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Curiosities & Surprising Details
Beyond the polemics, Tarabotti's life is full of vivid, human detail: a manuscript hidden "even from the eyes of Heaven," a painter sister, a clutch of pseudonyms, and a thriving correspondence run from behind a convent grille. Here are some of the most memorable.
A "son" hidden from Heaven
Her exposé Inferno monacale was so dangerous she never tried to publish it, calling it a "son" she had to keep "hidden even from the eyes of Heaven." It survives today in a single manuscript copy — not printed in full until 1990.
A writer of pseudonyms
Born Elena Cassandra, she took the religious name Arcangela. She signed the Antisatira "D.A.T.," and published under the invented names Galerana Baratotti and Galerana Barcitotti — masks that let her speak as a secular author, not just a nun.
Her sister the painter
Her sister Caterina became a painter in the circle of Alessandro Varotari (il Padovanino). Tarabotti proudly praised her as proof of women's genius — able to rival Apollo in music, Apelle in painting, and Minerva in the sciences.
A businesswoman behind bars
Venetian nuns were famous for their lacework. Tarabotti acted as an intermediary for noblewomen who wished to commission lace from the nuns of Sant'Anna — and once complained in a letter that her convent sisters hadn't been paid for their work.
A crest hidden in a printer's mark
The printer's device for her Lagrime — ten roses arranged in three rows — was a coded tribute to the Donà dalle Rose family crest, honoring the noble house of the friend she mourned, Regina Donati.
Her portrait among the greats
A portrait of Tarabotti holding a book hung in the study of her champion Giovan Francesco Loredano — alongside portraits of six other Italian women writers. She wished to be remembered as an author, not merely a nun.
Pen-friends with cardinals and duchesses
Though she never left the convent, her correspondents included Cardinal Jules Mazarin, Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere of Florence, and the humanist Ismaël Boulliau. French diplomats even sent their daughters to her for their education.
She read Machiavelli in a convent
Nuns were meant to own only a few religious books. Tarabotti read far beyond that — Seneca, Ovid, Petrarch, Ariosto — and even Machiavelli's Prince, banned by the Church, smuggled in or lent by her literary friends.
On the Index — too late to matter
Her masterpiece was printed abroad in 1654 and condemned to the Index of Forbidden Books in 1661. But she had died in 1652 — her death, as her editors note, "blunted the effect" the condemnation might otherwise have had.