Her father was Count Annibale Cesis and he gave 300 pieces of gold for her dowry when she entered the Augustinian convent in Modena in 1593.
Unlike her contemporaries, her work contains indications for instruments such as cornetts, trombones, violones, and archviolones.
Another is that low parts may have been sung an octave higher than written, as she wrote this direction for some sections.
Sulpitia Cesis is mentioned in Giovanni Battista Spaccini's chronicle of life in Modena, as the composer of a motet which was performed at the doors of San Geminiano in 1596 during a religious procession.
For this text, "Cesis inserts melismatic phrases, underlining the name of Mary Magdalene and depicting the word surrexit (He is risen), in an otherwise dominantly homophonic texture and affectively uses harmonic suspension and dissonance to emphasize the miracle of Jesus' disappearance (Non est hic, "He is not there")".