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Isabella Losa, also known as Isabella Losa of Cordova or Losa de Cordova (1491-1564) was a doctor of theology and nun.
Isabella Losa was known for her knowledge of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. [1] She received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Cordova. [2] After the death of her husband in 1539, she became a Clarissan abbess and moved to Vercelli in Piedmont in 1553, where she founded an orphanage, Santa Maria di Loreto. [3] She died in 1564 at age 74. [4]
Isabella Losa's name was included in the Heritage Floor of artist Judy Chicago's work The Dinner Party.
Isabella d'Este was Marchioness of Mantua and one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance as a major cultural and political figure. She was a patron of the arts as well as a leader of fashion, whose innovative style of dressing was copied by numerous women. The poet Ariosto labeled her as the "liberal and magnanimous Isabella", while author Matteo Bandello described her as having been "supreme among women". Diplomat Niccolò da Correggio went even further by hailing her as "The First Lady of the world".
Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara, was an Italian noblewoman and poet. As an educated, married noblewoman whose husband was in captivity, Colonna was able to develop relationships within the intellectual circles of Ischia and Naples. Her early poetry began to attract attention in the late 1510s and she ultimately became one of the most popular poets of 16th-century Italy. Upon the early death of her husband, she took refuge at a convent in Rome. She remained a laywoman but experienced a strong spiritual renewal and remained devoutly religious for the rest of her life. Colonna is also known to have been a muse to Michelangelo Buonarroti, himself a poet.
Barbara Strozzi was an Italian composer and singer of the Baroque Period. During her lifetime, Strozzi published eight volumes of her own music, and had more secular music in print than any other composer of the era. This was achieved without any support from the Church and with no consistent patronage from the nobility.
Anne Oldfield was an English actress and one of the highest paid actresses of her time.
Isabella Lucy Bird, married name Bishop, was a nineteenth-century British explorer, writer, photographer, and naturalist. With Fanny Jane Butler she founded the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in Srinagar in today’s Kashmir. She was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Isabella Andreini, also known as Isabella Da Padova, was an Italian actress and writer. Andreini was a member of the Compagnia dei Comici Gelosi, a touring theatre company that performed in Italy and France. The role of Isabella of the commedia dell'arte was named after her.
Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti was an Italian physicist and academic. Recognized and depicted as "Minerva", she was the first woman to have a doctorate in science, and the second woman in the world to earn the Doctor of Philosophy degree. Working at the University of Bologna, she was also the first salaried female teacher in a university. At one time the highest paid employee of the university, by the end of her life Bassi held two other professorships. She was also the first female member of any scientific establishment, when she was elected to the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna in 1732 at 21.
Isabella Angela Colbran was a Spanish opera soprano and composer. She was known as the muse and first wife of composer Gioachino Rossini.
Bianca Cappello was an Italian noblewoman who was the mistress, and afterward the second wife, of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Her husband officially made her his consort. Coincidentally, the creation of the fortunate term serendipity by the writer Horace Walpole is due to a portrait of Bianca.
Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia or Elena Lucrezia Corner, also known in English as Helen Cornaro, was a Venetian philosopher of noble descent who in 1678 became one of the first women to receive an academic degree from a university, and the first to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree.
Tarquinia Molza was an Italian singer, poet, conductor, composer, and natural philosopher. She was considered a great virtuosa. She was involved with the famous Concerto delle donne, although whether she sang with them or coached them is not clear. She also played the viola bastarda, viola da mano, clavier, and lute. Trained in both distinctly male and female singing styles, her contributions helped combine them into the madrigal of the late Renaissance.
Tullia d'Aragona was an Italian poet, author and philosopher. Born in Rome sometime between 1501 and 1505, Tullia traveled throughout Venice, Ferrara, Siena, and Florence before returning to Rome. Throughout her life Tullia was esteemed one of the best female writers, poets, philosophers, and charmers of her time. Influencing many of the most famous male philosophers, Tullia's work raised the status of women to be on an equal footing as men. Her fame and success made her into the most celebrated of Renaissance poet-courtesans. With her intellect, literary abilities and social graces, she entertained powerful men and famous poets.
Mary Hays (1759–1843) was an autodidact intellectual who published essays, poetry, novels and several works on famous women. She is remembered for her early feminism, and her close relations to dissenting and radical thinkers of her time including Robert Robinson, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and William Frend. She was born in 1759, into a family of Protestant dissenters who rejected the practices of the Church of England. Hays was described by those who disliked her as 'the baldest disciple of [Mary] Wollstonecraft' by The Anti Jacobin Magazine, attacked as an 'unsex'd female' by clergyman Robert Polwhele, and provoked controversy through her long life with her rebellious writings. When Hays's fiancé John Eccles died on the eve of their marriage, Hays expected to die of grief herself. But this apparent tragedy meant that she escaped an ordinary future as wife and mother, remaining unmarried. She seized the chance to make a career for herself in the larger world as a writer.
Wallada bint al-Mustakfi was an Andalusian poet.
Ann Baynard was a British natural philosopher and model of piety. She sought discussions with atheists and non-Christians. Later, during her eulogy, Reverend Prude called her philosophical knowledge of this 20-year-old woman the same size as that of an "old bearded male philosopher"
Beatriz Galindo, sometimes spelled Beatrix and also known as La Latina, was a Spanish Latinist and educator. She was a writer, humanist and a teacher of Queen Isabella of Castile and her children. She was one of the most educated women of her time. There is uncertainty about her date of birth; some authors believe it was 1464 or 1474. The La Latina neighborhood in Madrid is named after her.
Moderata Fonte, directly translates to Modest Well is a pseudonym of Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi, also known as Modesto Pozzo, (1555–1592) was a Venetian writer and poet. Besides the posthumously-published dialogues, Giustizia delle donne and Il merito delle donne, for which she is best known, she wrote a romance and religious poetry. Details of her life are known from the biography by Giovanni Niccolò Doglioni (1548-1629), her uncle, included as a preface to the dialogue.
Elisabetta Gonzaga (1471–1526) was a noblewoman of the Italian Renaissance, the Duchess of Urbino by marriage to Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro. Because her husband was impotent, Elisabetta never had children of her own, but did adopt her husband's nephew and heir, Francesco Maria I della Rovere. She was renowned for her cultured and virtuous life.
Isabella Clara of Austria was a Duchess consort of Mantua, Montferrat, Nevers, Mayenne and Rethel by marriage to Charles II, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat.
Cassandra Fedele was an Italian humanist writer. She has been called the most renowned woman scholar in Italy during the last decades of the Quattrocento.