Certainly a preliminary illustration for the Golden Cockerel Press's "The Four Gospels," to which Gill contributed numerous engravings. With this initial for the Gospel of Matthew, Gill adopted the constrained, imagistic quality of of the squared-off initial; this he would later cast aside in favor of letterforms that completely integrated the images. The drawing also indicates an early stage in the book's production when the whole would have been printed in Latin, rather than English. Though Gill frequently reused certain motifs throughout his oeuvre—including of a usually male-coded divine figure bent in a kiss over a supplicant - this image appears nowhere else. Fine, not examined outside frame. 3 7/8 x 2 1/8 in.