Vendela Skytte was a Swedish noblewoman, salonist and writer, poet and Lady of Letters.
Background
Vendela Skytte was born to statesman and noble Johan Skytte and Maria Näf and became he aunt of Gustav Skytte, Maria Skytte and Christina Anna Skytte. Growing up in an environment were humanists such as Thomas More, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Juan Luis Vives were popular, she was given the same education as her brothers by her father - her sister Anna Skytte also became respected for her learning.
Education
She studied theology, ethics, history, philology and geology, and mastered Latin, French, German and Greek.
Career
During her lifetime, she became an ideal and role model for a learned female scholar. This was unusual, as the educational level was not normally this high for females of the nobility. She corresponded in Latin, and became known for her poetry.
Vendela Skytte was famed in her lifetime for her learning and academic abilities, qualities which was then regarded as rare for her sex, and came to be regarded an ideal of a female academic, and praised form keeping her femininity despite her learning, which was regarded as oppositions by her contemporaries.
She has been called the most learned female of her country before Christina of Sweden. She held a salon and participated in the contemporary intellectual debate.
She surrounded herself with scientists and artists and corresponded with the learned Catharina Burea. Except for her learning, she was admired for her beauty and wit.
Georg Stiernhielm called her »Sexus et sæculi miraculum» ("The wonder of her time and her sex") for her intellect and beauty.
Her spouse later became governor of Österbotten, but during the life time of Vendela, he was in service of the army of Gustav II Adolf during the Thirty Years war. She some time accompanied him during his warfare in the war in Germany. She was brought to Sweden and buried in Uppsala.
In the national National Portrait Gallery (Sweden) of Gripsholm, which was opened in the 1822, she was one of the first six women of the Swedish history who was given a portrait in the collection, alongside Bridget of Sweden, Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, Barbro Stigsdotter, Sophia Rosenhane and Sophia Elisabet Brenner.
Poem:
"Alas, the mayflies do not live longer
They come and go with the sun. When the evening wind blows by your ear,
In it is an image of my fates! So sad around my grave does the sylphid go
and blow away my memory from time
VITALIS".