Ioannis Boccatii de Certaldo insigne opus De claris mulieribus

The viper had lost its power, with the girl as its parent,
She crawls prone on the ground, may she bear offspring in pain.

A woodcut illustration depicts the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve stand in the center, nude, with a serpent coiled around a tree between them. Various animals, including a lion, a sheep, a rabbit, and a squirrel, are scattered throughout the wooded landscape. A small sign hanging from a tree branch is inscribed with the date "1537".

Since I am about to write of the splendors by which distinguished women have shone, it will not seem unworthy to have taken the beginning from the mother of all. That most ancient parent was, as she was the first, so was she also distinguished by magnificent splendors. For she was not produced in this sorrowful valley of miseries, in which we other mortals are born to labor, nor was she made by the same hammer or anvil, or even by a craftsman, nor did she come into life wailing and weeping for the crime of being born, or weak like the rest. Rather (which is heard to have happened to no one else), when the best craftsman of all things had already fashioned Adam with his own hand from the slime of the earth, and had transferred him from the field—to which the name of Damascus was later given—into the garden of delights, and had brought him into a peaceful sleep, by an artifice known only to Himself, He led her forth from the side of the sleeper. She was self-possessed and mature for her husband, and joyful in the pleasantness of the place and the view of her Maker: immortal, and lady of things,