Laura Terracina

Laura Terracina (sometimes Laura Bacio Terracina; 1519 – c. 1577) was a Neapolitan poet of the Renaissance. She was the most published Italian poet of the sixteenth century.

Life At first traceable to Brescia, Terracina's family moved to Rome in the thirteenth century, where they gained rights over the eponymous town from the Colonna or Corsini families for their assistance against the popes. By the fourteenth century, members of the Terracina family were fighting in the service of the Angevins in the Kingdom of Naples. Later, they were known for their extreme fidelity to the Spanish viceroys of Naples. Terracina herself wrote verse praising the Habsburg rulers of Naples and mocking their foes, such as Sultan Suleiman I and King Henry II of France.

Terracina was born in Chiaia, now a suburb of Naples. Her father was Paolo Terracina, lord of St Crispano and St Demetrio in the province of Lecce, while her mother was Diana Anfora of Sorrento. The couple had at least one more daughter and two sons.

In her youth, Terracina enjoyed a "neither complete nor profound"

The quality of Terracina's poetry has been unfavourably compared to that of other contemporaries such as Vittoria Colonna. Her signatures are instead her productivity and fame in her time, her use of poetry to social and financial ends, and her concern with the condition of women in the past and present. Terracina's poetry changed through time, with her later work being marked by a heavier focus on religion, likely reflecting the changed expectations about female authors in Italy caused by the Counter-Reformation.