{{Short description|Florentine humanist and scholar (1475–1506)}} '''Alessandra Scala''' (1475–1506) was an Italian humanist and scholar of Latin and Greek in the late fifteenth century.
Born in Colle di Val d'Elsa, she was an amateur actress during the 1490s, portraying Electra in a Florentine performance of Sophocles's ''Electra''. The only two pieces of Scala's work that survive are her letters to her fellow writer Cassandra Fedele and a poem written in the Greek language.
== Biography == Alessandra Scala was the fifth daughter of the chancellor of Florence at the time, Bartolomeo Scala, and was born in 1475.<ref name=":1">{{cite book|last=Robin|first=Diana|title=Encyclopedia of women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2007|isbn=978-1-85109-772-2|editor-last=Robin|editor-first=Diana|location=Santa Barbara, CA|pages=332–333|editor-last2=Larsen|editor-first2=Anne R.|editor-last3=Levin|editor-first3=Carole}}</ref> Scala was taught in part by her father and Angelo Poliziano, and also studied Ancient Greek under Janus Lascaris and Demetrios Chalkokondyles.<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite book|last=King|first=Margaret L.|author-link=Margaret L. King|title=Renaissance humanism : foundations, forms, and legacy|date=1988|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|isbn=0-8122-8066-0|editor-last=Rabil|editor-first=Albert|volume=1|location=Philadelphia|pages=435|oclc=16227152}}</ref>
In 1493, Scala participated in a Florentine performance of Sophocles's ''Electra'' as Electra, and was highly praised for her acting in a letter from Poliziano to Cassandra Fedele.<ref name=":02">{{Cite journal|last=Jardine|first=Lisa|date=1985|title='O Decus Italiae Virgo', or The Myth of the Learned Lady in the Renaissance|url=https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1420374/1/S0018246X00005070a.pdf|journal=Historical Journal|volume=28|issue=4|pages=807–810|doi=10.1017/S0018246X00005070|s2cid=159761599 }}</ref> She also corresponded with Fedele in Latin about marriage and scholarship between 1492 and 1493,<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Pesenti|first=Giovanni|date=1925|title=Alessandra Scala: Una figurina della Rinascenza fiorentina|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1310285417|journal=Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana|volume=85|pages=249–250|id={{ProQuest|1310285417}}}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last1=King|first1=Margaret L.|author-link=Margaret L. King|title=Her immaculate hand : selected works by and about the women humanists of Quattrocento Italy|last2=Rabil, Jr.|first2=Albert|publisher=Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies|year=1992|isbn=0-86698-124-1|location=Binghamton, N.Y.|pages=87–88|oclc=26096179}}</ref> and replied to love poems written in Greek that Poliziano sent her around 1493.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal|last=Pesenti|first=Giovanni|date=1925|title=Alessandra Scala: Una figurina della Rinascenza fiorentina|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1310285417|journal=Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana|volume=85|pages=252–254|id={{ProQuest|1310285417}}}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite book|last=Feng|first=Aileen A.|title=Writing beloveds : humanist Petrarchism and the politics of gender|date=2017|isbn=978-1-4875-1179-1|location=Toronto|pages=94–103|oclc=970693924}}</ref> 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,<ref name=":4" /> 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.<ref name=":02" /><ref name=":3" /> 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.<ref name=":2" />
In 1494, she married the Greek poet and soldier Michael Tarchaniota Marullus.<ref>{{cite book|author=Stevenson, Jane|url=https://archive.org/details/womenlatinpoetsl00stev_672|title=Women Latin poets: language, gender, and authority, from antiquity to the eighteenth century|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2005|isbn=0-19-818502-2|page=164|url-access=limited}}</ref> Six years later Marullus died, and Scala then entered the Florentine convent of San Pier Maggiore<ref name=":1" /> – 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.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Strocchia|first=Sharon T.|date=August 2007|title=When the Bishop Married the Abbess: Masculinity and Power in Florentine Episcopal Entry Rites, 1300–1600|url=http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.1468-0424.2007.00479.x|journal=Gender & History|language=en|volume=19|issue=2|pages=351|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0424.2007.00479.x|s2cid=143907245 |issn=0953-5233|url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Miller|first=Maureen C.|date=October 2006|title=Why the Bishop of Florence Had to Get Married|url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1017/S0038713400004280|journal=Speculum|language=en|volume=81|issue=4|pages=1060–1063|doi=10.1017/S0038713400004280|s2cid=163412470|issn=0038-7134|url-access=subscription}}</ref> She died there in 1506.<ref name=":1" />
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Scala, Alessandra}} Category:1475 births Category:1506 deaths Category:15th-century Italian poets Category:15th-century Italian women writers Category:15th-century Italian writers Category:16th-century Italian women writers Category:15th-century letter writers Category:16th-century letter writers Category:Italian women poets Category:Italian Renaissance humanists Category:15th-century Italian scholars Category:16th-century Italian scholars Category:15th-century actresses