The lettering of the simple fifteenth-century title page was often that of the text of the book, or sometimes a larger, heading type was used. Very frequently the words were cut on wood, and since for the printer it was as easy to print from a block containing a design in addition to a brief title, the woodcut illustration on the first leaf soon followed. The examples of the John Lydgate, printed by Pynson, _c._ 1515, and of the _Deceyte of Women_, printed by Abraham Vele about 1550, are typical title pages of popular books of the earlier printers. In Spain especially this combination of title and illustration, in that country often an heraldic cut, both cut on wood, became the fashion and persisted for many years in the next century. Scenes from school life often illustrated educational texts, while a school of woodcutters at Florence designed a famous series of illustrations which decorated the title pages of devotional tracts by Savonarola and other works. The first printers' devices, the two shields of Fust and Schöffer and the double cross rising out of a circle at Venice, were added to the colophons, and it was only when the French printers began to use large devices surrounded by borders, for which there was no room on the last leaf, that the printer's name, or at least mark, began to appear on the title page. Thus one further step was taken towards the title page as we know it.
[Illustration: MACHIAVELLI, SOPRA LA PRIMA DECA DI TITO LIVIO, ANTONIO BLADO, ROME, 1531. The formal Italic below the device, designed by Lodovico Vincentino, the calligrapher, was used in many of Blado's books. It has been revived and is known as Blado Italic. (Size, 5-1/2x8-1/4 inches.)]