Ein new getruckt model Büchli...Page 5, verso 1529

This is page 5 from a model book printed by Johann Schönsperger the Younger in Germany sometime in the early Sixteenth Century. It's a woodcut, so we can imagine the process of carving away the wood around these patterns to produce a template for printing. These designs are of the kind that would be used for embroidery, and they point to a significant shift in the social status of women’s work at this time. With the rise of print, patterns and designs could be disseminated more widely. This also suggests a burgeoning market for luxury goods and an increasing emphasis on domestic display among the rising merchant classes. Model books like this one offer a fascinating insight into the intersection of art, commerce, and gender roles in early modern Europe. To understand this image better, we could examine similar model books from the period, study the history of embroidery and textile production, and investigate the social and economic conditions that shaped the lives of women in Renaissance Germany.