Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T04:56:33.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘O decus Italiae virgo’, or The Myth of the Learned Lady in the Renaissance*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Lisa Jardine
Lisa Jardine
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Let me start by making it clear that, taken at face value, my title is entirely a piece of mischief: I am not about to disclose the fact that there were actually no learned women in Italy in the fifteenth century. Indeed, this paper is built around the careers and works of five distinguished women intellectuals of that period: Isotta Nogarola (1418–66); Costanza Varano (1426–77); Cassandra Fedele (c. 1465–1558); Laura Cereta (1469–99); and Alessandra Scala (1475–1506). There is, however, a serious point to my choice of words in the title. The point is that the ‘learned lady’ of the Renaissance (the cultivated noblewoman, beautiful, charming, gifted, ‘gentile’) has a mythic place in the secondary historical literature on humanism. From Isabella d'Este to Sir Thomas More's daughters and the English Tudor princesses, the cultivated gentlewoman is the Beatrice or the Laura of some male humanist's circle, his hi adoring pupil, his inspiration, his idol. Scholars adopt a fondly indulgent tone when discussing the women, which carries the implication that their intellectual calibre, their actual standing as scholars and humanists, is not a real issue, is perhaps not in fact of any real substance (a figment, rather, of their male admirers' or suitors' imaginations). The single scholarly piece of any significance on the life and work of Alessandra Scala concludes with typical sentimental indulgence:Her noble and elusive aspect – for no portrait of her survives, unless perhaps she smiles at us, unrecognised, in the guise of a saint or a goddess, from one of Botticelli's canvases, or that of some other Florentine artist – yet that aspect shines forth from the shadows of the past, and casts a beauteous and gracious light upon the discordant chorus of Florentine humanism at the end of the fifteenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 799 - 819
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Although this is the date of birth which stands in the standard works, it is clearly incorrect. G. Pesenti. in a footnote to his seminal article on Alessandra Scala, cites Cesira Cavazzana as responsible for suggesting 1465 as Fedele's birth date, and indicates that this is a correction for the even less plausible 1456: ‘Cesira Cavazzana, Cassandra Fedele, erudita veneziana del Rinascimento, Venezia. 1906 (estr. dall' Ateneo Veneto). C'è chi drede che la F. nascesse nel 1456; ma la data più plausibile è il 1465; certa è invece la data della morte [1558]: cfr. ibid., 13 sg.’ (Pesenti, G., ‘Alessandra Scala: una figurina della rinascenza fiorentina’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, LXXXV (1925), 241–67, 248Google Scholar. In a letter of 1488, Eleanora of Aragon calls Cassandra ‘femina adolescens’; she was regarded as extraordinarily precocious when she performed publicly in an oration and disputation in 1487. I think 1470 is a more plausible birth date. It still leaves her five years older than Alessandra Scala, who certainly treats Fedele as senior to her in their correspondence (Politian also refers pointedly to Fedele's seniority over Scala). See Pesenti, , ‘Alessandra Scala’, p. 243Google Scholar, for similar comments on the implausibility of the birthdate of 1450 proposed in the earlier literature for Alessandra Scala.

2 For comprehensive bibliographical information on all five women see King, M. L., ‘Book-lined cells: women and humanism in the early Italian Renaissance’, in Labalme, P. H. (ed.), Beyond their sex: learned women of the European past (New York and London, 1980), pp. 66–90Google Scholar; P. O. Kristeller. ‘Learned women of early modern Italy: humanists and university scholars’, ibid, pp. 91–116. I should like to take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to Margaret King for the stimulus her fascinating and pioneering articles on fifteenth-century women humanists gave to my own work. My debt to Professor Kristeller will always remain immeasurable.

