Magdalena van de Passe

She and her three brothers all trained in her father’s workshop, but she was by far the most talented of them all. At just 14 she was already hard at work for the family business. Even at that young age, she was allowed to sign her prints – something her brothers were only permitted to do from the age of 17. Van de Passe was inventive and enterprising. She began a major series of illustrations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but it was never completed, due to her early death. In 1630 she applied for a patent for printing images on linen nightcaps, and the States General granted her the exclusive right to do so. In the same period, Van de Passe taught engraving to the celebrated artist and scholar Anna Maria van Schurman.