Isabella Parasole

Design for lace, from folio "Lavori di Ponto Reticella", from book Il Teatro delle nobili et virtuose donne, 1620, in the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge

Isabella Parasole (ca. 1570 – ca. 1620) was an Italian engraver on wood of the late-Mannerist and early-Baroque periods.

She was born and active in Rome. She married the engraver Leonardo Norsini, who took his wife's more distinguished last name. Her sister, Geronima Parasole, was also an engraver and made a woodcut of Antonio Tempesta's Battle of the Centaurs. Isabella executed several cuts of plants for an herbal, published under the direction of Federico Cesi, of Acquasparta. She published a book in 1597 called Studio delle Virtuose Dame, dedicated to Juana de Aragón y Cardona (1575–1608), and in 1616 she published another book on the methods of working lace and embroidery, with ornamental cuts, which she engraved from her own designs.^[1][2] She dedicated that book to Elisabeth of France (1602–1644), and called herself also Elisabetta as the author.

Her son Bernardino Parasole became a pupil of Giuseppe Cesari, but died young. She was working at Rome about 1600, and died there in her 50th year.

References

1. Studio delle virtuose Dame, Rome, 1597
2. Teatro delle nobili et virtuose donne dove si rappresentano varij Disegni di Lauori nouamente Inuentati, et disegnati da Elisabetta Catanea Parasole, Rome, 1616

• Bryan, Michael (1889). Walter Armstrong & Robert Edmund Graves, ed. Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical (Volume II L-Z). York St. #4, Covent Garden, London; Original from Fogg Library, Digitized May 18, 2007: George Bell and Sons. p. 251.
• Parasole Biography in Web Gallery of Art