Selected Letters (Volume 54) (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series) [1 ed.] 0866985727, 9780866985727

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Isabella d’Este

Selected Letters Ed i te d a n d tr a n s l ate d by

Deanna Shemek

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 54

SELECTED LETTERS

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 54

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEXTS AND STUDIES VOLUME 516

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Ser ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Madre María Rosa Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns Edited and translated by Sarah E. Owens Volume 1, 2009 Giovan Battista Andreini Love in the Mirror: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Jon R. Snyder Volume 2, 2009 Raymond de Sabanac and Simone Zanacchi Two Women of the Great Schism: The Revelations of Constance de Rabastens by Raymond de Sabanac and Life of the Blessed Ursulina of Parma by Simone Zanacchi Edited and translated by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Bruce L. Venarde Volume 3, 2010 Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera The True Medicine Edited and translated by Gianna Pomata Volume 4, 2010 Louise-Geneviève Gillot de Sainctonge Dramatizing Dido, Circe, and Griselda Edited and translated by Janet Levarie Smarr Volume 5, 2010

Pernette du Guillet Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Karen Simroth James Translated by Marta Rijn Finch Volume 6, 2010 Antonia Pulci Saints’ Lives and Bible Stories for the Stage: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Elissa B. Weaver Translated by James Wyatt Cook Volume 7, 2010 Valeria Miani Celinda, A Tragedy: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Valeria Finucci Translated by Julia Kisacky Annotated by Valeria Finucci and Julia Kisacky Volume 8, 2010 Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers Edited and translated by Lewis C. Seifert and Domna C. Stanton Volume 9, 2010

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Ser ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sophie, Electress of Hanover and Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence Edited and translated by Lloyd Strickland Volume 10, 2011 In Dialogue with the Other Voice in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women’s Writing Edited by Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino Volume 11, 2011 Sister Giustina Niccolini The Chronicle of Le Murate Edited and translated by Saundra Weddle Volume 12, 2011 Liubov Krichevskaya No Good without Reward: Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Brian James Baer Volume 13, 2011 Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell The Writings of an English Sappho Edited by Patricia Phillippy With translations by Jaime Goodrich Volume 14, 2011

Lucrezia Marinella Exhortations to Women and to Others If They Please Edited and translated by Laura Benedetti Volume 15, 2012 Margherita Datini Letters to Francesco Datini Translated by Carolyn James and Antonio Pagliaro Volume 16, 2012 Delarivier Manley and Mary Pix English Women Staging Islam, 1696–1707 Edited and introduced by Bernadette Andrea Volume 17, 2012 Cecilia Del Nacimiento Journeys of a Mystic Soul in Poetry and Prose Introduction and prose translations by Kevin Donnelly Poetry translations by Sandra Sider Volume 18, 2012 Lady Margaret Douglas and Others The Devonshire Manuscript: A Women’s Book of Courtly Poetry Edited and introduced by Elizabeth Heale Volume 19, 2012

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Ser ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Arcangela Tarabotti Letters Familiar and Formal Edited and translated by Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater Volume 20, 2012 Pere Torrellas and Juan de Flores Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers: A Bilingual Edition and Study Edited and translated by Emily C. Francomano Volume 21, 2013 Barbara Torelli Benedetti Partenia, a Pastoral Play: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Lisa Sampson and Barbara Burgess-Van Aken Volume 22, 2013 François Rousset, Jean Liebault, Jacques Guillemeau, Jacques Duval and Louis De Serres Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (1581–1625) Edited and translated by Valerie WorthStylianou Volume 23, 2013 Mary Astell The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England Edited by Jacqueline Broad Volume 24, 2013

Sophia of Hanover Memoirs (1630–1680) Edited and translated by Sean Ward Volume 25, 2013 Katherine Austen Book M: A London Widow’s Life Writings Edited by Pamela S. Hammons Volume 26, 2013 Anne Killigrew “My Rare Wit Killing Sin”: Poems of a Restoration Courtier Edited by Margaret J. M. Ezell Volume 27, 2013 Tullia d’Aragona and Others The Poems and Letters of Tullia d’Aragona and Others: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Julia L. Hairston Volume 28, 2014 Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza The Life and Writings of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza Edited and translated by Anne J. Cruz Volume 29, 2014 Russian Women Poets of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Amanda Ewington Volume 30, 2014

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se r ie S edi to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se r ie S edi to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Jacques du Bosc L’Honnête Femme: The Respectable Woman in Society and the New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women Edited and translated by Sharon Diane Nell and Aurora Wolfgang Volume 31, 2014 Lady Hester Pulter Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda Edited by Alice Eardley Volume 32, 2014 Jeanne Flore Tales and Trials of Love, Concerning Venus’s Punishment of Those Who Scorn True Love and Denounce Cupid’s Sovereignity: A Bilingual Edition and Study Edited and translated by Kelly Digby Peebles Poems translated by Marta Rijn Finch Volume 33, 2014 Veronica Gambara Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition Critical introduction by Molly M. Martin Edited and translated by Molly M. Martin and Paola Ugolini Volume 34, 2014

Catherine de Médicis and Others Portraits of the Queen Mother: Polemics, Panegyrics, Letters Translation and study by Leah L. Chang and Katherine Kong Volume 35, 2014 Françoise Pascal, MarieCatherine Desjardins, Antoinette Deshoulières, and Catherine Durand Challenges to Traditional Authority: Plays by French Women Authors, 1650–1700 Edited and translated by Perry Gethner Volume 36, 2015 Franciszka Urszula Radziwiłłowa Selected Drama and Verse Edited by Patrick John Corness and Barbara Judkowiak Translated by Patrick John Corness Translation Editor Aldona Zwierzyńska-Coldicott Introduction by Barbara Judkowiak Volume 37, 2015 Diodata Malvasia Writings on the Sisters of San Luca and Their Miraculous Madonna Edited and translated by Danielle Callegari and Shannon McHugh Volume 38, 2015

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se r ie S edi to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se r ie S edi to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Margaret Van Noort Spiritual Writings of Sister Margaret of the Mother of God (1635–1643) Edited by Cordula van Wyhe Translated by Susan M. Smith Volume 39, 2015 Giovan Francesco Straparola The Pleasant Nights Edited and translated by Suzanne Magnanini Volume 40, 2015 Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld D’Andilly Writings of Resistance Edited and translated by John J. Conley, S.J. Volume 41, 2015 Francesco Barbaro The Wealth of Wives: A Fifteenth-Century Marriage Manual Edited and translated by Margaret L. King Volume 42, 2015 Jeanne D’Albret Letters from the Queen of Navarre with an Ample Declaration Edited and translated by Kathleen M. Llewellyn, Emily E. Thompson, and Colette H. Winn Volume 43, 2016

Bathsua Makin and Mary More with a reply to More by Robert Whitehall Educating English Daughters: Late Seventeenth-Century Debates Edited by Frances Teague and Margaret J. M. Ezell Associate Editor Jessica Walker Volume 44, 2016 Anna StanisŁawska Orphan Girl: A Transaction, or an Account of the Entire Life of an Orphan Girl by way of Plaintful Threnodies in the Year 1685: The Aesop Episode Verse translation, introduction, and commentary by Barry Keane Volume 45, 2016 Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi Letters to Her Sons, 1447–1470 Edited and translated by Judith Bryce Volume 46, 2016 Mother Juana de la Cruz Mother Juana de la Cruz, 1481–1534: Visionary Sermons Edited by Jessica A. Boon and Ronald E. Surtz. Introductory material and notes by Jessica A. Boon. Translated by Ronald E. Surtz and Nora Weinerth Volume 47, 2016

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se r ie S edi to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se r ie S edi to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Claudine-Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin Memoirs of the Count of Comminge and The Misfortunes of Love Edited and translated by Jonathan Walsh Volume 48, 2016 Feliciana Enríquez de Guzmán, Ana Caro Mallén, and Sor Marcela de San Félix Women Playwrights of Early Modern Spain Edited by Nieves Romero-Díaz and Lisa Vollendorf Translated and annotated by Harley Erdman Volume 49, 2016 Anna Trapnel Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea; or, A Narrative of Her Journey from London into Cornwall Edited by Hilary Hinds Volume 50, 2016

María Vela y Cueto Autobiography and Letters of a Spanish Nun Edited by Susan Laningham Translated by Jane Tar Volume 51, 2016 Christine de Pizan The Book of the Mutability of Fortune Edited and translated by Geri L. Smith Volume 52, 2017 Marguerite d’Auge, Renée Burlamacchi, and Jeanne du Laurens Sin and Salvation in Early Modern France: Three Women’s Stories Edited, and with an introduction by Colette H. Winn. Translated by Nicholas Van Handel and Colette H. Winn Volume 53, 2017

ISABELLA D’ESTE

Selected Letters •

Edited and translated by DEANNA SHEMEK

Iter Press Toronto, Ontario Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Tempe, Arizona 2017

Iter Press Tel: 416/978–7074

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 416/978–1668

Web: www.itergateway.org

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Tel: 480/965–5900

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 480/965–1681

Web: acmrs.org

© 2017 Iter, Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. A generous subvention from the Lila Acheson Wallace — Reader’s Digest Publications Subsidy at Villa I Tatti enabled the book’s publication. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Isabella d’Este, consort of Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, 1474–1539 Author. | Shemek, Deanna, editor, translator. Title: Isabella d’Este : selected letters / edited and translated by Deanna Shemek Other titles: Correspondence. English. Description: Tempe, Arizona : Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017. | Series: Medieval and Renaissance texts and studies ; 516 Identifiers: LCCN 2016053857 (print) | LCCN 2017005260 (ebook) | ISBN 9780866985727 (paperback) | ISBN 9780866987332 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Isabella d’Este, consort of Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, 1474– 1539—Correspondence. | Mantua (Italy)—Kings and rulers—Correspondence. | Nobility— Italy—Correspondence. | Mantua (Italy)—History—Sources. | Italy—History—1492–1559— Sources. | Renaissance—Italy—Sources. Classification: LCC DG540.8.I7 A413 2017 (print) | LCC DG540.8.I7 (ebook) |DDC 945/.28106092 [B] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016053857 Cover illustration: “File: Tizian 056.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, accessed 20 May 2015, https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Isabella_d%27Este#/media/File:Tizian_056.jpg. Wikimedia Commons image source: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei: von der Antike bis zum Beginn der Moderne. DVD-ROM. ISBN 9783936122206. Berlin: Yorck Project, Gesellschaft für Bildarchivierung. Distributed by Directmedia Publishing GmbH. c2002. Portrait details: Tizian (Tiziano Vecellio) (c.1488–1576), Isabella d’Este (1474–1539), Margravine of Mantua. Oil on canvas (1534-1536), 102 x 64 cm. Inv. Gemäldegalerie, 83. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Cover design: Maureen Morin, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries. Typesetting and production: Iter Press.

Contents Acknowledgments

xiii

Introduction

1

Letters of Isabella d’Este 1. 1479–1499: Letters 1–200

21

2. 1500–1509: Letters 201–420

141

3. 1510–1519: Letters 421–608

307

4. 1520–1529: Letters 609–748

441

5. 1530–1539: Letters 749–830

535

Weights, Measures, and Time

583

Genealogical Tables

585

Glossary of Names

593

Abbreviations

647

Bibliography

649

Index

669

Acknowledgments With pleasure I acknowledge the generous financial support of a number of institutions that made this edition possible. Yearlong fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Harvard Villa I Tatti in Florence afforded me crucial periods of concentrated work. At the Villa I Tatti I found both material support of every kind, from books to copying facilities, and also a community of colleagues gathered under the directorship of then-Director Walter Kaiser with whom to exchange ideas in the splendid surroundings of the Bernard Berenson villa. I remain deeply grateful for that transformative opportunity, a gift that keeps on giving. The Committee on Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz provided regular injections of funding to help me travel to Italy for summer and sabbatical archival work; their faith, in particular, in this project is most appreciated. A generous subvention from the Lila Acheson Wallace — Reader’s Digest Publications Subsidy at Villa I Tatti enabled the book’s publication. The staff of the Archivio di Stato of Mantua has been generous, and this book would not have been possible without their assistance. Nearly every day I spent in the archive found me seeking their help in deciphering words. They made these exchanges occasions for fun and collaborative learning: dictionaries came down from shelves, inquiries floated among scholars in the room, and moments of discovery produced palpable collective glee. Director Daniela Ferrari, who was in many ways responsible for that local culture, also afforded me many hours of her time, sometimes huddling in her office over a particularly knotty document, sometimes explaining the institutions of the Gonzaga state, sometimes introducing me to just the right person to help me unravel a mystery. At the Villa I Tatti, Michael Rocke, Kathryn Bosi, and the entire library staff were always happy to facilitate my work. At Santa Cruz’s McHenry Library I relied on the expertise of the formidable Elisabeth Remak-Honnef for both local and worldwide library searches. My sincere thanks to all of these colleagues. Along the way, a number of student assistants, both undergraduate and graduate, provided valuable support. I thank Erin Williams, Katie Kanagawa, Evan Calder Williams, and Maria Sole Costanzo for their labors. The Humanities Division staff at the University of California, Santa Cruz has been spectacularly supportive, from information technology assistance to the processing of bewildering paper work. In particular Jay Olson and Chris Jahr have always been at the ready to keep my work on track when technology seemed to contrive against me. Helen Hill’s good-humored assistance to faculty in Cowell College and Janelle Marines’s understanding of financial bureaucracy were also keys to my success. A great number of colleagues provided information and moral support over the years of this book’s elaboration. Though I cannot name them all here, I must xiii

xiv Acknowledgments record my debts to Jordi Aladro-Font, Karen Bassi, Margaret Brose, the late Clifford M. Brown, Stephen Campbell, Mary Ann Carolan, Dori Coblentz, Elizabeth Cohen, Alison Cornish, Jane Couchman, Ann Crabb, Suzanne Cusick, Andrew Dell’Antonio, Janina Darling, Konrad Eisenbichler, Iain Fenlon, Luca Fitzgerald, Alison K. Frazier, Claudio Gallico, Amyrose McCue Gill, Katherine Gill, Allan Grieco, Sarah Matthews Grieco, Ariane Helou, Margo Hendricks, Sally Hickson, Jason Jacobs, Virginia Jansen, Lawrence Jenkins, the late F. W. Kent, Victoria Kirkham, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Anne Macneil, John McLucas, Katherine McKiver, Gerry Milligan, Caroline Murphy, Jonathan Katz Nelson, Marina Nordera, Roberta Piccinelli, Eileen Reeves, Andrea Rizzi, Diana Robin, Guido Ruggiero, Catherine Soussloff, the late Barbara Sparti, Christopher Stembridge, Melissa Swain, Valerie Taylor, Nina Treadwell, Alessandra Villa, Lisa Boutin Vitela, Michael Warren, Elissa Weaver, Evelyn Welch, and Michael Wyatt. Douglas Biow, Virginia Cox, Bruce Edelstein, Julia L. Hairston, Dennis Looney, the late Romano Sarzi and Jane Tylus were all supportive in particular ways that sustained my spirit in the course of this project. I express here my gratitude to all of them. My thanks also to Barbara Banks Amendola, who shared the manuscript of her biography of Isabella d’Este with me, pre-publication, and consulted with me on Gonzaga genealogies. I strain for words to thank Laura Giannetti, who painstakingly read the entire manuscript at an intermediate stage and saved me from numerous errors in translation; and Molly Bourne, who read all the letters through 1519, the year of Francesco II Gonzaga’s death. Both offered precious corrections and elucidations of obscure references in Isabella’s correspondence. Sarah Cockram also read portions of the manuscript and shared copious amounts of information from her own research on the Gonzagas. Carolyn James read the semi-final version of the manuscript anonymously for the press and was, from this project’s beginning to end, a thorough, generous, and knowledgeable resource. Such collegiality and collaboration on the part of these wise interlocutors has been priceless. Margaret King, Margaret English-Haskin, and Anabela Piersol expertly saw the manuscript through its final editorial phases, while Amyrose McCue Gill and Lisa Regan of TextFormations, assisted by Valerie Hoagland, expertly prepared the volume’s indices. Any remaining errors in this book are my responsibility alone. The seeds of my thinking about Isabella d’Este and her correspondence were sown by several people who had no idea what effect would result from our exchanges. Armando Petrucci and Franca Nardelli taught me how to read manuscripts in a seminar sponsored by the NEH at the Newberry Library, back in 1988. Without their help and confidence, I would never have walked into the Archivio di Stato di Mantova. Several years later on a visit to Vienna, I received as a gift from my host Hans Loeschner the catalogue for a splendid exhibition devoted to Isabella d’Este, which had just closed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Acknowledgments xv Though I had missed the exhibition, the catalogue (which is now falling to pieces from heavy use) caught my attention and drew me to Isabella. At about the same time, Albert Ascoli remarked to me, offhand, that he was sorry not to see Isabella d’Este make a substantial appearance in my first book, Ladies Errant (Duke 1998). Armed with basic paleographic skills and curious to see what I might find, I dipped into Isabella’s correspondence, a body of documents that proved to be so gripping and expansive that it has sustained my attention for many years. Finally, Albert Rabil, Jr. approached me at a conference where I had just delivered a paper about Isabella and asked me to contribute a volume of her letters to the Other Voice Series. Though I immediately agreed, neither of us realized at the time that my assignment would require reading and choosing among over sixteen thousand letters in manuscript, since no edition of Isabella’s correspondence prior to this one has been published, in Italian or any other language. Given the fact that I live in California, the project at times appeared to be beyond my capacities. Which brings me to my husband and best colleague, Tyrus Miller. He has not only kept me going through these long years of the project; he has virtually welcomed the marchesa di Mantova into our lives. After me, he must be the happiest person alive to see Isabella’s letters caught between the covers of this book. I thank him here in a measure that he will understand. For unflagging patience, confidence, serenity and good humor, I owe Albert Rabil, Jr. and Margaret L. King a world of gratitude. In meager exchange, I dedicate this book to them, two visionary scholars who have contributed immensely to Renaissance Studies and the history of women, both through this series and in an inspiring body of their own work.

Introduction Isabella d’Este: Princess, Collector, Correspondent Selected from nearly sixteen thousand manuscript letters, the writings published here emanated over a period of some fifty years from the chancery of Renaissance Italy’s most prolific female correspondent, Isabella d’Este (1474–1539). Isabella was born into the elite class that ruled Europe through bonds of kinship, marriage, and military service. As the firstborn child of Ercole I d’Este, second duke of Ferrara and Eleonora d’Aragona, princess of Naples, she married Francesco II Gonzaga, fourth marchese of Mantua in 1490. By that marriage she became marchesa of that city-state, co-governing it until after Francesco’s death in 1519 and then operating in the background when their son, Federico II, assumed power. Meanwhile, Isabella’s brother, Alfonso I, succeeded their father as duke of Ferrara, taking as his first wife Anna Sforza of Milan and as his second, Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI. Her sister Beatrice reinforced Ferrara’s alliance with Milan when she married Duke Ludovico Sforza. Another brother, Ippolito, worked the power corridors of the papal court, extending his reach by serving in Hungary as archbishop of Esztergom; he later achieved the rank of cardinal.1 There were also outliers in the family. While the youngest of the Este ducal offspring, Sigismondo, lived quietly in the shadow of his more powerful siblings, their brother Ferrante spent thirty-four years in prison and died there for plotting to overthrow his brother as duke. Their natural brother Giulio, severely scarred from a gouge in the eye delivered by Ippolito in an act of jealous rage, was given a life sentence for the same treason and was freed only at the age of eighty-one. Isabella was a figure of renown in her own lifetime and the object of considerable fascination in succeeding centuries. In some ways, indeed, she has become rather too familiar as a “personality” of the Italian Renaissance. Historians of art, theater, music, and fashion have studied her records in detail, charting her prodigious activities as a collector and patron of the arts, a serious amateur musician, and an arbiter of taste. Visitors to the major museums of Paris, Vienna, London, New York, and other world capitals can admire grand canvases from her collection of paintings, peer into glass cases displaying her jewelry, and ponder her visage as rendered by Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, and others. Plates 1. Isabella’s maternal aunt, Beatrice d’Aragona, was also queen of Hungary and Bohemia as the wife of King Mátyás Corvinus from 1476 until his death in 1490 and then as wife to King Wladislaus II of Bohemia. “International” marriages among the Gonzagas included Francesco’s parents (his mother was Margarete von Wittelsbach, of Bavaria) and his sister, Chiara (who was countess of Montpensier).

1

2 Introduction from her dinner table may be seen in collections around the globe from Vancouver to Melbourne, where they are identifiable by the personal emblems she incorporated into their decoration.2 Inside the Ducal Palace of Mantua—now a museum—remain the ornate ceilings and the remnants of trompe-l’oeil architecture in her apartments, chambers that have long stood empty of their treasures, most of which were sold to Charles I of England in 1627 or taken in the Habsburg sack of Mantua in 1630.3 Over the centuries since she lived, many scholars have consulted Isabella d’Este’s papers for information on specific subjects. Many have studied her relations with the historical protagonists of her time; and a notable number of writers have undertaken to narrate all or part of her life in essays, biographies and novels.4 The present volume, however, constitutes the first assembly of a broad selection from Isabella d’Este’s correspondence—the most voluminous 2. See Lisa Boutin Vitela, “Dining in the Gonzaga Suburban Palaces: The Use and Reception of Istoriato Maiolica,” Predella 33 (2013): 103–19; Valerie Taylor, “Art and the Table in Sixteenth-Century Mantua: Feeding the Demand for Innovative Design,” in The Material Renaissance, ed. Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn S. Welch (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 174–96. 3. On the sale to Charles I, see Alessandro Luzio, La galleria dei Gonzaga venduta all’Inghilterra nel 1627–1628: Documenti degli archivi di Mantova e Londra raccolti ed illustrati (Milan: Cogliati, 1913; facsimile reprint Rome: Bardi, 1974). 4. Book-length biographies include, in order of date of publication, Julia Maria Cartwright [Ady], Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474–1539: A Study of the Renaissance, 2 vols. (London: J. Murray; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1903); Titina Strano, Isabella d’Este, marchesa di Mantova (Milan: Ceschina, 1938); Giannetto Bongiovanni, Isabella d’Este, marchesa di Mantova (Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1939); Jan Lauts, Isabella d’Este: Fürstin der Renaissance, 1474–1539 (Hamburg: M. von Schröder, 1952); Jeanne Boujassy, Isabella d’Este, grande dame de la Renaissance (Paris: Fayard, 1960); Edith Patterson Meyer, First Lady of the Renaissance: A Biography of Isabella d’Este (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970); George Marek, The Bed and the Throne: The Life of Isabella d’Este (New York: Harper and Row, 1976); Massimo Felisatti, Isabella d’Este: La primadonna del Rinascimento (Milan: Bompiani, 1982); Daniela Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento: Vita e splendori di Isabella d’Este alla corte di Mantova (Milan: Rizzoli, 2001). Coming to my attention too late to be considered here is the most recent Lorenzo Boldi and Clark Anthony Lawrence, Isabella d’Este: A Renaissance Woman (Rimini: Guaraldi, 2016). All of these are written for a general readership and feature minimal documentation, as is true of the collective portrait, Kate Simon, A Renaissance Tapestry: The Gonzaga of Mantua (New York: Harper and Row, 1988). A forthcoming biography by Barbara Banks Amendola, First Lady of the World: A Biography of Isabella d’Este (seen by this author in preliminary form) features substantial archival documentation. Among the novels, see Maria Bellonci, Private Renaissance: a Novel, trans. William Weaver (New York: Morrow, 1989); and Jacqueline Park, The Secret Book of Grazia de Rossi: a Novel (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997). In a category apart belong the many scholarly studies of Alessandro Luzio and his collaborator Rodolfo Renier. These co-founders of the Giornale storico della letteratura italiana (GSLI) planned to write a definitive biography of Isabella d’Este, but that book never materialized. Of particular note are their two longest studies, Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, Mantova e Urbino: Isabella d’Este ed Elisabetta Gonzaga nelle relazioni familiari e nelle vicende politiche (Turin-Rome: Roux, 1893; reprint Bologna: Forni, 1976); and La coltura e le relazioni letterarie di Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, ed. Simone Albonico (Milan: Bonnard, 2005). The first of these presents itself in many ways as a biography.

Introduction 3 documentary record of her “voice” in many spheres—and the first translation into English of such a selection.5 It is my hope that the range of subject matter here included will both entice new readers to explore the rich landscape of early modern life and bring new material to bear on discussions of the period among experts in the field, perhaps unsettling comfortable notions of Isabella’s character that derive from partial or prejudicial views. A commonplace of historiography casts Isabella d’Este as a female counterpart to the “Renaissance men” for whom Italy is celebrated: polymaths like Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Niccolò Machiavelli, whose reputations vaunt their ability to excel as geniuses in numerous spheres.6 But while the parallel between Isabella and such men is suggestive, it is largely so by contrast, since outlets for her talents were restricted to activities deemed acceptable at the time for elite women. She spent her childhood in the sophisticated court of Ferrara, in regular contact with, musicians, scholars, and courtiers, including prominent humanists like Battista Guarino, who educated her for regency as consort to Francesco Gonzaga. Marriage arrangements were made for Francesco and Isabella in 1480, when the future bride was six and her fiancé was fourteen. In an obvious effort to prepare them for harmonious relations, their families cultivated a friendship between the future spouses by encouraging visits and letter exchanges. Contemporaries described the child Isabella as intelligent and inquisitive, highly verbal, and socially precocious; memorably, she entertained guests with her dancing at the age of seven.7 Accounts by her teachers recall 5. It would be inaccurate to discuss Isabella’s correspondence archive as a record of her voice without acknowledging the mediated nature of conventional, generic, mostly dictated letters. For a brief consideration of such mediation, see Deanna Shemek, “‘Ci Ci’ and ‘Pa Pa’: Script, Mimicry, and Mediation in Isabella d’Este’s Letters,” Rinascimento: Rivista dell’istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento series 2, 43 (2005): 75–91. 6. Several of the paragraphs below draw on my entries for Isabella d’Este in “Este, Isabella d’,” in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999), 2:295– 97; and “Este, Isabella d’,” in Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England, ed. Diana Robin, Anne R. Larsen, and Carole Levin (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 2007), 130–33. 7. Alessandro Luzio, I precettori di Isabella d’Este: Appunti e documenti; per le nozze Renier-Campostrini (Ancona: Morelli, 1887). Luzio cites letters from Beltramino Cusatro to Federico I Gonzaga and from Guido da Bagno. Cusatro, who conducted the marriage agreement between Isabella and Francesco’s families, reports that after preliminary agreements were reached, Isabella was called to speak with him. “And when I and others put different questions to her, she answered with such intelligence and quickness that it seemed to me miraculous that a little girl of six could make such apt replies. Though I had already been told before that she was especially bright, I would never have imagined her to be so much so and in this way” (11–12). Guido da Bagno, writing a year later, reported, “The most illustrious Madama Isabella danced twice for us with Ambrogio the Jew, who is employed by the most illustrious lord duke of Urbino and is her dancing master; no one else danced with such style and ability, which was so much greater than one would expect at her age” (12n).

4 Introduction an active learner possessed of an excellent memory, a girl who enjoyed horseback riding and card games as well as Latin lessons and chivalric romances.8 On 15 February 1490, Isabella d’Este entered her new home city in triumphal procession, having married Francesco II Gonzaga by proxy four days earlier in Ferrara’s ducal chapel. For the next half-century, she played a substantial role in the culture of the Mantuan state, first as marchesa and then, after Francesco’s death in 1519, as an important auxiliary figure in the court of their son and heir, Federico II Gonzaga. Six of Isabella and Francesco’s children survived infancy. Eleonora married Francesco Maria della Rovere, nephew and heir of the childless Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, thereby succeeding her aunt, Elisabetta Gonzaga, as duchess of Urbino. Federico succeeded his father as marchese and was named first duke of Mantua by Habsburg Emperor Charles V in 1530. He married Margherita Paleologa, heir to the marquisate of Monferrato, and ruled Mantua until he died in 1540. Isabella and Francesco’s two other daughters, Ippolita and Livia Osanna, chose to enter convents, in Ippolita’s case preempting plans to place her at the French court in service to the queen. The couple’s bookish second son, Ercole (also known as Aloyse, a northern form of the name Luigi), pursued a career within the Church, where a concerted campaign by his mother led to his appointment as cardinal in 1527. He later served as papal legate to the Council of Trent.9 Their third son, Ferrante (also known by his Spanish names, Ferrando and Ferdinando) married Isabella di Capua, princess of Molfetta; Ferrante excelled as a commander in Charles V’s imperial army and later governed as viceroy of Sicily. These siblings’ political positions placed them at times not only near the center of historic events for Italy, but also on dramatically conflicting sides of the turmoil that wracked the Italian peninsula over the course of the sixteenth century. During the devastating 1527 Sack of Rome, for example, Ferrante represented Charles V, whose unpaid troops were pillaging the city to the emperor’s helpless dismay. Ercole, meanwhile, served the Holy City’s ineffectual prince, Pope Clement VII. Eleonora Gonzaga was at the time in Urbino hearing Clement’s appeals for support, and Federico II was in Mantua, dodging calls for him to choose between empire and Church. As ferocious soldiers raped, wrecked, and murdered their way through the streets of Rome, Isabella d’Este herself was barricaded inside a palace owned by the powerful Colonna family, where she was offering refuge, 8. On Isabella’s memory and her childhood Latin studies, see the letter of her tutor, Jacopo Gallino in Luzio, I precettori, 15. Ferrara fostered two important innovators of heroic adventure poetry in Isabella’s lifetime. Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato is dedicated to her father, while Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso is dedicated to her brother, Ippolito. Isabella knew both poets personally and is the subject of tributes in the Furioso’s final edition. The relevant lines appear in Orlando furioso 13.59–60, 41.67 and 42.84. See also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:293–94. 9. See Paul V. Murphy, Ruling Peacefully: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Patrician Reform in SixteenthCentury Italy (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007).