3 See, for example, Portigliotti, G., Donne del rinascimento (Milan, 1927)Google Scholar, which opens: ‘Forse mai fiore femminile ebbe un'evocazione cosi tenere e dolce come Cecilia Gonzaga nella bellissima medaglia del Pisanello’ (p. 3), and is illustrated with plates showing details of Botticelli's paintings (the Venus from the ‘Primavera’, the Graces, the Horae), to complement the ‘learned ladies’ of the text. Sabbadini, R., in his Vita di Guarino Veronese (Catania, 1896Google Scholar; reprinted in M. Sancipriano (ed.), Guariniana, Turin, 1964), presents the Nogarola sisters, Ginevra and Isotta, as the chief ornaments of Guarino's circle of Veronese students and followers. P. Gothein begins his study of Isotta Nogarola's correspondence with Lodovico Foscarini: ‘L'epoca del Rinascimento si segnala per parecchie famose amicizie fra uomo e donna. Oltre l'amicizia del Tasso e quella di Michelangiolo Buonarroti con Vittoria Colonna, che appartengono al Cinquecento, non è da dimenticare nella metà del Quattrocento un'amicizia fra due personaggi molto coltri, altrettanto eloquente che delicata nelle sue espressioni, e precisamente quella di Lodovico Foscarini… con…Isotta Nogarola’ (L'amicizia fra Lodovico Foscarini e l'umanista Isotta Nogarola', La Rinascita, VI (1943), 394–413, 394)Google Scholar. I should stress how strikingly such accounts are at odds with the (comparatively) straightforward incorporation of the women humanists by earlier historians. See for example the letter from Cendrata, Lodovico, quoted in Cavrioli, E., Delle historie Bresciane, libri dodeci (Brescia, 1585)Google Scholar: ‘Tu dei nato in q[ue]lla citta ragioneuolme[n]te si puo dire Academia d'Huomini, & di Donne, perche ei conosceua benissimo, che non pure i nostri huomini ma alcune Do[n]ne ancora haueuano fatto professione di lettere.’ Cavrioli also cites a letter from Girolamo Campagnola to Cassandra [Fedele?], ‘Do[n]na dottissima’, praising Brescia in the same terms (Laura Cereta came from Brescia, and is straightforwardly praised for her intellectual contributions on p. 239).

4 ‘La sua figura gentile ed evanescente (chè nessun ritratto di lei ci rimane, ma forse ella ci sorride non conosciuta, sotto le sembianze di santa o di dea, da qualche tela di Botticelli o di altro pittore fiorentino), pure emerge ancora dall'oblio degli anni e sparge una luce di bellezza e di grazia sul coro discorde dell'umanesimo fiorentino dell'estremo Quattrocento’ (Pesenti, G., ‘Alessandra Scala’, p. 264)Google Scholar. Aside from its thorough-going sentimentality, Pesenti's article is a good starting point for work on Scala.

5 See Pesenti, ‘Alessandra Scala’. Naturally both men become Scala's suitors in Pesenti's reconstruction of Scala's life.

6 Ardizzoni, A. (ed.), Poliziano: Epigrammi greci (Florence, 1951Google Scholar; reprinted in A. Politianus, Opera omnia, Turin, 1970), 11, epigram XXVIII (p. 20; Italian transl. p. 56); Pesenti, G. B., ‘Lettere inedite del Poliziano’, Athenaeum, III (1915), 284–304Google Scholar, letter IX (pp. 299–301).

7 In a previous paper I have suggested that a close study of the career of the quattrocento woman humanist Isotta Nogarola sheds considerable light on our understanding of the assumptions behind the habitual pairing of ‘learning’ and ‘moral uprightness’ in studies of Renaissance humanism. See Jardine, L., ‘Isotta Nogarola: women humanists – education for what?’, History of Education, XII (1983), 231–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In general I believe that the study of women in history must lead to substantial reassessment of a good number of assumptions historians have made in studying the past without its female figures.

8 It is striking that of the five women I am considering, only Laura Cereta does not get an entry of her own in Cosenza's compendious dictionary of Italian humanists (Cosenza, M. E., Biographical and bibliographical dictionary of Italian humanists and of the world of classical scholarship in Italy, 1300–1800, 6 vols. (Boston, Mass., 1962–1967Google Scholar; 2nd edn, revised)). Cereta is the only one who did not correspond with a ‘great’ male humanist; she does, however, figure in Cosenza's entries for Bonifacio Bembo and Cassandra Fedele, with both of whom she did correspond.

9 Recent, feminist-inspired interest in women humanists of the Renaissance is leading to fresh editorial work, but currently this falls substantially short of the impeccable editing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See, for instance, Rabil, A., Laura Cereta: quattrocento humanist (Binghamton, New York, 1981)Google Scholar, which only provides synopses of letters already edited by Tomasini, adding full transcriptions of letters not included by the seventeenth-century editor. I did not get sight of King, M. L. and Rabil, A. Jr (eds.), Her immaculate hand: selected works by and about the woman humanists of quattrocento Italy (Binghamton, New York, 1983)Google Scholaruntil this article had been completed.

10 Pesenti, , ‘Alessandra Scala’, p. 248Google Scholar; see also Greswell, W. P., Memoirs of Angelus Politianus, Joannes Picus of Mirandula, etc. (London, 1805), p. 309Google Scholar.

