Studio delle virtuose Dame, page 33 (recto) 1597

Curator: Immediately I'm drawn into a hypnotic, almost medieval aesthetic. It feels like a tapestry woven from ink. Editor: This is "Studio delle virtuose Dame, page 33 (recto)," an engraving and woodcut print by Isabella Catanea Parasole, created in 1597. What captures your eye about it? Curator: It’s so stylized and balanced; I feel it as both intricate and quite strong. There is something strangely comforting in the ordered geometry of it. All those symbolic figures of geometry, standing as signs, creating memory... Editor: The geometric aspect is key; Isabella was really ahead of her time as an early female entrepreneur who actually held copyrights to her pattern books for lace making! Each of the drawings are both prints, a work of art on paper, and templates for other crafts. The cultural exchange this generated would be amazing, I can only imagine ladies working over complex geometry such as that. Curator: Templates of memory—almost like those repeating figures we use for computer graphics. The patterns here aren't static. There's this flow suggesting continuous expansion. It is also incredibly tactile... you could imagine women working from them. Editor: And you’d see the patterns of virtue emerging in so many Italian, and then European homes. What a symbol that is! Curator: The darkness of the woodcut creates this dramatic starkness and highlights this sense of domestic work. The detail of the mandolin lace is still visible, even as a pattern to cut from. Editor: And each one, the triangle, the circle, even those semi-circles, become characters with meanings. Curator: A whole culture gets expressed through these signs of geometric instruction, and for this level of expression the whole piece comes into symbolic significance. Editor: It shows us how patterns preserve and re-imagine the cultural life and work of Renaissance women!