In the early decades of the 17th century, Neapolitan printers took up the Renaissance tradition of illustrating books with portraits, a genre that once again raised the grand humanist question of parallelisms between poetry and painting, bringing together images and discourses in the complex symbolic object that was the book in what must be considered a mixed form of the construction of meaning. This article analyses some Neapolitan editions of works written in Spanish, in Italian or in Latin which contain portraits of monarchs, artists, viceroys, etc.: these fairly deluxe editions are at once good examples of the cultural dignity of the Neapolitan typographic art of the time and of the complex relationships between the printing press and power. These «mixed» books, whose portraits lent visibility to monarchs and persons of power, prompt questions about patronage, the turning of books into objets d’art, and various other aspects relating to ceremonial and propaganda.