Isabella d'Este

A Renaissance Princess

Christine Shaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429683060
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua (1474-1539), is one of the most studied figures of Renaissance Italy, as an epitome of Renaissance court culture and as a woman having an unusually prominent role in the politics of her day. This biography provides a well-rounded account of the full range of her activities and interests from her childhood to her final years as a dowager, and considers Isabella d'Este not as an icon but as a woman of her time and place in the world. It covers all aspects of her life including her relationship with her parents and siblings as well as with her husband and children; her interest in literature and music, painting and antiquities; her political and diplomatic activities; her concern with fashion and jewellery; her relations with other women; and her love of travel.

In this book, grounded in an understanding of the context of the Italy of her day, the typical interests and behaviour of women of Isabella d'Este's status within Renaissance Italy are distinguished from those that were unique to her, such as the elaborate apartments that she created for herself and her extensive surviving correspondence, which provides insights into all aspects of life in the major courts of northern Italy, centres of Renaissance culture.

Providing fresh perspectives on one of the most famous figures of Renaissance Italy, Isabella d'Este will be of great interest to undergraduates and graduates of early modern history, gender studies, renaissance studies and art history.

1 A child in Ferrara

Isabella was a very fortunate child. She was born into a princely dynasty that had created one of the major cultural centres of Renaissance Italy, to parents who genuinely loved their daughter, who were concerned for her happiness and her welfare, and educated her with care. Of course, she had to conform to the demands and restrictions that her status entailed. At the age of five she was betrothed to a husband chosen for political and dynastic reasons. It would have been difficult for her to remember a time when she was not aware that one day she would be the Marchioness of Mantua. But she would always remain Isabella d’Este. This was not just a question of her keeping her family name when she married, for that was common practice for women of her rank in the Italy of her time. Throughout her life, she felt a strong affinity with her birth family, and with Ferrara. In character, she was very different from both of her parents, and she would, notoriously, aim to make manifest her unique qualities as an individual. Yet she would retain the stamp of her upbringing at the court in Ferrara to the end of her days.

Isabella was the first child of Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara and his consort, Eleonora d’Aragona, the daughter of King Ferrante of Naples. Their marriage was not, as hers would be, the outcome of a long and untroubled betrothal. Ercole knew Eleonora’s father well, for he was brought up in the Neapolitan court, as his companion. Sent to Naples in 1445 at the age of about fourteen, he stayed there for seventeen years while two of his illegitimate half-brothers, Leonello and Borso, preceded him on the throne of Ferrara. (Their father Niccolò III had sired no fewer than fourteen illegitimate sons, as well as three legitimate ones, and ten illegitimate and two legitimate daughters.) At the conveniently distant Neapolitan court, Ercole could be kept in honourable exile under the supervision of Leonello’s father-in-law, King Alfonso.¹

After Alfonso’s death in 1458, Ferrante was faced by a baronial rebellion and a challenge from the French prince Jean d’Anjou, who came to reclaim the crown for the Angevin dynasty which Alfonso had displaced. At first Ercole supported Ferrante, but then, probably acting under instructions from Borso, he fought for the Angevins until his return to Ferrara in 1462. Understandably, Ferrante felt this as a personal betrayal. He was a vengeful man. Some of the barons who had fought against him and were supposedly pardoned, vanished into the dungeons of the royal fortresses in Naples, never to emerge. But he seemed to become genuinely reconciled to Ercole. Either he accepted that Ercole had only been acting on his brother’s instructions, or he took a pragmatic view of the advantages of being on good terms with him, as the most likely successor to the childless Borso. In any case, he did not wait for Borso’s death in 1471 to open discussions with Ercole about marrying Eleonora. Ercole liked the suggestion, but there was one major obstacle. She was already married, to a brother of the duke of Milan.

Eleonora, who was born in 1450, was married to Sforza Maria Sforza by proxy in 1465, but did not go to join her husband. The following year her father-in-law, Francesco Sforza, died and the new duke, Galeazzo Maria, refused to fulfil the terms of the marriage settlement. Eleonora was left in limbo, married and yet not married. As the years passed, her situation became humiliating and distressing to her. ‘Always weeping’, she felt her youth slipping away from her.² This might seem a touch melodramatic for a young woman of twenty, but by contemporary standards, she was well past the age when it would have been considered fitting for her to be with the man to whom she had been betrothed for so long. Ferrante felt for his daughter. He was very fond of her, proud of her intelligence and good sense, and he wanted her to have a husband. He could not think of a better match for her in Italy then Ercole.³ But before Eleonora could become Ercole’s bride, she would have to be divorced from Sforza Maria Sforza.

