Isabella d'Este
Isabella d' Este ( born May 18, 1474 Ferrara, † February 13, 1539 ibid ) was one of the most important people in the culture and politics of the Italian Renaissance.
Life
Isabella d' Este was the daughter of Ercole I d' Este, Duke of Ferrara, and Leonora of Naples, daughter of King Ferdinand I of Naples. Antonio Tebaldeo was her tutor. Her younger sister was Beatrice d' Este, Duchess of Milan as the wife of Ludovico Sforza, her younger brothers were the Duke Alfonso I d' Este of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio Emilia and the Cardinal Ippolito I d'Este.
Isabella d' Este had - as her voluminous correspondence from Mantua shows - experienced a very good education. For already made their educated mother, who not only could play the harp and with great passion collected the images of famous painter, but also possessed a small library. Isabella was taught as their brothers and sisters in Latin, music ( she could perfectly play the lute and the flute, and to have had a wonderful singing voice), in dance, in Greek and Roman history and classical literature. With particular interest, she studied maps and dealt with astrology. Your contemporaries eventually described as extremely talk gifted, highly intelligent, well-read, quick-witted, very spirited and as a passionate chess and card player. She could converse in Latin fluently. She is described as very beautiful, but declined as her mother to obesity.
She later became a passionate, almost greedy collector of Roman sculpture and Contracting Authority of Modern sculptures in the antique style.
At the age of 16 years, on February 12, 1490, she was with Gianfrancesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, married. They got along very well with her husband's family, but not so well with her suspicious and difficult suffering from syphilis since 1512 husband.
On December 31, 1493 Isabella brought her first child into the world, a daughter, whom she named after her mother died shortly before Eleonora. Your disappointment that she had borne a son, was very large, the relationship with her daughter, her father later darling, always remained cool. Her second daughter, Margherita, died after two months.
On May 17, 1500 she gave birth to her longed-for son Federico II Gonzaga, who was named after his grandfather.
1502 was Livia ( died as a child) and 1503 Ippolita to the world, to which they also emotionally was no access. In November 1505 and in January 1507 ( 1527 Cardinal ) and Ferrante she gave birth to her sons Ercole (commander under Emperor Charles V and founder of the Dukes of Guastalla ). 1508 her last child was Livia (named after her sister, who died in the same year ) born. Her sons she loved more than anything, but mockers advocate that if you still come their dogs in front of their daughters.
Her oldest daughter had political reasons Francesco Maria della Rovere, marry the nephew of Pope Julius II, Ippolita and Livia had to be nuns.
Only at the age she was reconciled with her daughters and gave them in their testament. Above all, the unfortunate life of her oldest daughter went to her very close.
Act as patron
Isabella and her husband supported Ludovico Ariosto as patrons, while he wrote his Orlando Furioso, and both were strongly influenced by Baldassare Castiglione, author of Il Cortigiano ( The Courtier ), as a model for aristocratic behavior for the next 200 years, affected. In Castiglione, it is also due that Giulio Romano was summoned to Mantua, to expand the Castello and other buildings. Under its auspices, the Court Mantua one of the most cultured in Europe was. Among the artists, writers, scholars and musicians who were attracted, were Raphael, Andrea Mantegna and the composers Bartolomeo Tromboncino and Marchetto Cara. Titian painted it twice, Leonardo da Vinci's portrait drawing of her hangs in the Louvre. Your study ( studiolo ) left her with cycles of Mantegna, Perugino, Lorenzo Costa, and Correggio imagine. Her ambition concerning the equipment of their studiolo but did not stop in front of it to acquire art objects displaced relatives.
Acting as regent
During the absence of her husband as a military commander in the service of Venice ( 1489-1498 ) Isabella of Mantua ruled for him, as did during his Venetian captivity ( 1509/1510 ), which she completed by diplomatic means, and after his death on March 29, 1519 her son Federico II Gonzaga. She began to play an important role in Italian politics, in which they constantly improved Mantua's position. Your skills, it is also due to that Mantua was elevated to a duchy in 1530, and her younger son Ercole was made a cardinal in 1527. They showed great diplomatic skills in negotiations with Cesare Borgia, who had dispossessed the husband of her friend and sister Elisabetta Gonzaga, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, 1502.