Introduction 5 reportedly, to thousands. She thus escaped unscathed from one of history’s most horrifying imperial invasions.10 Isabella d’Este was keenly interested in politics, government, and social life and had evident gifts for all three, but it is chiefly for her activities as a patron and a collector that history has thus far remembered her. As her correspondence documents, she spent decades building a distinguished collection of artworks, books, and antiquities, devoting careful attention to its every detail. While Isabella’s role as a female patron was not unique, what made her collection truly extraordinary, and garnered for her a lasting place in the history of art, were the scope, richness, and coherence of her acquisitions, together with her meticulous construction of a designated space in which to display them.11 Shortly after marrying, she embarked on a project to decorate her private apartments in Mantua’s Castello di San Giorgio (now part of the Ducal Palace complex). Her quarters included a large reception room (the Camera delle Armi), her bedroom, a chapel, and a bathroom, plus two additional chambers designed to house books, paintings, antiquities, and other luxury collectibles. These two camerini (little rooms) were a studiolo (study) and a room below it that she called the grotta (grotto), with a short staircase running between them. Isabella used these spaces for reading and quiet withdrawal, but she conceived them also for display to selected guests as an expression of her personal culture, taste, and values. They are recorded as one of the most spectacular instances of self-fashioning in the Italian Renaissance. Stephen Campbell observes of these delightfully stimulating rooms: Isabella’s camerini were emphatically a place devoted to curiosity, to sensual experiences whether visual, tactile, or auditory, and to the reading of “profane” literature. Described by contemporaries as a kind of locus amoenus, they were a place for music-making, for the discussion of cose amorose, and for the accumulation of small and “curious” works of art and nature.12 10. See Leonardo Mazzoldi, Da Ludovico secondo marchese a Francesco secondo duca, vol. 2 of Mazzoldi, ed., Mantova: La storia (Mantua: Istituto Carlo d’Arco, 1961), 293–95. Cited henceforth as Mazzoldi. 11. On other women patrons, see a volume whose title explicitly evokes Isabella d’Este: Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins, eds., Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001). See also Sally Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage in Renaissance Mantua: Matrons, Mystics and Monasteries (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012). 12. Stephen Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 61. Campbell offers a compelling, revisionary interpretation of the studiolo and its contents as a project that in large part was devoted to the management of a freely acknowledged and carefully explored eros. The scholarship on these spaces is extensive. Among the most important contributions, see the substantial work of Clifford M. Brown, including, in order of date of publication, “‘Una testa de Platone antica con la punta dil naso di cera’: Unpublished

6 Introduction Isabella surely had in mind as models for her project the studioli she knew about in the palaces of Urbino, Gubbio, and even Ferrara, where each of her parents had at least one such chamber, but no woman before her had elaborated so full a vision of the domestic interior as personal statement, and no patron, male or female, had developed a multi-media collection of such signature coherence.13 By the time it was completed, seven large narrative paintings (now owned by the Louvre) hung on the walls of the studiolo, by Andrea Mantegna, Lorenzo Costa, Pietro Perugino and (after relocation of the apartments in 1519) Antonio Allegri da Correggio. Isabella’s art collection included additional works by Giovanni Bellini, Giancristoforo Romano, Michelangelo, Francesco Francia, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, and others. The last three artists were among those who executed her portrait. Highly wrought intarsia panels as well as the marchesa’s collections of books, ancient and all’antica sculptures, cameos, medallions, and other precious finds increased the space’s symbolic density, while frescoes, sculpted doorways, gilded ceilings, and tiles bearing enigmatic emblems and mottoes further ornamented the rooms. All of these carefully planned features contributed to an

Negotiations between Isabella d’Este and Niccolò and Giovanni Bellini,” The Art Bulletin 51, no. 4 (1969): 372–77; “‘Lo insaciabile desiderio nostro de cose antique’: New Documents for Isabella d’Este’s Collection of Antiquities,” in Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Cecil Clough (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), 324–53; “Public Interests and Private Collections: Isabella d’Este’s Appartamento della Grotta and its Accessibility to Artists, Scholars and Public Figures,” Sonderdruck 25, no. 4 (1983): 37–41; La grotta di Isabella d’Este: Un simbolo di continuità dinastica per i duchi di Mantova (Mantua: Gianluigi Arcari, 1985); “Tullio Lombardo and Mantua: An Inlaid Marble Pavement for Isabella d’Este’s Grotta and a Marble Portal of the Studiolo,” Arte Veneta 43 (1989): 121–30; “‘Purché la sia cosa che representi antiquità’: Isabella d’Este e il mondo greco-romano,” Civiltà mantovana series 3, 30, no. 14/15 (1995): 71–90, reprinted in Daniele Bini, Isabella d’Este: La primadonna del Rinascimento, Civiltà mantovana 112, Supplement (Modena: Il Bulino; Mantua: Artiglio, 2001), 129-53; “‘Fruste et strache nel fabricare’: Isabella d’Este’s Apartments in the Corte Vecchia,” in La corte di Mantova nell’età di Andrea Mantegna: 1450–1550: Atti del Convegno, Londra, 6-8 marzo 1992, Mantova, 28 marzo 1992, ed. Cesare Mozzarelli, Robert Oresko, and Leandro Ventura (Rome: Bulzoni, 1997), 295-335; Isabella d’Este in the Ducal Palace in Mantua: An Overview of her Rooms in the Castello di San Giorgio and the Corte Vecchia (Rome: Bulzoni, 2005). See also Clifford M. Brown and Anna Maria Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia: Documents for the History of Art and Culture in Renaissance Mantua (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1982); Clifford M. Brown, Anna Maria Lorenzoni, and Sally Hickson, “Per dare qualche splendore a la gloriosa cita di Mantua”: Documents for the Antiquarian Collection of Isabella d’Este (Rome: Bulzoni, 2002). On Isabella as a collector, see also Rose Marie San Juan, “The Court Lady’s Dilemma: Isabella d’Este and Art Collecting in the Renaissance,” Oxford Art Journal 14, no. 1 (1991): 67–78. 13. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 62. The standard study on Renaissance studioli is Wolfgang Liebenwein, Studiolo: Storia e tipologia di uno spazio culturale, ed. Claudia Cieri Via, trans. Alessandro Califano (Ferrara: Panini, 2005). In English, see Dora Thornton, The Scholar in his Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

Introduction 7 intricate network of significations designed to project an image of Isabella d’Este as a woman of sovereign taste, substantial learning, and solid virtue.14 Isabella ascribed to herself an “insatiable desire for things ancient” and an “appetite” for beautiful things. Both types of goods were on offer for wealthy and discriminating buyers in sixteenth-century Italy. She shopped assiduously, often through correspondence with trusted agents, for pieces of antique sculpture and for all manner of applied and decorative arts, demanding peerless quality in every purchase and devoting unstinting effort to obtaining precisely what she wanted.15 She carefully inspected fabrics from France and Venice, gloves from Spain, jewelry, crystal, flowers, belts, beads, and fragrance-filled buttons, never hesitating, despite the complications of early modern transport, to return items that fell below her standards. Her correspondence detailing these purchases reveals Isabella’s role as a pioneer of fashion and design. She collaborated in the production of perfumes and toiletries, raising her own flowers and musk-producing animals in part for this purpose. She supervised in detail the design of glassware for her table and worked with consultants on patterns for her clothing and jewelry. The spherical capigliara seen on her head in the portraits by Titian and Rubens was a signature element of her wardrobe that was part hat and part wig, made of fabric, jewels, and human hair; it was widely admired and imitated. Motifs from the emblems decorating the walls, floors, and ceilings of the camerini were worked into Isabella’s jewelry and gowns and were subject to an implicit “copyright,” as evidenced by her written replies to women who sought permission to adopt them. Some of the first fashion dolls known in Europe constitute yet another instance of Isabella’s personal branding. Several of these were made for her to comply with requests from the kings of France and Spain for miniature replicas of her attire, so that her styles could be copied for women in those courts.16 Isabella was also among those Renaissance princes who imitated the ancients by having her image coined in medals bearing her likeness, which she circulated to increase her currency among people she especially favored. The most ornate of these was one encrusted with jewels (now held in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum), but simpler versions have also survived. The Este court at Ferrara boasted one of the finest libraries in Europe, and Isabella continued her parents’ practice of collecting and reading books 14. Campbell, however, cautions against views of the studiolo paintings as mere propaganda: “[D]espite what is constantly claimed the paintings are not reducible to monotonous advertisements of the marchesa’s chastity and virtuous accomplishments, and even in the instances when such a reading is possible, they are never simply or entirely that.” Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 23. 15. Evelyn Welch, “Shopping with Isabella d’Este,” in Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400–1600 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 245–73, 352–59. 16. Yassana C. Croizat, “‘Living Dolls’: François I Dresses His Women,” Renaissance Quarterly 60 (2007): 94–130.

8 Introduction throughout her life.17 Her letters document many requests for volumes to be bought, borrowed, or copied and offer a portrait of an avid Renaissance reader and book collector. At the time of her death, her library contained one hundred and thirty-three titles, including works of Greek philosophy, Latin classics (works of Cicero, Ovid, Pliny, Plutarch, Seneca, Juvenal, and Horace among them), books of music, chivalric romances, theatrical comedies, religious sermons, saints’ lives, biographies, and prophecies.18 Also present were vernacular writings by Dante, Petrarch, Jacopo Sannazzaro, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and Pietro Bembo as well as many minor contemporaries. Still other books passed through her hands without remaining in her personal library but are recorded in her letters. Not surprisingly, Isabella also cultivated literary friends, including Matteo Maria Boiardo, Niccolò da Correggio, Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, Mario Equicola, Baldassarre Castiglione, Pietro Bembo, Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, Gian Giorgio Trissino, Bernardo Accolti, Ludovico Ariosto, Paolo Giovio, and Matteo Bandello, several of whom commemorated her in their writings. Isabella was a skilled musician who was proficient in keyboard as well as stringed instruments.19 Her substantial correspondence with the master 17. Brian Richardson, “Isabella d’Este and the Social Uses of Books,” La Bibliofilìa 114, no. 3 (2012): 293–325. More comprehensively and for the inventory of her library, see Luzio and Renier, La coltura. Campbell and Malacarne also reproduce the inventory of her library; see Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 270–79; and Giancarlo Malacarne, “Collezionismo e querelle librarie: L’inventario dei libri ‘lassati’ dalla ‘quondam’ Isabella d’Este,” Civiltà mantovana 119 (2005): 121–31. On the library of Isabella’s parents, see Giulio Bertoni, La biblioteca estense e la coltura ferrarese ai tempi del Duca Ercole I (1471-1505) (Turin: Loescher, 1903). 18. The storywriter Matteo Bandello, who spent many days in Isabella’s company at her country villa of Porto, remarks of her in the preface to novella 2.21: “She commanded me to take up Livy’s History of Rome and read to her the story of Tarquin’s rape of Lucretia and Lucretia’s resulting death, which I did in order to obey her. She, as you know, understands all of the Latin histories.” Matteo Bandello, Tutte le opere di Matteo Bandello, vol. 1, ed. Francesco Flora, 4th ed. (Milan: Mondadori, 1972), 843. 19. Iain Fenlon, “The Gonzaga and Music,” in Splendours of the Gonzaga: Catalogue; Exhibition, 4 November 1981–31 January 1982, Victoria & Albert Museum, ed. David Chambers and Jane Martineau (London: the Museum; Cinisello Balsamo [Milan]: Pizzi, 1981), 87–94; Fenlon, “Music and Learning in Isabella d’Este’s Studiolo,” in La corte di Mantova nell’età di Andrea Mantegna, 353-67; Claudio Gallico, “Poesie musicali di Isabella d’Este,” Collectanea historiae musicae 3 (Florence: Olschki, 1963): 109–19; William F. Prizer, Courtly Pastimes: The Frottole of Marchetto Cara (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1980); Prizer, “Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, ‘Master Instrument-Maker,’ ” Early Music History: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Music 2 (1982): 87–127; Prizer, “Isabella d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia as Patrons of Music: The Frottola at Mantua and Ferrara,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 38 (1985): 1–33; Prizer, “Lutenists at the Court of Mantua in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries,” Journal of the Lute Society of America 13 (1980): 5–34; Prizer, “Marchetto Cara at Mantua: New Documents on the Life and Duties of a Renaissance Court Musician,” Musica disciplina 32 (1978): 87–110; Prizer, “‘Una virtù molto conveniente a madonne’: Isabella d’Este as a Musician,” The Journal of Musicology 17, no. 1 (1999): 10–49; William F. Prizer and Eugene Enrico, “Isabella d’Este: First Lady of the Renaissance,” DVD (Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Center for Music

Introduction 9 instrument maker, Lorenzo da Pavia, documents her purchase of several fine examples of these. She also bought and borrowed instruments from others for her musical pursuits, and she sang for personal recreation and in intimate court gatherings as recorded in her correspondence and that of others.20 At a time when her male contemporaries were mostly patronizing foreign composers, Isabella was among the first sponsors to seek the work of Italian musicians and composers, especially Marchetto Cara and Bartolomeo Tromboncino. The latter was so dear to her that she advocated his pardon for murdering his wife. Ottaviano Petrucci, the first printer of music in Europe, included in his 1504 First Book of Frottolas a number of compositions originally produced for Isabella.21 When she wasn’t singing, Isabella’s voice was one of power, but that power was constrained by her female position in a patriarchal society. As a woman, she had to limit her public role to tasks performed in the name of her husband or that fell traditionally to female co-regents, though these were in fact considerable. As Sarah Cockram has argued, moreover, Francesco and Isabella adopted a policy of cooperation and joint decision making that is visible in much of the frequent correspondence between them.22 While Francesco was away on duty as a condottiere (hired military officer) in the service of principal European powers, Isabella exercised masterful diplomacy and administrative acumen. She was obliged to defer to her husband’s higher authority, but there is ample evidence that Francesco accepted her counsel and trusted her analyses. Her activism, pragmatism, and judgment are evident in arenas ranging from the pursuit of justice to the management of trade and the brokering of marriages. When Francesco was captured and imprisoned by the Venetians (August 1509–July 1510), Isabella became Mantua’s official acting regent and fended off foreign contenders for Gonzaga territories, despite internecine power struggles within the court administration. In Francesco’s ensuing years of increasing debilitation from syphilis, she appears, on the one hand, to have been marginalized by her husband’s advisors, who were often hostile to her. On the other hand, she became an important ambassador for Este, Sforza, and Gonzaga interests and a reliable conduit of intelligence to Francesco at home. The couple’s political style was one that may have impressed their contemporary, Machiavelli, if he was watching. As Cockram illustrates, they often embraced a strategy of seeming to be at odds in their allegiances to opposed allies, and Television, 1999); Donald C. Sanders, Music at the Gonzaga Court in Mantua (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012). 20. Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia; Prizer, “Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia.” 21. Sanders, Music at the Gonzaga Court. I thank Anne MacNeil for informative discussions of Isabella’s prominence as a patron of Italian music. 22. Sarah D. P. Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga: Power Sharing at the Italian Renaissance Court (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013).

10 Introduction effectively keeping multiple options open and biding their time under uncertain conditions.23 Some of Isabella’s travel was justified officially by religious pledges to visit holy shrines, as with her 1502 and 1523 journeys to Venice and her 1517 visit to Provence. On other occasions her motivations were clearly political, as was true of her 1525–1527 sojourn in Rome to pursue a cardinalship for her son, Ercole. In many cases she performed combined ambassadorial and social functions, for instance in her visits to Milan in 1491 and 1513, and her 1510 trip to Rome and Naples. At still other times, she traveled purely for pleasure and recreation (sometimes incognita). Her summer expeditions to Lake Garda, just north of Mantua, were a regular getaway ritual. Isabella’s letters convey her delight in travel and her eagerness to see the world. They further show her to be an able stateswoman with an innate sense of occasion and opportunity, and an attentive travel correspondent. Her descriptions of ceremonies, festivities, and theatrical productions are among the most detailed records of certain events to survive from the period. Among her occasional travel companions were her closest friends—her sister-in-law Elisabetta Gonzaga, the duchess of Urbino; and Emilia Pia da Carpi—both of whom are immortalized in Castiglione’s 1528 Book of the Courtier.24 Francesco II Gonzaga died in 1519 after years of suffering from the syphilis he had contracted as early as 1496.25 At this time, Isabella transferred her apartments to a less central location of the palace and prepared to yield authority to her son Federico, once he reached his majority. She hardly withdrew from society or political life, however. Over the next twenty years, she continued to travel, making several trips to Venice and spending an extended period in Rome. In 1525, when her brother-in-law, Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga died, he left to his nephew Federico a small fiefdom near Imola called Solarolo, which Isabella purchased from her son with the aim of governing it independently. This political experiment was a mixed success, at best. The papacy questioned the legitimacy of Isabella’s ownership of Solarolo and made repeated attempts to reclaim it. Choosing to govern largely in absentia, Isabella unwittingly appointed a corrupt administrator who betrayed her trust and undermined her dream of bringing political harmony to the faction-ridden little town. She spent her final years managing her 23. Cockram, Isabella d’Este. 24. The most detailed source on the relations among these women remains Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino. For an authoritative modern translation of Castiglione’s classic work, see The Book of the Courtier, trans. Charles S. Singleton, ed. Daniel Javitch (New York: Norton, 2002). 25. Molly Bourne notes that Francesco showed early signs of syphilis in the 1495–1496 period of his greatest military successes: Francesco II Gonzaga: The Soldier-Prince as Patron (Rome: Bulzoni, 2008) 39. As general sources on this painful and disfiguring condition, see Jon Arrizabalaga, John Henderson, and Roger French, The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, “Contributo alla storia del malfrancese ne’ costumi e nella letteratura italiana,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 5 (1885): 408–32.

Introduction 11 affairs, keeping in contact with her growing family, advocating for subjects who sought her protection, seeking out beautiful things to buy, and tending to her own declining health. Isabella d’Este died on 13 February 1539 in Mantua, attended by her son, Federico. Though a Gonzaga-Nevers line ruled until 1707, the Gonzaga court at Mantua essentially vanished with the death in 1627 of Vincenzo II, the last heir of the original dynasty. To pay off his debts, Vincenzo sold the choicest works from the court’s art collection to Charles I of England, and whatever treasures remained were carried off in subsequent years during Mantua’s domination by Austria and France. Among the remnants of Isabella’s court still remaining in the city she co-ruled, however, are secretarial copies of over sixteen thousand of her letters, together with an even more substantial quantity of incoming correspondence. These documents tell remarkable tales, often with colorful precision, of the daily life and the extraordinary experience of Isabella d’Este and her generation.

The Gonzaga Chancery and Isabella’s Archive Writing in Isabella’s time was a bothersome business. Quills required frequent trimming, and even when perfectly shaped to match the direction of the writer’s pen strokes, they did not glide smoothly on the page as pens do today. They were uncomfortable to hold and had to be dipped frequently into ink that was easy to smear. Lighting conditions were only ideal in the daytime, near a sunny window; and letters had to be folded to form their own closure, then finished off with the paraphernalia of sealing wax and seals. Personally written letters were charged with special meaning, because they implicitly conveyed not only the sender’s corporeal contact but also the physical effort that went into producing them. Nonetheless, like everyone of her class, Isabella avoided this exertion whenever possible and dictated her letters to a secretary. Given that she sent correspondence so regularly, whether in residence at Mantua or traveling, her male secretary was often at her side. As someone who was privy to his employer’s personal space as well as the content of her correspondence, the secretary was also often a counselor and a senior, high-security member of the chancery in Italian princely courts, informally organized as these could sometimes be.26 Additional chancery members tended to the production and filing of all important documents. 26. Though the title’s original connotations have faded today, the secretary was, by definition, the custodian of secrets. Isabella’s secretary for many years was the Mantuan Benedetto Capilupi, who descended from a long line of Gonzaga secretaries. After his death, Capilupi was succeeded in 1519 by Isabella’s humanist tutor, Mario Equicola, who was then followed by Antonio Tridapali when Equicola passed into service of Federico II Gonzaga. On Capilupi, see Daniela Ferrari, “La cancelleria gonzaghesca tra Cinque e Seicento: Carriere e strategie parentali al servizio dei duchi,” in Gonzaga: La celeste galeria; L’esercizio del collezionismo, ed. Raffaella Morselli (Milan: Skira, 2002), 301. On Equicola, see Stephen Kolsky, Mario Equicola: The Real Courtier (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1991); Alessandra

12 Introduction Since correspondence sent from one person to another belongs to the recipient, letter archives often contain only incoming mail. Unless they were copied prior to sending, the letters of a single writer remain dispersed and can only be editorially reassembled if retrieved, which is often an impossible task. Isabella wrote to scores of addressees, many of whom were ill equipped to archive their papers. The vast majority of her correspondence would now be lost forever, had it not been transcribed by chancery secretaries before being entrusted to a courier. Gonzaga secretaries sometimes drafted or took down verbally dictated letters in a shorthand version, called the minute (minutes). The minute could then be expanded in two subsequent transcriptions: one for filing in the copialettere (bound copybooks), which served as administrative points of reference; and another for sending, the originale (fair copy).27 In the present volume these letters are designated as originals. Given the magnitude of Isabella’s correspondence, for efficiency I have used the copybooks as the main source for this edition. I have selectively (though not systematically) compared those texts to secretarial drafts and to the fair copies addressed to other members of the court which, given their recipients, are also held in the Gonzaga Archive. Such comparison reveals that few significant revisions were made between one phase of production and the next, but a substantial number of letters went uncopied, as attested by the existence of fair copies not represented in the copybooks. Isabella also wrote some letters herself. These are identified in the archive as autografi and in this edition as autographs.28 The choice to rely primarily on the copybooks as the source for this edition made it possible for me to make maximal use of my time in the archive as a foreign visitor to carry out the project, but it came at the cost of a certain one-sidedness. Readers who wish to pursue questions raised by letters published here may now follow their trails of origination and replies as well as read letters that were not copied into the copybooks by consulting online images of Isabella’s correspondence through IDEA: Isabella d’Este Archive. Villa, Istruire e rappresentare Isabella d’Este: Il “Libro de natura de amore” di Mario Equicola (Lucca: Fazzi, 2006). On the emergence of the secretary as a professional figure, see Douglas Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries: Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). On the organization of the Gonzaga chancery, see Isabella Lazzarini, “Peculiaris magistratus: La cancelleria gonzaghesca nel Quattrocento,” Ricerche storiche 24, no. 2 (1994): 337–49. 27. In some instances, additional copies were also created, for example when they were needed for sharing with other readers. Occasionally the copybook indicates that multiple recipients should receive the same letter, in which case the copybook version served as a template record, for example of a birth or death announcement. All sent copies are designated as originali. 28. The number of incoming pieces of correspondence addressed to Isabella is currently estimated at about 28,000. Though it would have been ideal to read and comment on replies to the letters included in this edition, constraints of time and the dimensions of the archive prohibited me from undertaking that project. The notes to this edition refer readers to published sources discussing some of these fuller exchanges.

Introduction 13

Renaissance Epistolarity There are critical ways in which Isabella’s letters differ from several other types with which they should not be confused. Though her teachers were humanists, she did not write humanist letters, strictly speaking. The letter was a banner genre for Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati, and other fourteenth-century pioneers of that cultural movement, and by the 1520s, epistolary writing had become central to humanist pedagogy.29 In 1345, when Petrarch made his jaw-dropping discovery of a copied book of Cicero’s letters in the cathedral library of Verona, he resolved to make a collection of his own, adopting the Roman’s intimate and informal epistolary voice and mobilizing the letter as a vehicle for the spread of humanist ideas. Petrarch’s twenty-four books of familiar letters (the Rerum familiarum libri), together with the eighteen books of his letters in old age (the Rerum senilium libri), launched humanist epistolarity as a mode of introspective, protoessayistic writing.30 This practice flourished among humanists for centuries, but the Gonzagas’ letters served other purposes. Though they bear many marks of humanist thinking—for example by casting epistolary correspondence as virtual conversation between friends—Isabella’s letters never engage in extended reflection on mortality, friendship, or other humanist themes, nor do they serve as a medium for self-scrutiny or the dissemination of ideas. Hers are letters of personal and state business, the correspondence of a woman who understood herself to be always, to some degree, speaking in an official role, and potentially under surveillance. Isabella’s letters offer no gazes deep into her soul, but they do afford some glimpses. Though they contain few intimate confessions, they feature numerous moments of unguarded candor in her real-life dealings with others. Humanist letters emulating personal conversation were oriented toward an oral model (a fiction of speaking directly with another), but so was the medieval 29. The two premier spokesmen for humanist education in the sixteenth century, Desiderius Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives, each published highly successful printed guides to epistolary composition: see Shemek, “Letter Writing and Epistolary Culture,” in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Renaissance and Reformation, . 30. Petrarch famously went so far as to address letters to persons long dead, including Cicero, Seneca, Virgil, and Quintilian. Machiavelli, nearly two centuries later, described in his most famous letter to Francesco Vettori his practice of putting questions to the ancients who, “in their humanity,” replied to him through their books. Francesco Petrarca, Letters on Familiar Matters: Rerum familiarum libri, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, 3 vols. (New York: Italica, 2005); Letters of Old Age: Rerum senilium libri, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, 2 vols. (New York: Italica, 2005); John M. Najemy, “Renaissance Epistolarity,” in Between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 1513–1515 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 18–57. On Petrarch’s strategic adoption of the letter, see Nancy S. Struever, “Petrarchan Ethics: Inventing a Practice,” in Theory as Practice: Ethical Inquiry in the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 3–34.

14 Introduction letter writing the humanists rejected. The ars dictaminis (arts of dictation) constituted a set of formulaic epistolary practices drawn from ancient rhetorical models that were taught to letter writers throughout late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The ars dictaminis looked to the oral practice not of private conversation but of public oratory, recommending that letters be composed in five parts that were considered necessary in a good speech: salutatio (greeting), exordium (an often-proverbial opening), narratio (the subject matter of the letter’s business), petitio (the request, if one was to be made), and conclusio (closure). While this type of letter writing had many uses in the world of commerce, it also served loftier purposes, for example in “public” addresses couched as letters. Celebrated medieval Italian examples of these include Dante’s epistle to Cangrande della Scala, in which he discusses interpretive keys to his Divine Comedy, and the letters of Catherine of Siena, many of which are political or religious treatises.31 Dante’s epistle is formal and learned; Catherine’s letters are formulaic and relatively unschooled. They share a relation to generically structured formal speech that is detectable also in the correspondence of the Gonzaga princes and, indeed, in personal and business correspondence today. Isabella’s letters might best be seen as a blend of the personalized, sometimes intimate humanist style with medieval generic efficiency. Though the Gonzagas preserved their correspondence, it was neither written nor conserved for sharing with the public. Readers familiar with Renaissance literature know that as the nascent printing industry took hold, marketing strategies for new types of books also developed, and media promoters, known as poligrafi, burst onto the Italian publishing scene with new kinds of books, like anthologies of lyric poems.32 One such novelty appeared for the first time in 1538, when Pietro Aretino published the first of six volumes of his “personal letters.” Aretino’s chatty, self-serving invention launched a phenomenon that would thrive, mostly in Italy, for well over a century. Italians proved to be keenly interested in reading each other’s mail; like public relations strategists avant la lettre, they also grasped the opportunistic value of offering up their own correspondence for public consumption. Far from being simple media for sharing their actual correspondence, their letter books were carefully edited, authorized self-portraits that could launch, aggrandize, or vindicate the reputations of their writers, even as they pandered to a public taste for access to the private and authentic details of 31. On the latter, see Jane Tylus, Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, Literature, and the Signs of Others (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 32. Monica Bianco and Elena Strada, eds., I più vaghi e i più soavi fiori: Studi sulle antologie di lirica del Cinquecento (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2001); Louise George Clubb and William G. Clubb, “Building a Lyric Canon: Gabriel Giolito and the Rival Anthologists, 1545–1590,” Italica 68, no. 3 (1991): 332–44; Amedeo Quondam, Petrarchismo mediato: Per una critica della forma “antologia” (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974).

