Alessandra Scala (1475–1506) was a Florentine

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humani ...

and scholar of

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

and

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

in the late fifteenth century.

Biography

Alessandra Scala was the fifth daughter of the chancellor of Florence at the time,

Bartolomeo Scala Bartolomeo Scala (1430–1497) was an Italian politician, author and historian. Born in Colle Val d'Elsa, he became a protégé of Cosimo and Piero de' Medici, being appointed at the highest positions in the Florentine Republic (Chancellor, Sec ...

, and was born in 1475. Scala was taught in part by her father and

Angelo Poliziano Agnolo (Angelo) Ambrogini (14 July 1454 – 24 September 1494), commonly known by his nickname Poliziano (; anglicized as Politian; Latin: '' Politianus''), was an Italian classical scholar and poet of the Florentine Renaissance. His scho ...

, and also studied Ancient Greek under

Janus Lascaris Janus Lascaris (, ''Ianos Laskaris''; c. 1445, Constantinople – 7 December 1535, Rome), also called John Rhyndacenus (from Rhyndacus, a country town in Asia Minor), was a noted Greek scholar in the Renaissance. Biography After the Fall of Con ...

and

Demetrios Chalkokondyles Demetrios Chalkokondyles ( el, Δημήτριος Χαλκοκονδύλης ), Latinized as Demetrius Chalcocondyles and found variously as Demetricocondyles, Chalcocondylas or Chalcondyles (14239 January 1511) was one of the most eminent Gree ...

. In 1493, Scala participated in a Florentine performance of Sophocles's ''

Electra Electra (; grc, Ήλέκτρα) is one of the most popular mythological characters in tragedies.Evans (1970), p. 79 She is the main character in two Greek tragedies, '' Electra'' by Sophocles and '' Electra'' by Euripides. She is also the centra ...

'' as Electra, and was highly praised for her acting in a letter from Poliziano to

Cassandra Fedele Cassandra Fedele (c. 1465 – 1558) was an Italian humanist writer. She has been called the most renowned woman scholar in Italy during the last decades of the Quattrocento. Early life Fedele was born in Venice in 1465 to Barbara Leoni and Angel ...

. She also corresponded with Fedele in Latin about marriage and scholarship between 1492 and 1493, and replied to love poems written in Greek that Poliziano sent her around 1493. Poliziano's praise of Scala's dramatic performance and his poetry addressed to her have been interpreted differently by scholars. While Pesenti views Poliziano as expressing genuine if unrealizable affection, more recently Feng and Jardine have argued that Poliziano's language draws upon previously established portrayals of a "beloved" in Renaissance love poetry, and that his portrayals did not treat Scala as an intellectual or scholarly equal to Poliziano. The only two pieces of Scala's work that survive, at least as far as Pesenti was able to find, are one of Scala's letters to Fedele and her poem in Greek replying to Poliziano. In 1494, she married the Greek poet and soldier

Michael Tarchaniota Marullus Michael Tarchaniota Marullus ( el, Μιχαήλ Μάρουλλος Ταρχανειώτης; it, Michele Marullo Tarcaniota; c. 1458 – 10 April 1500) was a Greek Renaissance scholar, poet of Neo-Latin, humanist and soldier. Life Michael Tarc ...

. Six years later Marullus died, and Scala then entered the Florentine convent of San Pier Maggiore – Strocchia notes that it was the oldest and richest convent in the city, whose nuns were traditionally drawn from what Miller terms "the ruling class" of Florence. She died there in 1506.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scala, Alessandra 1475 births 1506 deaths 15th-century Italian poets Italian women poets Italian Renaissance humanists 15th-century Italian women