11 For Fedele's extant works see Tomasini, I. P. (Tomasinus), Clarissimae feminae Cassandrae Fidelis venetae epistolae et orationes… (Padua, 1636)Google Scholar; Pesenti, , ‘Alessandra Scala’ (fn. 1), pp. 266–7Google Scholar (transcription of an unpublished letter from Fedele to Pico, 1489). On Fedele see most recently M. L. King, ‘Book-lined cells’; P. O. Kristeller, ‘Learned women’, passim; see also Cavazzana, C., ‘Cassandra Fedele, erudita veneziana del Rinascimento’, Ateneo Veneto, XXIX (1906), ii, 73–91, 249 75Google Scholar; Greswell, , Memoirs, pp. 135–6Google Scholar; Pesenti, , ‘Alessandra Scala’, pp. 248–52Google Scholar.

12 This was the standard way to establish a public reputation as a humanist.

13 Pesenti, , ‘Alessandra Scala', pp. 266–7Google Scholar. Politian mentions his close friend Pico in both his extant letters to Fedele.

14 ‘Etsi ad te iamdiu scribere proposueram, tuis tamen divínis virtutibus pene deterrita, perceptis a multis et maxime a Lactantio Thedaldo ornatissimo tuarumque acerrimo praecone laudum, potius obtumescere destinaveram, quam parum luculenter et femine(e)[sic] admodum tuas perlibarc virtutes. Sed postquam his proximis diebus ab optimo viro Salviato tuae ad me lucubrationes ornatae verborum sententiarumque copiosissimae delatae essent, quas cum saepius lectitassem, ex his tui ingenii dexteritatem ac singularem doctrinam cognovissem, a multis reprehendi posse verebar nisi pro me viribus ingenioli tuas inauditas dotes celebrarem, quibus ut miraculum teneris, laudaris ac veneraris, praesertim tuo opere edito; cui quoniam insunt dilucida verba, sensus gravissimi, splendor, sublimitas interpretandi divina, omnia denique divinitus quadrant. [Nee mirum; nam in omni disciplinarum genere fulges ac splendes, virtutes ornas, homines ad litteras capessendas incendis, quin immo inflammas]’(p. 267).

15 See King, , ‘Book-lined cells’, p. 69Google Scholar. For the text of this oration see Tomasini, , Epistolae, pp. 193–200Google Scholar.

16 The date is fixed by the account of the visit given by Politian to Lorenzo de' Medici in a letter written the following day. See below.

17 Just as Nogarola's fame was established in the humanist circle around Leonello d'Este at Ferrara by the exchange of letters between herself and Guarino. See Jardine, ‘Isotta Nogarola’.

18 For the characterization of the Florentine humanists of this period as scholar-courtiers, see Martines, L., The social world of the Florentine humanists (Princeton, 1963), pp. 5–6Google Scholar.

19 ‘Item visitai iersera quella Cassandra Fidele litterata, e salutai ec., per vostra pane. È cosa, Lorenzo, mirabile, nè meno in vulgare che in latino; discretissima, et meis occulis eliam bella. Partìmi stupito. Molte a vostra partigiana, è di Voi parla con tanta practica, quasi te intus et in cute norit. Verrà un dì in ogni modo a Firenze a vidervi; sicche apparecchiatevi a farli onore’ (Lungo, I. Del, Prose volgari inedite e poesie latine e greche edite e inedite di Angela Ambrogini Poliziano (Florence, 1867), p. 81)Google Scholar. ‘Quasi te intus et in cute norit’ is surely only decorous as a courtierly comment.

20 Garin, E., ‘L'ambiente del Poliziano’, II Poliziano e suo tempo, atti del IV convegno internazionale di studi sul rinascimento (Florence, 1957), p. 24Google Scholar; Garin, , ‘I cancellieri umanisti della repubblica fiorentina da Coluccio Salutati a Bartolomeo Scala’, Rivista storica italiana, LXXI (1959), 204Google Scholar; cit. Martines, , The social world, pp. 5–6Google Scholar.

21 Female heirs substitute for absent men; they do not hold power in their own right, and the male line is reinstated as soon as possible. See Jardine, L., Still harping on daughters: women and drama in the age of Shakespeare (Brighton, 1983)Google Scholar, ch. III.