Introduction 15 “celebrity” lives. Marking the mass-media modernity of this phenomenon, Francesco Erspamer quips that if (for the ancients) letters were dialogues with absent friends, Aretino’s letter books were like a talk show with absent interviewers.33 Virtually all of Isabella’s correspondence predates this phenomenon, but in any case heads of state like the Gonzagas did not publish their correspondence, even at the height of the letter book’s popularity; they had no need to engage in the social climbing and self-justification that motivated the commercialized letter book. On the contrary, they took pains to prevent unauthorized reading of their letters, sometimes even encrypting them in cipher.34 The reasons they saved their letters were to share them with their descendants and to use them in the present as administrative records. More relevant points of reference for the conservation of Gonzaga correspondence were bureaucratic reforms that had been transforming European political and military institutions since the twelfth century. Armando Petrucci points to the emergence of the notary, the secretary, and the resident ambassador as key professional figures in early modern Europe whose jobs revolved around the production, circulation, and preservation of documentary records, including letters, within increasingly complex institutions. These institutional changes coincided with the aggressive expansion of long-distance commerce. As banking systems developed and trade networks went global, merchants relied on written communications for their livelihood. For purely practical reasons, vernacular literacy was rising among both men and women, who used letters to manage family and business affairs. Moreover, all of these practices fostered and benefited from technological advances that made letter writing cheaper and faster. Water-powered paper mills—a technology learned from the Spanish that appeared in Italy as early as the mid-thirteenth century—were supplying far cheaper writing surfaces than the animal-skin parchments previously in use.35 Postal networks evolved to answer the need for faster delivery. Cipher systems became more complex and numerous to protect this circulating data. And in order to handle the increased volume of correspondence, professional chancellors and secretaries invented cursive (“running”) writing.36

33. Francesco Erspamer, “Introduzione” in Pietro Aretino, Lettere, 1: Libro primo (Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo / Ugo Guanda, 1995), x–xi. More generally, see Amedeo Quondam, ed., Le “carte messaggiere”: Retorica e modelli di communicazione epistolare, per un indice dei libri di lettere del Cinquecento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1981). 34. For brief discussion of the Gonzagas’ use of cipher systems, see Romano Sarzi, “Le (ziffre) dei Gonzaga,” La Reggia 6, no. 2 (May 1998): 5; 6, no. 3 (September 1998): 4. 35. For a concise chronology of paper production, see . 36. Armando Petrucci, Scrivere lettere: Una storia plurimillenaria (Bari: Laterza, 2008), 49–110; 204–14.

16 Introduction

Themes and Content The letters translated here constitute a substantial selection, but they represent only a fraction of the number that might have made it into print. In choosing what to include, I have sought, first of all, to present as many sides of Isabella d’Este’s correspondence as possible, so that readers may access a fuller, perhaps more nuanced picture of her activities than the one that results from the heavy historical emphasis on her persona as a collector and patron. Counterbalancing the letters about her shopping and commissions here are many that address politics, marriage, maternity, war, diplomacy, justice, friendship, health, food, travel, animals, and a wide range of other topics that evoke everyday life in a working Renaissance court. This variety will allow Isabella’s correspondence to function as a gateway to understanding much about the sixteenth century that lies beyond any individual’s significance. I hope it will also enable readers to begin to gauge for themselves the validity of starkly contrasting portraits of Isabella d’Este that circulate in the biographies and scholarship. Isabella’s historical legacy circulates in two general, competing versions. One version was first propagated by her admiring contemporaries and then, more comprehensively, by the historian archivist, Alessandro Luzio. Beginning in 1883, over the course of three decades Luzio wrote more than forty articles examining sixteenth-century culture and politics through the prism of Isabella d’Este’s letters. Combing through the marchesa’s voluminous correspondence with persons throughout Italy and beyond, Luzio and his sometime collaborator, Rodolfo Renier discovered a brilliant and faultless Renaissance princess, a paragon of womanhood who was married, regrettably, to a man who was her intellectual, moral, and cultural inferior, but one whom she managed to love and serve. Their Isabella is educated and sophisticated, devoted, energetic, generous, brave, wise, creative, and serenely chaste. This is the Isabella who appealed to the great, Edwardianera art historian Julia Cartwright, whose two-volume biography draws heavily on Luzio and Renier’s publications and paints a highly admiring picture of its subject. A long strain of writing on Isabella, particularly of the sort directed to a general readership, carries on this uncritical tradition. Another Isabella, however, appears like an evil twin in a range of writings that also extends back to the Renaissance.37 Exhibiting varying degrees of dislike 37. Negative views of Isabella as presumptuous for her involvement in political matters appear in some of the correspondence of the period, especially among certain reporters from the papal court. See Carolyn James, “‘Machiavelli in Skirts’: Isabella d’Este and Politics,” in Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400–1800, ed. Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 57–75. An early slander in print came from Pietro Aretino, who published in 1534 a satirical “Forecast” on the coming winter, which he predicted would be so cold that everyone would be copulating to keep warm and, “even the monstrous marchesa of Mantua who has teeth of ebony and eyebrows of ivory and is immorally ugly and even more immorally painted with makeup, will give

Introduction 17 for the marchesa and what are deemed her amateurish, feminine intrusions on the serious business of art, a veritable pantheon of authoritative modern art historians has pronounced against Isabella d’Este. For Roberto Longhi, she was “odious” for distracting Mantegna and Leonardo from more significant projects than hers. Kenneth Clark dismissed her as a “dictatorial bluestocking.” Subtly condescending, Andrew Martindale saw Isabella’s collecting of bronzes, medals, and gems as evidence of a “typically feminine” love for objets d’art, while J. M. Fletcher, in similar vein, attributed her interests to “a highly developed sense of interior decoration,” adding, as if to distinguish her from the majority of wealthy patrons, that Isabella was “exceptionally difficult” and “unpredictable.” Charles Hope pronounced Isabella’s taste for mythological paintings and allegories “banal” and “pretentious.” The revered Italian cultural historian, Carlo Dionisotti, however, outdid these relatively mild misogynists, in a book review on another subject, where he paused to comment on recent critical interest in the marchesa of Mantua: [T]he studies we have on Isabella d’Este, it must be said, are as poor in critical discernment as they are rich in loving erudition. How curious that modern scholars have become so enthused by a woman who, as far as we know, was not beautiful and was so frigid and viperish that, with no ill will, we can say she got the husband and son she deserved.38 Dionisotti wrote in the 1950s, in open polemic with Luzio and a whole school of celebratory Italian historiography, but his resentment of the marchesa’s avoidance of her syphilitic husband (whom she had already borne eight children) and his apparent hostility to female ambition echo more broadly in twentieth-century criticism as clichés in their own right. Even thirty years later, in an important valorization of Mannerist painting, Giovanni Romano returned to these preoccupations when he portrayed Isabella d’Este as a woman who, trapped in a reputation for spotless virtue, renounced all bodily passions and took refuge in the fables of antiquity that were painted on the walls of her studiolo.39

birth in her old age, without benefit of conjugal relations.” See Alessandro Luzio, Un pronostico satirico di Pietro Aretino (Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1900), 9. 38. Carlo Dionisotti, review of Un illustre nunzio pontificio del Rinascimento: Baldassar Castiglione, by Vittorio Cian, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 129 (1952): 53. 39. For full references and further discussion of these and other sources, see Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 1–4; San Juan, “The Court Lady’s Dilemma”; Villa, Istruire e rappresentare Isabella d’Este, 9–15. For review of many of Isabella’s “fanatics,” see the introduction to Luzio and Renier, La coltura, by Giovanni Agosti, “Ai fanatici della marchesa,” vii–xxxvii.

18 Introduction Recent scholarship has systematically confronted the flaws in this fraught legacy. Rose Marie de San Juan was the first to point to the art-historical tendency to focus on Isabella’s personality rather than on her collecting practices in context. Stephen Campbell’s extensive study offers learned and dramatic new readings of the paintings in Isabella’s studiolo, in key both with San Juan’s feminist critique and with a wealth of philological and theoretical reflection on Renaissance thought. A definitive monograph by Molly Bourne has laid to rest the caricature of Francesco Gonzaga as a boorish warrior and explored his impressive patronage of art, architecture, and music, thus opening up more informed discussion of the relations between Isabella’s and Francesco’s cultural programs. Sarah Cockram, in a book on power sharing between Isabella and Francesco, makes a convincing argument for their collaborative political style. A series of studies by Carolyn James offers new critical readings of Isabella’s correspondence not only with her consort but also with her mother and her daughters. And a monograph by Alessandra Villa examines the relationship between Isabella and her tutor-turned-secretary, Mario Equicola, addressing also this divided legacy of Isabella d’Este criticism.40 Given the historical failure to conserve most non-literary writings from the period, it is difficult to measure how exceptional was Isabella’s output as a female correspondent. What we can say is that, to date, we know of no other woman of her century, anywhere, who left an organized epistolary legacy of similar dimensions. The marvel of Isabella’s correspondence lies both in its quantity and in its range of tone and subject matter: commerce, politics, travel, art, food, fashion, shopping, gardens, animals, music, theater, family life, health, justice, friendship, and other topics alternate, often in the same letter, throughout her epistolary corpus. 40. San Juan, “The Court Lady’s Dilemma”; Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros; Molly Bourne, “Renaissance Husbands and Wives as Patrons of Art: The camerini of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga,” in Reiss and Wilkins, Beyond Isabella, 93–123; Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga; Cockram, Isabella d’Este; Carolyn James, “An Insatiable Appetite for News: Isabella d’Este and a Bolognese Correspondent,” in Rituals, Images, and Words: Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. F. W. Kent and Charles Zika (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005), 375–88; James, “‘Machiavelli in Skirts’ ”; James, “The Travels of Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua,” Studies in Travel Writing 13, no. 2 (2009): 99–109; James, “Florence and Ferrara: Dynastic Marriage and Politics,” in The Medici: Citizens and Masters, ed. Robert Black and John Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Villa I Tatti Series, 2015, 365–78); James, “What’s Love Got to Do With It? Dynastic Politics and Motherhood in the Letters of Eleonora of Aragon and her Daughters,” Women’s History Review (2015): DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2015.1015327; James, “Women and Diplomacy in Renaissance Italy,” in Women, Diplomacy and International Politics Since 1500, ed. Glenda Sluga and Carolyn James (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 13–29; Villa, Istruire e rappresentare Isabella d’Este. The work of Stephen Kolsky stands apart from these revisionary studies. In his view, Isabella’s active role in politics suggested that she wanted to be a man: Kolsky, “Images of Isabella d’Este,” Italian Studies 39 (1984): 47–62; most valuable is Kolsky, Mario Equicola.

Introduction 19

Organization and Technical Criteria The letters are arranged chronologically and provided with descriptive headers. Salutations, though they can provide crucial information for identifying addressees, have been considered prohibitively lengthy for this edition.41 A brief introduction to each decade of Isabella’s life together with footnotes to the individual letters provide minimal historical, biographical, and geographical coordinates to facilitate reading. Square brackets indicate material I have inserted for clarification. Curved brackets signal missing words where the manuscript was illegible or damaged. In all cases I have published complete letters and, unless otherwise stated, have relied on my own transcriptions. Given space limitations in a book that is already long, I have not cited every previous published transcription, paraphrase, or translation but have made a good-faith effort to reference some of these. This project resulted from many hours in an archive, where I often pondered the technology of letter writing in the Renaissance and the massive effort early moderns made to produce, deliver, and preserve the very correspondence I held in my hands. I also worked for lengthy periods from remote locations in the United States, Italy, France, and Hungary, profiting from the technology of the photocopy machine, the laptop computer, and the enlargeable PDF. I am pleased to report that today, readers who wish to view or study the manuscripts of Isabella d’Este’s correspondence may do so through yet another transformative technology, by visiting the online IDEA: Isabella d’Este Archive, where they may also offer corrections or pose questions to a community of contributing scholars.

41. An otherwise obscure figure may be recognized as an artisan if he is addressed as “maestro,” while a person who shares the same name with another may be distinguished from her homonym by a salutation such as “dearest sister” or “beloved cousin,” and a greeting including the words “most reverend” confirms the clerical status of the addressee. But salutations in Isabella’s correspondence can occupy several lines, once the abbreviations are expanded. In the interest of concision, and knowing that online images of these letters are now available, I have used the salutations and other historical evidence to identify Isabella’s addressees but have not included here the lengthy salutations themselves.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 Opening this collection are rare examples of correspondence from Isabella’s childhood in Ferrara that afford glimpses of a princess in formation. Signing herself in the first instance as “tiny Isabella d’Este,” in these brief missives she reports to her father on a perceived injustice, seeks a political favor, and thanks her future father-in-law and her fiancé for courtesies they have shown her. In February of 1490 Isabella married Francesco II Gonzaga and, like most elite women of her time, moved away from familiar surroundings to take up residency in her consort’s city. Coping with homesickness and adolescent jealousies, the young bride distracted herself with visits from friends, singing lessons, party planning, and shopping. Already in her first year of marriage, Isabella had a discriminating eye for the quality of luxury goods she wanted to own, and she grasped intuitively that knowledgeable agents were crucial to her shopping operations. It was not long before a perennial gap between her “appetite” for beautiful things and her access to ready cash led the marchesa of Mantua to the expediency of the pawnbrokers with whom she did business for much of her life. Letters from 1491 mark the early plans for Isabella’s studiolo and document her literary interests, illustrating her contacts with artists, booksellers, and poets of renown. Her attention to food production for the court is traced by orders for delicacies for which northern Italy is still known today: prosciutto, salame, and mortadella. Both her purchases and her practice of food diplomacy through the exchange of tasty comestibles suggest a rich food supply in early modern Mantua, at least for the most privileged consumers. A key role for Italian noblewomen was governing during the lengthy periods when their husbands were away on political or military missions and, in fact, it was official duties in the Mantuan court that took up most of Isabella’s time. In 1491, Francesco Gonzaga initiated a series of extended travels within Italy that raised his political profile and enhanced Gonzaga diplomatic relations. His tour of the Italian peninsula was possible because he could now rely on his capable consort to conduct the kind of day-to-day business that had kept him tied to Mantua since his succession to the marquisate in 1484.1 Thanks to those travels, the newly wedded spouses exchanged a great deal of mail and we, today, have an excellent vantage point from which to observe both their relationship and the momentous events that soon engulfed Italy. In 1494, Charles VIII (House of Valois), king of France, descended into Italy through Milan in a campaign to capture Naples, thus commencing a series of wars in which Italy remained a European bone of contention for the next sixtyfive years. As battle locations and military alliances shifted, the political fates and 1. Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 37–38.

21

22 ISABELLA D’ESTE private realities of an entire generation of Italians were molded by nearly continuous warfare during their lifetimes. Mantua, a state situated centrally between Venice, Milan, and Bologna, was not so much an object of direct aggressions as a key crossroads in these conflicts. With family ties to Naples, Milan, Bologna, Urbino, and Ferrara (among others), the Gonzagas themselves were broadly implicated in everything that happened on this Mediterranean peninsula. Francesco Gonzaga, a respected military commander already by the time he married, renewed his condotta (contract of service) with Venice in February 1495 and joined the coalition to stop the French on their return march. This expedition would bring him the greatest military distinction of his life, at the Battle of Fornovo on 6 July 1495. Both Francesco’s diplomatic travels and his military activity account for Isabella’s growth as a confident auxiliary regent of Mantua. In this first decade of her reign as marchesa, we find Isabella working on many fronts as a governing consort: she excelled at conventionally “feminine” responsibilities, like running a large household staff and planning complex state receptions for important guests; but she was also a reliable administrator when relaying political news, negotiating marriages, managing natural resources, and overseeing the institutions of justice. Her letter regarding an arsonist illustrates her measures to maintain law and order, early modern style. Isabella negotiated pardons for harshly condemned convicts, conducted murder inquiries, and protected women and girls from violent crimes. Her concern for young victims did not, however, apply universally. As a drawing of the people and horses encountered by explorers in the Guinea territory piqued her curiosity, she purchased black children captured in Africa as ornaments for her court. Isabella also made several official state visits in the first decade of her rein. Recorded below are those to Milan for her sister’s wedding and to Venice as a Gonzaga ambassador. The reproduction of the dynasty was a crucial duty for Isabella and Francesco. Several of her letters suggest the degree to which Mantua’s reigning couple was scrutinized in their efforts to start a family. Three pregnancies mark the first decade of the marriage. Eleonora came in 1493. Margherita, born in July 1496, lived just two months. Their third child, they hoped, would be the male heir required for legitimate Gonzaga succession.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 23 Letter 1 To Ercole I d’Este, duke of Ferrara, reporting on being spanked.2 I would not want Your Excellency to forget his little daughter Isabella for want of writing, as I will hardly forget Your Most Excellent Lordship. On the contrary, I remember you always and have many reasons for doing so. Especially because on one day you left, and on the next day, I was hit as many times as if I were a little dog: Colonna scolded me, Sirvia held me, and Madama hit me. ( ) I said that I surely wanted to write about it to Your Excellency, for I had good reason to remember your departure. I humbly pray you remember me, and at your feet I commend myself always. Your tiny daughter Isabella d’Este.

Letter 2: 1479 August 26 Ferrara To Ercole I d’Este, requesting a benefice.3 Seeing that Your Most Illustrious Lordship shows great love for me as his little daughter, I take the liberty humbly to pray you consent to grant a favor: that for love of me Your Excellency will grant a sinecure benefice that is about to be vacated to no one other than the son of my wet nurse Felipa. The benefice is for the church of San Giorgio, in Villa della Fratta, which brings in about eleven or twelve ducats per year and is in the bishopric of Rovigo. At present it is held by a certain Don Giovanni, canon regular4 in the order of Saint Lazarus, who is near death. If Your Most Illustrious Lordship satisfies me in this request for the aforesaid son of my wet nurse, you will afford him the stature to become a man of worth, for this is a very good beginning for a poor fellow. I ask this of Your Excellency’s grace, and at your feet I commend myself always.

2. No date; no city. ASMo Casa e Stato busta 133. This letter is catalogued in the Modena archive in a folder with others from the 1470s. Its placement, along with its contents and signature (minoma figliola Isabella da Este), indicate that it was composed by the Ferrarese chancery or dictated by Isabella’s mother on her behalf. Isabella routinely used the title, Madama, for her mother, Eleonora d’Este; Colonna was a senior lady-in-waiting who had accompanied Eleonora from Naples to Ferrara and was at this time serving as Isabella’s governess. Sirvia (perhaps Silvia) I have been unable to identify but was probably another lady-in-waiting. On correspondence for and by children, see Deanna Shemek, “ ‘Ci Ci’ and ‘Pa Pa’: Script, Mimicry, and Mediation in Isabella d’Este’s Letters,” Rinascimento: Rivista dell’istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento series 2, 43 (2005): 75–91. 3. ASMo Casa e stato busta 133 c. 1684/1. The date on this letter is slightly obscure and could read 1477. 4. Canons regular are members of communal religious orders under Augustianian rule (regula).

24 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 3: 1480 June 12 Ferrara To Federico I Gonzaga marchese of Mantua, reporting on a fever and wishing him well.5 The letter Your Most Illustrious Lordship wrote me on the 8th of this month brought me such delight that God the creator lifted away my fever. Surely I could receive no remedy more apt to restore me to health than this letter of yours, coming as it did along with the very sweet and loving one written by the Most Illustrious Lord Francesco, my dear consort. And this is all the more so since I understand that Your Most Illustrious Lordship is also feeling much better now, thanks be to God; such news gives me more pleasure and comfort than I can say.6 Now I pray God that he restore both you and me to our previous state of health. I assure you that now I feel much better; and I await with utmost longing the aforesaid illustrious consort so that I may see and embrace him as my heart desires. If only God had willed that I were well at this time, I would have come personally to pay my respects to Your Lordship, to whom I send a thousand thousands of thanks for the cherries you sent me.7 Though I will only be allowed to eat a few, they will seem just the same like manna to me, and will give me back all my health, thanks to Your Most Illustrious Lordship who sends them. To your good graces I commend myself always.

5. AG 1183. Federico was Isabella’s future father-in-law. This letter is also reproduced, with slight differences in transcription, in Alessandro Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e Francesco Gonzaga promessi sposi,” Archivio storico lombardo series 4, 9 (1908): 34–69; see 48. A letter to Federico I from Isabella’s father, Ercole d’Este, on 21 April 1480 notes that the contract for Isabella’s marriage to Francesco II Gonzaga has been finalized via the ambassador D. Beltramino. A first encounter between the two children was scheduled for soon after, but in mid-May Isabella contracted a “double” tertian fever (doppia terzana), which her mother explained was one bout of fever followed immediately by another. For this reason the meeting was postponed. Eleonora d’Aragona wrote again on 7 June saying that fever was still keeping Isabella down (la febre la bate). See AG 1183 for documents concerning the marriage arrangements and this initial visit. 6. A letter of 5 June from Ercole d’Este expresses displeasure at hearing that Federico I is not well. On 8 June he congratulates Federico on the improvement of il mal suo, assuring him that the ratification of certain documents can wait until he is again in good health. 7. Though this period in Gonzaga-Este relations is marked by a number of food exchanges, Federico’s gift to Isabella may have been a response to Eleonora d’Aragona’s letter to him of 4 June, in which she observed that Isabella had been fever-free for two days and now wanted to do nothing but eat (la non voria far se non manzar).

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 25 Letter 4: 1483 May 22 Modena To Francesco II Gonzaga, thanking him for sending a messenger with get-well wishes for her.8 I could never convey the thanks I owe Your Lordship for the visits made to me on your behalf by the noble Francesco Malatesta. Certainly, once I heard his offers and embassies, I felt I was completely cured. But when I learned that Your Lordship had in mind to come all the way to Modena to see me if my illness lasted any longer, I almost wanted to be sick again, just to be able to see you, whom I would happily see and to whom I continue to commend myself. And I pray you deign to commend me to the most illustrious ladies, my sisters.9

Letter 5: 1490 February 23 Marmirolo To Beatrice d’Este, expressing regrets.10 My dismay at your departure was so great that I was quite beside myself and could find no appropriate words for such an occasion that would befit the tender love we bear each other. If I weren’t certain that Your Ladyship must know this came from the tenderness in my heart, which prevented me from speaking, I would try to offer excuses. But excuses aside, I must say that I so regret being deprived of Your Ladyship’s sweetest company that I feel my soul has left my body. Nor can I think of anything but Your Ladyship, whose image appears before me at every hour and in every place. Though here my illustrious lord looks well on me, and no pleasure is lacking, I don’t enjoy these things with the contentment I would feel if I had Your Ladyship near. And since I cannot visit you personally, I will do so continuously in spirit, and often with letters, begging Your Ladyship to treat me similarly, for I could have no greater pleasure than hearing from Your Ladyship daily. I pray you commend me every day to our most illustrious mother, and every night when you go to receive her blessing, receive it also for me and kiss her hand in my name. To you I offer nothing, since it seems to me superfluous to give you that of which you are just as much mistress as I am. Your Ladyship will excuse me if I don’t write now in my own hand, for I am much occupied. But another time I will make good on this omission. I offer myself and commend myself to Your Ladyship. (Write in similar vein, mutatis mutandi, to the illustrious Alfonso, Ferdinando, Sigismondo and Giulio d’Este.) 8. AG 1183. Luzio plausibly identifies this letter as an autograph by Isabella. If his assessment is correct, then the document is clear evidence of Isabella’s early, diligent training in the art of epistolary communication. The letter would have been produced under the watchful eye of her tutors. Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e Francesco Gonzaga promessi sposi,” 52–53. 9. Isabella is claiming Francesco’s sisters Chiara, Elisabetta, and Maddalena, as her own. 10. AG 2904 libro 136 cc. 1v–2r.

26 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 6: 1490 February 26 Marmirolo To Eleonora d’Aragona, duchess of Ferrara, a letter of recommendation.11 In order to get Scozia, the presenter of this letter, off my back, I could not deny him this request to Your Highness. I pray you take this as a recommendation to favor him in some litigations that currently involve him. I commend myself always to Your Excellency’s good graces.

Letter 7: 1490 February 27 Marmirolo To Benedetto Agnello, a letter of advocacy.12 We understand that you must adjudicate a certain dispute between Martino Peglione and a certain Bartolomea, his sister-in-law. As both of them are poor folk, especially Martino who is a foreigner, we ask that you consider fully only the verified facts and judge in favor of whoever is in the right, so that the poor fellow will not have to pay excessively.

Letter 8: 1490 March 2 Marmirolo To the duchess of Ferrara, sending a gift of fish.13 As I was unable to obtain fish from Lake Garda to send you as I wished, to show that I remember you and keep you constantly in my heart, I had some caught in the rivers here. And since a small number of lampreys were gotten, I thought to send them to you right away. I hope you will excuse me if they are not so beautiful and so many as you deserve, and accept my great affection in compensation. I commend myself always to the good grace of His Illustrious Lordship my father and you, praying you deign to commend me to my illustrious brothers and sister. As I finished writing the above, my messenger from Garda returned with some salted carp, fifty of which I am sending for you, and equally as many for the illustrious lord, my father, as well as some citrons and lemons for Your Excellency. I will make every effort to have some fresh carp next time and will send them to Your Ladyship, to whom I commend myself eternally.

11. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 1r. This letter commences Isabella’s first copybook after her marriage. On Isabella’s correspondence as a young marchesa, see Monica Ferrari, A Sentimental Education by Letter: Isabella d’Este, 1490–1493; Un’educazione sentimentale per lettera: Il caso di Isabella d’Este (1490–1493), 2009, . 12. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 1r. 13. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 3v.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 27 Letter 9: 1490 March 4 Mantua To Lucrezia d’Este, complaining that she has not received answers to her letters.14 The courier we sent returned with no reply to the letter we wrote you, which would have much amazed us if we had not already anticipated that you would be caught up in so many pleasures that you no longer remembered us. It seems to us that you have confirmed the proverb that says, “Out of sight, out of mind.” We did not write you in our own hand, since we doubted you would trouble yourself to respond, and we guessed well, because if you did not deign now to send the courier with as much as a tiny little note, much less would you have written it yourself. And so, having written you that we intended to write you in our own hand, we changed our mind upon verifying what we suspected. And yet we thought to confuse you by writing yet another letter to ask you, if you don’t care to honor us with one of your letters, at least to kiss the hand of our mother every day in our name, and keep us commended [to her] and to our illustrious lord father. And greet all the ladies of the court on our behalf. We dispose ourself to your pleasure.15

Letter 10: 1490 March 4 Mantua To Lady Polissena in jealousy over Francesco.16 Though you chose not to stay fifteen days with us because you were more moved by your craving for oysters and mussels than by our love, we thought we would write you these few words.17 We wanted to tell you that you should not have let yourself be overwhelmed by that appetite, for if it had persisted we would have seen to satisfying it, sending messengers to Venice every day so you could have an abundant supply of those things. Nor should you have worried that being in such a rustic locale you would lack for provisions, because you could easily see 14. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 4v. 15. Here and throughout, I translate Isabella’s use of the plural personal forms when referring to herself (noi, ne, ci, which in English are often termed “the royal we” pronouns) as we, us, and ourself. Though the use of the plural our with the singular self rings somewhat strange in English, it seems preferable to the more confusing option, ourselves, or the elimination of these historic forms of formal distancing. 16. AG 2904 libro 136 cc. 4v–5r. This Polissena is probably not the woman identified by Cartwright as Isabella’s cousin, a Ferrarese lady-in-waiting who accompanied Beatrice d’Este to Milan in 1491 when the latter married. Since Cartwright describes Polissena d’Este as “considerably older and more sedate” than the duchess, we must surmise either that Cartwright is mistaken or that the Polissena of this letter is someone else, perhaps a daughter or niece of the elder. See Julia Cartwright [Ady], Beatrice d’Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475–1497 (1903; repr., London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1920), 77–78, 232. 17. Oysters were already at this time considered to have aphrodisiac powers. The letter builds skillfully from the erotic bent of Polissena’s appetites to the accusation of seduction.