There were canonical grounds for divorce, as the marriage had not been consummated, so the pope’s consent was not a problem. Sforza Maria’s opinion in the matter did not count for much. It was his brother, Duke Galeazzo Maria, who had to agree to the dissolution of the marriage. Among the conditions he insisted on were that Ferrante’s granddaughter, Isabella d’Aragona, should be married to Galeazzo’s own son and heir, and that the girl should be sent to Milan to be brought up there (a suggestion that sent her mother into hysterics).⁴ Despite resenting his daughter’s dilemma being used as a diplomatic bargaining counter in this way, Ferrante, anxious to liberate Eleonora from her embarrassing situation, was prepared to discuss Galeazzo’s demands.

Happy to swap Sforza Maria for Ercole, Eleonora was speaking of her second marriage as fixed while her father was still wrangling for the consent of the duke of Milan to the dissolution of her first. A marble portrait bust of her was carved to send to Ercole. Preparations of her trousseau were under way, so that she could leave for Ferrara in September 1472. Ercole was becoming impatient – there was talk of him considering an offer of the hand of a daughter of the duke of Savoy – and Eleonora again began to lament her fate. If the affair was going to continue to drag on like this, she protested, she would rather enter a convent.⁵ To settle them both, Ferrante arranged a wedding by proxy, with Ercole’s ambassador standing in for him at a private ceremony, before the papal dispensation was officially notified.

Even though it was decided that she should stay at Naples until the spring to avoid her making the long journey to Ferrara in winter weather, Eleonora was now content. Finally, in mid-May 1473, Sigismondo d’Este arrived in Naples to accompany his brother’s bride to her new home. Another proxy marriage was held, this time in a more public ceremony, with Sigismondo standing in for Ercole. Jewels and cloth of gold said to be worth over 80,000 ducats were presented to her as gifts from Ercole, and the size of her dowry – again, 80,000 ducats – was published.⁶ Galeazzo Maria Sforza was still quibbling as Eleonora was making her journey to Ferrara.

A splendid company of nobles had been sent to Naples by Ercole to accompany his bride, and she was much fêted as she made her way north. Her arrival at Ferrara on 3 July was no anti-climax. Ercole was out to impress. He awaited her on horseback at one of the city gates, dressed in a mantle of crimson cloth of gold and a black velvet hat bearing a large ruby and a pendant pearl. Processing through streets shaded by woollen cloth stretched across the street, Eleonora rode a white horse under a baldaquin of crimson cloth of gold, past set pieces representing the planets, with dancers and singers. She too was dressed in gold brocade, in what was noted as the ‘Neapolitan style’, her hair loose over her shoulders as befitted a young bride, with a white veil covered with pearls, and wearing a golden crown with rubies, diamonds and pearls as befitted a king’s daughter.⁷ The next day she went through yet another wedding ceremony, in the cathedral of Ferrara, this time with Ercole in person.

She would not dazzle her new subjects by her beauty – short and fat, a big face, short neck, rather brown, a small mouth, small, black eyes and a small nose that turned up a little, not given to dressing finely, was the less than flattering description of her by a local chronicler. Nor was he impressed by her manner – haughty, abrupt and domineering, insisting that those to whom she gave audience should address her on their knees, ‘as though they were adoring God’.⁸

Conscious of her dignity as a princess as she may have been, she was also conscious of the duties of her new role, and the way she performed them would win her the esteem of her subjects. To her mind, her duties as Ercole’s consort were not limited to providing him with heirs, or conventional works of piety and charity, although she fulfilled those too. She soon showed gifts as an administrator and manager, proving more capable than her husband of keeping a careful eye on routine business. A memorandum she compiled after some years in Ferrara of tasks to be done was principally concerned with checks on income and expenditure, with regular reports from the officials who handled the revenues, and going through the accounts weekly. She did not think it beneath her to make personal checks on the lodgings of visitors to the court to see that they were in good order – and that no one was making off with the furnishings.⁹

Advice Eleonora sent to her sixteen-year-old daughter Isabella on the duties of a consort has the ring of practical experience, not pious exhortation.

