Florentine noblewoman and prolific letter writer Born in the first decade of the fifteenth century into the elite Macinghi family, Alessandra Strozzi is known for her seventy-three extant letters, written in her own hand in the Italian merchant script of the day; these letters are housed in the Archivio di Stato in Florence. All but one are addressed to her sons, all of whom would become bankers in Naples, Spain, and Bruges. Like most women of the upper class in Florence, Strozzi learned to read and write in the venacular, though she had no schooling in the humanist studies for which her husband Matteo and other members of the Strozzi clan were noted.
Alessandra married Matteo Strozzi when she was fourteen. By the time she was twenty-eight, in 1435, she had lost three of the eight children she bore to the plague. That year, her husband also died in the epidemic. Her earliest surviving letters, which begin when she had been a widow for twelve years, show her establishing her sons in merchant careers and finding husbands for her daughters. Later letters document her efforts to obtain the repeal of her sons’ exile and to find them wives. Spanning a twenty-three-year period (1447—1470), Strozzi’s letters leave a portrait of a woman who was religious and a devoted mother, serious in her desire for her sons to become successful but morally just men. They also suggest that Strozzi was a woman of strong will but considerable tact, an astute judge of family and business matters, and a keen but cynical observer of the Florentine scene. Letters written by Alessandra’s relatives reinforce this self-portrait and depict her as a guiding force in family decisions until the end of her life.
Ann Crabb
See also the subheading Letter Writing (under Literary Culture and Women).
Bibliography
Primary Work
Strozzi, Alessandra. Selected Letters: Bilingual Edition. Translated by Heather Gregory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Secondary Works
Crabb, Ann. “How to Influence Your Children: Persuasion and Form in Alessandra Macigni Strozzi’s Letters to Her Sons.” In Women’s Letters Across Europe, 1400-1700. Edited by Jane Couchman and Ann Crabb. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005.
Crabb, Ann. Widowhood and Family Solidarity in the Renaissance: The Strozzi of Florence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
Strocchia, Sharon. “Strozzi, Alessandra Macinghi.” In Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. Edited by Paul F. Grendler, 93. New York: Scribners,
1999.
World History
