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Giacomo Filippo Foresti - Concering Famous Women, 29 April 1497

Giacomo Filippo Foresti (Solto, 1434 - 1520, Bergamo)

Concerning Famous Women [De plurimis claris selectisque mulieribus], 29 April 1497

Printed ink on paper , 32.2 x 22.9 x 2.9 cm (12 11/16 x 9 x 1 1/8 in.)

Commentary

Augustian monk and author, Giacomo Filippo Foresti's illustrated encyclopedia of famous women is arranged chronologically, beginning with Eve. The list includes Biblical women, women from pagan times, Christian women, and notorious women like the legendary medieval female Pope Joan. The last seven women: Bona of Lombardy, Bianca Maria of Milan, Catherine of Imola, Leonora of Ferrara, Bianca Mirandula, Genevra Sforza, and Damisella Trivulzia, are Foresti's contemporaries, and are illustrated with woodcuts that are so full of individual character that they are thought to be based on actual portraits and are therefore among the first woodcut portraits. The other 165 woodcut images are mere types of the women represented in the histories, and not portraits. The classical women and the saints each share a series of woodblocks which are printed repeatedly to fill out the series. Two saints or two goddesses might share a single appropriate woodcut. This sort of typological representation is extremely common in early books.