1983.3.1 Coriolano worked with Guido Reni and often did prints which followed his master's work. This one also resembles, just a little, Michelangelo's great Cumaean Sibyl in the Sistine Chapel. The Medieval feminist poet Christine de Pizan saw them as proof that women also possessed the power of valid prophecy. This aged sibyl, bent over a prophetic scroll, seems full of the woe and power of wisdom and prophecy.
Wisdom means sorrow but also the life of truth.
For Christine, tears and sorrow are part of the strength and truth of women.