In Central and Northern Italy especially, the printed books of the fifteenth and first decade of the sixteenth century were decorated with illuminations of the most beautiful kind. Books printed in Venice about 1470-5 by Nicolas Jenson of Paris and Vendelin of Spires, and Florentine books, even of a few years later date, frequently contain masterpieces of the illuminator's art. The Magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici and others of his family were liberal patrons of this class of work; as were also many of the Venetian Doges and prelates, especially various members of the Grimani family. _Early colophons._ There are no grounds whatever for the belief that the early printed books were passed off as manuscripts, or that Fust was accused of having multiplied books by magical arts. The early printers usually inserted a statement in their _colophon_ to the effect that the book was produced "without the aid of a pen (either of reed, quill or bronze), by a new and complicated invention of printing characters." Many different varieties of this statement occur. In the Mentz _Psalter_ printed by Fust and Schoeffer in 1459 the printer's statement at the end is, _Presens Psalmorum codex venustate capitalium decoratus, rubricationibusque sufficienter distinctus, adinvencione artificiosa imprimendi ac characterizandi; absque ulla calami exaracione sic effigiatus et ad laudem Dei...._ In the Mentz _Catholicon_ of 1460 the phrase is used, _Non calami, stili aut penne suffragio...._ It was not till about half a century after the invention of printing that the new art grew into an important means for the increase of knowledge through the copious production of cheap books. _Aldine books._ No other typographer did so much for the advancement of learning as Aldus Manutius, a Venetian scholar and printer, who, in the year 1501, initiated a new and cheaper form of book by the printing of his Virgil in small 12mo. size, with a new and more compact form of character, now commonly known as the _Italic_ type[157]. As Aldus records in three verses at the beginning of the Virgil, the new Italic fount of type was designed and cut by Francesco Francia, the famous Bolognese painter, goldsmith and die-cutter. These small _italic_ books of Aldus were not all intended for sale at a low rate; many copies exist which are magnificently illuminated, and some are even printed on vellum. The issue of the cheaper Aldine classics gave the death-blow to the illuminator's art, which the early large and costly printed folios had done little or nothing to supersede. _Wood-cuts in MSS._