This volume is dedicated to a specific kind of Renaissance publications - to books with portraits of famous people. Illustrium Imagines has become a phrase denoting the very tenet of early modern individualism as well as the phenomenon of the widespread individual popularity acquired through book illustration and prints.
The first part of the study deals with major characteristics of portrait books from the very beginnings in the biographies of classical antiquity to their new role as a medium of information, representation and propaganda in the early modern world. The second part of the study consists of a bibliographical list of publications that correspond to criteria of portrait books. The catalogue contains 173 major units, most of them illustrated by one typical portrait.