28 ISABELLA D’ESTE that this is a cultivated place, fertile with good things. Given your offensive behavior, we now scorn you. And even more than for these reasons, also because we suspect that the most illustrious lord our consort is in love with you, since he always wears on his finger a ring that you gave him. We wanted to inform you of this so that you would know how to behave from now on. Otherwise, we will see that you get a potion that will cost you your skin. You are hereby informed that we no longer want you as a friend, a relation, or anyone who cares for us at all.

Letter 11: 1490 March 4 Mantua To Diana di Cumani, thanking her for correspondence.18 We received your letter, which was so loving that we appreciated it more than we can say, especially for the news that our most excellent lady shows many signs of displeasure at her separation from us. Though we have always been certain of how tenderly she loves us, this was nonetheless the best news we could possibly have heard, for we will live content in this world to the degree that we know we are in her good graces. Though to us it is an agony to be torn from her, we won’t expend many words to tell you so, because you know in some measure the passionate and incomparable love and honor we bear her. We will tell you just this: that when we see that evening has come and we cannot kiss her hand as is our custom, we become so ill disposed that we can find no consolation. Nonetheless, we will follow the instructions we received from Her Excellency and try to live as happily as we can. When you go to the dances and feasts you have in Ferrara every day, we pray you wish we were still with you there. And every day, go to Her Excellency our lady and kiss her hand for us. And ask her to please send us a deck of playing cards, because we have none. Commend us always to the illustrious lords our brothers and sister, and take care of Madonna Lucrezia, Violante [Serafina?], Isabella and Barbara for us. We thank you for your long letter and remind you that you are always in our heart. We are disposed to your every pleasure and accommodation. Commend us to the ambassador of the lord king, Messer Colla, Don Vincenzo, and Signor Galasso.

Letter 12: 1490 March 4 Mantua To the courtier Francesco, on being missed in Ferrara.19 We have learned from a letter from Giovanmaria Trotti that since our departure you are all cold and mute at the table for lack of skirmishes with us. Since we hope to return there for this St. George’s day, we warn you that you must prepare well to defend yourself from the many assaults we have planned for you! We would be 18. AG 2904 libro 136 cc. 5r–v. 19. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 6v. The addressee is perhaps Francesco Castello.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 29 most grateful if you kept us continuously commended to Her Excellency Madama and to the illustrious lords our brothers and sister, and if you would comfort all the courtiers one-by-one on our behalf. We offer ourself to your pleasures.

Letter 13: 1490 March 9 Mantua To the duchess of Ferrara, thanking her for writing and lamenting the absence of letters from others.20 Through the reply Your Excellency made, I learned of your wellbeing, which I desire more than my own. There was no need to explain why you did not respond to me in your own hand, because any letter from you delights me. I would not want you to go to any trouble on my account, though when I do have letters from Your Excellency’s hand I keep them as holy relics. I beg you, for my part, to excuse me if this letter is not written in my hand, for I was with the most illustrious duchess of Urbino all day and had no time. My illustrious lord consort came here yesterday, and today after dinner he went back to Gonzaga en route to there [Ferrara]. Perhaps Your Excellency will see him before you get this letter of mine. Your Excellency once charged that I would soon forget everyone there [in Ferrara]. But it seems to me that just the opposite is true, because I have written to twelve people and received not one reply, except from Gianmaria Trotto. Whence I have cause to complain of that whole court, and especially of Lucrezia, Madonna Polissena, and most of all our Francesco, who didn’t bother to write me even a line or two. I don’t know whether this is because he has become too great a master, or from some other reason unknown to me. And so if I wrote no more in the future, Your Excellency could not accuse me of haughtiness or of forgetting Ferrara. I enclose here the list of all those to whom I wrote, so that Your Excellency will be apprised of my every action. To your good grace and that of my illustrious father I commend myself.

Letter 14: 1490 March 16 Cavriana To Alessandro [da Baese], ordering a banquet for a night on Lake Garda.21 We answer your letter by saying that if by now you have seen the lodgings at Santa Maria, as we assume you have, and if fifty or sixty people could stay there as you say, we will be delighted to go there for one night. Even if there is no accommodation or possibility of lodging everyone there, we wish very much to stay a night at the lake, so please have prepared all the lodgings that are available in Desenzano. Since those officers have no commission to incur expenses, you yourself must see to getting the fish for Thursday’s dinner and supper, because we 20. AG 2904 libro 136 cc. 7r–v. 21. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 12r. Perhaps Alessandro da Baese.

30 ISABELLA D’ESTE will arrive with a hundred mouths to feed that morning. We will send the other things from here tomorrow, along with a list of all the company. Now that you are fully informed, please give the details regarding all you have seen and done to this rider, whom we have sent for this purpose. We commend you greatly for writing and for your diligence thus far. Please thank the vicar of Sirmione on our part for the gift he sent us, which we liked immensely and which we will enjoy for love of him. By God, Alessandro, do employ your usual diligence in this case, for you could give us no greater pleasure, so great is our desire to spend a night on the lake. We would like to have a reply tomorrow morning telling us what you have done and arranged today—that is, at the archpriest’s house or elsewhere.

Letter 15: 1490 March 24 Mantua To the duchess of Ferrara, thanking her for letters received and sending fish and fruit to several people.22 No reply is required for the two letters from Your Excellency of the 22nd and 21st of this month, since they were answers to mine, except on the question of Solomon the Jew, who left here over twenty days ago for Your Highness’s court. I am amazed that he hadn’t arrived before you wrote me, and I trust he is there by now. Madonna Beatrice of Naples promised me she would send the recipe for that powder to Your Most Illustrious Ladyship by this courier. The most illustrious lady duchess of Urbino and I went to Lake Garda, as I wrote to you, where we truly enjoyed ourselves very much. We have now come back to this city to attend to our devotions. I thank Your Ladyship for your loving reminders and instructions, for which I am most grateful. We shall make an effort to carry them out and do you honor. I commend myself etc. P.S.: I am sending Your Ladyship twenty fresh carp and a fresh trout, with a number of citrons and quinces so that you can share in my trip to the lake. Please accept and enjoy them for my sake. I also ask you to distribute the rest of the carp and trout according to the list below, along with the enclosed letters. To the most illustrious lord duke, 20 carp and one trout To the Most Illustrious Messer Sigismondo 12 carp and one trout To the Most Illustrious Lord Alfonso 10 carp To Madonna Sister Violante 7 carp

22. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 14v.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 31 Letter 16: 1490 March 24 Mantua To Francesco Castello telling him not to hit his wife, “la Brogna.”23 We were very pleased to hear that after our departure you consummated your matrimony with la Brogna. But we urge you at least not to hit her as you used to do. In this spirit we commend her to you. Take care of her for us. We dispose ourselves to you.

Letter 17: 1490 March 28 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga after his departure, requesting that he write to her often.24 I received Your Excellency’s letter of the 26th of this month written in Padua, from which I learned that you are well. This was the most welcome news I could have heard. I thank you greatly for the message, and I pray you, while you are away, see fit to have word written to me often, for I could receive no greater favor from you. I am well, along with the illustrious lady duchess our sister in common; the only comfort we lack is the presence of Your Lordship, to whom I pray God will grant a good and prosperous journey and a speedy return. To your good grace I commend myself always, along with the aforesaid lady, the duchess.25

Letter 18: 1490 June 1 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, replying to his command that she to come to him.26 I saw that you command me to be in Gonzaga tomorrow with a minimal entourage. In order to obey you I will do so willingly. I pray Your Lordship, however, advise me whether I should bring Messer Stefano and Messer Guidone, or not, and that you have an answer sent right away so that I may know how to proceed. To your good graces I commend myself. 23. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 15v. Banks Amendola identifies “La Brogna” as Eleonora Brogna de’ Lardis: First Lady, 256. Also according to Rita Castagna, that nickname referred to Eleonora Brogna de’ Lardis, though Castagna notes that La Brogna married Matteo Bonatto in 1496: Un vicerè per Eleonora Brognina alla corte di Isabella d’Este Gonzaga (Mantua: Moretti, 1982), 21–23. Eleonora’s sister, Beatrice, married Ercole Compagni in 1491; and the third of these daughters of Ludovico Brogna de’ Lardis was Caterina, whose nickname was “La Brognolla.” The famous beauty known as “La Brognina” was Beatrice’s daughter. 24. AG 2106 c. 364. 25. Elisabetta Gonzaga remained in Mantua for several weeks after her brother’s wedding, striking up the long friendship between the two women. See Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 51–54. 26. AG 2106 c. 367. Francesco’s request appears to be an invitation for an intimate rendez-vous with his wife, who otherwise traveled with dozens of people in her company.

32 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 19: 1490 June 26 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, regarding an emerald he has sent for Isabella’s inspection.27 Along with your letter, we received from Antonio di Trionfo the emerald you sent, which is, as you say, very beautiful, and we like it immensely. But because it is a little flawed, we don’t think we will keep it, for we want something exemplary and spotless. If this one were not blemished it would be just right, and it would be a great bargain at thirty ducats. We assure you that we are as satisfied with your labors as if we had decided to keep it; we know you worked diligently. We were prepared to send you the payment quoted by Antonio for the other things you sent, but our upcoming trip requires more expenses than we had anticipated; we have had to spend this money as well as some more. So you must now be patient, but as soon as we return from Pavia we will send it to you without delay. We thank you and praise you for the sweet oranges you had presented to us; we will enjoy them and think of you with affection. We are returning the emerald to you through our servant Giacomo de Verità, from whom you will also hear better how pleased we are with you.

Letter 20: 1490 last day of April Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, “visiting” him with a few words.28 Though it has not yet been ten hours since Your Excellency left here, nonetheless to me it seems ten years, so I wanted to visit you with these few words and wish you a successful journey and speedy return. I cannot help worrying, for I am unable to see you every day, and I recall how you said to me as you were leaving that you didn’t feel very well. This was like a knife in my heart. I will not be glad until I have some word of Your Lordship. I pray you see fit to have me notified of your condition. You will excuse me if this letter is not written in my hand, for I am thoroughly disquieted by your departure. I commend myself to you always.

Letter 21: 1490 June 30 Ferrara To Francesco Secco, about a runaway Mantuan wife.29 Seduced by a bad lot of friends, the wife of Mastro Antonio Sedazarro’s son, Giacomo, fled from Mantua some months ago and took up residence here. Her poor husband came after her and turned to Her Excellency, Madama our mother, 27. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 41v. Brognolo was one of the Gonzagas’ most trusted and respected diplomats. In April of 1489, the marchese named him resident ambassador to Venice. He would later serve in many other cities, including Rome. See Roberto Zapperi, “Brognolo, Giorgio,” DBI 14 (1972). 28. AG 2106 c. 375. 29. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 42v. On Secco’s relations to the Gonzagas, see Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 36–37; Cockram, Isabella d’Este, 92–93.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 33 who called this woman to her and urged her to return home and live properly. The woman would on no account consent to return to Mantua, but she did promise that if her husband came here she would stay with him and remain faithful. Her Excellency had the woman held in the castle until the agreement could be finalized. Since the husband wants to live in peace with her and since Madama our mother had taken him into her protection, he forgave his wife for her past mistake and decided to please her by coming to live here. [The duchess] has exhorted us with great urgency to see that the woman gets back certain bequests and the dowry she is supposed to possess in Mantua. Hence we are content to have you instruct our local council that by petition of her husband, the bearer of this letter, they conduct a brief, summary, and expedited trial against the heirs of Giovan Antonio de Mulieribis and against Cristoforo Orsi, the father of this woman, for the rest of her dowry. Once the case has been decided, we want the verdict to be carried out, and that the money from the bequests as well as from the dowry be deposited in the hands of an appropriate person. Then notify the illustrious Madama our mother, who wants to see that the money is placed here in solid investments for the security of husband and wife. We would be grateful if you would give these strict instructions to the above mentioned counselors and authorize them to expedite this matter with as little delay and expense as possible, because as we say above, our mother has urged this very much upon us. See also that they return certain possessions of his that Cechetto has retained, and have them authorize the transport of her bed and other draperies here.

Letter 22: 1490 August 11 Mantua To Giovanfrancesco Gonzaga, requesting a visit from Margherita, his new daughter-in-law.30 As I have felt some displeasure these past few days and am not entirely recovered, it would please me to have Margherita here for a few days. I pray Your Lordship be content to send her to me. Nothing could give me more pleasure than having some company to restore me and to share in the enjoyment of the feast of Our Lady and the running of the palio. I offer and commend myself to Your Lordship and to your most illustrious consort.

30. AG 2104 libro 136 c. 49r. Giovanfrancesco’s natural son, Phebus, who would serve with Francesco Gonzaga at the battle of Fornovo, had recently married Margherita, natural daughter of Alberto d’Este, half-brother of Isabella’s father, Ercole d’Este.

34 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 23: 1490 August 11 Mantua To Margherita d’Este, inviting her for a visit.31 Since we have had a little fever these days and are not entirely free of it, we would like to have your company to soothe us. We pray you please request leave from the illustrious lord our uncle, to whom we are also writing in proper fashion. If he is content, as we believe he will be, and provided that it very much please our illustrious lord consort, and once our father, who must speak to him for us, has informed us that this is the case, you will come here. We would like you to come before Sunday, so that if we are feeling better we can see the feast of Our Lady of Grace and the palio race on San Leonardo together. Please advise us through this rider regarding the day of your arrival and the number of people in your party. We offer ourself to your pleasure, praying you commend us to the Most Illustrious Lady Antonia.

Letter 24: 1490 August 27 Mantua To the vicar of Revere advising him about a prodigal, violent husband.32 The wife of Carlo Bonazzo, a resident in your vicariate, has informed us that her husband has thrown her out and beaten her multiple times in his wish to lead a life of crime and squander his wealth. She says that when she has sometimes reminded him not to spend all he has, since besides his sons he has daughters to marry, he has threatened to kill or injure her. The Most Illustrious Lord Messer Giovanni our brother-in-law and brother has had word sent to us that this man should be forbidden to sell his property, because his land is in His Lordship’s estate. We too are content to have you admonish this Carlo—on pain of falling into our disgrace—not to threaten or harm his wife, for if we were to hear a word about it we would make him regret it. You will take note that this man is not to use up the poor woman’s dowry if he does not want her, in turn, to have cause to litigate, which, given her lack of power she would not be able to do.

Letter 25: 1490 September 16 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, recommending someone to him.33 Giovanni Feriolo has been pestering me these days to commend him to Your Excellency and to pray you expedite him. I don’t know what expedition he needs. But to satisfy him I had this letter written to Your Lordship, to whom I commend myself. 31. AG 2104 libro 136 c. 49r. 32. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 51v. 33. AG 2106 c. 392.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 35 Letter 26: 1490 September 28 Cavriana To Francesco II Gonzaga, heeding his wish that she not visit her mother.34 It is now the third hour and I have just received Your Excellency’s letter, from which I learn that you wish me not to go to Ferrara just now. I reply that I am ready in this and in all things ever to obey Your Excellency. But I had wanted to please my mother, having heard that she had a fever and stomach pains. Nonetheless, I take greater pleasure in staying, to please Your Excellency, than in going. For I desire nothing more in this world, nor would I want to live in any other way. And when I please Your Lordship in something, I take the greatest pleasure I can have. I commend myself always to your good graces.

Letter 27: 1490 September 29 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, remarking the difficult paths letters sometimes take.35 This evening at the twenty-second hour [two hours prior to sunset] the illustrious lords my brothers and I arrived here safely. The Illustrious Lord Messer Giovanni rode as far as Goito on a litter, due to a slight fever he had. From there he went by boat ahead of us, and when we met him here he was quite well. Yesterday evening as soon as I got to Cavriana I sent a rider with a basket of trout to Your Excellency at Gonzaga, so that you could share in our catches. But then I changed my mind upon being assured by someone coming from Mantua that Your Lordship was expected in Ferrara tonight. I sent the fish here, so that it would go immediately by boat to Ferrara along with other things I was sending the illustrious lady our shared mother, thinking you could enjoy it there. And then I was greatly dismayed when I heard that Your Lordship is still at Gonzaga. I wanted to offer my excuses for this, so that you know I was thinking of you, commending myself always to your good graces.

Letter 28: 1490 October 29 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting a petition for a sword to fight a duel.36 Since Your Excellency is not here, Fatino, who was sent by Lord Constantino, reported to me as testified in the enclosed credential letter that he had come in the name of his patron. He was here to pay his respects to Your Lordship and confidentially to seek your favor in this request of his. He says that some months 34. AG 2106 c. 407. Carolyn James notes that both Isabella and her mother had been sick with malarial fevers as recently as the end of August. Perhaps Francesco’s insistence that Isabella not travel regarded her own recent illness: James, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?,” 11. 35. AG 2106 c. 387. 36. AG 2106 c. 399.

36 ISABELLA D’ESTE ago when the duke of Milan’s [Gian Galeazzo Sforza’s] camp was in Piemonte, during a certain conversation among some men of the marchese of Monferrato, one of Galeazzo San Severino’s men at arms named Giovan Giacomo was embittered and remarked that he wished the aforesaid marchese along with his wife and children would be hanged. To which a man named Antonio Zanardo, one of Lord Ludovico’s men at arms, responded that it was wrong to use words of this kind to speak about such a lord. The other answered that he had suffered sufficient offenses to be able to speak thus. To which Antonio again replied that even if [Giovan Giacomo] had suffered a thousand offenses from the lord marchese, he should nonetheless not rave on like that, and that if he insisted in doing so, he should not invoke the wife and children who had caused him no trouble, and that to do so was no behavior for a decent man. In the end, one word led to another and they decided to fight. Lord Ludovico will meet him on the field in Vigevano, since they are both Milanese soldiers. Lord Constantino, who is favoring Antonio Zanardo the defender of the marchese, is now asking Your Lordship, for love of both of them and in the interest of all of us nobles, to lend him a lance point, for he intends to have the advantage. He asks that if you have some good and secret weapons you oblige him, for he could have no greater favor from Your Lordship. I replied that I would not dare to give [him] anything of this kind without Your Lordship’s permission, but that I was quite certain that out of love for the lord marchese and for Lord Constantino you would show him every favor that you honorably could. He begged me to write Your Lordship about this and to ask you to respond as quickly as possible, for he would wait here. And so, as is my duty, I wanted you to understand the whole story. He says he begs Your Lordship not to make any show of this, because he does not want it known that they are seeking these arms. I commend myself to Your Lordship’s good grace.

Letter 29: 1490 November 5 Mantua To Count Antonio Maria della Mirandola, asking him to free a mistreated woman.37 We heard via the reasons included in the letter of Girolamo Stanga the excuses Your Lordship gives for not freeing the daughter of Paolo Busseto, reasons that seem to us in no way acceptable. Nor do we know where you got the idea that a woman ought to pay the penalty for her husband’s offenses. Perhaps Your Lordship, who professes sanctity, got the opinion in Rome that it is quite worthy to detain another man’s wife. You say that she is being kept by decent people and that her honor should not be compromised; we believe this is true. But this does not mean that evil talk could not shame [her], and such imputations would not 37. AG 2904 libro 136 cc. 60v–61r.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 37 leave Your Lordship unscathed. We are therefore not at all pleased; we would have thought that a mere word from us would produce compliance in something more difficult, let alone in freeing this woman, which should not even require our intercession. We urge you again and pray you free that poor woman out of love for us. Otherwise, if her situation should come into our hands again, we might render you tit for tat.38 But if you do as we ask we will hold Your Lordship most dear. To whom we offer ourself.

Letter 30: 1490 November 26 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, assuring him that her property is his.39 Mazzoni had word sent to me that you wanted my illustrious lord father’s crocks filled with vinegar and salt to prepare some gray mullet for Your Lordship, and I gave him everything at once. And since I understood from him that he got the money to buy these things from Alberto da Bologna, I thought it expedient, since I am here, for me to pay this expense. I ordered Alberto to take the money from my account and not to seek any repayment from Mazzoni for any of these things, for between Your Lordship and me there is no separation of goods. I commend myself to you continuously.

Letter 31: 1490 December 10 Sermide To Franceso II Gonzaga, asking him to approve a singing master.40 This evening I arrived here safe and sound.41 Tomorrow I will be in Sacchetta, and the next day in Mantua, as you will have understood from another letter I wrote Your Excellency. As Your Lordship knows, the other day I had Maestro Giovan Martino come to Mantua so that I can learn to sing.42 I took great pleasure in this, since I think singing is a most laudable virtue; now, in order to follow up, I am bringing him back with me. But since he cannot stay long, he has brought with him a young Frenchman who has a good singing method; he will be to our advantage because he is alone.43 If it please Your Excellency, I would be very happy to

38. Isabella uses here a popular phrase: “We might trade you bread for focaccia.” 39. AG 2106 c. 413. 40. AG 2106 c. 384. 41. AG 2106 c. 384. Isabella was returning from a trip to her home city of Ferrara. 42. William Prizer identifies Martino as Johannes Martini, “compositore” in Ercole d’Este’s chapel in Ferrara: Prizer, “ ‘Una virtù molto conveniente.’ ” Prizer also transcribes the letter and cites another, from Isabella to her father requesting Martino as a favorite teacher on 30 August 1490. 43. Isabella’s comment refers to the savings the court will realize by employing a teacher who will not arrive in Mantua with a family to support. Prizer notes that this unidentified Frenchman did not stay

38 ISABELLA D’ESTE have him with me. And so I pray you inform me of your wishes, and I commend myself always to Your Lordship’s good grace.

Letter 32: 1491 January 12 Piacenza, posted by the duchess of Ferrara. To Francesco II Gonzaga, recounting a day of travel toward Milan.44 We departed Friday from Viadana and Bressello according to plan. We traveled the whole time by boat and slept in the boat five nights; we cannot say we were very comfortable there. Nothing worth reporting has happened on this journey, except that considering the hardships, Madama, the duchess, and I have been quite strong. We arrived here around the twenty-second hour [two hours before sunset] today and were honorably received by Lord Sforza, his commissioner, and some gentlemen. Madama is lodging in the house of the Counts of Landi and I in the house of Messer Antonio Ceresa. Tomorrow we will stay in place. Friday we will depart and will once again sleep two nights in the boat. On Sunday, we will make our entry into Pavia, where the Most Illustrious Lord Ludovico will be. They say we will stay five days. I will send word of all that follows to Your Excellency, to whose good graces I commend myself always.

Letter 33: 1491 January 18 [Pavia] To Francesco Secco, inquiring whether Francesco Gonzaga is in Pavia incognito, and on travel complications caused by icy weather.45 You will learn of the ceremonies that were conducted here yesterday from our letter to our most illustrious lord, which you may open and read if he is absent. Today the Most Illustrious Lord Ludovico told us he had heard that our most illustrious lord was here in disguise, asking me, if it were true, to point him out. We replied that we knew nothing about it and that we did not believe it, in the conviction that if he were here he would make himself known to His Excellency. We would be grateful if Your Majesty would advise us whether he has come here or not, and in what garb. The household arrived here yesterday and we heard how readily Madonna Caterina del Flisco availed us of her horses and carts: thank her on our behalf. long at Mantua and was soon replaced by a French soprano named Carlo [Colinet?] de Lannoy, who also left suddenly and was next spotted in Florence: “ ‘Una virtù molto conveniente,’ ” 13. 44. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 75v. Isabella was en route with her mother and her sister Beatrice to Milan for Beatrice’s marriage to Ludovico Sforza. For commentary on their harrowing winter journey and the nuptial ceremonies, festivities, and faux pas, see Cartwright, Beatrice d’Este, 53–63; Banks Amendola, First Lady, 54–55. More extensively, see Cecilia M. Ady, A History of Milan under the Sforza, edited by Edward Armstrong (London: Methuen; New York: Putnam, 1907), 139–64. 45. AG 2904 libro 136 cc. 77r–v.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 39 We also learned that the bucentaurs still cannot be sent because of the ice, and we regret this.46 But because we understand that Madama has sent a rider to request the bucentaurs from our most illustrious lord if the ones from Ferrara are unable to come, we remind Your Majesty that if His Lordship wishes to accommodate her he can send her the large bucentaur that was left at home, in addition to the medium and small ones that were ordered for us, and explain to her that the large one is being sent for her and the others for us and our entourage, so that it will seem to her that His Excellency has our conforts in mind as well. For in any case we would be in agreement with Madama, our mother. In addition to the bucentaurs send two wherries for the trunks, but if the ice persists and they cannot come, see that you send now in any case three ships from Borgoforte to Viadana, as you will understand from Antimaco, to whom Benedetto [Capilupi?] wrote yesterday. Be well.

Letter 34: 1491 15 March Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, instructing him to get a precious stone and other goods.47 No reply is necessary to your recent letters in these days except to thank you for the Lenten things you sent us as a gift. We very much appreciated them and will enjoy them for love of you. We would be pleased if you urged the master who is cutting that stone to send it as soon as possible, because we are having it made for our sister. We would also like you to have made a piece of dark lion tabby and a dark green one of the highest quality. Since we wish to have one of those stones that grows [mushrooms?] in one night,48 ask around to some merchant or man who knows these things how and where one could be found, and when you find it have it bought for us. We say no more of the civet dealer, since that man does not want to undertake this duty. We have had your chancellor paid all the money you were to be paid by us.

46. The bucentaur (bucintoro) was a ceremonial barge used for water parades and the arrivals of important guests. These vessels were often highly ornamented with sculpted and gilded embellishments. 47. AG 2904 libro 136 c. 80v. 48. Lion tabby (or tabé) was heavy silk from Lyon, with a striated or watermarked pattern. This fabric’s name derives from the place where it was first made, the Attabiy section of Baghdad. See Daniela Ferrari, ed., Le collezioni Gonzaga: L’inventario dei beni del 1540–1542 (Cinisello Balsamo [Milan]: Silvana, 2003), 433, 442; Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, & Fine Clothing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 317. The uncertain translation here derives from una de quelle petre che fa nascere i fonzi in una nocte.

40 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 35: 1491 April 2 Mantua To Girolamo Ziglioli, sending him shopping.49 Since you are not coming through here on your route, we are sending you one hundred gold ducats, which you should spend on the things listed here. You need not return any of the money, because you will buy these things. If you should still have money left afterwards, buy some small chains, or something new and exquisite that in your opinion would suit our tastes. And if this cash should not suffice for the things we require, add some of your own and we will pay you back right away. We would rather be your debtor than your creditor, as long as you don’t bring us silly baubles. These are the items we want in particular. Fifty large gold beads, which should be beautiful and all alike. Large black amber beads of all sorts as you see fit. Sixty large beads of carved amethyst. If you find no carved ones, take the kind you find, but they should be all alike. Blue or tawny cloth for a gown (camora) and black cloth for a cape (albernia).50 You will understand how much from Master Thomaso. We would like this to have no equal in the world; money is no object, even if it should cost ten ducats per ell, as long as it is utterly extraordinary. If it is such that there is anything else like it, we would rather you left it behind. Two bolts of Cambrai cloth,51 which should be exquisite. Two bolts of the loveliest Reims linen. If you don’t find any of this quality, leave it be. In conclusion, we ask that you exercise your usual diligence in serving us as you characteristically do. Above all, beyond these items listed try to dig up from underground some small, really special things, as we write above, for you could do nothing that would please us more. We offer ourself to your pleasure.

49. AG 2904 libro 136 cc. 83r–v. For further commentary on this letter, see Welch, “Shopping with Isabella d’Este.” 50. The camora (gamurra, zimarra) was a basic woman’s gown. It could be made rich or simple, depending on fabric and ornamentation, but was usually unlined and worn over an underblouse or camicia. It could also be worn with other garments over it; after 1450 it was often made with detachable, richly contrasting sleeves. Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 309. The albernia (sbernia, ibernia) derives its name from Hibernia, the Latin word for Ireland. This type of cape was made of rich fabric, sometimes lined with fur, which was draped around the body and fastened on the left shoulder with a brooch. See Treccani. 51. This fabric and the Reims linen mentioned in the same letter are both named for the French cities where they were made.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 41 Letter 36: 1491 April 3 [Mantua?] To Alfonso I d’Este, thanking him for a drawing of people and horses in the Guinea territory.52 I received along with Your Lordship’s letter the drawing of the men and the horses from that island newly discovered in the Guinea region. They pleased me as much as one can say, as did the information Your Lordship gave me the other day about this matter. I assure you that it was not due to any neglect of mine if you did not get a reply, because I submitted one immediately to my chancellor, who confirms that he prepared and sent it; perhaps the rider gave us bad service. Wherever this leads, Your Lordship must be certain that I am not to blame and accept my excuses. If I did not reply earlier to your other letter from the end of last month recommending Jacopo my footman, this was instead for my own reasons, because I wanted to consider the matter first rather than give an ambiguous answer. Now, I tell you that for love of Your Lordship, for whom I wish I could do something greater, I will be content to make him my sideboard keeper.53 This way, Your Lordship will know that you can dispose of me as much as of yourself. I commend myself to you always and also to your illustrious consort, praying Your Lordship kiss the hands of Her Excellency Madama54 in my name.

