This chapter argues for the Italian Renaissance as a pivotal moment in women’s history. This was the first Western age in which secular women emerged in significant numbers as producers, as well as consumers, of high culture. It also witnessed the development of new ways of thinking about sex and gender, framed to counter traditional arguments for women’s inferiority to men. Like many Renaissance cultural innovations, the emergence of culturally active women was initially an elite phenomenon mainly limited to the princely courts, but practices like women’s writing later migrated down to lower strata of urban society. By the late sixteenth century, women writers were being joined by other species of virtuose such as singers, composers, actresses, painters, and other visual artists. The chapter argues that traditional periodizations of the Renaissance, which see the movement as ending in the mid sixteenth century, have led to a major underestimation of the degree to which women may be considered stakeholders in the movement alongside men.