Book frontispiece

Illuminated frontispiece of the 1845 illustrated Book of Common Prayer, designed by Owen Jones.

A frontispiece is a picture. It is in a book, on one of its front title pages. It is usually a big scene of the book, or a portrait of the writer. In older times, the picture of the writer was more often used. This was because it was less costly, and could be used again for the writer's other books. Frontispieces were often used in scholarly books and Bibles, and many are fine works of art.

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Book Frontispiece Media

A frontispiece and title page of Matthias Klostermayr's biography (1772)
A portrait of Yung Wing used as the frontispiece of his 1909 book My Life in China and America
Frontispiece to A popular treatise on the winds: Comprising the general motions of the atmosphere, monsoons, cyclones, tornadoes, waterspouts, hail-storms, etc. by William Ferrel (1904)
Title page and frontispiece to Telliamed by Benoît de Maillet (1749)
Title page and frontispiece to volume I1 of Joannis Kepleri Astronomi Opera Omnia by Johannes Kepler (1858)
Frontispiece and title page to De Rerum Natura by Titus Lucretius Carus (1754)
Frontispiece and title page to volume I of Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1774)
Frontispiece illustration from Johann Bode's Anleitung zur Kentniss des Gestirnten Himmels (1772)
Frontispiece of the first edition of the memoirs of Pierre Victor, Baron de Besenval de Brunstatt, showing his portrait (1805)