 Lucrezia Marinella was a Venetian author of the sixteenth century, who published prolifically in a range of genres, primarily devotional literature (in prose and verse) and philosophical polemics. Her work, La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne, co’ difetti et mancamenti de gli uomini, (The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men), published in 1600, was one of the first polemical treatises written by a woman in Italian as part of an ongoing debate about the nature and worth of women, often called the querelle des femmes (the debate about  women).[1] The Nobility and Excellence of Women is an erudite recapitulation of the arguments and evidence brought forward to support claims for the merits of women, but it is more than a summary. Marinella provides a cogent, extended argument for the superiority of women’s intellectual and moral capacities, effectively constructing an account of a nature proper to women and distinct from the nature of man.