An incunable, or sometimes incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively) is a book printed during the earliest period of typography - i.e., from the invention of the art of typographic printing in Europe in the 1450s to the end of the 15th century (i.e., January 1501). Such works were completed at a time when books - some of which were still being hand-copied - were sought by an increasingly large number of readers. The name comes from the ancient Latin word for "baby clothes" or the medieval Latin one for "things of the cradle."

The convenient but arbitrarily chosen end date for identifying a printed book as an incunable does not reflect any notable developments in the printing process, and many books printed for a number of years after 1500 continued to be visually indistinguishable from incunables.

In the books produced using this new technique, the work of the printer and publisher, who were often the same person, was limited to the realization of the text. The titles and initials were added by hand by rubricators and illuminators. However, since illumination was more effectively executed on parchment, in every edition approximately twenty copies would be printed on parchment destined to be decorated by professional artists, while some paper copies were embellished with drawings in ink.

In the later fifteenth century, at a time when manuscript books and printed books coexisted in parallel, the art of illumination reached its zenith, developing different characteristics in the various Italian cities where Renaissance courts were based and there were similar developments in Germany, France and Spain.

Preview	Picture Data	Info
	Gutenberg Bible 1454-55 Incunable Private collection
	Gutenberg Bible 1455 Incunable (C.9.d.4) British Library, London
	Gutenberg Bible 1460s Incunable (Ms. 15) Lambeth Palace Library, London
	Aulus Gellius: Noctes Atticae 1469 Incunable (Auct. L.2.2) Bodleian Library, Oxford
	Pliny the Elder: Naturalis historia 1469 Incunable (Inc. 670, 2 volumes) Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna
	Pliny the Elder: Naturalis historia 1469 Incunable (Inc. 670, 2 volumes) Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna
	Pliny the Elder: Naturalis historia 1469 Incunable (Inc. 670, 2 volumes) Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna
	Historiae Romanae Decades by Livy 1470 Incunable (PML 266) The Morgan Library and Museum, New York
	Petrarch: Canzoniere and Trionfi 1470 Incunable (Inc. Ven. 546) Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice
	Guillaume Fichet: Rhetorica 1471 Incunable (Membranacei 53) Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice
	Book of Hours 1491 Incunable (Inc. E. 25) Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan
	Giovanni Boccaccio: Filostrato 1499 Incunable (Pal. E. 6. 4. 111) Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence
	Boccaccio 15th century Incunable (MS 5793) Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris
	Antoninus Florentinus: Chronicon 1450-1500 Incunable (Inc. 234/1) Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest
	Decrees, Pope Innocent IV 1481 Incunable (Mon. Typ. 1481, 2, 10) Landesbibliothek, Gotha