Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola (1702 – ca 1740) was an Italian natural philosopher, poet and translator. She is best known for her translation of René Descartes

René Descartes

René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...

 Principles of Philosophy

Principles of Philosophy

Principles of Philosophy is a book by René Descartes. Written in Latin, it was published in 1644 and dedicated to Elisabeth of Bohemia, with whom Descartes had a long standing friendship. A French version followed in 1647. It set forth the principles of nature—the Laws of Physics--as Descartes...

in Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

. from 1722.

She was a member of the Accademia degli Arcadi in Bologna under the name Myristic. She often published her poems in collaboration with her friend, the poet Luisa Vico. In her translation of Principles of Philosophy, Barbapiccola claimed that women, in contrast to the belief of her contemporaries, were not intellectually inferior out of nature, but because of their lack of education.