Be solicitous and diligent in what is necessary and expedient, not minding the effort and taking pleasure in everything, because you will feel it less and have a quieter mind when you have done the tasks, for you know well that she who has a husband and a state, will necessarily have to exert herself, bearing in mind that you will have children and that you have to see to maintaining and conserving the property and the state, and do what is needful for your subjects and citizens, according to what may crop up.¹⁰

Nor did she think it beneath her dignity to tend her husband personally when he was ill; that was the way, she advised Isabella, to make her husband love her twice as much as before.¹¹

While she always formally deferred to Ercole’s wishes and judgement, she expected him to treat her with consideration and to respect her opinion. Forgive me if I complain a little of the instructions you have given me, without first finding out from me what happened, she wrote to him in 1487, because it looks as though you hold me in little account, and that I proceed hastily, and without concern for justice. If that is what you think, you had better give this responsibility to someone else.¹² If it were not for the authority I have in representing you and the brusque words I have to use, nothing would get done, she told Ercole two years later. No one wants to come to show their accounts, and they are all hoping to come to some sort of arrangement through your benevolence.¹³

Soft touch as Ercole may sometimes have seemed compared to his consort, he was by no means incapable of governing. He could show good judgement, good sense and needful diligence. But he was liable to bouts of indecision and reluctance to confront difficulties, preferring to seek distraction in hunting or playing cards or music. Details of architecture and town planning were of more interest to him than the details of financial administration to which Eleonora paid such close attention. More reserved and less approachable than Borso had been, Ercole wanted the city as well as the court of Ferrara to reflect his ducal status.

From her father, as well as from her mother, Isabella imbibed a strong sense of her own status as the daughter of a duke of Ferrara and the granddaughter of a king. She was not brought up to consider affairs of state as a male preserve. In the household and court in which she grew up, the consort of the prince had a recognized and respected role in government and administration, far beyond the running of her own household and the care of her children. Exceptionally diligent as she was, Eleonora set her daughters a high standard. Neither Isabella nor Beatrice would ever really match this, partly because they would have different priorities, and partly because their husbands would not leave so much to their care.

Eleonora was delighted by the birth of her first baby, on 17 May 1474. ‘Although it is not the custom to write about the birth of little girls’, she wrote to Barbara of Brandenburg, Marchioness of Mantua, to tell her of her safe delivery of ‘a beautiful little damsel’.¹⁴ To celebrate the arrival of their duke’s first child, the people of Ferrara lit two great bonfires in the square before the palace. (Unfortunately, these fires got out of control, and burned the shutters of many of the shops and workshops around the square.) Her baptism was celebrated in great style. Isabella was carried into the cathedral by a courtier dressed in a mantle of gold brocade, accompanied by a large crowd of gentlemen, members of the university and townspeople, as well as the households of her father and mother. She was baptized by a bishop. Representatives of Ferrante and of the duke of Urbino were among her godfathers. A ball followed in the ‘great public hall’, and then there were races, one for horses, one for men and another in which 150 boys took part. Eleonora watched the races with her ladies and the girls who had been invited to the ball, while the duke presided on horseback.¹⁵

Isabella was not the only child for long. A year later, on 29 June, her sister Beatrice was born. This time ‘there were no celebrations, because everyone wished for a boy’.¹⁶ Their wishes were satisfied by the arrival of Alfonso, born on 21 July 1476. Three days of public festivities greeted his birth. Two-year-old Isabella attended his baptism, as a personage in her own right, in the charge of one of Ercole’s men rather than a nursemaid. Three more sons followed: Ferrante in 1477, Ippolito in 1479 and finally Sigismondo in 1480. Eleonora had unquestionably done her dynastic duty, providing Ercole with four healthy sons and two daughters.

Another duty the loyal consort of a prince or nobleman was often called upon to perform was to raise his illegitimate children, or at least his favourite ones, in her household with her own. Two illegitimate children of Ercole received a mother’s care from Eleonora: Lucrezia, who was born before the duke’s marriage, and Giulio, born in 1478. Giulio may well have been conceived while Eleonora was away from Ferrara from June to Novembe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: “Isabella d’Este, granddaughter and niece of Aragonese kings, daughter and sister of dukes of Ferrara, wife and mother of Gonzaga marquises”
• 1 A child in Ferrara
• 2 Wife and consort
• 3 Always an Este
• 4 Patron and collector
• 5 The first lady
• 6 The traveller
• 7 The dowager
• Bibliography
• Index