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The Christians Pattern, or, A Divine Treatise of the Imitation of Christ
Women could not legally own print shops, but a widow was permitted to continue the family printing business under her own name until she remarried (occasionally to one of the apprentices in the shop), or until a son came of age. Often successful, many widows flourished as independent businesswomen, responsible for operations, finances, and the supervision of pressmen and compositors. Elizabeth Redmayne actively printed in London from 1683 to 1706. -
Neues Modelbuch
Rosina Helena Fürst grew up in Nuremberg in a family of engravers and printers, as was often the case for women who became artists. Her sister Magdalena, also an artist, had been a student of Maria Sibylla Merian. Rosina Fürst drew and engraved the complex illustrations of lace and embroidery for this two-volume model book published by her father. Lace was used on linens as well as to adorn both men’s and women’s clothing. Model books for calligraphy, lace patterns, and needlework were typically used exhaustively by their owners, and as a result few survive. The richly engraved domestic scene on the half-title page depicts women engaged in the obviously social activity of lace-making. -
Heures nouuelles dédiées a Monseigneur Dauphin, ecrites et grauées par Elisabeth Senault
French calligrapher and engraver Elisabeth Senault was trained by her father, engraver and writing master Louis Senault. After his death, she produced private prayer books for the French royal court. This intimate book of hours, in its original blind-stamped binding with silk brocade doublures, is completely engraved. Imitating the intricate illustrations of illuminated manuscript prayer books, Senault embellished her engraved plates with inventive decorative borders, floriated initials, delicate flowers, birds, tiny insects, arabesques, and flourishes. -
Villa Benedetta
Elpidio Benedetti’s villa near Porta San Pancrazio was designed by the Roman architect, sculptor and painter Plautilla Bricci, who was the only female architect of her time. Though Benedetti claimed that Plautilla only assisted her brother Basilio, the surviving building contract and drawings attribute the design of the villa solely to Plautilla. Benedetti subsequently commissioned Plautilla Bricci to design another work, the chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome for which she also carved reliefs and sculpture. Villa Benedetta was completed in 1665. It was destroyed in 1849 during the bombing of the Roman Republic. -
Books Printed at London, and are to be Sold by Elizabeth Hutchinson in Durham
Women have actively participated in the bookselling and printing trades since the invention of movable type around 1450. Though women were not permitted to take up printing apprenticeships, both printing and bookselling tended to be family businesses that included women. Well-hidden and tipped into this copy of a seventeenth- century travel book is a rather substantial list of books available at "reasonable rates" from bookseller Elizabeth Hutchinson, possibly the wife of bookbinder Hugh Hutchinson, who kept shop from 1665 to 1684. -
Aana Macallame
In early modern Europe, men’s beards signified their role as the head of households, with control over economic and sexual matters. Bearded women threatened this “natural” order, and therefore they were usually described as rare natural anomalies and depicted in domestic settings that emphasized their roles as wives and mothers. Many became public attractions, often earning money for their husbands, and inexpensive portraits helped to spread their fame. Aana Macallame of Scotland left little historical trace beyond this engraved portrait. It describes her as part of nature’s variety and is unusual in its depiction of her in men’s clothing. As noted in the text, she visited the court of Charles II when she was forty-seven years old.Tags 1600s -
Lyon dans son lustre
Artist and engraver Claudine Brunand was likely related to the artist and woodcutter Michel Brunand. She worked for a number of printers and publishers in her native Lyon as well as in Germany. We know her for this charming, inventive, and marvelously original frontispiece. In a map of Lyon configured in the shape of a rampant lion, Brunand manages to incorporate each street and the city hall, along with heraldic shields and banners flying in the breeze. -
The marrow of history, or, The pilgrimage of kings and princes: truly representing the variety of dangers inhaerent to their crowns, and the lamentable deaths which many of them, and some of the best of them, have undergone: collected, not onely out of the best modern histories, but from all those which have been most famous in the Latine, Greek, or in the Hebrew tongue: shewing, not onely the tragedies of princes at their deaths, but their exploits and sayings in their lives, and by what virtues some of them have flourished in the height of honour, and overcome by what affections, others of them have sunk into the depth of all calamities: a work most delightfull for knowledge, and as profitable for example
English printer Elizabeth Alsop was the widow of printer Bernard Alsop and published under her own name from 1653 to 1656. Her business was located on Grub Street, a locale known for its concentration of low-end publishers, tabloid journalism, and “hack writers.” The Welsh author of this title was a colorful figure in the courts of Queen Elizabeth and King James. -
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America
The Puritan emigre Anne Bradstreet was America’s earliest English-language poet. Well-educated as a child, she married at sixteen and migrated to the colonies with her husband in 1630. Bradstreet owned a significant library of approximately eight hundred books that were lost to fire when her Andover house burned in 1666. Fortunately, the manuscript notebooks of her poetry survived the fire. This copy of the Tenth Muse is from the first edition of her first book, the only compilation of her poetry to appear during her lifetime.
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits.