Letter 37: 1491 June 14 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, ordering a black child and other “goods.”55 Upon receipt of this letter, please have made for us a bolt of taffeta twenty-eight ells long, bordered in the way shown above. Also get: a black border ribbon; a cap; a new black cap; a dark cap; and another black cap. This should be done so as to have the cap always in the middle.56 See that it is as beautiful as can be, and done

52. AG 2904 libro 136 cc. 85r–v. Portuguese explorers had been setting out from Lisbon and navigating the west coast of Africa since the 1420s and had reached the Guinea coast by 1460. On the Gonzagas’ interest in these developments, see Daniela Ferrari, “L’incontro dei Due Mondi: Le fonti dell’Archivio di Stato di Mantova (sec. XV–XIX),” Civiltà mantovana 27, series 3 (1992), 45–67; Giovanni Praticò, “Fonti gonzaghesche per la storia delle scoperte geografiche (1491–1534),” Studi colombiani 3: Quinto centenario della nascita di Cristoforo Colombo; Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Colombiani, Genova 1951 (Genoa: Civico Istituto Colombiano, 1952), 85–103. On the general history of Renaissance exploration, see James M. Boyden, “Exploration,” in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999), 2:306–15. See also Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 77–79. 53. The cupboard (or sideboard) keeper oversaw the cold food preparation and table service in staffed households. 54. Their mother, Eleonora d’Aragona, duchess of Ferrara. 55. AG 2991 libro 1 cc. 4v–5r. 56. Isabella may mean that she wants the cap to be cut from the center of the piece of fabric.

42 ISABELLA D’ESTE not soon but very, very soon. We would appreciate nothing so much from you as to be well served regarding this taffeta. As for the Moorish girl, spare no diligence in finding her.57 Our Francesco da Castello tells us that he has found one and has sent to have her picked up in Venice; we understand that she was in a certain orphanage.58 Hence we want you to have the whole city searched, with every sort of careful inquiry. If you cannot find [a child] who is just two years old, we won’t mind if she is two and a-half years or so, provided that she is pretty, very black, and meets with our approval. Even if you should have to bring her forth from the womb, see that we are satisfied in this and that others don’t snatch her up before you do, because we hear that there are other people looking for [black girls], and we want to have one more than we have ever wanted anything before. You will find the breadth of the fabric border here enclosed. Note that for the taffeta we want no colors other than those we have indicated.

Letter 38: 1491 June 15 Porto To Galeazzo Trotti ordering a small black girl (moretta).”59 Since we have a great desire to have a little Moorish girl of one to one-and-a half to two-and-a-half years at the most, with a nice figure and very black, we thought we should notify you, because we know that in Venice and other places where they may be found you are very capable. We ask that you write some of your friends in such a way as to assure that we are obliged. See that she is acquired in such a way that if we do not like her we can send her back, carrying out this task with the same diligence that always characterizes your satisfaction of our wishes, for you could do nothing that would please us more. We remain ever disposed to your pleasures.

57. The quick passage from sartorial commodities to a human one reflects the expansion of the European slave trade that had been thriving since at least the mid-fifteenth century. See Jardine, Worldly Goods; Paul H. D. Kaplan, “Isabella d’Este and Black African Women,” in Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, ed. T. F. Earle and K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 125–54; Kate Lowe, “Isabella d’Este and the Acquisition of Black Africans at the Mantuan Court,” in Mantova e il Rinascimento italiano: Studi in onore di David S. Chambers, ed. Philippa Jackson and Guido Rebecchini (Mantua: Sometti, 2011), 65–76; Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, “Buffoni, nani, e schiavi dei Gonzaga ai tempi d’Isabella d’Este,” Nuova antologia series 3, 34 (1891), 618–50 and 35 (1891), 112–46. More generally, see William D. Phillips, Jr., “Slavery,” in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, 6:38–42. 58. Isabella’s word here is hospitale, as orphanages at the time were called. Venice’s Ospedale della pietà, for example, was established in the early fifteenth century for abandoned girls. 59. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 5r.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 43 Letter 39: 1491 June 18 Porto To Niccolò da Correggio, asking him for an eclogue he has promised her.60 Your Magnificence must recall that several months ago now you promised me an eclogue that you had composed, or were composing, and another one by Virgil, which you had translated from Latin into the vernacular. But since the wedding of the Most Illustrious Lord Duke Alfonso61, where you last promised us these things, we have heard nothing more, although we have written to Your Magnificence to ask you please to send them, for you could give us no greater pleasure than, indeed, to relieve us of this anticipation. Since we are naturally prone to cravings, things are dearer to us the faster we can obtain them. We remain ever ready to serve at the pleasure of Your Magnificence.

Letter 40: 1491 July 11 Porto To Giorgio Brognolo, ordering neck chains and marble for a sculpture of herself.62 Your two letters of the 9th of this month arrived along with the chains and were most pleasing. We commend you for writing and we assure you that it seems to us you acted prudently in not accepting the salt from Cervia without an increase in the weight [allowance]. By the same token, you also did well to accept the deal not to have our barges overspend. As for the amount of the next payment, we have once again given strict instructions to Cristoforo dal Bosco, who tells us that he will write to you through this rider when necessary. We are sending the chains back to you again, so that you can have them lengthened to the length of the string you will find in the box, because we want to wear them doubled around our neck. Do the same as well with all the others that are there. And as we wrote to you before, have some new ones made according to your own taste. We are not sending you another drawing, since we trust in your judgment and that of the craftsman. See that those too are of this length. Also: Since we would like to have our portrait done in marble, please find some good sculptor; and have two pieces of white marble located. It should not be calcified or have any hairline cracks or black veining. The pieces should each be exactly three palms long and two wide, so that if one should not be right or should be damaged we can use the other. Send them as soon as you can. The doge’s messenger was here; we accepted the falcons and distributed them as usual. 60. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 6r. On this recipient, see Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, “Niccolò da Correggio,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 21 (1893): 205–264; 22 (1894): 65–119. 61. Alfonso I d’Este had officially married Anna Sforza in Milan on 23 January 1491, just a few days after Ludovico Sforza had married Beatrice d’Este in Pavia. All interested parties benefited from the economy of a veritable double wedding in the Sforza family. Cartwright, Beatrice d’Este, 62–66. 62. AG 2991 libro 1 cc. 16v–17r. Isabella’s management of Gonzaga business often went hand-in-hand with her personal shopping, as she enlisted the same agent to serve her on both fronts.

44 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 41: 1491 August 9 Porto To Matteo Maria Boiardo, asking for his new addition to the Orlando innamorato.63 We wrote to you the other day asking you to please send that new part you have just composed for the Orlando innamorato, but we have received no reply. We beg you again please send it, for after we have read through it once, we will send it right back to you. You could do nothing that would please us more. We remain as ever disposed to your pleasure.

Letter 42: 1491 August 13 Porto To the podestà of Viadana, settling a small dispute.64 Stefano de Ruberto has informed me that a cavalry deputy came to his house to collect a lien for a hedge behind the road, which he says extends too far out. And since [Stefano] had not been previously cited or warned, they came to certain words. This deputy said some offensive things to the women of [de Ruberto’s] house, and he responded, “If my son were here you wouldn’t do what you are doing.” Now it seems that either for having said these things or because of the lien, you have detained him. If these are the only reasons for his detention, we want him released. Then find out whether because of that hedge he must be sentenced or not. And do not let him be wronged.

Letter 43: 1491 August 13 Porto To Count Matteo Maria Boiardo, asking for a copy of the Orlando Innamorato, to read it again.65 Since Your Magnificence has not composed more of the Orlando innamorato beyond what we saw at Reggio, we ask you to please send us that same one, so that we can read it again. You would be doing us a singular pleasure. We remain ever ready to please you. 63. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 28v. The poet replied to this letter saying he had written no more of his adventure poem since she last read it in Reggio. Isabella had known Boiardo and his poetry for much of her life, and indeed the Innamorato is dedicated to her father, Ercole. See Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 251–60; Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e l’Orlando Innamorato,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 2 (1883): 163–67. 64. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 29v/2. The Gonzagas employed podestà (the same word is both singular and plural)—representatives with both administrative and judicial powers—to reside in the most important centers of their territory, while vicars and commissioners were appointed to the smaller centers. The podestà, because they were also magistrates, adjudicated simple suits and petitions, while more important cases were argued before the Mantuan tribunal. See also the chapter on “L’ordinamento dello stato” in Mazzoldi, 2:375–423. 65. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 29v.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 45 Letter 44: 1491 August 18 Porto To Benedetto Mastino regarding a battered wife.66 A woman named Francesca, daughter of Antonio Maiocho and wife of Benedetto the son of Lord Antonello di Albergini, a resident of Ceresara, has informed us that she can no longer remain with her husband because he mistreats her so. He is also wasting and mismanaging the property she gave him, especially a share she has in a mill at Marcaria. He gives her neither food nor the other necessities for living. We want you to hear this woman’s case immediately and to make such good provision for her as you see fit. Seek justice and equity, so that this poor woman will not be so badly treated. Be well.

Letter 45: 1491 September 3 Porto To Francesco II Gonzaga, on some pills he has taken.67 I was delighted by your letter informing me of the good effects of that pill. I hope this has brought your complete recovery. Given this good result, I have decided to go to Castiglione Mantovano tomorrow to see that property I have never seen. I’ll arrange for a bit of feasting to feed the farmers and have a little recreation myself.

Letter 46: 1491 September 17 Porto To Giorgio Brognolo, asking him to check the booksellers in Venice for books.68 We would like you to send one of your men out one day to all the book shops there in Venice, and have him note all the books in the vernacular—both in verse and in prose—that feature battles, histories, and tales both modern and ancient. Send us as soon as you can especially those that tell of the paladins of France and everything else that is available. Be well.

66. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 30v. 67. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 39r. No evidence has come to light that Francesco manifested the symptoms of syphilis before 1508. Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 43, 469–70. His illness in 1491 may have been one of the malarial fevers that were so common at the time, or any of a number of other maladies. 68. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 46r. Alessandro Luzio transcribes this letter in I precettori di Isabella d’Este, 18. See also Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 7–8, for more on these readings and for the list of books Isabella ordered from Brognolo on 24 September (Justino de historia, Epistule de Phalaris, Ameto de Jo. Bochatio de ninphe, Merlino, Falconetto, Vita de Julio Cesare, Damaroenza, Jacomo Pizenino).

46 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 47: 1491 September 7 Gonzaga To Giorgio Brognolo regarding a Moorish boy, a ruby, and a chess set.69 In response to your letter, we say that we would gladly have you take the Moorish boy to your house until he is weaned and keep him with you until he has regained a little of his strength. Let us know daily how he is doing, and we will write to you when we want you to send him. We are returning the ruby with this rider, as we didn’t like it. We would like it to be bigger, and not so round; more in the shape of the engraved turquoise you sent us in the past few days. To get it right, you can send whatever you are able to get, and we’ll keep those we like. We’d like you also to send us a chess set with an ivory board.70 You can spend four to six, or even ten ducats depending on its beauty, but no more. The sooner we have it, the more appreciative we will be.

Letter 48: 1491 October 2 Ferrara To Giovanni Luca Liombeni, commanding him to finish her studiolo.71 Having now realized that you are as long in finishing a picture as you are in your person, we hereby notify you that this time you will have to change your nature. Because if you have not finished the studiolo by the time we return, we will have you imprisoned in the bridge dungeon, and that will be no joke.

Letter 49: 1491 November 12 Ferrara To Giovanni Luca Liombeni threatening him if he does not finish the studiolo.72 In response to your letter, we say that we are pleased you are disposed to finish our studiolo soon so as not to end up in the bridge dungeon. The devices we want in 69. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 39r/2. 70. gioco da schachi cum lo schachiero de avolino. Avolino [avorino] likely designates an ivory-like material. The chess set and board do not appear in the 1542 inventory of Odoardo Stivini: Il codice Stivini: inventario della collezione di Isabella d’ Este nello Studiolo e nella Grotta di Corte Vecchia in Palazzo Ducale a Mantova; Commentario, ed. Daniela Ferrari (Mantua: Il Bulino, 1995; facsimile reprint of original 1542 edition). Ferrari cites avolio as “ivory taken from the tusks of elephant, hippopotamus, walrus, or narwhal.” Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 423. 71. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 64v. This short letter has been widely published. See, for example, Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 275n11; Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 61. 72. AG 2991 libro 1 c. 68r. The correspondence with Liombeni is often cited in the scholarship on Isabella’s patronage, since it represents her first activities toward the studiolo for which she would become famous. See, among the most recent work, Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 275n11; Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 320n18; Luzio, I precettori, 18. Clifford M. Brown notes that none of the images specified by Isabella for this project (equine devices: mellega, travaglio, penarola, staffe, cavedon) endured among Isabella’s personal canon of emblems: Brown, Isabella d’Este in the Ducal Palace in Mantua, 44 and 58n50.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 47 the frieze are those enclosed, which you should apportion to good effect. Do your best to make it beautiful and striking. We also wish to have you paint inside the armoires whatever seems best to you. Nothing gauche: we would only make you redo it all at your own expense and then send you to the dungeon for the whole winter. You might enjoy spending a night there to get a taste of how well you like the room; then maybe you would be more responsive. For our part, we will not leave you wanting; Cusatro has been ordered to give you the gold you need.

Letter 50: 1492 February 21 Ferrara To Antimacho, explaining her motives in pardoning a criminal.73 Benedetto Capilupi74 reported to us on your behalf that you understood from our illustrious consort that he wanted that man Greco da Sacchetta, whom we had pardoned, to be pilloried and have his hand cut off, and that you had thought to inform us of this before the sentence was carried out, so that we could then advise you of our wishes, which you would heed. We reply that you did well to postpone the punishment and notify us about it. We praise you greatly. For you can be sure that neither in this nor in any other matter do we mean to oppose the wishes of His Excellency. We want you to know that we granted this pardon as a concession to Lord Ercole da Camerino, who requested it of us, and also because we had been told that this poor man’s case was not very significant. Since we would like the pardon to be granted with the approval of our aforesaid lord, given the compassion we feel for the man’s pregnant wife and three children, we want you to request this of His Excellency on our behalf. But use such dexterity that he will have no cause to be displeased or irritated, because as we said, we never intend to desire anything that he does not also desire. Commend us to his good graces.

Letter 51: 1492 April 10 Mantua To Ludovico Sforza, seeking pardon for someone.75 Letters of recommendation are such that refusing to write them for anyone would appear inhumane; so, all the more would it seem improper not to grant them to friends. If I often weary Your Lordship, blame not me but my innate sense of compassion, which easily moves me and leads me to intercede willingly for those who ask. A friend of mine named Tommaso da le Store from Casalmaggiore has given me to understand that quite a number of years ago now, he was accused of being present at a murder committed in Casalmaggiore. He was afraid to appear and 73. AG 2991 libro 2 cc. 1r–v. Antimacho was the nickname of Matteo Sacchetti, Francesco Gonzaga’s secretary. 74. Isabella’s secretary and a trusted court functionary. 75. AG 2991 libro 2 c. 7v.

48 ISABELLA D’ESTE defend himself because he didn’t want to be imprisoned, and he absented himself for so long that, along with some of his fellows, he was condemned by default. Afterwards, it appears that three of his banished companions, having made peace with the wronged relatives of the dead man, obtained mercy and pardon of their lives from Your Lordship. On the basis of this example, and having heard that this Tommaso, my friend, has also made peace with the relatives of the dead man, I am moved to intervene and ask by the grace of Your Lordship that you be willing to free this friend of mine from his death sentence. I will be most pleased. And Your Lordship will be acting according to his praiseworthy custom of clemency, forgiving poor men the offenses they committed out of carelessness or even unwittingly as with this poor Tommaso, regarding whom I hope to hear that Your Lordship has revoked his sentence. I commend myself always to you.

Letter 52: 1492 April 13 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino [Elisabetta Gonzaga], sending gifts of food.76 I received along with Your Highness’s letter the figs you sent me, which were most welcome; and for love of you I have begun to enjoy them. In exchange, I’m sending you two cheeses of five pesi each, the finest available in this city of ours. And so, Your Ladyship must think of me when she eats fat, just as I must think of you now that we are eating lean.77 I wish you could come here so we could enjoy these and other things together, and so that our sea air could purge you and free you of that little obstruction I understand you have. I could have no greater solace than the most sweet conversation of Your Ladyship, to whom I commend myself heartily. I ask that you commend me also to the most illustrious lord duke and to Signor Ottaviano.

Letter 53: 1492 April 13 Mantua To the vicar of Villimpenta, seeking a girl who was kidnapped on her way to Mass.78 We understand that a girl named Katerina, the daughter of Veronese citizen Donato da Bolon, has been kidnapped by a man named Baptista, a resident of Villimpenta. He found her in the countryside, on her way to Mass, and conducted her there [to Villimpenta] by force. We want you to try to find out if she is there. If you find her, have her taken out of his hands and put her in the company of some 76. AG 2991 libro 2 cc. 9v–10r. 77. Isabella refers to the fact that they are still in the season of Lent, when Catholics abstained from rich foods and other pleasures, often fasting as a form of penance in remembrance of Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion. Easter, the end of the Lenten season, fell on 22 April in 1492. 78. AG 2991 libro 2 c. 10r. Villimpenta is a small town southwest of Mantua.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 49 good woman; and have this Baptista detained. Then you shall immediately give us notice of the actions you have taken, in which you will use all possible diligence.

Letter 54: 1492 May 26 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga in Marmirolo on the language for a sermon.79 The venerable friar Pietro dal Carmine, who is appointed to give the sermon on the Precious Blood of Christ, asked me whether he should do it in Latin or vernacular, because some say that it is customary to give it in Latin. Others say it would be understood by all if given in the vernacular. He says that he thought of doing it first in Latin and then translating it. I replied that this would take too much time, but that I would write to Your Excellency to hear your wishes, on the basis of which we can decide how to manage. Hence I pray you to advise me at once, keeping in mind that if you understand little Latin, I understand even less.

Letter 55: 1492 July 3 Mantua To Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, complimenting him on his work, “Gynevera de le clare donne.”80 Though we already understood something of your virtues from your reputation, and therefore already delighted in you, now that you have sent us the work you composed on famous women and dedicated to the Most Illustrious Lady Ginevra [Sforza] Bentivoglio, direct acquaintance makes you both famous and familiar to us. As a consequence, we are induced not only to delight in you but also to love and admire you. This work pleased us beyond measure, because it is composed with supreme elegance and is written on a noble subject. We will read it with care, and we will try to follow in the footsteps of those illustrious matrons. We praise you more than a little for the excellence of your talent, and we send you a thousand thanks for having wanted to share your cleverness with us. In recompense, we shall count you among our principal friends. We offer ourself ever to the service of your comfort and your honor. 79. AG 2991 libro 2 c. 21v. Isabella’s claim to understand little Latin may be a gesture of modesty, or it may point to a contrast between her command of spoken versus written Latin, as there is evidence that she studied the language to advanced levels as a child. On Isabella’s education, see Luzio, I precettori; Shemek, “ ‘Ci Ci’ and ‘Pa Pa,’ ” 111–12. On Francesco’s role in this Ascension Day sermon, see Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 3. 80. AG 2991 libro 2 c. 34v. The Gynevera was inspired by Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris. On this letter’s addressee, see The Letters of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, 1481–1510, ed. Carolyn James (Florence: Olschki; Perth, Australia: University of Western Australia, 2001); Guido Ruggiero, The Renaissance in Italy: A Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 372–74.

50 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 56: 1492 July 10 Mantua To the vicar of Castiglione Mantovano, investigating an alleged child rape.81 Maria di Bartolomeo Rossano, a resident of Roverbella, complained to us that Lodovico, the son of Jacomino Terzo, tried to violate a seven-year-old girl named Sara: a thing of supreme abomination and worthy of the severest punishment if it is true. We want you to hear the evidence and circumstances that this woman will give you, and to be extremely diligent in getting true information on the matter. Send us by letter your certain and reliable account. You can have the little girl looked at to see if she has suffered any mistreatment whatsoever. But do all of this cautiously, so that this Lodovico will not run away because he senses you on his trail.

Letter 57: 1492 July 25 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, consulting on the arrival of guests including her father.82 Upon seeing what Your Excellency wrote regarding the arrival of the most illustrious lord our shared and most honored father, I sent immediately for the stewards83 so we could consult about where we should lodge him to provide the greatest comfort and honor to His Highness. In the end, we all agreed that it was best and necessary to put him here in the Castello in Your Lordship’s downstairs rooms.84 We would then take for Lord Don Alfonso and the other assistants to his person the room of Lord Giovanni our brother, the rooms of Messer Guidone, Signor Petrogentile and Giacomo Boschetto, since due to [Boschetto’s] illness all of his rooms are empty. The rest of the company will be put up in the court, where the lord duke [Ercole d’Este] will not be lodged since the spaces there are few and less honorable. We discussed at length the Palazzo del Borgo, but since there is not a thing in it, it would be four days before it was ready, and I also understand it has so many fleas that no one could live there. For Your Excellency I am reserving the Camera Picta and the Camerino del Sole. I will have everything prepared suitably, 81. AG 2991 libro 2 cc. 36v–37r. Castiglione Mantovano lies just north of Mantua; Roverbella lies north and slightly west. 82. AG 2991 libro 2 cc. 40v–41r. 83. sescalchi 84. Here we see some of the practical uses of Gonzaga architectural spaces. Ercole d’Este will be lodged on the first floor of the Castello San Giorgio (a wing of today’s Ducal Palace), in Francesco Gonzaga’s rooms. The Corte Vecchia (Old Court) rooms are considered too small for important guests but adequate for their entourage; and the Palazzo del Borgo, a palace Isabella used in the village of Borgo di San Giorgio across the Po River, is currently toxic. Isabella assigns her husband the Castello rooms adorned with frescoes of his family by Andrea Mantegna: the Camera Picta (or Camera degli sposi / Wedding Chamber) and its anteroom, with its sun motif. On Isabella’s Borgo palace, see Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 274 n.7.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 51 and I have appointed Filippo to spare nothing in honoring him. Malatesta will go to Sermide.85 If Your Excellency is of a mind to lodge him otherwise, I will be quick to obey your command. To your good graces I commend myself always.

Letter 58: 1492 November 14 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, rejoicing in her plan to come for a visit.86 After Your Ladyship wrote, I heard from the castellan of your good health and of your readiness to come here to our waters after Christmas. The one thing and the other gave me inestimable pleasure. Now, I pray you see that we may spend this winter in the pleasure of each other’s company; and in the meantime I will be counting the days, which already have begun to seem much longer than usual to me. Among the many other things we can talk of will be little bits about our travels.87 I hope to have stories that will pique your appetite even more than yours will do for me. I commend myself to you and beg you to commend me to your most illustrious consort and to Lord Ottaviano; and don’t forget as well the most reverend lady my comatre.88

Letter 59: 1492 December 19 Ferrara To Federico di Casalmaggiore, instructing him how to use this year’s pigs, and advising him on hiring a new singer who has shown up in Mantua.89 We are responding to the letter in which you write that there are no more than six pigs for butchering this year and that none have yet been killed, but that they will not suffice for making prosciutto and salame for the house in addition to the great quantity of lard we will need. You also say that it would not be wise to spend money on pigs to lard them, and you ask us to advise you about this matter. We would like you and our farmer to consult together with the Magnificent Madonna Beatrice [de’ Contrari] about what seems most appropriate and economical; have these six pigs butchered and buy those that you think we will need for salame and prosciutto. On this matter and the decision about the lard, we defer to all of you, who have more experience than we do. We know you will decide in our best interest. We inform you 85. A town southeast of Mantua. 86. AG 2991 libro 2 c. 80r. 87. Isabella and Elisabetta both loved travel and cultivated a friendly competition over who could travel the most. See James, “The Travels of Isabella d’Este,” 99–109; Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, “Gara di viaggi fra due celebri dame del Rinascimento,” Intermezzo (March 20, 1890). 88. Costantino Cipolla and Giancarlo Malacarne interpret this word, when it appears in a 1525 letter to Isabella from Vincenzo de Pretis, as “midwife” (levatrice): Cipolla and Malacarne, eds., El più soave et dolce et dilectevole et gratioso bochone: Amore e sesso al tempo dei Gonzaga (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2006), 401. 89. AG 2991 libro 2 cc. 93 r–v.

52 ISABELLA D’ESTE that we have also had two pigs made into mortadella; we leave up to you what more should be done. As we say, we don’t yet have much experience with these things. We think, though, that you won’t be able to do much before Christmas, since you were late in writing; and if Her Excellency Madama agrees, we will be home by the third of January. We say this, however, not to suggest that you delay this provision of necessities. And as to whether to butcher in Porto or Mantua, this is up to you. Our singer Ruggiero writes us that a soprano has arrived there. We want you to tell him that if he and the other singers think he is good, we are pleased to have you authorize expenses for him until our return.90 If he is not really special, you can let him be on his way. Letter 60: 1493 February 29 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi, on how much she likes to get his letters, and on her curiosity to have different perspectives on the news.91 It pains us that you have not been in Milan recently, both for your own convenience and for our pleasure, because given how much you wrote to us in the two days you were there, we know that all our other correspondents put together haven’t written the half of what you would have written if you had not left. Your letter from the 20th of this month really pleased us immensely; you informed us so well that we felt we had participated in those parties and ceremonies. We appreciated your discussion of things in Rome no less, because though we get news of Rome here, we like to hear the opinions people have where you are. So, we thank you very much for your copious writings, and we pray you continue. You could do nothing for us that would be more welcome. Be well. Letter 61: 1493 March 11 Mantua To the duchess of Ferrara, presenting a young man who wants to see the world.92 Leonello da Brolo, a gentleman of this city, wishes to see the world and try his fortune beyond his homeland. He would gladly join the Most Illustrious Lord Don Ferrante my brother on his voyage to France, with the intention of serving 90. Evidence regarding the castration of singers remains uneven but generally pertains to the second half of the sixteenth century at the earliest. This singer was likely not a castrato but rather a falsetto vocalist or sopranista. In other correspondence, Isabella specifies that she wishes to employ a soprano and not a contralto: Prizer, “ ‘Una virtù molto conveniente,’ ” 12–15. More generally, see Giuseppe Gerbino, “The Quest for the Soprano Voice: Castrati in Renaissance Italy,” Studi musicali 33 (2004): 303–57. 91. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 12r. Early modern letters were the precursors of today’s news and social media, and Isabella d’Este liked getting her information from multiple perspectives. Bernardino Prosperi was a supremely skilled and assiduous reporter. Though he is widely cited for information in this period, we still await a systematic study of this fascinating figure. 92. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 21r.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 53 him well and honorably. Since it is my duty to favor my subjects in their virtuous choices, I am taking the initiative to write to Your Highness, requesting that out of love for me you accept this Leonello into my brother’s service. [Ferrante] can only be served well by him, since [Leonello] is so eager to go and will have occasion to do him honor. I will be grateful to Your Most Illustrious Ladyship, to whom I commend myself.

Letter 62: 1493 March 26 Mantua To Niccolò da Correggio, thanking him for rhymes by Gasparo Visconti and requesting poems by Correggio.93 Having been in Sacchetta these eight days, we received just now your letter of the 23rd of last month, along with the little book of rhymes by the Magnificent Messer Gasparo Visconti. Since it is a new and beautiful thing, we like it very much, but we would have liked it even better if we had received it before it came out in print. Nonetheless, we will read it eagerly, out of admiration for both the writer and the sender. We thank Your Lordship, and we pray you, if it doesn’t seem we are being a bother, send us something you have composed since we last saw you. Because, without intending to flatter, we like them better than those of any other person writing today in rhyme. You could give us no greater pleasure.

Letter 63: 1493 March 27 Mantua To Manfredo Manfredi, thanking him for returning to her a pilfered libro da canto, and speaking of her limited musical abilities.94 We received our singing book, which you retrieved and sent to us. We commend you greatly, and we thank you for your services in helping us get it back. We would 93. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 29r. Niccolò was Isabella’s cousin, son of her paternal aunt Beatrice. His father, the prince of Correggio, died before he was born, and Niccolò grew up alongside Isabella at the court of Ferrara, eventually becoming both a skilled courtier and the author of many literary works including the 1487 pastoral play, Cefalo, and numerous eclogues and sonnets. Isabella was particularly fond of his poetry. See Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:82–86, 313–15; Luzio and Renier, “Niccolò da Correggio.” 94. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 29v. The addressee was ambassador to Florence for the duke of Ferrara. The book in question was, according to Prizer, a singing method book, which Prizer suggests was stolen by a singer who had recently left the Mantuan court. See Prizer, “ ‘Una virtù molto conveniente,’ ” 16. The turchotto may have been an article of Turkish style clothing, perhaps a vest or a turban. Iain Fenlon notes that Isabella’s upbringing at Ferrara included learning music and dance, and that she eventually played the cittern, the lute, the lira da braccio, and keyboard instruments. Her musical literacy and understanding of the technical aspects of musical language made her an unusually informed patron, and musical motifs permeated the visual program of her studiolo. “Shaped by her tastes, Mantuan court music not only took on a particularly distinctive character during the years 1490–1520, but is also of considerable importance in the history of Italian song.” Fenlon, “The Gonzaga and Music,” 87. See also Fenlon, “Music and Learning in Isabella d’Este’s Studiolo”; and Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 32ff.

