PUBLIC MARKS with tags medieval & typography

As a follow-up to my entry on ‘figurative alphabets,’ I’ve since obtained a copy of a book (Omaggio all’Alfabeto, by Attilio Rossi, Milan, 1990), which contains a complete set of reproductions of the painted alphabet of Giovannino de’ Grassi (d. 1398). The detail images below link to some large JPEGS scanned from this volume, which, between them, spell out twenty-four stylised letters: there being no j, and an single letter that’s both u and v.

Just as there are pictures composed of letters: calligrams, for example; there are, inversely, letters made from pictures. An interesting sub-set of the latter are those alphabets contrived out of human figures…