Despite the predominance of geometric patterns, expression of Renaissance purity until the first quarter of the Seventeenth century, in the second half of the Sixteenth century lace decorations began to go toward a freer interpretation of decorative schemes.

The initiative came from some Italian authors and designers, such as Vecellio, Valvassore, Vinciolo, Isabella Catanea Parasole from Rome and other artists that, through the modellari, pattern books printed mostly in Venice during the Sixteenth and the first decades of the Seventeenth centuries, proposed designs especially suitable for needle lace, characterized by new stylistic trends.

The name punto in aria derives, in fact, by the new need to create an object from nothing more than needle and thread, as in a very precious web, in which the rigid geometric motives are alternated by other softer and more curvy motives to the point of completely substituting them. The most popular decorative motives were the representations of vegetable volutes, grottesche and musical instruments, until the appearance of new floral oriental species.

D.D. Poli, Il Merletto Veneziano, Novara, 1998,

S. Levey, Lace A History, London, 1983.