22 See, for instance, Del Lungo's footnote against her name in the letter to Lorenzo quoted above.

23 Aeneid xi. 508–9.

24 If ‘O decus Italiae virgo’ became a catchphrase for a female representation of learning or chaste wisdom, that might explain the fact that Botticelli's ‘Pallas and the Centaur’ was known as ‘Camilla’ in the fifteenth century.

25 Aeneid vii. 803–17; 805–8. This passage is picked out by Auerbach as the acme of Virgilian ‘sublime’ – female valour sublimely idealized. Auerbach, E., Literary language and its public in late Latin antiquity and in the middle ages, transl. Manheim, R. (London, 1965), pp. 183–6Google Scholar.

26 ‘Mira profecto fides, tales proficisci a femina (quid autem a femina dico?) imo vero a puella, et Virgine potuisse. Non igitur iam Musas, non Sibyllas, non Pythias obijciant vetusta nobis secula, non suas Pythagorei Philosophantes feminas, non Diotimam Socratici, nee Aspaciam, sed nee poetrias illas Graeca iactent monimenta, Telecillam, Corinnam, Sappho, Anyte(m), Erinnem, Praxiham, Cleobulinam, et caeteras: credamus que facile Romanis iam Laelij, et Hortensij filias, et Corneliam Gracorum matrem fuisse matronas quantumlibet eloquentissimas. Scimus hoc profecto scimus, nee eum sexum fuisse a natura tarditatis, aut hebetudinis damnatum’ (Tomasini, , Cassandrae Fidelis epistolae, pp. 155–6Google Scholar). Guarino's celebratory letter in praise of Isotta and Ginevra Nogarola, which gave rise to the correspondence between himself and Isotta, is similarly extravagant in invoking ancient prototypes of outstanding female accomplishment; see Abel, E. (ed.), Isotae Nogarolae veronensis opera quae supersunt omnia (Budapest, 1886), 1, 55–60Google Scholar. See Jardine, , ‘Isotta Nogarola’, pp. 236–7Google Scholar. For further comment on the routineness of such clusters of ‘exemplary’ women in compliments to living women see Robathan, D. M., ‘A fifteenth-century bluestocking’, Medievalia e kumanistica, fasc. 11 (1944), 106–11Google Scholar.

27 ‘At vero aetate nostra, qua pauci quoq(ue) virorum caput altius in literis extulerunt, vnicam te tamen existere puellam, quae pro lana librum, pro fuco calamum, stylum pro acu tractes, et quae non cutem cerussa, sed atramento papyrum linas’ (ibid.). See King, ‘Book-lined cells’, p. 76Google Scholar.

28 ‘O, quis me igitur statim sistat istic, vt faciem virgo tuam castissimam contempler, vt habitum, cultum, gestumq [ue] mirer, vt dictata, instillata tibi a Musis tuis verba quasi sitientibus auribus perbibam, deniq [ue] vt afflatu instin[c]tuq[ue] tuo consu[m]atissimus repente Poeta euadam,

nee me carminibus vincat, aut Thracius Orpheus,

aut Linus: huic mater quamvis, atque huic pater adsit,

Orpheo Calliopea, Lino formosus Apollo. (Eclogues lv. 55–7)’(Tomasini, Cassandrae Fidelis epistolae, p. 157).

29 For a n interesting footnote on such ‘becomings“, see Leflcowitz, M. R., ‘Patterns of women's lives in myth’, in her Heroines and hysterics (London, 1981), pp. 41–7Google Scholar.

30 Just as Guarino's correspondence with Isotta Nogarola rated sufficiently low on his list of priorities for him also to overlook replying to her in good time. See King, M. L., ‘The religious retreat of Isotta Nogarola (1418–1466): sexism and its consequences in the fifteenth century’, Signs, iii (1978), 807–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King ‘Book-lined cells’; Jardine, ‘Isotta Nogarola’.

31 This is the same pattern as that followed in the exchange of letters between Guarino and Nogarola. Both women claim to have been publicly shamed by their male correspondents' prolonged silence, although undoubtedly such men habitually failed to reply to letters from less distinguished male colleagues. The shame is clearly social – the woman's overture if ignored is deemed forward. Later, in 1494, when she herself failed to answer a letter of Politian's promptly, Fedele wrote a humorous letter excusing her tardiness (‘Tibi debeo, ecce persoluo sero. tamen; sed melius sero quam nunquam’). Tomasini, , Cassandrae Fidelis epistolae, pp. 159–60Google Scholar.

