The 1574 Venice edition by G. Bariletto of Cortese's Secreti is later described as the sole printed book by a female alchemist in that century.
In 1574, the Venetian printer G. Bariletto issued a new edition titled I secreti de la Signora Isabella Cortese, ne' quali si contengono cose minerali, medicinali, arteficiose, & alchimiche, & molte de l'arte profumatoria.... This edition expanded the reach of Cortese's work, adding material on perfumery alongside the original alchemical, medical, and household recipes.
This particular printing has taken on special significance in modern scholarship: the Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance (2007) singles it out as 'the only printed book by a female alchemist in the sixteenth century'—a striking claim that underscores just how rare it was for a woman's name to appear on a published scientific or alchemical text during this era.
The survival and circulation of this edition allowed Cortese's recipes and claimed expertise to reach an even wider readership across the Italian peninsula and beyond. Copies of this 1574 printing, held in institutional collections such as the University of Pennsylvania's E. F. Smith Collection, continue to serve as primary evidence for historians studying gender, authorship, and science in the Renaissance.
The edition's endurance—being cited, collected, and exhibited centuries later—demonstrates the lasting historical weight placed on Cortese's singular position in the record of early modern women in alchemy.