The examples of letters taken from Roman and Renaissance Italian monuments, shown in the pages of this chapter, will illustrate the variety of individual letter forms used by the Classic and Renaissance designers. The shape of the same letter will often be found to vary in the same inscription and even in apparently analogous cases. The designers evidently had in mind more than the directly adjacent words, and sometimes even considered
the relation of their lettering to objects outside the panel altogether. This is especially true in the work of the Italian Renaissance, which is almost invariably admirable in both composition and arrangement.
