Joseph Penso de la Vega (1650–1692), Marrano writer and merchant. Joseph was born in Amsterdam. His father Isaac Penso Felix, a native of Espejo, Spain, had been imprisoned by the Inquisition in Spain, and supposedly vowed to embrace Judaism openly within a year of his release. When freed he fled with his family to Antwerp and then to Amsterdam, and formally returned to Judaism at Middleburg. A charitable man, Isaac was said to have distributed 80,000 guldens as tithes from his profits.

Joseph Penso spent a short period in Leghorn, but lived mainly in Amsterdam, where he was a member of several literary academies and produced many and varied works. Besides funeral orations, wedding verses, and similar occasional pieces, he claimed to have written more than 200 epistles to different European statesmen.