54 ISABELLA D’ESTE be most grateful if you would thank master Pietro [Piero] de’ Medici on our behalf, and tell him that since His Majesty does not wish to insist that the singer return the turchotto, we are willing to acquiesce to his wishes out of affection for him. And tell him also that we accept the offer you make us on his behalf to show us some new types of songs. Because even though we are not very accomplished in music, we will nonetheless appreciate and be entertained by the things he sends us. Please tell His Majesty that we are at his disposal and would be happy to see him here. Similarly, we remain ever at your disposal.

Letter 64: 1493 April 2 Mantua To the countess of Acerra, thanking her for a portrait and a Spanish-style blouse.95 We cannot convey in writing the pleasure and satisfaction we took at Your Ladyship’s letter, both for the news from Jacopo d’Atri who spoke with us at length of Your Ladyship’s good convalescence, and for the love that you bear us.96 We have felt this love already many times, but we don’t believe Your Ladyship surpasses us in this feeling, since between the love we feel for the most illustrious lady the duchess of Bari, our only sister, and that which we bear Your Ladyship there is no difference. Indeed, nothing would be dearer to our heart than to show you our feelings effectively. If God granted that we could see you and embrace you once, we would consider ourself happy in this world. This desire leads to our long-standing wish to have Your Ladyship’s portrait, so that in some way we might gratify our affection. Now that we have it both on paper and in wax, we treasure it and look at it often. We think it does not resemble you much; we know how difficult it is to find painters who can perfectly counterfeit the natural face. But since the descriptions from Margherita, Jacopo, and others who have seen Your Ladyship compensate for the painter’s shortcomings, we think we are not at all deceived in our conception of you. We thank you immensely for having granted our wish. Now we beg you not to fail in the promise Jacopo relayed to us that you will send another on canvas; and we will send Your Ladyship one of us, to grant your request. Not that you will see a pretty figure, but so that you will have in your home an image of one who loves you like a sister. 95. AG 2991 libro 3 cc. 30r–31r. This well-known letter affords insight into the meaning of portraits for Isabella and her contemporaries. The two women, who have not yet met, exchange portraits both as tokens of affection and as attempts to visualize each other. On this exchange, see Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 22–23. For commentary and translation of this correspondence, see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:91–93. Banks Amendola writes that this addressee has been identified in the past with Isabella del Balzo, the wife of Isabella’s uncle, Federico d’Aragona but is now believed to be Costanza d’Avalos: Banks Amendola, First Lady, 72. 96. On Jacopo Probo d’Atri’s service to Francesco Gonzaga, see Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 60–61.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 55 The Spanish style blouse you sent us could not have pleased us more, both because it is very elegant, well made, and a new style here, and because it comes from your hands. We will wear it in love for you and look at it often as if to look at you. We know that we are so indebted to Your Ladyship that we can’t imagine how we will ever repay your favors. But since it seems impossible to render you the thanks we owe you, we will set that task aside, and simply remind you that you may dispose of our possessions and our person to the degree that we ourself do. We make no further reply to Your Ladyship about your recommendation of [Margherita] Gambacurta, because even if she did not possess the virtues and the manners that she clearly does, our regard for you would make her welcome. She will be in our graces no less than the girls we have brought up, because since she was raised by Your Ladyship and does you such honor, we will love and treat her as if she had been born in our household. You can be certain of this. We dispose and commend ourself to you.

Letter 65: 1493 April 13 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, denying a rumor that Mantua is infected with plague.97 Benedetto Agnello98 told me he has ascertained that in Parma, Cremona, Brescia, and Verona, Mantua has been banned as infected with the plague, and that he thinks this false rumor was spread by some merchants who by this means want to keep down the price of wool. This would do great harm to Your Excellency and our subjects, so I immediately had letters written to all those places and sent them by special riders to the commissioners and rectors. I assured them that by the grace of God, Mantua and the whole state is completely free not only of the plague but of any suspicion of it, for which reason any person should be able to come here freely. By my duty I wanted to inform Your Excellency of this. I commend myself to your good graces.

97. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 36r. The recurrence of plague, which had first struck Europe in the fourteenth century, was an economic as well as a health concern for early moderns, who kept close watch over its contagious movements. For general information on the plague, see David Herlihy and Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 98. On Agnello, see Daniela Ferrari, “La cancelleria gonzaghesca”; David S. Chambers, “Benedetto Agnello, Mantuan Ambassador in Venice, 1530–56,” in Chambers, Individuals and Institutions in Renaissance Italy (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998), 129–45.

56 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 66: 1493 April 20 Mantua To the countess of Acerra, complaining about the quality of a portrait.99 You will have gathered from our other letters how much pleasure we derive from the portraits Jacopo d’Atri brought us, which look so little like you according to what he and others who have seen you tell us; and how much we like the Spanishstyle blouse you sent us. Nonetheless, since we have the chance to do so through Martino our rider, we wanted to thank you eternally for both things, and to assure you that we look at the portraits every day, and we wear the blouse often out of affection for you. And we often speak with Gambacurta of you, hoping one day to see you in person and take pleasure in your company. But since the great distance between us forbids this, we wish at least to receive letters from you telling us of your wellbeing, which we desire no less than our own. By the grace of God, we and our most illustrious lord, our consort, are well, which we know will please Your Ladyship. We are very sorry that we cannot send you our portrait at this time. The painter did it so badly that it has no features like our own. We have sent for a foreigner who has a reputation for counterfeiting the natural very well, and once it is done, we will send it immediately to Your Ladyship.100 Please do not forget in the meantime that we are totally yours, and ever disposed to do something to please you. We commend ourself to you.

Letter 67: 1493 May 14 Venice To Francesco II Gonzaga, with copies to the duchesses of Ferrara and Urbino, describing her arrival in Venice.101 I arrived on Sunday after dinner at Pontelagoscuro, as I wrote to Your Excellency I would, and there I boarded a bucentaur. At six in the evening [six hours past sunset] I had all the people who had remained on shore board the ship, and we set out. The sailors were soaked for two hours, because rain was pouring from the sky. Then it cleared and we had a fine day. Seven miles outside Chioggia I was met by the most magnificent podestà, who explained to me as the representative of our 99. AG 2991 libro 3 cc. 39v–40r. 100. The painter with whom Isabella is so displeased is none other than Andrea Mantegna, while the “foreigner” for whom she has sent is Giovanni Sanzio, father of Raffaello. Sanzio took ill in Mantua and the portrait’s completion was delayed for several months. 101. AG 2991 libro 3 cc. 51v–53r. This letter illustrates Isabella’s eye for detail and her love for attention and luxury, as well as her exhilaration with travel, seeing Venice, and her diplomatic responsibility. This was an official visit to the Most Serene Republic. She was invited by the doge to attend the festivities for Ascension Day, which for Catholics commemorates Christ’s ascension into Heaven after rising from the dead, but her role there was clearly as the wife of the Venetian army’s Captain General. Venice’s particular customs for Ascension Day include a ceremony in which the city weds the sea. For further context on this visit, see Banks Amendola, First Lady, 77–80. More generally, see Carolyn James, “Women and Diplomacy in Renaissance Italy.”

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 57 illustrious signoria that he was commissioned to do me honor and accompany me as far as Venice, where I was awaited with great longing by His Serenity the doge and the entire distinguished senate. He added many loving words to show what pleasure they took in this visit of mine, and I responded fittingly. Sailing along, we arrived at Chioggia at the twenty-fourth hour [sunset]. I lodged in a palazzo that was all covered with tapestries and beautifully decorated at great expense in honor of me and my company. After dinner four gentlemen arrived: of course, Messer Giorgio Pisano, Messer Zacharia Contarino, and Messer Francesco Capello, who were ambassadors at my wedding; and in place of Messer Girolamo Leone, who was ill, came Messer Giorgio Contarino. Messer Francesco Capello greeted me on behalf of His Serenity the doge, reiterating the great delight and happiness that he and all the signoria took in my visit. He spoke many sweet and loving words and informed me that these men had been sent to escort me. He said that once we had passed the port of Malamocco, I would have another group of gentlemen, and at Santa Croce I would meet His Serenity the doge with the entire signoria and a great number of ladies. For he said they had sought to make every show of the fatherly love they bear Your Excellency and me. I first thanked him for showing me such kindness, and then I replied that it was not fitting for a daughter and a sister to be treated with such ceremony and such show by her father and lord. I said that I had come to pay my respects and be welcomed with familiarity, not with pomp. And I begged Their Majesties to plead in my name to His Serenity the doge not to leave his room for me, because I would go to him, as a family member. But they repeated that this was his choice, and there was not much they could do since the orders had already been given. I answered that as an obedient daughter I would patiently do as commanded. They took their leave, and we all retired to our rooms. This morning, I was accompanied by the magnificent podestà and these four gentlemen to hear Mass at Chioggia’s main church. When we got back home, I invited them to dine with me, but they declined. Once we had all eaten, we went to the ship, as it was the fifteenth hour. We passed by both ports so calmly that I would not even have noticed them if they had not been pointed out to me. At San Clemente I met two pontoons with many gentlemen. They had me board one of them along with our ladies and gentlemen, and once we were seated, Messer Mario Zorzi the doctor greeted me with many elegant words, saying again what a pleasure it was to see me and how much they wanted to welcome and honor me, going on and on very lovingly. We reached Santa Croce, where we found His Sublimity the doge with all these excellent lords, the magnificent orators [ambassadors] of the ducal court and of the most illustrious lord my father. I disembarked, and as I moved toward the church I saw the doge with all the aforesaid people come out; and I touched and kissed His Serenity’s hand, commending Your Excellency to him. He received me with a glad face and loving words and gestures and asked after Your Excellency’s health. In this fashion, he led me to his large bucentaur,

58 ISABELLA D’ESTE which was full of gentlemen and ladies. The ladies were ninety-three in number, all of them richly dressed and laden with jewels; indeed it was said that none of them was wearing jewels worth less than six thousand ducats. When the doge was seated in his place, with me at his right hand and the others according to their rank, we sailed down the Grand Canal, talking of various things, to the sound of trumpets, bells, and gunfire. There were so many boats and so many people of both sexes who had flocked to see me that I could not have counted them. Despite my protests and resistance, the doge insisted on accompanying me to the room above the first floor102 which is over the courtyard of the house that Your Excellency keeps. This was around the twenty-third hour [one hour before sunset]. My Lord, I cannot describe adequately the loving welcome and great honor that has been shown me here. Even the stones and the walls of this city seem to smile and rejoice at my arrival. And all of this is a sign of the love they feel for Your Excellency. I and all my company are lavishly provided for. There are two gentlemen appointed to oversee my stay, who have told me on behalf of His Lordship that they have orders to obey me no less readily than they do His Serenity the doge. Tomorrow I will have my audience [with the doge], and I will communicate to him all that Your Excellency has sent me to say, in the best way I know. I do not write to Your Excellency about the beauty of this place, because you have seen it many times. I know that you understand it is the most wondrous thing I have ever seen.103 I hope you will excuse me for not writing to Your Excellency from Chioggia since there was no rider available. And similarly if I don’t write in my own hand, as I am constantly in the company of others and could not steal a bit of time. I commend myself to Your Excellency and to our reverend monsignor. I ask that you deign to share this letter of mine with the illustrious madonna the duchess of Urbino, as I am too rushed to write her. And please deign to commend me to her. [Secretarial note: Sent in similar form to the lady duchess of Ferrara with a summary also to the duchess of Urbino.]

Letter 68: 1493 May 23 Vicenza To the duchess of Urbino, asking to meet her in Porto.104 Since I will be going to Verona tomorrow and will stay there for Saturday, I am thinking of arriving on Sunday by way of Castiglione Mantovano at our palazzo in Porto and staying there. I pray Your Ladyship consider coming there too that 102. selaro. I thank Mauro Ramazzotti for help in deciphering this word. 103. Isabella’s only previous visit to Venice was with her mother, when she was a very small child too young to retain the memory. Banks Amendola, First Lady, 77. 104. AG 2991 libro 3 c.60v. Isabella’s second suburban residence was at Porto, across the Lago di Mezzo. She and Elisabetta stayed there six weeks at this time.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 59 day, or even earlier if you like. Then we can savor that fresh air together; and we will enjoy ourselves by telling each other all that has happened to us while we have been apart. My factor, Giovanni da Villa Nova, has instructions to put the palazzo in order.105 Your Ladyship can now give him new instructions of your own. He will obey you no less than he does me, knowing that I wish you to have free reign over all my staff. I commend myself to Your Ladyship always.

Letter 69: 1493 May 30 Porto To the duchess of Ferrara, denying rumors of pregnancy.106 I’ve received all the letters Your Excellency wrote me since the arrival of the illustrious lords the duke and duchess of Bari in Ferrara, and I very much appreciate all the details they contain about their activities.107 I thank Your Excellency greatly and pray you see fit to have me advised daily, especially to let me know whether the duchess will take the Mantuan road on her return, as my servant Matteo Ippoliti told me. If this shall be so, please let me know when, and where she would like to lodge, so that we can prepare to receive her with honors. Your Excellency writes me that my illustrious consort has told you that I am pregnant. I answer you that I cannot yet be sure; and I regret that this news is going around. Madonna Beatrice is the cause, because she told my lord that she suspected it. His Lordship then took it for certain and made it public.108 If I had any sense that this was so, by my duty Your Ladyship would be the first to hear of it. So I pray you not to speak further of this, and if others should speak to you about it, say that you know nothing, just as I know nothing. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace, and I pray you commend me to the illustrious ladies the duchess of Bari and Madonna Anna.

105. The term factor (factor, fattore) is a general one indicating employees who operated as commercial agents, brokers, administrators, managers and the like. Henceforth I translate it variously in this volume, since factor (though it exists as a word with this meaning) is rarely used in English. 106. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 61v. The pressure was immense on noblewomen to produce male heirs, who were the vehicle for continuation of their dynasties. This fact motivated both the intense interest in Isabella’s reproductive state and her wish to control rumors. 107. Isabella’s sister, Beatrice, and her husband Ludovico Sforza made a triumphal entry into Ferrara on 18 May. From there, Beatrice would proceed to Venice on a visit much like that Isabella had just made. Ludovico stayed in Ferrara, while in Beatrice’s entourage were her mother Eleonora, her brother Alfonso and his wife Anna Sforza, and Francesco II Gonzaga. Banks Amendola, First Lady, 80–81. 108. Beatrice de’Contrari was Isabella’s childhood governess. It is not clear whether Isabella had confided in her or whether Beatrice had guessed this from Isabella’s symptoms and informed Francesco behind her back.

60 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 70: 1493 June 17 Gonzaga To Ludovico Pio, requesting poems for a book of eclogues she is assembling.109 Since we desire to make a little book of eclogues by different authors, and we know that you delight in rhymes, we thought it fitting to pray you, if you have any by Gualtiero110 or others, except that of Pan which we have, let us have them. You will be doing something we very much appreciate.

Letter 71: 1493 June 22 Porto To Gonzaga agent Antonio Salimbeni, ordering a stringed instrument.111 We want you to see whether a small cithara that would be good for our arm can be found there in Venice. And if there are none, have one made right away by some good master, telling him that we want it so we can learn how to play. Send it to us as soon as you can, informing us of the cost, for we will repay you the money right away.

Letter 72: 1493 June 22 Porto To Atalante Migliarotti, requesting the cithara ordered from Antonio Salimbeni.112 Since we desire to have a good, pretty, small cithara for our use, we ask that you not mind having one made for us in your gallant style and with the number of strings that you deem fitting. The money will be given to you by the ambassador of the most illustrious duke of Ferrara our most honored father, if you ask him for 109. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 67r. 110. Luzio and Renier identify this poet as the Emilian Gualtiero da San Vitale and transcribe the letters of Ludovio Pio that accompanied the poems he sent in reply to this letter: Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 204–5. 111. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 69r. According to Prizer, Isabella was not typical of amateur women musicians of her day, but rather “a paragon of women’s musical talents and tastes … Her abilities, if contemporaneous accounts are to be believed, were outstanding not in the simple fact that she was a moderately proficient amateur musician, but rather to the degree of her accomplishments and in the central role music took in her life.” Prizer, “  ‘Una virtù molto conveniente,’  ” 12. Prizer (“Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia,” 107–08) surmises on the basis of a later letter of Isabella’s that references to the cithara indicate a lira da braccio. Peter Holman observes further, “It may be that Isabella d’Este was personally responsible for having the Spanish viol converted from a single-size instrument into one made in several sizes with arched bridges.” Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddles: The Violin at the English Court 1540–1690 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 15. On the distinctions among many of these stringed instruments, see James Tyler, “The Renaissance Guitar, 1500–1650” Early Music Vol. 3, no. 4 (1975), 341–47. My thanks to Nina Treadwell for generous instruction on this topic and for the last two references. 112. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 69r. Migliarotti was a Florentine lirest and improvisor who learned to play his instrument from none other than Leonardo da Vinci. He also may have invented the lira da gamba

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 61 it. Once it is made, if you have no messenger who can come here, please consign the cithara to [the ambassador], and he will send it by the best road. You will be doing something we very much appreciate. We offer ourself to your pleasure. Letter 73: 1493 June 22 Porto To Manfredo de Manfredi, accompanying the letter above.113 We are writing to send you the enclosed letter to Atalante, the Florentine cithara player who serves the Most Reverend Cardinal de’ Medici, asking that he please have made a pretty and small cithara for our use, with the number of strings he thinks best. We ask that you have the letter brought to him and encourage him to serve us. If he needs the money, give it to him, and we will repay you right away. Please also take care to send it to us once it is made, for we will be most grateful. We offer ourself ever ready to please you. Letter 74: 1493 June 29 Porto To Maestro Jacopo da Capua, thanking him for his discretion about rumors of Isabella’s pregnancy.114 You did not need to make excuses to us for not having let that false rumor raised by our most illustrious lord reach our ears, because we understand very well that you and the others who heard it kept it hidden for good reasons, and in order not to distress us with something that lacked even a scintilla of truth. We are quite happy not to have received those letters by surprise, because we know that we would have died from the pain of it. If you ever had a good thought for us, it was this one, which strove to do the duty of a faithful servant. We are most grateful to you, and we commend your loyalty. Letter 75: 1493 July 19 Ferrara To Girolamo Stanga, discussing Francesco’s management of her pregnancy news.115 Since it is public knowledge that we are pregnant even though we do not share this information willingly, we want you to request a favor from the most illustrious lord (more commonly known today as the lirone). On this interesting figure, see Mauda Bregoli-Russo, Teatro dei Gonzaga ai tempi di Isabella d’Este (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), 68–71; Prizer, “Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia.” Bregoli-Russo recalls that Migliarotti asked Isabella to act as godmother to his daughter (whom he named Isabella) in 1494 and that the marchesa happily accepted this role, which she delegated to Manfredo de Manfredi as her proxy. 113. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 69r. Manfredi was the Ferrarese ambassador to Florence. 114. AG 2991 libro 3 c.70r. 115. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 73r.

62 ISABELLA D’ESTE our consort, and do this in such a way that he cannot refuse. Ask His Excellency to be content to leave to us the selection of the people who will deliver the birth announcements. We have many poor servants, and if we don’t give them this income now, we do not know when we will be in a position to reward them.116 It seems to us honorable that those who have long been in our service should reap the fruits of our first efforts before others do. Even if someone has already inquired with our aforesaid lord about these errands and if he has raised their hopes, we want you to insist that he revoke what he has told them. He can very well do so without offending anyone, because one cannot promise something that is still uncertain; and he can always say that he is leaving this matter to us. We would be grateful for this favor from His Excellency, and we know you will not fail to use your usual dexterity in obtaining it, though we also know it will not be difficult for you, since you are always ready to please us. Please commend us to his good graces. Letter 76: 1493 July 4 Porto To the duchess of Ferrara, thanking her for a songbook and a drawing.117 I received along with Your Excellency’s letter the songbook that you write was directed to me from Florence, and which the Magnificent Piero [de’ Medici] sent me as a gift. I thank Your Ladyship both for sending this and for the drawing from Milan which, given its quality, I judge to be by the hand of signor Girolamo.118 And I believe that when signor Ludovico119 starts to talk about his little son, everyone responds just as we can see in the drawing. I’m pleased to learn by this route that he is well, as are his family, father and mother. I am not replying to Your Excellency in my own hand, because my lord consort is here, with whom I am occupied. I hope you will excuse me. I commend myself to you. Letter 77: 1494 January 7 Mantua To Anna d’Este, replying to congratulations on the birth of a daughter.120 I am quite certain that Your Ladyship took even greater pleasure than you wrote me when you heard that I had successfully given birth, because I know how tenderly you love me, just as I love you. I also know that you, like me, would have wanted me to have a boy, as almost everyone desired. But we must deem 116. The suggestion is that messengers could expect to receive gratuities for delivering such happy news about the Gonzaga princes. 117. AG 2991 libro 3 c. 71r. 118. Perhaps Girolamo Stanga, who served Ludovico Sforza. 119. Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan and Isabella’s brother-in-law. Isabella’s sister, Beatrice, had given birth to her firstborn son, Ercole (Massimiliano), on 25 July 1493. 120. AG 2991 libro 4 c. 13v. The addressee is likely Anna Sforza, wife of Alfonso d’Este, though Isabella normally addresses her sister-in-law, and all noblewomen, by their family, rather than their married,

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 63 everything God does to be for the best and be satisfied with what pleases His Divine Majesty. It suffices that the baby girl and I are well. I thank Your Ladyship for your sweet and loving letter, for which I make no repayment now except to wish for you my present trouble.121 I commend myself to you and pray you commend me to your most illustrious consort. This was written in similar form, mutatis mutandis, to those listed here: Sigismondo d’Este, the bishop of Adria [Niccolò Maria d’Este], Battista Guarino, Nicolao Bendidio, Bernardino Prosperi, Agostino Villa, Francesco Bagnacavallo. Letter 78: 1494 February 2 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi, sending him a stone to aid his wife’s birthing labor.122 We are sending by way of Alessandro da Baese an eagle stone, which they say is very useful in facilitating births. Though we ourself did not deliver without enormous difficulty, we pray God that it will perform its powers better for your wife than it did for us. It would already be a great deal for her just to come through the delivery healthy. Once you have used it, please send it back.

names. Isabella’s candor about her disappointment in female births has contributed to another cliché that merits reexamination in the scholarly literature: that of Isabella as unfeeling, even hostile, toward her daughters. Such a reading results from a rather unreflecting projection of modern values backward into the sixteenth century. In the dynastic logic of early modern Italy, though women too were valuable in the construction of political alliances, they required dowries; male children were the initial priority for young couples, since they could be expected to carry on the family name and inherit its assets, ideally defending and even increasing them. Even Isabella d’Este could not escape this logic and its toll on the female body: the only possible course of action for her at this point was another pregnancy as soon as possible. Isabella addresses this letter to her brother Alfonso’s wife; their mother, Eleonora had died on 11 October 1493. 121. Isabella is expressing hope that her female correspondents will give birth and be healthy. 122. AG 2991 libro 4 c. 23v. The letter underscores the well-founded fears surrounding childbirth for early modern women. Mortality rates for women in childbirth were high. Jacqueline Musacchio observes that many items were thought to facilitate childbirth in the period and recalls specifically the aetite, which was also called eagle stone or aquiline. “Like the mandrake root, aetites were associated with childbirth because of their physical characteristics: they are type of hollow geode, with small pieces loose inside them that rattle when shaken. According to the logic of sympathetic magic, aetites therefore recalled the child in the womb.” Jacqueline Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 140.

64 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 79: 1494 March 20 Ravenna To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting news about Naples and Venice.123 As I was talking with this magnificent rector, he told me that when an ambassador came here from Naples on his way to Venice, he received special letters from Naples, telling him that an honorable ambassador of the Turk had been [to Naples] to offer condolences to His Majesty King Alfonso upon the death of his father the king. He offered [Alfonso] whatever might please him as assistance, from twenty up to thirty thousand horses. This seemed to me extremely important news, and I wanted to notify you immediately, even though you may have received it already from Venice. Then I heard that the Venetians have renewed the condotta for the lord prefect124 and increased his supply of horses by two hundred. And I understand that once the lord duke of Urbino125 has finished his condotta with the pope, which will last through all of April, he will be [with the] Aragonese. This is all I have to report to you, except that I commend myself always to your good graces.

Letter 80: 1494 April 13 Castrodurante To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting on political tensions in Italy.126 This most illustrious duke our brother-in-law127 has told me that the contract for his condotta has been finalized with His Majesty King Alfonso at twenty-four thousand gold ducats per annum, with a commitment to two hundred men at arms. The enlistment is for three years, with an option for the pope to contribute to the salary if he signs an accord with the king, though the king is liable for all of it. I am told [King Alfonso] accepted him very willingly and warmly. He will 123. AG 2991 libro 4 c. 41r. Isabella was on her way home from fulfilling a religious vow at Loreto, which she had made in prayer for a healthy delivery of her baby. Her sensitive ear was picking up the signs of the political storm that was brewing as word circulated that Charles VIII of France was planning to invade Italy to capture Naples. Alfonso d’Aragona rose to the throne as king of Naples after the death of his father, Ferdinand I on 25 January 1494. The Turkish sultan Bayezid II had heard that Charles’s intent was to proceed to a crusade against him once he had secured Naples; hence his offer to supply troops to resist the French invasion of that city. With support from Ludovico Sforza of Milan, Borgia Pope Alexander VI, and Ercole I d’Este of Ferrara, Charles invaded the Italian peninsula by land in the autumn of 1494 and captured Naples in February 1495. Alfonso abdicated to his son Ferdinand [Ferrandino] II in January 1495 and spent the remainder of his life in a monastery in Sicily. Michael E. Mallett and Christine Shaw, The Italian Wars 1494–1559: War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe (New York: Pearson, 2012), 6–27; more generally, see Jerry H. Bentley, Politics and Culture in Renaissance Naples (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). 124. Giovanni della Rovere, duke of Sora 125. Guidobaldo da Montefeltro. 126. AG 2991 libro 4 cc. 50v–51r. Cf. original: AG2109 cc. 205 r–v. Isabella is still on return from her pilgrimage. 127. The duke of Urbino.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 65 send [the duke] several beautiful chargers and is granting him license to take as many horses as he needs to organize his company. Next the king provided him with Antonio da Tolentino, who was a condottiere for His Majesty [king Alfonso’s father] and was trained by Duke Federico of beloved memory;128 he thus acquires a man both capable and esteemed in the mercenary profession. The king will provide him [Tolentino] with personal guards; and the duke will give him twenty-five men at arms, just as he got from the king. The duke will have to obey no one but His Majesty the king and the duke of Calabria.129 These contracts have been sealed, but they will not be announced until the month is over, because the contract with the pope lasts until then. I write you nothing about the negotiation between the pope and the king, because I know Giorgio Brognolo is keeping you informed. But I will not omit that the pope is enormously perplexed, because Signor Ludovico130 informed him that if he [the pope] makes an accord with the king [of Naples], he [Sforza] will join the king of France and the king of the Romans.131 He will have them break their obligation and they will call him into council.132 On the other hand, Lord Ludovico sent word to King Alfonso that he hears he has plans to send troops into Romagna. He told him he should consider very carefully what he does, because the first thing [Ludovico] will do if he hears of it is send the duchess of Milan [Isabella d’Aragona] home; and he will not only give the king of France the troops he has committed to the fief of Genoa, but all the ones for the state of Milan as well, and he will throw his entire treasury into the conflict. He said a great many other bold things as well. I don’t know if deep down he has the nerve.133 The king [Alfonso] was not at all fazed. His argument was that either the French will come in such great numbers that they will be able to subjugate not only the Kingdom [of Naples] but all of Italy, in which case His Majesty cannot be the first to be offended, or they will come on so weakly that [His Majesty] can fight them off alone and then take revenge on the one who sponsored them. All these things were told to me by the lord duke so that I could keep Your Lordship informed. Madonna 128. Federico da Montefeltro, Guidobaldo’s father. 129. Ferdinand of Aragon. 130. Sforza, whose usurpation of the title of duke of Milan from his nephew Gian Galeazzo will be legitimized later this year by Emperor Maximilian I. 131. Maximilian I Habsburg, who will claim the title of Holy Roman Emperor in 1508. 132. gli farra levare la obedientia et lo chiamaranno a concilio. 133. Fearing claims Alfonso as king of Naples might make on Milan, Ludovico Sforza facilitated the passage of Charles VIII’s troops into Italy and effectively pointed the way to the French capture of Naples. His alarm at both the ease and the savagery with which the French moved through Italy, however, would bring him at the end of March 1495 to join the anti-French League of Venice (also known as the Holy League) with Borgia Pope Alexander VI, Venice, Milan, and Emperor Maximilian as well as Naples and a number of small Italian city states.

