Celebrating a Great Renaissance Intellect: Alessandra Scala (1475–1506)

When it comes to Four Seasons Hotel Firenze, we usually tell the story of Bartolomeo Scala, the founder of the Renaissance palazzo that now houses the Hotel.  Today however, we are putting the spotlight on his daughter Alessandra Scala. Born in Tuscany in 1475, Alessandra Scala was a Renaissance humanist and linguist who was fluent in both Latin and Greek.

Scala was one of the scholars who gravitated around Lorenzo de’ Medici together with other great intellects such as Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

An expert in Greek and Latin literature, she corresponded in Latin with Venetian proto feminist Cassandra Fedele and in Greek with Poliziano, one of the most prominent poets of his time.  Indeed, Poliziano dedicated a part of his Greek songbook to Alessandra Scala, as a tribute to her intelligence and scholarship. She also gained renown for reciting the lead role in the Greek tragedy Electra by Sophocles in original language at her family palazzo.

In January 1492, Alessandra Scala wrote to her friend Cassandra asking for advice about whether to have a family or cultivate her intellectual pursuits. Even in Renaissance times women wondered if they could “have it all”!  In her answer, Cassandra quotes Plato in Latin with the words ad quoad te magis proclivem natura constituit, meaning: “pursue what is closest to your nature.”  It would appear that Scala’s nature was to balance intellect and personal life. She continued her studies while marrying Michele Marullo Tarcaniota, a Greek soldier, philosopher, historian and poet, in 1497. After her husband's death (tragically a brief three years later), Alessandra decided to publish her works and then became a Benedictine Nun of San Pier Maggiore in Florence, where she died in 1506.