32 Aeneid iii, 312–14.

33 It should be remarked that contrition was not a character trait in evidence anywhere else in Politian's public career aside from his studied dealings with female scholars; he was renowned for his ability to quarrel with other humanists, for example, with Alessandra Scala's father Bartolomeo and her future husband Marullus. On Politian's life see Mencken, F. O., Historia vitae et in literas meritorum Angeli Politiani… (Lipsiae, 1736)Google Scholar. On his relations with Bartolomeo Scala see Brown, A., Bartolomeo Scala, 1430–1497, chancellor of Florence: the Humanist as bureaucrat (Princeton, 1979). PP 211–19Google Scholar.

34 ‘Hoc vesperi tuas accepi litteras querimoniae plenas et accusationis, quibus incertum me reddidisti tibine magis condoleam an mihi ipsi gratuler. Nam cum tuum istud perspexisse viderer ingenium adiunctis doctrinae ornamentis insigne, te adeo virili animo et opinari et praedicare solebam, ut nihil accidere posset quod non forti et invicto ferres pectore. Nunc autem sic demissam abiectam et vere mulierem tete ostentas, ut nihil magninco de te sensui meo respondere te cernam’ (Sabbadini, R., Epistolario di Guarino Veronese, II (Venice, 1916), 306–7)Google Scholar.

35 There is, I think, a distinctly hollow ring to Guarino's protestations that Isotta's ‘virility’ of temperament precludes the possibility of attaching social blame to her actions. ‘Cum enim intelligeres tuum in me pro litteraria inter nos necessitudine officium fecisse scriptis ad me tarn suavibus tam ornatis tarn laudatissimis litteris (nam sicut ex studiis arrogans esse non debes, ita bonorum tuorum aestimatrix non ingrata fias oportet) quid tibi obiectari potuit quod matronalem constantiam labefactaret?’ (ibid.)

36 ‘Nam cum te olim domi visurus salutaturusque venissem, qua maxime causa profcctus Venetias fueram, tuque te diutius expectanti habitu quodam pulchro pulcherrima ipsa quasi nympha mihi de silvis obtulisses, mox ornatis copiosisque verbis atque ut verissime dicam divinum quiddam sonantibus compellasses, ita mihi animus repente (quod te arbitror meminisse) miraculo illo tanto et rei novitate obstupuit, ut quod de se ait Aeneas, ‘raris turbatus vocibus hiscerem’, vixque illud saltem meam tibi excusare infantiam potueram.… Harum igitur imaginum plenus, atque hac undique rerum facie circumfusus, ut Florentiam sum reversus, litteras abs te mirificas accepi; quibus cum respondere saepius tentassem, nescio quo pacto digiti ipsi scribentes haesitabant, ipse de manibus calamus excidebat; nee enim subire impar certamen audebam, quasi magis mihi timendum crimen esset arrogantis et improbi, cum respondissem, quam desidis ac parum officiosi, cum tacuissem. Non igitur neglegentia factum est ut non rescripserim, sed verecundia, non contemptu, sed reverentia’ (Pesenti, , ‘Lettere inedite’, pp. 299–300)Google Scholar.

37 This performance also provided the occasion for Politian's first Greek epigram addressed to Alessandra Scala. See below.

38 ‘Sed revertor ad Alexandram. Dies ea noctesque in studiis utriusque linguae versatur. Ac superioribus diebus, cum graeca tragoedia Sophoclis in ipsius paternis aedibus maximo doctorum conventu virorum exhiberetur…ipsa Electrae virginis virgo suscepit, in qua tantum vel ingenii vel artis vel gratiae adhibuit, ut omnium in se oculos atque animas una converteret. Erat in verbis lepos ille atticus prorsum genuinus et nativus, gestus ubique ita promptus et efficax ita argumento serviens, ita per affectus varios decurrens, ut multa inde veritas et fides fietae diu fabulae accederet. Nee tamen Electrae sic meminit ut Alexandrae sit oblita. Verecunde omnia et pudenter, non modo ad terram demissis sed pene in terram semper defixis oculis: sentire illam diceres quid ludiae alicui et mimae, quid ingenuae rursus ac virgini conveniret; nam cum scaenae satisfaceret nihil de scaena tamen sumebat, quasi non cuilibet, sed doctis tantummodo et probis ederet gestum’ (Pesenti, , ‘Lettere inedite’, pp. 300–1)Google Scholar.