66 ISABELLA D’ESTE the duchess and I commend ourselves highly to you. Your Lordship should not be surprised if this letter arrives late, because right now there is no rider available.

Letter 81: 1494 June 9 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, pleading the case of a wife who has come to her for help.134 Among these condemned men who planned to break out of prison is one called Francisco Zaffardo, an old man of sixty who comes from a good family and is being held not for any crime or particular fault, but only for some private debts and for sureties to other people. He has been in prison for about two years. His wife made an appeal to me in tears. She pleaded that given his old age, he could suffer grave injury or lose his life if subjected to three drops from the strappado.135 And she asked that I consider his reputation as well as that of his family and his two marriageable daughters. For these reasons I ordered the podestà to suspend this man from his sentence until I have an answer from Your Excellency, but for the others I told him to carry out the imposed penalties. I pray you deign to free this man for love of me; and I will take it as a favor from Your Excellency, to whom I commend myself.

Letter 82: 1494 December 18 Mantua To Bernardino da Piemonte, sending home his son, who has contracted syphilis.136 Since the illness commonly known as French has been discovered in your son Michele, our page, he has requested leave to go home to care for himself, because here he will not have the same comforts, and he will run the risk of giving it to our other pages. And so we remain content for him to go. Have him well cared for, and as soon as he is well, send him back to us, because we welcome his service.137

134. AG 2991 libro 4 c. 74r. Original at AG 2109 c. 224. 135. tre tracti de corda: Known in English as the strappado, this form of punishment or torture would have the subject hoisted by a rope tying the hands behind the back, then dropped without touching the floor, effectively pulling the arms from their joints at the shoulder. In this case, the men were to be dropped three times. 136. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 39v. 137. Isabella’s message to Michele’s father is notably free of the moral judgments that surrounded venereal diseases in later centuries, even as she implicitly acknowledges that pages might be sexually active with each other. The French disease, also known by many other names, was rampant in sixteenth-century Europe and claimed Isabella’s husband Francesco and her daughter Eleonora among its many victims. Arrizabalaga, Henderson, and French, The Great Pox; Luzio and Renier, “Contributo alla storia del malfrancese.”

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 67 Letter 83: 1495 February 13 Milan To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting news from Naples.138 This most illustrious duke [Ludovico Sforza] showed me a letter from King Ferrando [Ferdinand II, Ferrante II, Ferrandino], written in his own hand, informing him that [Ferrando’s] father [Alfonso II d’Aragona] has renounced his throne and asking for help and aid in trying to keep it. He used the sweetest and most effective words in the world, words that would move even stones to compassion. I tried to get a copy to send to you, but I wasn’t able to, because they have not given it out to anyone yet, though some ambassadors have requested it. The sense of it is this: [Ferrando] tells the duke that on the 23rd of last month his father abdicated the state and Ferrando rode through Naples as king. He says the duke should be pleased at this, since by natural blood [Ferrando] is both nephew and self-professed son to him. He says that upon mature consideration, he gives himself [to the duke] as a son, in the firm commitment to show him reverence and to follow the path the duke wants him to take. But since his reign is new, he is exhausted, and he has a powerful enemy at home, the danger to his life and the state is very clear if he does not receive help from His Excellency, in whom he has placed all his hopes. He says he cannot believe that a duke of Milan would allow the loss of the Kingdom conferred on his great-grandfather by Duke Filippo and on his grandfather by Duke Francisco at the time of Pope Pius, with whom they had no blood tie. And that during the wars of Pope Innocent the reign was confirmed again on Ferrando’s grandfather and father by the present duke of Milan. And that it should be much easier to agree to preserve the state now that it belongs to someone who is descended from his own blood and is so observant of his wishes and who must fight a more powerful enemy than Innocent. And that though he had already decided to defend the state with all his might, such that if he must lose it he would lose it together with his own life, nonetheless it would never occur to him that a duke of Milan so powerful and prudent as His Excellency would leave as his current and future legacy that while he lived he watched his nephew and son lose both life and state, having had the power to save it and not doing so. This is the conclusion and the general sense of the letter, but to anyone who saw it, it would appear much better expressed than this unpolished letter of mine. If they are willing to give it out, I won’t delay sending a copy to Your Lordship, to whose good graces I commend myself always. 138. AG 2992 libro 5 cc. 12v–13r. Isabella was in Milan, where she has just attended her sister, Beatrice’s delivery of a baby boy. Gian Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan, died on 20 October, thus opening the way for Ludovico to resume the title of duke. Isabella’s new nephew, Francesco Maria Sforza, was born on 4 February. As this and the following letters illustrate, the festive atmosphere of the Milanese court was hugely darkened by the successes of Charles VIII of France. Striking in these letters is the juxtaposition of Milanese court merriments and the dread that pervades Isabella’s political reporting. Isabella’s stay in Milan and the current political situation are discussed in Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:108–27; Cartwright, Beatrice d’Este, 258–76; Banks Amendola, First Lady, 91–93.

68 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 84: 1495 February 19 Milan To Chiara Gonzaga, hoping that her letters work as medicine.139 To Your Ladyship’s letter of the 12th of this month I need not reply, since yours was a reply to one of mine. But since I cannot speak with you in person, my desire to do so induces me to settle for letters. I know you appreciate them so much that each time you read them you feel some improvement in your condition. I well believe this is possible, because I write them with such love that they should lift all your illness away, and in order to do that, I would spill my own blood. In many respects, as you will wisely be able to guess, I would rather be in Mantua, most of all because then I would be able to find solace in your company. It seems to me it will be a thousand years before this Carnival season ends and I am able to return to you and fulfill our shared wish. This I say despite the fact that the affection and honors shown me by these lords and Madonna [Beatrice d’Este] are such that I should wish to stay with them forever. Every third day they organize parties at the houses of different gentlemen, to which the lord duke and all the ambassadors take me; and we linger there to our great pleasure, since the many ladies and gentlemen present make these occasions most excellent and magnificent. I often wish you were there. So in this meantime, Your Ladyship must see to regaining her strength so that upon my return I will find you in a condition that will permit us to have some enjoyment and recreation. I commend myself to you, praying you also commend me to my most illustrious lord consort each time he comes there.

Letter 85: 1495 February 20 Milan To Antonio Maria de Collis, declaring that she is enjoying herself in Milan.140 You show that you have little wit, less brain, and ample ignorance when you encourage us to return to Mantua. You know that there is no place where we reside with more pleasure and status than we do here, thanks to the great favor we are shown by this most illustrious lord duke of Milan, the greatest lord in the world. He thinks of nothing but amusing and entertaining us in every way possible. Every third day, there are triumphant and magnificent celebrations; one went on until the ninth hour [after sunset], and another until the eleventh. On the days when we don’t have parties we go to the park, or around Milan, which is so 139. AG 2992 libro 5 c.15r. Francesco’s elder sister, Chiara, was in Mantua while her husband, Gilbert de Montpensier, was fighting in Naples for the French. In this period while Francesco was in service to the officially neutral Venetians, Banks Amendola notes, Isabella was “wholeheartedly Francophile”: Banks Amendola, First Lady, 90. On Isabella’s notion of letters as cures, see Deanna Shemek, “In Continuous Expectation: Isabella d’Este’s Epistolary Desire,” in Phaethon’s Children: The Este Court and its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara, ed. Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), 269–300. 140. AG 2992 libro 5 c. 16r. The letter’s recipient is addressed in the familiar “tu” throughout.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 69 beautiful that you wouldn’t recognize it if you came here. So you really are insane to write us to return home, for since we have been here we haven’t had a care in the world. What’s more, you can be sure that we have no intention of leaving here until after the arrival of the emperor, who is expected in three or four months. You could well and truly say that we were out of our mind if we did not wait for him. We greeted the lord duke and the duchess of Milan on your behalf, and they commend themselves to you. We ask that now you commend us to the most illustrious lord our consort. We commend you greatly for writing to us, which was most welcome.

Letter 86: 1495 March 1 Milan To Francesco II Gonzaga, marveling at recent events in Naples.141 Since the letter I sent yesterday I have no further news of the Kingdom. Here all is in disarray over this sudden ruin: what a wondrous and unheard-of thing that in six days such a powerful king was expelled without so much as the prick of a sword. And that in thirteen months we have seen four kings in one kingdom: King Ferrante dead; King Alfonso; King Ferrante [Ferrandino] alive; and now King Charles of France.142 From all this, the only message we can derive is that it is God’s will. Today there were processions here to feign happiness, and we will continue in this manner though there is little desire to do so. It seems a thousand years until this Carnival will be over and I can return home. My departure will take place the first auspicious day after the Milanese Carnival, as this lord wants me to leave according to astrological calculations. I’ll come by way of Bergamo and Brescia, and the lord has said he will accompany me as far as Trezzo. In the meantime, I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good graces. Fare well.

141. AG 2992 libro 5 c. 19v. For discussion of this letter and its context, see Luzio and Renier, “Delle relazioni di Isabella d’Este con Ludovico e Beatrice Sforza,” Archivio storico lombardo series 2, no.7 (1890): fasc. 1, 74–119 and fasc. 3, 619–74, especially 622–24. 142. Alfonso II d’Aragona succeeded his father Ferrante I in 1494, then abdicated to his son Ferrante II [Ferrandino] and retired to Sicily. The French invasion put Charles VIII in charge of Naples. The Milanese, having facilitated that event, were obliged at this point to show French support, but their position would soon change.

70 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 87: 1495 March 1 Milan To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting the attack on Castelnuovo.143 We have news that king Ferrando144 has left Castelnuovo with the women, many men and supplies, and fifteen or eighteen galleys. He has retreated to a certain castle fifteen miles from Naples. From there he can send aid to Castelnuovo, where he has left the marchese of Pescara [Alfonso d’Avalos] with seven hundred soldiers. He has already started to bombard the city, which is being sacked by the French from the other side; this is to pay the Neapolitans back in the coin they have earned. But the worst is that King Ferrando and the troops are dispersed, and Lord Virginio [Orsini] and the count of Pitigliano [Niccolò Orsini] are taken prisoner. I thought it best to give you word of these things immediately, so that you can be informed of everything. If other things happen I will do similarly. I commend myself to your good graces. P.S.: They are writing that Pontano145 betrayed the king for having declared to the populace that he expected no aid whatsoever, and that Lord Virginio and the count of Pitigliano let themselves be taken in Nola with three thousand foot soldiers by Monsignore d’Aubigny. The castle where the king has gone is on an island called Ischia.

Letter 88: 1495 March 4 Milan To Chiara Gonzaga, speaking of a party and of her return to Mantua.146 If my other letters pleased Your Ladyship, I’m certain that this one will please you even more, as it tells you that these illustrious lords and Madonna have given me permission to leave on Wednesday the 11th of this month. They will escort me as far as Trezzo; then by way of Bergamo and Brescia I will come home, where I most want to be in order to see my most illustrious consort and Your Ladyship. I won’t write to you now about the parties we have had or other recent events; this way we will be able to talk together longer when I return. But I won’t omit that yesterday evening our Messer Niccolò gave a lovely party to stage that tale from 143. AG 2992 libro 5 c. 20r. The Castelnuovo fortress finally fell to the Spanish on 12 June 1495, under assault by a gunpowder mine that was set by Italians. In response to this and the fall of Castel dell’ Ovo on 11 July, Charles’s great commander, Louis de la Trémoille reinforced the French troops with 6,000 Swiss, 4,000 crossbowmen, and 900–1,000 men at arms, as well as a fleet of galleys under commander Prégent de Bidoux. Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 19–28, 66 ff. 144. Ferrante II [Ferrandino], son of Alfonso II d’Aragona, and now king of Naples. 145. The humanist Giovanni Pontano served the Aragonese lords of Naples. He was accused of negotiating peace with the French in 1495 and dismissed from his position as chancellor to the Neapolitan court. He was later pardoned but never resumed his post. 146. AG 2992 libro 5 c. 21r.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 71 the Orlando innamorato, about Ippolito, Teseo, and Florida.147 It was very well done. I commend myself to Your Ladyship and wish you well.

Letter 89: 1495 April 3 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, thanking her for figs.148 I am certain that Your Ladyship was pleased that I returned from Milan to Mantua safely to reclaim the love there is between us. The figs Your Ladyship sent me were much appreciated, both because now is the season for these fruits and because they came from Your Ladyship’s hands. For the moment, nothing else occurs to me to write to Your Ladyship, except that my illustrious lord consort, together with our other mutual brothers, myself, and the baby girl are all very well. The Most Illustrious Lady Chiara, our mutual sister, was a little ill in the past few days, but now she is less so. I commend and offer myself always to Your Excellency and your consort and to Signor Ottaviano.

Letter 90: 1495 April 7 Mantua To Beatrice d’Este, regretting a missed opportunity to host her.149 The letters Your Ladyship wrote us from Milan and Toresella, in which you inform us of your departure from Milan and Ferrara, were given to us only yesterday evening, and today from another letter of yours we learned that by the time we got the first ones, you were arriving at Revere. This matter gave us great displeasure at not having been able to house and honor you, as is our duty. If we should find that one of our subjects is responsible for the tardy arrival of the letters, which in less than an hour were presented by different means, we shall deliver a punishment deserving of this situation of not having satisfied our wishes. But Your Ladyship did very well to go in family style to stay at the Revere palace; and the vicar did his duty in honoring and welcoming you. If he had done any differently, it would not have escaped the blame and great indignation of our most illustrious lord consort and of myself, who would now have commanded it. Your Ladyship erred, however, in not coming as far as Mantua to stay several days with us in your own home, where we would have been so very delighted to see you, and this would 147. Isabella’s list of characters is not to be found in Bioardo’s Orlando innamorato. The presenter, Niccolò da Correggio, was in service to the duke of Milan. 148. AG 2992 libro 5 c. 30v. Since fresh figs are not in season in April, the duchess may have sent Isabella dried figs which, perhaps, are in culinary season. 149. AG 2992 libro 5 c. 31v. Beatrice’s letter was not delivered until after she had come near the Mantuan court and then proceeded to Revere instead, southeast of Mantua. Letters between the two sisters served to mark the different segments of their travel and assured connection, but their tardiness in this case blocked the exercise of hospitality: no small matter, since Isabella had just spent weeks at the Sforza court, enjoying the lavish attentions of her sister’s household.

72 ISABELLA D’ESTE have been worthy of our close relation. If it happens again that Your Ladyship returns to our city, please consent to coming and staying several days, and advise me of your departure by a messenger who will give us better service than these have done. We offer ourself to whatever should please Your Ladyship.

Letter 91: 1495 June 18 Mantua To Antonio Salimbene, requesting cats and soap.150 We want you to see to finding three or four cats, male or female, those striped ones that come from the East for catching rats, and send them to us, because rats are driving us out of this house. Send also some soap for the head, as Alberto the courier will explain to you.151 Tell us how our viola152 is coming along, which you shall not fail to ask after.

Letter 92: 1495 June 27 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, thanking him for many letters while he is on the road.153 I received several letters from Your Excellency, of the 22nd, 25th, and 26th of this month, along with the list of orders for your successful army, thanks to which I am now fully informed of all the movements and practices you observe in your mission and of everything that has happened to you daily up to now. This is extremely dear to me, especially when such news brings me word of Your Lordship’s wellbeing, which I desire most highly. I thank you enormously for writing, from which I take much pleasure. Regarding those communities which Your Lordship writes me are recalcitrant in paying the installments they have been assessed for the sabotage troops you maintain in the field, I will see to having reliable information,

150. AG 2992 libro 5 c. 42r. On Isabella’s toiletries, see the third installment of Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, “Il lusso di Isabella d’Este, marchesa di Mantova,” Nuova antologia series 4, 63 (1896): 441–69; 64 (1896): 294–324; 65 (1896): 666–88. The authors remark that early modern Italian nobles, both male and female, were known for washing their hair often as well as for attention to other matters of hygiene. For more general discussion, see Douglas Biow, The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 151. Isabella specifies that the soap should be facto in cidelle. I have been unable to trace the meaning of this phrase. It may refer to the soap’s shape (as a spur or star?) or to molds in which it should be formed. 152. The term ‘viola’ in this period was used generically to refer to any string instrument, either plucked or bowed. It is therefore impossible to deduce the precise instrument to which Isabella refers with this term, and the referent may vary from instance to instance. See James Tyler, “The Renaissance Guitar.” 153. AG 2992 libro 5 c. 47r.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 73 and then I will notify Your Excellency about it.154 To your grace I commend myself always.

Letter 93: 1495 June 30 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, assuring him that rumors of disorder in Mantua are false.155 If Your Excellency’s letters of the 28th and 29th of this month containing favorable news of your mission gave me pleasure, that of the 29th bearing the false news given to Your Excellency that here in Mantua there has been some disorder regarding the grain gave me much greater displeasure, worry, and extreme irritation when I considered that the inventor of this chatter shows such malignance that he cared nothing about disturbing Your Excellency’s spirits while you are occupied with the health of Italy. And he certainly showed no respect for my honor, because given that I am here, one could not speak or write on this subject without having it redound upon me and many gentlemen with whom I consult on all things of moment. But about what you write I neither know nor want to say anything in justification. I don’t even know how to explain it, because since your departure there has not been the smallest scandal or grumbling whatsoever. The grain has been managed in the way that, following my proposal, pleased Your Lordship. In piazza neither grain nor bread has been lacking, nor has anyone been given occasion for valid complaint. It is true that yesterday morning a certain Giacomo who deals with musical organs presumptuously said to the massaio that there was no bread in the piazza.156 The massaio, together with other persons present took him and reproved him as mendacious, malignant, and bold, because all the bakers’ stands were brimming with bread. To punish him for this insolence, he was put in prison as an example for others. I would never bother Your Excellency with this or any such nonsense, and I would never withhold anything important. Nevertheless, I know this matter did not cause you to write that letter, because you could not have heard 154. Sabotage troops or guastatori were wreckers who disabled enemy fortifications and neutralized enemy arms supplies. Here we catch a glimpse of the tax system that maintained such armies. 155. AG 2992 libro 5 cc. 49r–50r. This letter indicates the importance of keeping domestic order in times of war as well as the crucial role that food supplies played in maintaining such order. Isabella’s defensive stance, while it affords readers a glimpse at her collaborative administrative style, also suggests the struggle she faced in exercising authority in a context where some may have resented her power. Later this same month, Gonzaga official Antonio Donato defied Isabella’s authority, on which occasion Francesco fully approved of his punishment for insubordination. Bona fide letters between the co-rulers of Mantua were key to the survival of the state and the success of Francesco’s military ventures. On Donato, see Cockram, Isabella d’Este, 61, 200–1. 156. The massaio (or massaro) was often a manager of either livestock or crops, but could also function as a sort of treasurer. The term (which also translates sometimes as farmer) could designate various agricultural or economic administrators. See Treccani.

74 ISABELLA D’ESTE about it yet. Rather, some good and charitable type who makes a habit of creating trouble wanted to show he was odder than anyone else by inventing something out of his own head. Your Excellency, who knows who it was, will now know this person for the man he is, and you must be truly convinced that he loves neither Your Lordship, nor me, nor our fatherland. I speak so boldly because this whole city is my witness and because I know there is no other person in the world who loves Your Lordship and this republic more than I do. If someone now wants to say it was bad not to place a price cap on grain, for the reasons I wrote to you the other day I still say the contrary, and anyone who had another opinion should have voiced it when all the officials were assembled and consulting together with the gentlemen and the counselors; and he would have been heard out. But since at the time everyone was of the same mind, it was decided to write our opinion to Your Excellency, and once it was approved through your letter, it was put into effect with great order and care, which is what will be done in every other necessity. Your Lordship may be calm of heart and think only of your military undertaking, for in matters of the state I will govern, with the counsel of these magnificent gentlemen, in such a way that it will suffer no disturbance or damage, and all will be done to the benefit of its subjects. And if something should be said or written to you about disorder, and you have not heard it from me, keep as your maxim that it is a lie. Because since my orders are that not only the officials but all the subjects may speak to me any time they want to, nothing can happen for which provisions against disorder are not made before it can occur. I will not go on, except to say that I commend myself always to the good grace of Your Excellency.

Letter 94: 1495 July 1 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting a mysterious murder.157 Perhaps Your Lordship will have heard already, though not from me, about a crime committed by a delinquent, since they say that he left Mantua before the homicide was known and was going to the field to meet Your Excellency. Nonetheless, I thought I would do my duty in notifying you about it with this letter. Today at the hour of nones [mid-afternoon] great bell ringing was heard. When I sought out the cause, I found that a certain Francesco, son of the merchant Vanino, had killed the wife of another man well before anyone discovered the fact; and having prepared a horse, he was seen leaving through the Predella Gate. When he was asked where he was going in such a hurry (for his crime was not yet known) he answered that he was going to see Your Lordship on some business of his. I wanted very much to understand what had induced him, but I can’t find anyone who knows. Some in his family say that he did it out of jealousy. But the neighbors and public opinion confirm that the victim was a decent woman of good reputation, 157. AG 2992 libro 5 c. 50v.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 75 the daughter of the merchant Master Anselmo da Compagnono, a decent man. I sent after [the murderer], but he had such an advantage that it will not be possible to find him. We will proceed against him as reason dictates. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace.

Letter 95: 1495 July 2 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, sending him a favorite Agnus Dei.158 I heard via a letter from Your Lordship to the most reverend monsignor the protonotary [Sigismondo Gonzaga] that you will soon have the enemy at hand, and then from a letter to me (to which I will respond with one in my own hand) that you have already begun. Seeing that you left behind the Agnus Dei to which you show such devotion because of the wood that is in it, I got the idea of having it set into a gold cross that is easier to wear around the neck and sending it to you with the present rider. I send it in the spirit and the hope that through the powers of the cross and the wood that is sealed inside, together with your devotion to the Madonna, you will keep your person safe and sound, for you also have all the religious and secular people of this city praying for you, both from their own disposition to do so and because I, who am so protective of your health, am a continuous spur to them. I commend myself to Your Highness’s good grace. May you fare happily.

Letter 96: 1495 July 24 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, responding to his request that she send to Milan the trophies he took from the French king.159 Your Excellency has had me notified that I should send those four pieces from the French king’s regalia, because you want to give them as a gift to the duchess of Milan. I am prepared to obey you. But to tell the truth, in this case I do so unwillingly, since it seems to me that these regal spoils were supposed to remain at home, in perpetual memory of Your Excellency’s glorious military deed, since there is otherwise not the smallest trace of it. If you give them to someone else now, you will appear to deny the honor of your exploit and confer it upon 158. AG 2992 libro 5 cc. 50v–51r. Francesco Gonzaga had renewed his condotta with Venice in February 1495. He therefore participated in the League of Venice in the fight to expel the French from Italy. The Agnus Dei, literally “lamb of God,” is an image representing Christ as a lamb, often with a halo, banner, and cross. This one contained a piece of wood believed to be a fragment from the cross of Christ’s crucifixion. The battle of Fornovo, into which Francesco would carry this relic on 6 July, was the greatest event of his military career. Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 65–99; Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, “Francesco Gonzaga alla battaglia di Fornovo (1495) secondo i documenti mantovani,” Archivio storico italiano 6 (1890): 205–46. 159. AG 2992 libro 5 cc. 60r–v. Though the French succeeded in breaking through the Italian lines and suffered far fewer casualties than the Italians, and though most contemporary accounts deemed

76 ISABELLA D’ESTE whoever has in hand the enemy’s trophies. I am not sending it yet, because I need a mule, and also so that Your Excellency can consider offering some excuse to the duchess, such as saying that you had already previously given this regalia to me. Certainly if I hadn’t seen it yet, it would not matter so much to me. But since Your Excellency sent it to be given to me, and considering that you won it by endangering your life, you can be sure that I will turn it over to others with tears in my eyes. Nonetheless I will obey Your Excellency, as I have said; I will await your answer, however. If this regalia were worth a thousand times its value but had not been acquired in the way it was, I would not regret placing it in the hands of the most illustrious duchess, my sister, whom you know I love and revere. But the aforesaid circumstance makes this difficult for me. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good graces, and wish you well.

Letter 97: 1495 July 25 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, sending him food and wine and speaking of taxes.160 Though I know that in that city there are good wines, nonetheless since I also know that Your Excellency doesn’t enjoy big wines, I thought to send you several loads of ours, in hopes that they will please.161 Along with them will be some other things, noted below, which I hope you are disposed to enjoy for love of me. If the melons are not the best, you must attribute it to the water that arrived these days along the road. Benedetto Agnello never fails to solicit the tax from the carters and the spoilers, and a part of it has already been sent. But given the poverty of the farmers, it is difficult to extract it. To get the money from the Jews I commissioned Antonio Donato, telling him to be diligent in getting it and sending it to Your the battle of Fornovo a French victory, the Italians took the majority of the spoils from the retreating French army. Francesco Gonzaga was able to claim Fornovo as a personal victory, as a result of which he was appointed captain-general of the Venetian forces. Bourne notes that Francesco wrote to his sister, Elisabetta Gonzaga on 16 July declaring that under his command the Venetian forces had “given birth to the liberation and freedom of Italy” and reports correspondence in the name of baby Eleonora Gonzaga that speaks of the songs and tributes celebrating her father’s rescue of Italy from barbarian hands: Francesco II Gonzaga, 68. The war trophies taken from the tent of King Charles VIII and originally sent to Isabella were not items she wanted to give over to her sister. In the end Beatrice agreed to borrow these hangings rather than keep them as her own. For further commentary on this letter, see Deanna Shemek, “Isabella d’Este and the Properties of Persuasion,” in Women’s Letters across Europe, 1400–1700: Form and Persuasion, ed. Ann Crabb and Jane Couchman (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 123–40. 160. AG 2992 libro 5 c. 61r. 161. Isabella uses the term “big wine” as it is used today, to refer to those that are full-bodied, intense in flavor, and relatively high in alcohol content. In the heat of summer, Francesco must have preferred the lighter wines of the Veneto and Lombardy. For grande as a reference to high-alcohol wine, see Giancarlo Malacarne, Sulla mensa del principe: Alimentazione e banchetti alla corte dei Gonzaga (Modena: Il Bulino, 2000), 308.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 77 Excellency. I’ll give Bernardino Messalia162 the commission for the things from the most illustrious duke of Urbino, as you instruct me in the letter you wrote on the 22nd. Nothing more occurs to me except to commend myself to your good grace. Note of the things I am sending: Four barrels of tart wine from Revere163 Two barrels of sweet wine to accompany melons164 Two small casks of white wine from Sacco165 One load of melons Two boxes of zucato166 One box of preserved pears Two boxes with two stone glasses filled with brognolata167 A basket of pears of different sorts

Letter 98: 1495 October 13 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, rejoicing that he is coming home.168 I confess that I have had no more welcome news from Your Excellency since you have been away than that peace has been brought about, which was communicated to me via your letters of the 9th, received on the 11th at about the seventeenth 162. On this envoy, who also made several trips to Constantinople on behalf of Francesco Gonzaga, see Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 52. 163. A town in Lombardy some thirty kilometers southeast of Mantua. 164. I thank Laura Giannetti for informing me that some doctors advised drinking wine when eating melons, to mitigate the fruit’s effects on the humors of the stomach. 165. A city in the Italian region of Campania. 166. zucato: Possibly a reference to the Sicilian specialty, zuccata. Malacarne defines zucchato as a composto di zucca (mixture of squash): Malacarne, Mensa del principe, 306. 167. scatolle due cum dui bichieri de preda pieni de brognolata. On preda as pietra, see Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 437. Brognolata is likely a preserved confection made from prunes (brogne/ brugne): Malacarne, Mensa del principe, 295; also Adriano Galassi and Romano Sarzi, Alla Syrena: Spezieria del ‘600 in Mantova; Con introduzione alla terapia medica e all’arte dello speziale ([Castel Goffredo]: Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Castel Goffredo; Mantua: Sometti, 2000), 126. 168. AG 2992 libro 6 c.1v. After enjoying his victory at Fornovo, Francesco was appointed captain general by the Venetians (27 July 1495) and promptly sent to Naples to assure full eradication of remaining French troops. He spent July to September in Novara, and it is from this campaign that Isabella prepared to welcome him home. Francesco then passed from February to November 1496 in Naples for the same purpose, returning finally to Mantua only in November of that year. Bourne notes that by November of 1496 Francesco was “exhausted and ill with typhoid, malaria, and syphilis after a rather disappointing campaign against the French in southern Italy”: Francesco II Gonzaga, 27–28, 110; while Banks Amendola observes, “Isabella and Francesco must have celebrated intimately his ‘victorious’ homecoming and by mid-December Isabella knew she was pregnant again”: First Lady, 100.

