Isabel Enríquez

Isabel Enríquez was a Spanish poet whose intellect was celebrated in Madrid. Isaac Cardoso dedicated a 1636 treatise on the color green to her. Enríquez later fled to Amsterdam, where she practiced Judaism openly. There she was befriended by the former New Christian poet Daniel Levi de Barrios, who also dedicated poems to her. De Barrios quoted a décima by Enríquez in his Relación de los poetas and described her as the author of a volume of verse. Enríquez was also apparently a member of Baron Belmonte’s Jewish literary salon, Academia de los Sitibundos, in Amsterdam. She dedicated the décima “This wonder, this marvel,” to Isaac Aboab “on the occasion of an enormous egg hatching at his home, yielding a bird with a crown as its head, which was badly interpreted by some.”