Ornamento delle belle & virtuose donne
A 1554 Italian pattern book by Matheo Pagano, titled Ornamento delle belle & virtuose donne, offering counted-thread embroidery and lace designs for women to copy. Its pages show full-page woodcut panels of geometric grids, interlaced knots, diamond lattices and stylised floral motifs, printed in dense dark-on-pale tones. A designer could draw on the tightly repeated lattice structures and the rhythm of pattern bands divided into horizontal and vertical fields.