39 For the epigram see Ardizzoni Epigrammi greci, p. 20 (Italian transl., p. 56): ‘When the girl Alexandra took the part of Electra, she, virgin, the Sophoclean virgin girl, all were struck with utter amazement.…’

40 Quentin Skinner has suggested to me that in their somewhat bizarre insistence on the virginity of the women humanists, the male humanists are ‘doing the best that their moral vocabulary allowed them’ by way of praising their virtus – for which chastity is the strict female equivalent. ‘Virtus’, the supposed product of the studia humamtatis, is a quality of a ‘vir’; in substituting the more appropriately female ‘chastity’ in the case of a woman we have gender creating a clear case of textual difficulty.

41 ‘Sola igitur nunc in ore omnibus apud nos Alexandra Scala, hoe est florentina Electra, digna nimirum puella quam tu, doctissima Cassandra, sororem voces, utpote quae sola omnium nostra aetate, non dicam tecum contendat, sed tuis certe vestigiis insistat’ (Pesenti, , ‘Lettere inedite’, p. 301)Google Scholar.

42 Guarino encouraged a correspondence between Isotta Nogarola and Costanza Varano, as Politian does one between Fedele and Scala, thus actually effecting a kind of merging of the female scholars into a composite figure of intellectual ‘worth’.

43 I have in mind particularly the theses of Garin and Baron. For another treatment of this issue see Grafton, A. T. and Jardine, L., ‘Humanism and the school of Guarino: a problem of evaluation’, Past and Present, xcvi (1982), 51–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar . See also Marlines, L., Power and imagination: city-states in renaissance Italy (London, 1980), ch. xiGoogle Scholar .

44 For Isotta Nogarola's works see Abel, Opera; for secondary works on her see the extensive bibliography at the end of King's ‘Religious retreat’, and Jardine ‘Isotta Nogarola’. For the works of Costanza Varano see Bettinelli, T. (ed.) [other bibliographies mistakenly cite this as the work of Lazzaroni; Kristeller cites it as by D. A. Sancassani], Orationes et epistolae, in Miscellanea di varie operette, vii (Venice, 1743), 295–330Google Scholar; Feliciangeli, B., ‘Notizie sulla vita e sugli scritti di Costanza Varano-Sforza (1426–1447)’, Giornale storico delta letteratura italiana, xxiii (1894), 1–75Google Scholar(texts, 50–75); for her life see Feliciangeli, ‘Notizie’. For the works of Cassandra Fedele see above, fn. 11.For the works of Laura Cereta see I. P. Tomasini (ed.), Laurae Ceretae Brixiensis clarissimae epistolae; for her life see Pesenti, ‘Alessandra Scala’ (op. cit.). It makes no sense to ask the question Alessandra Scala's extant works (one Greek epigram and letters to Fedele) see Pesenti, , ‘Alessandra Scala’, p. 255Google Scholar; Ardizzoni, , Epigrammi greci, p. 37Google Scholar (Italian transl., p. 66); Tomasini, Cassandrae Fidelis epistolae; for her life see Pesenti, ‘Alessandra Scale’ (op. cit.). It makes no sense to ask the question why none of them rises to the stature of a Politian or a Guarino. Or rather, to ask is to ask the same question as ‘Why has no woman author risen to the stature of Shakespeare?’ See Carter, A., ‘Notes from the front line’, in Wandor, M. (ed.), On gender and writing (London, 1983), pp. 69–77Google Scholar: ‘So there hasn't been a female Shakespeare. Three possible answers: (a) So what?…(b) There hasn't been a male Shakespeare since Shakespeare, dammit. (c) Somewhere, Franz Fanon opines that one cannot, in reason, ask a shoeless peasant in the Upper Volta to write songs like Schubert's; the opportunity to do so has never existed. The concept is meaningless’ (p. 76).

45 In Scala's case, unfortunately, only the single Greek epigram and her letters to Fedele survive.

46 Cereta is a particularly imaginative and lively prose writer. See, for instance, her letter to Fedele describing a dream in which she descends to the underworld (Tomasini, Cassandrae Fidelis epistolae, letter 35 (summarized in Rabil, Laura Cereta, pp. 83–4)), and the way she revivifies a conventional attack on the decadence of women's fashions and lifestyle by preluding it with a vivid account of her personal grief at her husband's deathbed (Tomasini, Cassandrae Fidelis epistolae, letter 31 (summarized in Rabil, op. cit. pp. 82–3)). Varano writes a competent verse to Nogarola (Abel Opera, 11, 7–8); Scala's Greek epigram to Politian shows her an extremely able composer of Greek verse.

