author
Luisa Sigea
A brilliant Renaissance humanist and poet, she became famous for her extraordinary command of languages and her place at the Portuguese royal court. Her surviving work helped make her one of the standout women scholars of sixteenth-century Iberia.
1 Audiobook
Aloisiæ Sigeæ Toletanæ Satyra Sotadica de arcanis Amoris et Veneris
by Nicolas Chorier, Johannes van Meurs, Luisa Sigea
About the author
Born in Tarancón around 1522 and later known in Latin as Aloysia Sygaea, Luisa Sigea de Velasco was a Spanish poet, scholar, and one of the notable figures of Spanish humanism. Contemporary accounts and later reference works remember her for exceptional learning, especially in classical languages, and for the intellectual reputation she built at a young age.
She spent an important part of her life in Portugal in the service of Maria of Portugal, where she worked as a lady-in-waiting and Latin teacher. Her best-known writing includes the Latin poem Sintra, and she was widely admired as an example of a highly educated Renaissance woman.
Sigea died in Burgos in 1560, still quite young. Even with a relatively small body of surviving work, her name continued to circulate for centuries as a symbol of female learning, literary skill, and courtly scholarship in the Iberian Renaissance.