Isola Bela

Isola Bella is one of the three Borromean Islands in Lake Maggiore, in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, occupied by a seventeenth-century palazzo and tiered Italianate gardens commissioned by the Borromeo family. Yoshida produced this print following his 1925 European travels, during which he sketched along the Italian lakes alongside Swiss alpine subjects. The composition likely approaches the island from across the water, framing the palace and its terraced gardens against the surrounding peaks of the Lepontine Alps. Lake reflections give the printer ample scope for bokashi gradations, while the geometry of the formal gardens demands precise kentō registration to keep architectural lines clean. Within Yoshida's roughly 260 designs, the European subjects form a discrete group documenting his interest in cross-cultural landscape, alongside his American national-park views and Indian travel prints. The choice of an Italian villa garden as a mokuhanga subject is itself uncommon within shin-hanga, where European motifs were rare.