A smaller version of this painting is at the Heckscher Museum of Art. Isabella is the Spanish Inquisitor queen who burnt people for being heretics. Here, Slobodkina gives us “the cruel hand in a soft glove” (Slobodkina Interview, March 26, 1991, Tape 1, Side 1). Slobodkina notes that “Actually, it’s an advertisement for gloves but in my imagination it becomes the gloved hand of Isabella and I believe there is some fire somewhere there…or some kind of instrument of cruelty…the torture…my tortures are pretty aesthetic of course. I don’t go into gruesome details.There [cut-out paper half-circles are the same shapes [as in other works]…somebody mailed a bunch of cut-offs from a printing of round, circular catalogs. So since it was in the house, I used them. Because they are very elegant shapes..I have them all over the place for at least thirty years and I’m still using them.