Ornament design for a thesis, the Strozzi coat of arms at top

A young man leads a group of maidens toward the Strozzi coat of arms, held upon a rocky outcrop between a lion and an eagle. This youth gestures to a Latin banderole translated as "force, glory, and honor," proclaiming the rewards the noble family received as the dedicatee of the print. The figures hold a terrestrial globe, a celestial globe, a compass, and an armillary sphere, representing humanity’s attempts to chart the earth and the cosmos. An allegorical river god reclines in the right corner, evoking the bodies of water that were navigated using such knowledge. This kind of a print, which addresses the general pursuit of knowledge, would have been suitable for thesis defenses in various subjects.

Credit: Gift of Harry G. Friedman, 1964