47 Politian commends Fedele for her argumentative skill; Quirini writes to Nogarola with advice on logical and philosophical reading (see jardine, ‘Isotta Nogarola’).

48 Pesenti presents documentary evidence which suggests rather strongly that Lascaris helped Scala with her Greek epigram for Politian (though Pesenti chooses to turn a blind eye to the implication): ‘Strana cosa è che nel vatic, greco 1412, fra le minute dei vari epigrammi del dotto profugo bizantino [Lascaris], ci compaia anche (fo. 62a), anonimo e anepigrafo, il noto epigramma di Alessandra in riposta al Poliziano…con parecchie varianti' (Pesenti, , ‘Alessandra Scala’, p. 258Google Scholar). But even here, a male humanist under the tuition of a renowned Hellenist might equally well have had his tutor polish the final offering.

49 Cosenza, Dictionary. I choose Bonifacio Bembo because he corresponded with both Cereta and Fedele; one could, of course, find any number of other examples of competent Latinists with a modest output in letters and setpiece orations.

50 Fedele and Scala are also associated with Ficino and Pico; Scala married Michael Marullus, and was Bartolomeo Scala's daughter. They kept, as it were, too distinguished company for the good of their later reputation.

51 Sabbadini, R., La scuola e gli studi di Guarino Guarini Veronese (Catania, 1896Google Scholar; reprinted in M. Sancipriano (ed.), Guariniana, Turin, 1964), pp. 104–5. For the text of the letter see Sabbadini, , Epistolario, pp. 446–8Google Scholar; Feliciangeli, , ‘Notizie’, pp. 57–9Google Scholar.

52 See Robathan, , ‘A fifteenth-century bluestocking’, p. 107Google Scholar.

53 Cit. Jardine, , ‘Isotta Nogarola’, p. 233Google Scholar.

54 Ibid. p. 240.

55 See Martines, Power and imagination; Grafton and Jardine, ‘Humanism and the school of Guarino’.

56 Although where a woman had to substitute for a missing man, such ‘mastery’ obviously helped give her personal authority. See, for instance, the discussion of the Tudor princesses' erudition in relation to power in Warnicke, R. M., Women of the English renaissance and reformation (Westport, Connecticut and London, 1983)Google Scholar, chs. VI and VII.

57 Tomasini, , Laurae Ceretae epistolae, letters 4, 7 and 9 (summarized in Rabil, Laura Cereta, p. 61)Google Scholar.

58 For an account of the iconographic availability of female abstract representations of the active male arts see Evans, M., ‘Allegorical women and practical men: the iconography of the artes reconsidered’, in Baker, D. (ed.), Medieval women (Oxford, 1978), pp. 305–29Google Scholar.

59 It has also to be confessed that the female humanists disparage the abilities of other women in precisely the same terms as their male colleagues. See, for example, Cereta's letter ‘against women who disparage learned women’ (Tomasini, , Laurae Ceretae epistolae, letter 54, summarized in Rabil, , Laura Cereta, pp. 95–6)Google Scholar.

60 ‘Quicumque istinc hue ad nos proficiscuntur virtutem tuam praedicant, ut apud hos quoque, iam nomen tuum summa in admiratione sit. De ingenio tuo, doctrina, de moribus nobis admiranda quaedam et fere incredibilia afferuntur. Quare tibi gratulor, agoque gratias, quod non nostrum modo sexum, sed hanc quoque aetatem illustraveris’ (Pesenti, , ‘Alessandra Scala’, p. 249)Google Scholar. The female members of ruling houses with whom Fedele corresponds (see below) all thank her for enhancing the reputation of their sex, and for contributing to the lustre female accomplishment is adding to the glory of their age. See, for example, the letter from Isabella of Spain of 1488: ‘Alterum quod sexum, et aetatem nostram non minus per te literariae laudis consecuturam confidimus, quam quondam militaris gloriae per Panthesileam Amazones fuerint consecutae’ (Tomasini, , Cassandrae Fidelis epistolae, p. 19)Google Scholar.

