Portuguese Variant of Landry, Written and Engraved by a Woman

Teresa Angelica da Silva (active ca. 1732).
Manual de oraçoẽs para assistir ao sacrificio da missa com hu[m]a oraçaô para implorar a misericordia divina contra o flagello dos terremotos.
[Lisbon], 1756. (BRB 1013)

Composed and illustrated in the early eighteenth-century by Teresa Angelica da Silva, an otherwise unknown Portuguese author and engraver, this manual of prayers to be recited during the celebration of the mass was first published in 1732. This unique copy of the 1756 edition includes forty-one full-page images, thirty-five of which illustrate the sacrament of the Eucharist. Silva may have been influenced by Landry’s La sainte messe (ca. 1670–ca. 1700, also issued in 1720 and before 1740) as the design and layout is quite similar to the earlier French work, although the quality of the engraving is not as accomplished. This 1756 edition, published after the horrendous Lisbon earthquake of 1755, includes two additional text pages with a prayer asking for divine intervention against future earthquakes.