A ‘Book of Drawings’ and the ‘Writing Pen’: Women Artists’ Self-Teaching and Transnational Print Culture in Early Modern Europe

Authors

  • Mallory N. Haselberger University of Maryland, College Park

Abstract

In early modernity, artistic education began and endured with the student’s drawing practice—first in replicating works from antiquity, then of the master, and finally in the student master’s creation of new invenzione to express artistic command. For women, this learning process was less straightforward. This essay considers the changing nature of women’s artistic education between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where the book and textual knowledge production come to mark the onset of women’s artistic practice. With case studies exploring artistic texts by Giovanna Garzoni, Élisabeth-Sophie Chéron, and Catherine Perrot, I trace the private means by which women artists utilized rising access to print culture for artistic instruction, commensurate with the growth of printing across Europe.

Author Biography

Mallory N. Haselberger, University of Maryland, College Park

Mallory N. Haselberger holds Master of Arts degrees in Art History and English Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is currently a candidate in the Master of Library and Information Sciences program at the same institution, specializing in special collections, rare books, and archives. Her work considers the cultural production of early modern women writers and artists, as well as women’s presence in printing and book histories. She is passionate about learning from the past by doing, whether reimagining the hand-press period by working with a Gutenberg-style printing press and binding her own artists’ books, or by introducing students to the wonders of working with archival documents that have passed through endless hands for hundreds of years.

Cover image of issue 40.2 92023) of Parergon

Published

2024-03-06

How to Cite

Haselberger, M. (2024). A ‘Book of Drawings’ and the ‘Writing Pen’: Women Artists’ Self-Teaching and Transnational Print Culture in Early Modern Europe. Parergon, 40(2), 55–86. Retrieved from https://parergon.org/index.php/parergon/article/view/482

Issue

Vol. 40 No. 2 (2023): Women's Agency in Early Modern Europe

Section

Articles