61 Abel, , Opera, II, 3–8Google Scholar.

62 Tomasini, Laurae Ceretae epistolae, letter 35. A letter of Cereta to Bonifacio Bembo later in the same year (1487, the year of Fedele's public triumph with her oration at the University of Padua) vehemently attacks Fedele for publicly doubting that Cereta's work was her own (Bembo corresponded with both women). Several of the women were accused by men of having their Latin works written by a father or tutor. It is ironical that the charge should here have apparently been levelled by another woman. (Letter 53 in Tomasini, with ‘Gismunda’ substituted for Fedele. See Rabil, , Laura Cereta, pp. 89–90.)Google Scholar

63 Fedele corresponded with Queen Isabella of Spain (Tomasini, Cassandrae Fidelis epistolae, letters II (Cassandra to Isabella, n.d.), 12 (Isabella to Cassandra, 1488), 13 (Cassandra to Isabella, 1487), 60 (Cassandra to Isabella, 1492), 66 (Cassandra to Isabella, 1495)); with Beatrice, Queen of Hungary (sister of Eleanora of Aragon and d'Este) (letters 21, 1488; 71, 1497; 78, n.d.); with Beatrice Sforza (letter 57 (Cassandra to Beatrice, n.d.), 58 (Beatrice to Cassandra, 1493)); and with Beatrice Sforza's mother, Eleanora of Aragon, Duchess of Ferrara, letter 105 (Eleanora to Cassandra, 1488). All these women were notable patrons of the arts, and Fedele presumably approached them with an eye to possible patronage (she was invited to Spain in 1488). Kristeller comments that on the whole patronage was sought for vernacular works from these female patrons. See Kristeller, , ‘Learned women’, pp. 93‐4Google Scholar.

64 Tomasini, , Cassandrae Fidelis epistolae, pp. 161–2 (1488)Google Scholar.

65 Sabbadini, , Epistolario, pp. 293–4Google Scholar. Guarino used this same passage from the De officiis in his complimentary letter to Varano (see Sabbadini, , Vita, pp. 157–8)Google Scholar.

66 See above.

67 See above, and King, ‘Religious retreat’ and ‘Book-lined cells’; Jardine, ‘Isotta Nogarola’.

68 A point regularly made in favour of education of girls by Erasmus and More. See, for example, More's letter to his daughter Margaret: ‘Quaeso te, Margareta, fac de studiis vestris quid fit intelligam. Nam ego potius quam mcos patiar inertia torpescere, profecto cum aliquo fortunarum mearum dispendio valedicens aliis curis ac negociis, intendam liberis meis et familiae’ (‘I beg you, Margaret, tell me about the progress you are all making in your studies. For I assure you that, rather than allow my children to be idle and slothful, I would make a sacrifice of wealth, and bid adieu to other cares and business, to attend to my children and my family’). Rogers, E. F. (ed.), The correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton, 1947), letter 69 (p. 134)Google Scholar, transl. Rogers, E. F., St. Thomas More: selected letters (New Haven and London, 1961), p. 109Google Scholar. More makes the explicit point, in writing to Margaret after her marriage, that her learning is intended for no other audience than her father and her husband: ‘Sed tu, Margareta dulcissima, longe magis eo nomine laudanda es, quod quum solidam laboris tui laudem sperare non potes, nihilo tamen minus pergis cum egregia ista virtute tua cultiores literas et bonarum artium studia coniungere; et conscientiae tuae fructu et voluptate contenta, a populo famam pro tua modestia nee aucuperis nec oblatam libenter velis amplecti, sed pro eximia pietate qua nos prosequeris satis amplum frequensque legenti tibi theatrum simus, maritus tuus et ego’ (But, my sweetest Margaret, you are all the more deserving of praise on this account. Although you cannot hope for an adequate reward for your labour, yet nevertheless you continue to unite to your singular love of virtue the pursuit of literature and art. Content with the profit and pleasure of your conscience, in your modesty you do not seek for the praise of the public, nor value it overmuch even if you receive it, but because of the great love you bear us, you regard us – your husband and myself – as a sufficiently large circle of readers for all that you write’). Rogers, , Correspondence, letter 128 (p. 302)Google Scholar, transl. Rogers, , St. Thomas More, p. 155Google Scholar.

70 Ardizzoni, , Epigrammi greci, epigram XXXII (p. 22)Google Scholar (Italian transl. p. 58).

70 A number of humanists wrote Greek ‘love’ poems addressed to Alessandra. One of them, Marullus, eventually married her. See Pesenti, ‘Alessandra Scala’.

71 For instance Martines, The social world and Power and imagination.

72 Pesenti, ‘Alessandra Scala’.

73 Gothein, P., ‘L'amicizia fra Lodovico Foscarini e l'umanista Isotta Nogarola’, La Rinascita, VI (1943). 394–413Google Scholar.

74 Abel, Opera, preface.

75 (Florence, 1926; first edn of Part II, 1893.)