Internationally known during her lifetime, Laura Battiferra (1523-89) was a gifted and prolife poet in Renaissance Florence. The author of nearly 400 sonnets, Battiferra, who was married to the prominent sculptor and architect Bartolomeo Ammannati, traversed an elite literary and artistic network, circulating her verse in a complex and intellectually fecund exchange with some of the most illustrious figures in Italian history. In this anthology Victoria Kirkham gathers Battiferra's most essential writing, including newly discovered poems, to provide modern readers with a valuable social chronicle of sixteenth-century Italy and the courtly culture of the Counter-Reformation.

Translated by: Victoria Kirkham