Frontispiece with the serpent woman (Works of Virgil, Paris, Jehan Petit, 1512)

2. The first edition of Virgil printed in Paris by Jehan Petit in 1501 features on the title page its only typographical mark in the center, with a lion and a cheetah facing each other (later replaced by two lions). The 1512 edition features for the 1st time a full frontispiece, with Virgil writing in a medallion in the top center, and on either side a female snake embracing in its tail a naked man holding a pike surmounted by a trophy of arms. The serpent's tail and the pike may have prefigured the motif of Virgil with basket, attested in the 1529 edition of Virgil, but which appears earlier in other Parisian frontispieces of the 1520s, unrelated to Virgil.