A poet’s pen all scorn I should thus wrong;
For such despite they cast on female wits,
If what I do prove well, it won’t advance—
They’ll say it was stolen, or else it was by chance. -
Manuscript memorandum book
The Haulsey family of London used this memorandum book in an embroidered binding to record marriages, births, christenings, deaths, burials, family genealogy, and even business transactions. Some of its pages are paper, while others were treated with a gesso-like substance to provide an erasable surface that could be written on using a metal stylus (not present). The stylus slipped through the silver fastenings to hold the book closed. The embroidered binding was likely done by a female member of the family. Day is depicted on the upper cover, night on the lower.Tags 1600s -
Les femmes illustres, ou, Les harangues heroïques
French philosopher Madeleine de Scudéry was a prolific writer. Her novels and books were published under her brother’s name. She embraced philosophical dialogue as a means to explore questions of gender, sexuality, education, and power. Scudéry was dismissed by her male contemporaries, and later critics focused on her salons rather than her philosophical contributions. Her life, work, and diatribes defending women’s right to exercise political authority are receiving new consideration by modern scholars. The strong image on this engraved title page certainly reflects her response to the querelle des femmes. -
Observations diuerses, sur la sterilité, perte de fruict, foecondite, accouchements, et maladies des femmes, et enfants nouueaux naiz
On the engraved title page of Louise Bourgeois Boursier’s Observations diuerses, babies abound and thanks are given to God. But it is the skill and lessons contained in this, the first book on obstetrics written by a woman, which we acknowledge. Louise Bourgeois turned to midwifery to support her family while her surgeon husband served in the army. In 1598 she received certification and passed the entrance examination to the midwives’ guild, eventually becoming midwife to the French court and to Marie de Medici, delivering all six of the Queen’s infants. Bourgeois attended over 2,000 deliveries of ordinary people as well as the aristocracy. -
Lo Stipo
Prolific author and performer Margherita Costa traveled from city to city to perform in the theaters and private salons of Europe’s great courts. She did not shy away from crossing the boundaries around decorous female writing, and some of her works have a feminist twist. These two works bound together include poems on unwanted pregnancy, female cosmetics, and sexual double standards. -
Flora, ouero, Cultura di fiori
Jesuit botanist Giovanni Battista Ferrari’s book on cultivating and planning gardens is one of the loveliest books to be produced in seventeenth-century Rome. It is filled with inventive engravings of complex garden designs along with stunningly drawn plates of individual flowers and plants; the plant names are heralded in beribboned banners. Many well-known artists collaborated to illustrate the production, including the Florentine painter and printmaker Anna Maria Vaiani, who designed and engraved a number of the plates. Vaiani, commissioned to paint a fresco in one of the Vatican chapels, was a member of the circles of Galileo and the noted collector and patron of the arts Cassiano dal Pozzo. -
Haec homo: wherein the excellency of the creation of woman is described, by way of an essay
English barrister William Austin advocated for legal and public liberties for women. The woodcuts shown here reference Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic Vitruvian Man, an image that defined ideal human proportions. Here Austin replaces the figure with the female body. Though diminutive, the images are monumental in spirit. Austin dedicated the book to Mary Griffith. It was published posthumously by his widow Anne. -
The lavves resolutions of womens rights, or, The lavves prouision for woemen: a methodicall collection of such statutes and customes, with the cases, opinions, arguments and points of learning in the lavv, as doe properly concerne women: together with a compendious table, whereby the chiefe matters in this booke contained, may be the more readily found
The Lavves Resolutions of Womens Rights was the first work devoted to the laws and rights of women in English law. The unidentified author reasoned that as women were subject to laws they should have access to information about them. The text is largely about property, inheritance, dowry, and the rights assumed or lost when a woman enters into marriage, is widowed, or divorces. Rape and wife beating are considered within the codification of the law. The work lacks practical details, refers to obscure case law, and uses technical terminology, making it more helpful to lawyers than to women themselves. -
Alphabet de l'imperfection et malice des femmes: reueu, corrigé, & augmenté d'vn friant Dessert, & de plusieurs histoires en cette cinquiesme edition pour les courtizans & partisans de la femme Mondaine
Olivier’s Alphabet of the Imperfection and Malice of Women, part of the querelle des femmes, provoked numerous responses and touched off a querelle des alphabets. -
Letter to Cassiano dal Pozzo
Artemesia Gentileschi was one of the most accomplished artists of the seventeenth century and the first woman to become a member of Florence’s Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno. Her Susannah and the Elders, painted when she was sixteen and working in her father Orazio’s studio, is likely the first nude painted by a women artist. Gentileschi’s powerful depictions of women, memorably her Judith and Holofernes and Mary Magdalen, brought her notice. This letter to the scholar, and her great patron, Cassiano dal Pozzo requests permission for her assistant to carry arms as she is now living in Naples, a more dangerous city. She promises that she is sending “my portrait, which you once requested.” -
[Suite de quinze estampes représentant des oiseaux]
French engraver Marie Briot was the daughter of Isaac Briot, an engraver and draughtsman, and trained in his studio. In addition to this work, she also contributed numerous engravings to a book of emblems published in 1638 and 1639. This volume includes fifteen plates of birds in their natural environment. She signs her plates Marie Briot, Fecit identifying herself as the maker. -
Corona delle nobili et virtuose donne. Fatti da Lugretia Romana
This series of four lace-pattern books published by Italian engraver and painter Cesare Vecellio first appeared from 1591-1596. At the time, lace was used extravagantly on both male and female clothing, as well as on linens. This series was the most extensive collection of lace patterns published to that point, and it was frequently reprinted. The dedication page of the fourth volume (dated 1616) is signed by Isabetta Alberti, who writes, “I came upon them [the lace designs] by chance and by means of my prints may works invented with such exquisiteness and diligence not remain in the shadows.”
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