Otto prints

[5] They are probably designed to appeal to female tastes, unlike most secular art of the period, and "reveal a Renaissance voice husky from reveling".

Scholars are mostly agreed that the surviving examples were from an album of samples held by a retailer, who sold them for use decorating the lids of other objects, "the covers of round or oblong toilet-boxes or work-boxes for ladies" as Hind puts it, or perhaps marriage caskets or small boxes of confectionery given as presents at weddings, betrothal ceremonies or the like, after which they might be reused by the recipient.

[10] Many of the prints have one or two blank shields or other spaces for heraldry; in some of the examples coats of arms have been added in ink, which was evidently the intention.

[12] Several have elaborate "self-borders" of garlands and flowers in the latest Renaissance styles, suggesting that they may have been pasted to card and hung on a wall, and also possibly used as patterns by artisans in more permanent materials.

[13] The typical subject matter includes pairs of lovers, putti and hunting dogs and their prey; "the prints share a certain thematic consistency found at the intersection between popular songs, pseudochivalric patrician culture, and love".

[14] Religious subjects, narrative rather than iconic, include a Tobias and the Angel and two versions of Judith Triumphant, brandishing the severed head of Holofernes.

[18] The motif of the "chastisement" or torture of Cupid is found in various contexts in Italian art of the period; it is supposed to stand for the conquest of lust, but in these rather light-hearted images may represent the revenge of women who had suffered in love, as in the poetry of the Late Roman Ausonius.

[19] Other types of secular Italian Renaissance art designed for female tastes are the marriage caskets made by the Embriachi workshop and others, and the painted desco da parto or "birthing tray".

Connections have been made between the iconography of the prints and the trays,[20] while the carved marriage caskets also often have blank shields for heraldry to be painted in.

[22] The prints are "characterized by rather sharp, often deeply incised outlines; similar deeply-cut graver work for the features, for the ample ornament of the costumes, and for the architecture; and extremely fine lines, organized into rather fuzzy cross-hatching, for the shading".