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One page, covering the pairs AL through AT, from a book of monograms entitled Schul der Pallas (The School of Pallas), engraved by Johann Baptista Homann.  This copy is owned by the Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts), more commonly referred to as the MAK.

A

From the Sixth Book of Madrigals for Five Voices by Luca Marezio, as printed by the firm of Angelo Gardano in Venice, 1594.  Gardano was one of the top music printing firms in the Veneto in the late 16th century.  They are well known for their liturgical printing, including a small 1587 Graduale et Antiphonarium and a massive 1591 Graduale.    The letters are from:

• A - Anima Cruda Si (seq. 10)
• M - Mentre Qual Viua Pietra (seq. 21)

And the music is the beginning of Mentre Qual Viua Pietra.

(Marenzio, Luca, 1553-1599. Il sesto libro de madrigali a cinque voci, novamente posto in luce. Venetia, appresso A[ngelo] Gardano, 1594. Mus 742.27.27. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.HOUGH:9710385)

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I. Paulini is a relatively-unknown late 16th century engraver, the Met simply provides the bio "Italian, active 16th C" in its catalogue page for the Mythological Alphabet which is the source for the new banner image. The images are from the Internet Archive for the copy owned by the Getty. Their caption only adds that though the "traditional" date for the work is c. 1570, the watermarks of the paper point to a later date, 1590-1600, for their copy.

The letters themselves are mythological in content, mostly based, as far as I can tell, on stories from Ovid's Metamorphosis. The A has Acteon, having offended Artemis, turning into a stag, with hunting dogs in the background. The M shows Midas, as king in the background and turning a rabbit to gold in the letter proper.

(via)

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Time for a new banner, and another sourced from the excellent resource ArtDico. These are from a 19th Century French maritime dictionary, the Dictionnaire Pittoresque de marine published in 1835 by Jules Lecomte. "A" was for Armament and "M" was for Master of chicken, apparently an important person on a boat.

(aource A M)


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• St. John's Abby Collection - artifacts and documents gathered by the monks of St. John's in the last 150 years 
• Ethiopian Manuscript Project - 400 years of Ethiopian manuscripts
  
• Hill Manuscript Museum and Library - a long-standing project to preserve and make accessible manuscripts, originally on microfilm

(letters from a 13th C Latin "Vitae sanctorum" [a 16. Februarii usque ad 31. Martii].A and M)


From another part of the world, both then and now, the Walters Art Museum has started digitizing it's Arabic manuscript collection.  This example of Kufic is a tiny crop of the full-screen image available