fuckyeahrenaissancewomen: Women of the Italian Renaissance | ISOTTA NOGAROLA (c.1418-

fuckyeahrenaissancewomen:Women of the Italian Renaissance | ISOTTA NOGAROLA (c.1418-1466)Isotta was born into a wealth Veronese family with a well-established tradition of learning; many of her relatives were university-educated, and her aunt, Angela Nogarola, was a poetess. Isotta’s father died when she was young, so it was her mother who took charge of the children’s education, hiring the humanist scholar Martino Rizzoni to tutor the Nogarola girls. Two of the sisters, Isotta and Ginevra, particularly embraced their studies, becoming fluent in Latin and knowledgeable in classical philosophy, rhetoric, and the study of Scriptures and theology. Ginevra would marry in 1438 and put aside her scholarship, but Isotta continued to write throughout her life.The Nogarola sisters sought to enter the literary world by writing to close family friends and kin, and the scholarly contacts of Rizzoni. Their early correspondences earned them high praise among academics; when the noted humanist Guarino da Verona read their compositions, he wrote enthusiastically of the glory he brought their home city: “Oh the glory indeed of our State and our Age! Oh how rare a bird on earth, like nothing so much as a black swan! If earlier ages had borne these proven virgins, with how many verses would they have sung … would they not have honoured these modest, noble, erudite, eloquent women …?”You might notice that he says nothing about their academic worthiness. Such is the case with most of the praises heaped on Isotta, and other female humanists like her: they are lauded for their virginity, singled out as remarkable among women, raised up as an emblem for their city or as spiritual sisters of the women of antiquity. They are made out to be symbols rather than active participants in the public discourse, prodigies with masculine souls rather than ordinary women who had taken advantage of the opportunity to learn. In a city where females were excluded from public life, the idea that any woman was capable of learning and contributing to high-minded discussions threatened the status quo.In any case, Isotta was heartened to have attracted the attention of so distinguished a figure as Guarino, and so in 1437 she wrote to him directly. Guarino did not reply, leaving Isotta feeling angry and shamed. “You have treated me wretchedly,” she wrote, some months later, “and have shown as little consideration as if I had never been born. For I am ridiculed throughout the city, those of my own condition deride me. I am attached on all sides … Even if I am deserving of this outrage, it is unworthy of you to inflict it. What have I done to be thus despised by you, Guarino?” This time, he did write back, sending her a stinging response that dismissed her as an overemotional woman who lacked the manly virtue he had once believed she possessed.Her family moved to Venice in 1438, and soon after an anonymous pamphlet began circulating, railing against the vices of the city’s women. Isotta herself was singled out, accused of promiscuity and incest because “she dares to engage so deeply in the finest literary studies” and “the woman of fluent speech is never chaste”. The attack may have been politically-motivated, aimed at discrediting the Nogarola family rather than Isotta specifically, but it nonetheless underlined again the precariousness of her position as a female scholar in a male field.Utimately, Isotta withdrew into a life of celibacy and solitude, moving from secular to sacred studies — this being seen as a more appropriate field of interest for a woman. She continued to correspond with other intellectuals, particularly the Venetian politician Ludovico Foscarini, with whom she debated whether Adam or Eve held the greater responsibility for the fall of humanity. -- source link

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