Between 1557 and 1561, a group of women at the convent Santa Maria Maddalena alla Giudecca, known as The Convertite on Giudecca island in Venice ran one of the earliest female operated printing presses in early modern Europe. Unlike other women printers of the time – often widows inheriting their husbands’ shops – these women worked collectively from within an enclosed convent. They were not noblewomen or scholars, but former sex workers, concubines and social outcasts, admitted to the convent precisely because they did not meet society’s ideals of chastity. They lived in poverty and they laboured out of necessity. They printed at least twenty-five titles in Latin and the Venetian dialect, including works authored by medieval visionaries and unknown women. I make a case that these women used typography not just to reproduce words in print, but as a way to remake their subjectivity. Their printing practice was physical, spiritual, and deeply embodied. Their work reveals how books are shaped not only by ideas, but by rituals, and bodies. One of their prints still bears the trace of a single strand of hair – caught between type and paper – a quiet archival witness to their presence.

Almost entirely overlooked in mainstream design history, the Convertite’s press offers a radically different story; one where women laboured under restriction and violence, but still found ways to produce, preserve, and participate. Their story is not one of genius or invention, but of resilience, survival, and the printed works they left behind.

Content warning: this episode contains references to violence, sexual abuse and rape. Please take care while listening.

TIMELINE

1542 – Fourteen women enter the newly founded Convertite convent in Giudecca, Venice

1551 – Nuns granted permission to profess vows under the Rule of St Augustine

1557 – Convertite nuns begin operating a printing press; 2 editions printed

1558 – 5 editions printed

1559 – 10 editions printed; some sold at the Alla Speranza bookshop in Campo Santa Maria Formosa

1560 – 7 editions printed 

1561 – 1 edition printed; marks the end of the press’s activity

1561 (6 Nov) – Rector Pietro Leon da Valcamonica sentenced to death by the Council of Ten for rape and abuse of more than 20 nuns

1561 (10 Nov) – Valcamonica executed in Piazza San Marco; printing operations cease

Early 1800s – Monastery suppressed by Napoleon and converted into a military prison

Mid-1800s – Building transformed into a women’s prison

2024 – Con i miei occhi, the Holy See’s pavilion for the 60th Venice Biennale, opens to the public at Casa di Reclusione Femminile, the former site of the Convertite convent

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