78 ISABELLA D’ESTE hour [seven hours before sunset], letters that also certified that the following day you were to break camp to return home. The pleasure I feel at this news is equally inestimable, and I want my thanks to you for sharing it with me to be innumerable as well. I thank Our Lord God that he preserved Your Highness unharmed in such a laborious and dangerous place. I await you with utmost desire, along with this your most faithful populace. And to your good grace I commend myself.

Letter 99: 1495 October 15 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, thanking him for news and ordering Venetian goods.169 We have your letters of the 10th and 11th of this month, which are copious with various news and were much appreciated. We commend you greatly for them. We also received the spools and little bottles you sent us, but because we would like the spools to be more slender than these, have the same number made again, ordering that they be made as slender as they can be, because it will suffice if they have holes big enough for a thread to pass through. They should be black, and as long as these. Similarly we want you to have the other little bottles remade in the same fashion as these, but they should be bigger. They should have more belly, and gradually and proportionally become thinner in such a way as to give them a bottle shape. But in exchange for the yellow ones that you just made, you shall have made the same number of gray ones, and the black ones should be as many as the yellow and black ones already sent. As for the satin cloth, you will see if you can find at least four suitable pieces in green tones for putting together with the other two. If they are a little varied, we won’t mind, because they will go on the beds. See, now, to satisfying us with the one and the other thing as soon as you can. If Messer Phebus and Messer Girolamo are still there, greet them on our behalf. And you be well.

Letter 100: 1495 November 5 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, praising his willingness to seek trade with Venice.170 The merchants of this city have let me know that they petitioned Your Excellency to be willing to entreat the illustrious signory of Venice to allow Mantuan cloth to go to Venice, and that you gave them a gracious response. For this reason, we are sending Francisco Creno to remind Your Excellency of it. Since I am informed 169. AG 2992 libro 6 cc. 2r–v. Isabella was an exacting shopper, but Giorgio Brognolo was effective in her service. A letter from Isabella to him on 28 October 1495 indicates that he had obtained these items precisely as she wanted them. 170. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 8v. The Venetian market for cloth was among the most trafficked in Europe and thus potentially highly lucrative for vendors. The license to sell in that city was a privilege with significant economic consequences.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 79 that besides its public utility, this permission will yield an extremely large increase in income, I thought I would encourage and pray Your Lordship to be willing to make every effort to obtain such license. For this, the entire city will feel no small benefit, and it will be considered a singular benefit and grace from Your Excellency. To whom I commend myself.

Letter 101: 1495 November 7 Mantua To Alfonso I d’Este, sending him truffles and thanking him for sea-fish he sent her.171 I received along with your letter the sea-fish you sent me by order of our most illustrious father. It was most welcome, and for love of you both I will enjoy it, thanking you most highly. If for many days I have sent no truffles to Your Lordship, you must know that I have had none. I think that given the innumerable quantity of them that I’ve sent already, this land must be depleted, so I wrote to Verona. If I can get any, I will send them to Your Lordship. But since my craving for shellfish is no smaller than yours for truffles, I pray you be willing to order that from time to time some of those be sent to me. You will be giving me great pleasure. To Your Lordship I commend myself and pray you commend me to the illustrious madonna, your consort.

Letter 102: 1495 26 November Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, sending trout.172 By the present boatman I am sending Your Excellency seven trout, with a total weight of six pesi. Please deign to enjoy them for love of me. To your good grace I commend myself.

Letter 103: 1495 16 December Mantua To the duchess of Milan [Beatrice d’Este], mourning the death of King Alfonso II of Naples.173 Through Venice I learned that King Alfonso is dead. And because he was our uncle, as Your Illustrious Ladyship knows, I would very much like to know how 171. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 9r. The exchange of food among relatives perpetuated a gift economy that contributed to family bonds, but it also brought the separate cities’ resources together and created a wider zone of production and consumption, especially for members of the elite class. 172. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 14v.doc. 173. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 18r. The death of such an important figure as Alfonso II required ceremonial observances such as mourning attire for women in the extended family. Isabella is aiming for a coherent public display by coordinating with her sister.

80 ISABELLA D’ESTE you will observe this in your dress, and if you wear mourning clothes for how long you will do so; and because I will do no differently than you do, I pray Your Excellency not be displeased to inform me immediately through the present rider. I commend myself to you always and ask that you not mind if I ask you to commend me to the good graces of the illustrious lord duke your consort and my most devout father.

Letter 104: 1495 17 December Mantua To Leonello da Baesio, instructing him to have salame and mortadella made.174 As it is now time to have salame made, we ask that you have made just two each of saveloy, mortadella, and zambudelli, of the same kind and quality you usually have made.175 Keep a good account of the cost and notify us of it, for we will have you paid back immediately. We will be most grateful. See that there are also some liver mortadellas. Be well.

Letter 105: 1496 January 3 Mantua To Ercole I d’Este, regretting a failed marriage negotiation.176 Some days ago now, Your Excellency wrote to ask that with all possible effectiveness I propose to Messer Zoanmaria di Guidoni, who is currently the podestà of Mantua, that he take the daughter of Nicolao Bendidio as his wife, and that I give him to understand that besides the honorable dowry and family connection he would acquire, he would also be doing something exceedingly pleasing to Your Most Illustrious Lordship. Since I wish to obey you in everything and especially in this matter concerning the interests of Nicolao and of his wife Madonna Tadea, whom I love enormously, I was happy to take up this negotiation. But because in the same instant that I received Your Lordship’s letter, Zoanmaria got news of the 174. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 18v. 175. Mortadella still exists today as a cold cut meat typical of Emilia-Romagna and is often sold abroad under the name of that region’s capital city, Bologna. Malacarne observes that the mortadella of the sixteenth century, however, was not at all the same product that is known today. For discussion and recipes, see Malacarne, Mensa del principe, 196. Cervellati (saveloy) were highly seasoned smoked pork sausages, sometimes made from the brains of pigs, while zambudelli were likely similar to the Emilian zampone, a sausage made by stuffing the rear leg and foot of the pig (zampa/gamba) rather than the intestine (budello) used for other sausages. See Giorgio Pavesi, “Al masalin”: Tradizione e pratica della norcineria casalinga a Mantova (Bozzolo [Mantua]: Arti Grafiche Chiribella, 2002), 10. Pavesi mistakenly dates this letter 1498. 176. AG 2992 libro 6 cc.20r–v. For a theatrical text representing a situation much like this one from the prospective groom’s side, see Pietro Aretino’s comedy, Il Marescalco (The Master of the Horse), composed 1527, revised and published 1533. Laura Giannetti and Guido Ruggiero, eds. and trans., Five Comedies from the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 117–204.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 81 death of his brother, Count Guido, I thought it better to let a few days pass so that he could set his soul a bit at peace. And that is what I did. Then, having chosen a good moment, I dexterously proposed the match to him, praising it with all the reasons Your Excellency and Messer Nicolao had given, and adding some that seemed appropriate to me, which I will not repeat here in order not to go on too long. His final reply, after many things he said to excuse himself because of the reverence he has for Your Lordship and for me, was that he is not at present inclined to take a wife, no matter what kind of match he might make. And though he appreciates this proposal from Nicolao, given the lineage, the family, and the manners of the young woman, he nonetheless has no intention of attaching himself. He begged me again not to force him to do something against his will. I tried anyway to praise this marriage and at least to extract from him some hope that with time he might be inclined toward my proposal, reminding him repeatedly of the pleasure he would be giving Your Excellency and of the advantage and honor he would derive from having Nicolao’s favor whenever he needed it; but he resolved that since he had not the faintest intention of taking a wife, he did not want to say anything that would cause the father to delay in seeking another match. Nor was I able to get anything more out of him than that in words and deeds he is ever obedient and loyal to Your Excellency. For my part, I spared no effort in trying to satisfy your request. If perhaps, since Messer Zoanmaria is your subject, you would like to have another try for yourself, maybe he will be more responsive to you. I commend myself to Your Highness’s good graces.

Letter 106: 1496 February 22 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, regretting her departure from Mantua.177 I well believe Your Ladyship took displeasure in departing from here, since you are so sweet and loving, but I won’t also believe that your displeasure is greater than mine. For though you take leave of your brothers and sisters, you are on your way to see and enjoy your illustrious consort. But I am left deprived not only of your faithful and welcome conversation but also of my husband’s presence, who is leaving on a difficult and dangerous mission, as Your Ladyship knows.178 It is true that the illustrious lady, the archduchess, our sister in common,179 remains here and will be of great refreshment to me. But I don’t know now which of us 177. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 29r. 178. Francesco, in service to Venice, was returning to Naples after the French retreat to help King Ferrandino reestablish power. 179. Isabella refers here, presumably, to Chiara Gonzaga, though Chiara’s title was countess of Montpensier. Chiara, together with the duke and duchess of Urbino, had been visiting in Mantua since November 1495. As Luzio remarks, Isabella was very attached to this sister-in-law, but the fact

82 ISABELLA D’ESTE has greater need of comfort, and without someone between us who is less overwhelmed by passions, we are not well and cannot feel much consolation. And so we rightfully say we feel the greater pain. One remedy will relieve it: if you write to me often. Because reading your letters I will go back in memory to a thousand pleasures we shared together in your sweet conversation. I commend myself to Your Ladyship and pray you commend me to your illustrious lord consort and to Signor Ottaviano, not forgetting also Madonna Emilia.180

Letter 107: 1496 February 24 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, requesting that he write to her often.181 The last time Your Excellency left for the field I was displeased, but I took comfort both because you were not going so far away and because soon word of your activities returned to me almost daily. But now I don’t know where to find comfort, considering the distance and the danger of the place where you are going; and it seems Your Lordship has been gone not one day but a thousand. Think now what lies ahead for me. I know no better remedy to help me live in less distress than to have frequent confirmation of your wellbeing; and I pray you content me in this by sending me word of it every day. I have no other news for this letter, save that I wanted to visit you as is my duty. I would have contented you with [a letter by] my hand if it were not for a bit of fever that came upon me yesterday evening and gave me some distress. I hope it goes no further. Eleonora is well. I commend myself in Your Excellency’s good grace.

Letter 108: 1496 February 25 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, admitting to him her recent headaches.182 Though nothing worthy of recounting to Your Lordship comes to me, I thought I would write so that the rider won’t reach you without letters from me. I report that I am feeling very well, save that since the day Your Excellency left and up to now I have had a small headache. It was so mild that I didn’t care to write you about it before, because I did not want to worry you for such a minimal thing. And I would not have told you about it even now, except to avoid your hearing that their husbands were fighting on opposite sides of the war must have put considerable strain on their relationship. Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 85–86. 180. Ottaviano Fregoso did not move to the court of Urbino until late in 1496, but as a family member, he may have been in Urbino at this time. The Emilia in this letter is very likely Emilia Pia da Carpi who, like Fregoso, is best known for her portrayal in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. Emilia Pia, lady-in-waiting and constant companion of Elisabetta Gonzaga, was also a close friend of Isabella’s. 181. AG 2992 libro 6 cc. 30 r–v. 182. AG 2111 Fasc.V c. 207r.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 83 of it from some other source and thinking it more serious than it is. Really, it is nothing more than a little discomfort, and Maestro Matteo [Cremasco] says that it will turn around soon. As long as I know Your Excellency continues to thrive and to prosper, I will be healthy and glad. I commend myself to you always.183

Letter 109: 1496 March 3 Mantua To Giulio d’Este, with a portrait he requested of Eleonora Gonzaga.184 To please Your Lordship, we have had our daughter Eleonora’s portrait painted. And though it could resemble her more than it does, we nonetheless wanted to send it to you via this special courier, so that you would be content with us, even though the portrait may not please you as much as we would wish. You will excuse us for not writing in our own hand, because we are not entirely well on account of that little headache we have had these days, though we are going outside the house. We commend ourself to the most reverend cardinal [Ippolito d’Este] and our other most illustrious siblings, and also to Your Lordship.

Letter 110: 1496 March 7 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, sending a drawing of a musical motif to be carved into a stone.185 We received your two letters of the 2nd and 3rd of this month, which were most welcome for the news you gave us about the affairs of the Kingdom [of Naples]. We commend you highly for this and encourage you to continue in this fashion, for you could do us no greater favor. On the matter of Francesco Anichini, we are pleased that he found a turquoise that meets his standards.186 So we are now sending you, enclosed here, the drawing for what we would like carved in it. It is not the one we wrote to you about the first time, but a different design that pertains to music, and which delights us. Now please urge Francesco to serve us as we hope he will. We commend you for the crabs you sent us; we enjoyed them out of love for you. We remind you to try to get back the provision for our pontoon and to give 183. This letter seems to make much of little, but its talk of minor health disturbances carried a vital subtext for Isabella and her husband. She was four months pregnant with their second child. Both dynastic and health concerns surrounded her condition, as their first baby had been female (thus ineligible to succeed Francesco), and every pregnancy was a serious health risk to sixteenth-century women. 184. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 39v. 185. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 44r. 186. For untranslated, partial transcriptions of several more letters in this campaign to have engraved gems by Anichini, see Brown, Lorenzoni, and Hickson, “Per dare qualche splendore,” 51, 104–9. On Anichini, see Maria Angela Novelli, “Anichini, Francesco,” DBI 3 (1961); also Antonino Bertolotti, “Le arte minori alla corte di Mantova,” Archivio Storico Lombardo series 2, 5 (1888), 281–84.

84 ISABELLA D’ESTE it to Pagano as we wrote to you on other occasions, so that we won’t have him on our back for the debt we owe him.187 Be well. P.S.: Be sure to tell Francesco Anichini that we want this intaglio in relief.

Letter 111: 1496 March 12 Mantua To the duchess of Milan, facilitating construction for a Carmelite convent.188 Since I keep under my protection both the men and women in the monastic community of Monte Carmelo, as Your Ladyship will have understood from an earlier letter of mine, not only those in this city but also those of other cities have recourse to me. Thus the sisters of Saint Mary Magdalene, who are members of this order in Parma, have informed me that their plans to build onto their convent have apparently been blocked by a certain neighbor of theirs, despite the fact that they occupy space belonging neither to him nor to anyone else, nor even a public pathway. In fact, the other close neighbors and the entire community are most pleased and have praised this project. But [the sisters] fear that in some way, because of his persistence, he will disturb their plans. Desiring the aid of the most illustrious lord duke [Ludovico Sforza], they turned to me; and I, in order to include you in this cause, wanted to employ your mediation. I pray you beseech the aforesaid most illustrious lord your consort to send a letter to the commissioner or the elders of Parma, directing them not to allow impediments to the sisters from any citizen regarding their building, since it impairs no one’s rights and indeed is an ornament in that city. I would take this as a singular favor from Your Excellencies, to whom I commend myself.

Letter 112: 1496 March 12 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, ordering a clavichord.189 We recall that you gave a most beautiful and perfect clavichord to the most illustrious duchess of Milan our sister when we were in Pavia, and since we wish to have one that cannot be improved upon, we think that in Italy there is no one who could serve us better than you. For this reason we pray you be willing to make us one as beautiful and good as befits your reputation and our hopes in you. We make no 187. Pagano was a Venetian merchant. 188. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 57r. The Carmelite order is named for Mount Carmel, a site near Nazareth considered sacred since the time of the prophet Elijah (9th century BCE), which in the first centuries of Christianity was associated with veneration of the Virgin. The order was reformed in the latter sixteenth century by Saint Teresa of Avila. 189. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 54v. On this instrument and on Isabella’s relations with Lorenzo, see Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 191–96. Though I have maintained her word choice

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 85 other specifications, save that you make it easy to play, because we have such a light hand that we cannot play well when the keys are so hard that they must be forced. You understand our wish and our need. As for the rest, make it in your fashion. And the sooner you serve us, the more grateful we will be, besides the fact that we will satisfy you with our payment. We offer ourself to your pleasure.

Letter 113: 1496 March 17 Mantua To the duke of Milan [Ludovico Sforza], apologizing for not sending him any carp.190 If I have not sent Your Excellency fresh carp this year, it is because they have not appeared in this city as they usually do. But seeing the wish you express in your letter of the 14th, I immediately sent a special messenger to Lake Garda to get some. If he catches any there, I will rush them to Your Highness, to whom I commend myself always.

Letter 114: 1496 March 17 Mantua To the vicar of Goito, ordering prosecution of anyone fishing in the Mincio River.191 Our farmers from the lake give us to understand that people are blatantly fishing in the Mincio for giltheads and other fish in violation of the law. We want you to reissue the commandment that no one, no matter who he may be, should dare catch those fish, on pain of the penalty we have already specified several times in the past. And see that violators are diligently punished.

Letter 115: 1496 March 19 Mantua To Antonio Visconti, negotiating for quicker production of a clavichord.192 We would like to have a clavichord made by Master Lorenzo da Pavia in Venice. He has replied to us that he cannot make it until he has finished a viola for the here, I owe to Christopher Stembridge the insight that Isabella’s use of the term clavicordio may be misleading for modern readers. Stembridge infers from this and other letters that the item in question is a plucked instrument, perhaps a harpsichord or a “spinetta” or arpicordio, and notes that the period term for what we now call a clavichord was “manichord.” See Christopher Stembridge, “The Stringing of Italian Keyboard Instruments, c. 1500 – c. 1650” (PhD diss., Queen’s University of Belfast, 1997), document 2 and notes. 190. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 60r. This letter and the following one highlight issues of resource management and the competition among economic classes for food in early modern Mantua. 191. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 60r. Goito lies some seventeen kilometers northwest of Mantua. 192. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 62r. Visconti was a musician and courtier in service to the duke of Ferrara at the Milanese court.

86 ISABELLA D’ESTE duchess of Milan, our honored sister, and then a clavichord for Your Magnificence. However, since we desire very much to have ours, we pray you be content to yield us your place after the duchess. You will be doing us a great pleasure. If you are willing, as we hope you are, Your Magnificence can write to the said Master Lorenzo that he should make our clavichord first. We offer ourself ever ready to do Your Magnificence’s pleasure.

Letter 116: 1496 March 21, the ninth hour of evening, Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, recounting the sudden arrival of Ippolito d’Este.193 Your Excellency is perhaps amazed that I did not write to you about the arrival of the most reverend monsignor cardinal, my most honored brother, before he got here. But rest assured that having last dispatched a courier not even two days ago, if I had had even the glimmer of a notion that he was coming, I would have made note of it to you. It all happened so suddenly that at times I was uncertain whether there was enough time to welcome him honorably. Briefly, I will relate to Your Excellency what happened. Saturday evening, I got a letter from the most illustrious lord, my father, in which he informed me that the aforesaid monsignor cardinal had asked his leave to come to see me and would be departing Ferrara on Sunday. My father did not specify how my brother would travel, nor did he send me any list whatsoever of the guests in his party. Pincaro, who had been in Ferrara in recent days, almost assured me that Ippolito would come incognito, since he had not notified me in any way of the visit in advance.194 In this puzzled state, I decided to send Pincaro to meet the cardinal on the way, so he could find out how he was coming and inform me how I should conduct myself. Pincaro had no sooner reached Revere than he met one of Ippolito’s men with the roster, who told him that Ippolito was indeed coming as himself, would be arriving with around eighty horses, and would be at Revere on Sunday, meaning yesterday. He said it was true that he had thought at first of coming in disguise, but since my lord father had not liked the idea, he changed his mind. Pincaro, with the assistance of the vicar of Revere, had table and lodgings prepared as best he could. And I immediately sent the Most Illustrious Lord Giovanni [Gonzaga], our brother, by boat to Revere to receive Ippolito. But instead Pincaro himself was met by His Most Reverend Lordship [Ippolito], who had 193. AG 2992 libro 6 cc. 65v–67r. Isabella takes the unusual step of noting the time of her writing this time-themed letter. 194. Persons of Ippolito and Isabella’s class sometimes traveled incognito, which is to say in disguise. They did so both to spare others the expense of formal ceremonies that would have been obligatory had they arrived identified, and also to be able to move about more freely, without the encumbrances of official status. For the traveler as well as for hosts, this choice brought significant savings, because all forms of pomp (including wardrobe) could be minimized.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 87 arrived an hour earlier. I was with the most reverend protonotary our brother;195 and in order to arrange these ceremonies better, since we were uncertain whether or not Ippolito should make his entrance into town with a canopy and procession, we sent the high priest and Antimacho196 to monsignor the bishop of Urbino.197 He is a person who understands these ceremonies, and he replied that since the cardinal was not representing the Church, he should not be received with a canopy or a procession, but that it would be good if besides all the rest of the nobility the clergy—meaning all the prelates—went to meet him. Monsignor Protonotary gave me to understand the he did not want to dress as a protonotary. And though I encouraged him to do so, he decided not to, saying that he would receive [Ippolito] with sufficient respect. He said he would rather go out to meet him well ahead of the others, as a family member. This was approved and commended by the bishop of Urbino, the high priest, and all the others. In order not to neglect my duty in any way, I informed the most reverend monsignor bishop of Mantua, our uncle,198 of the arrival here of Monsignore my most reverend brother. Though out of reverence, I did not write that he should come to this city, he did come this morning. This was very fitting, because since the protonotary was not wearing his rochet,199 there would not have been any leader for the priests. The cardinal [Ippolito] came this morning to dine at Sacchetta, and since we had him come by way of the Serraglio to enter through the Cerese garden, the protonotary with his entourage met and escorted him for eight miles.200 It is not customary for women to go out to meet cardinals, but since he is my brother I wanted to go out, and once I had seen him and embraced him I could then come back to receive him in the Castello.201 So taking as my escorts the son of 195. Sigismondo Gonzaga, Francesco’s brother, who was in this period hoping to be appointed cardinal himself, a fact to which Isabella refers at the end of her letter. 196. Gonzaga secretary Matteo Sacchetti. 197. Giovanni Pietro Arrivabene. On this Mantuan figure, to whom Poliziano dedicated an epigram, see David S. Chambers, A Renaissance Cardinal and His Worldly Goods: The Will and Inventory of Francesco Gonzaga (1444–1483) (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1992); Jardine, Worldly Goods, 70. 198. Ludovico Gonzaga. 199. A Latin-rite liturgical garment. A “tunic usually made of fine white linen and reaching to the knees…decorated with lace or embroidery.” See Joseph Braun, “Vestments,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), . 200. The Serraglio was a fortification system that enclosed a substantial portion of Mantuan territory between the Mincio River, the Mantuan lakes, and the Po River, with a western extension running from Curtatone to Borgoforte. Carlo Parmigiani, Il Serraglio mantovano: Storia, difese militari ed idrauliche (Mantua: Sometti, 2010). 201. Presumably the Castello di San Giorgio, the section of today’s Palazzo Ducale that served as the main residence of the Gonzaga princes from the mid-fifteenth-century on. The reference to the

88 ISABELLA D’ESTE the late Lord Rodolfo, Count Guido Torello, Messer Guidone, Messer Baldessaro, Messer Lodovico degli Uberti, and my entourage, I met him at Formigata, leaving orders for the bishops of Mantua, Urbino, and Comino, as well as the other prelates, advisors and gentlemen to come as far as the Cerese Gate.202 Once they had met the cardinal, I immediately returned to the castle, leaving with them also the protonotary and Lord Giovanni, who conducted him via the route of the Corpus Christi procession. He dismounted at San Pietro to pray, as is his custom. Once they were remounted, they came to the Castello, where I, accompanied by the Most Illustrious Lady Laura, the Contessa Fregolina, Madonna Francesca Torella wife of Hector, and several other gentle, elderly ladies received him with the most loving welcome I could make. His Most Reverend Lordship is lodging in the lower rooms, where Your Excellency used to stay, and which I have had honorably furnished. With him are the Most Illustrious Don Sigismondo and Don Giulio my brothers, Bishop Cantelmo, a suffragan bishop,203 the Protonotary Bigaro, Master Sacharia. All these people are lodging in the Castello. The rest of the entourage is being lodged at court. The most reverend monsignor has asked me most lovingly about Your Excellency’s health and begged me to commend him to you, and the other lords my brothers do the same. How many days more he will stay here I cannot yet say. I will try to provide him with all the pleasures I can, and I will send news to Your Excellency of how things develop. Having written up to this point, I received Your Lordship’s letter from Ovaldo204 including the news of the Kingdom [of Naples], for which I thank you immensely, because I took great pleasure and much comfort in hearing of your well-being. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good graces, together with Eleonora. Even she took part in the reception of His Most Reverend Lordship the cardinal. I pray that God may soon give this title to Monsignor the protonotary.

lodgings at court likely refers to the Corte Vecchia, which lies across the piazza from the Castello but still within the palace complex. 202. The men named in this list are presumably all prominent citizens of Mantua. On Guido Torello, see Condottieri di ventura. On the Uberti family in Mantua, see Guido Rebecchini, Private Collectors in Mantua, 1500–1630 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2002), 26. Rodolfo was Francesco’s uncle, lord of Castiglione, who died at Fornovo in 1495. 203. Suffragan bishops are appointed as assistants to the bishop of a diocese. 204. My thanks to Molly Bourne for informing me that Francesco Gonzaga was at this time in Spoleto.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 89 Letter 117: 1496 April 13 Mantua To Galeotto del Carretto, thanking him for the verses he sent her.205 We received your letter together with the verses you composed. From the one and the other we took great pleasure, both in understanding that you persist in the affection you have shown you feel for us, and because we were happy to read your verses, which are perfect both in words and in conception. And so we thank you for sending them, and we pray you, if you compose others and have messengers at hand, send them willingly. We offer ourself ever disposed to your pleasure.

Letter 118: 1496 April 17 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, approving a carved turquoise and ordering another.206 We received your letter along with the carved turquoise which, since it is a work by Francesco Anichini, could not but please us. Commend him highly on our behalf, in addition to what we will write him in reply. Give him the ten ducats he requested, which we are sending with the present rider along with the six you spent on the turquoise. Since we would like to have as many things done by Anichino as we can, we would like another carved stone, also a turquoise; but the color should be like black jasper and utterly perfect.207 We won’t mind waiting several months for it, as long as the item is excellent. And since we also want the carving to be of the highest quality, we leave it to this Francesco to carve what he thinks will do him most honor: a head or a full-length figure. The design can be of his choice, as long as it is something representing antiquity.208 We will be content for him to take his time in his own fashion, so that he can apply all his genius and skill to make something in which he can glory always, and for which we can honor him by citing him as its author. You understand our wish. Use your usual diligence to carry it out. We commend you highly for what you wrote to us in your letters of the 11th and the 13th of this month; and we enclose here the letter you sent us from our most illustrious lord consort, because we received the same one.209

205. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 86v. On Carretto, see Roberto Ricciardi, “Del Carretto, Galeotto,” DBI 36 (1988); Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 146–48. 206. AG 2992 libro 6 cc. 91v–92r. For an untranslated transcription of this letter (with very slight differences from mine), see Brown, Lorenzoni, and Hickson, “Per dare qualche splendore,” 107–8. 207. ma che de collore fusse in tutta perfectione et da parangono: Isabella refers to the very dark blue of black jasper, also known as pietra di paragone (or touchstone) because it may be employed in a scratch test to verify the authenticity of gold: Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 436. Black jasper lends itself especially well to polishing, sculpting, and carving. 208. Isabella’s love for collecting things ancient runs through much of her patronage. See Brown, “ ‘Lo insaciabile desiderio nostro’ ”; Brown, “ ‘Purché la sia cosa che representi antiquità.’ ” 209. Francesco had made multiple copies of a single letter for sending to different recipients.

90 ISABELLA D’ESTE P.S.: To tell you the truth, in the judgment of one who knows, this carving could be better, especially from the middle downward. But we did not point this out in the letter, so that [Anichini] would not be offended if you showed it to him.210 We know he is the finest master in Italy, but people aren’t always in their best form. Hence we want you to have another made in the way we wrote, checking first to see that the turquoise is the color of black jasper, and then that he carves it at his leisure and disposition, in order to make something excellent. Send us four ells of handsome, hundred-width black cloth, which we want to give as a gift to a certain friend of ours.211 See to getting the reply from Madonna Zenevria with the required sample to be worked.

Letter 119: 1496 April 17 Mantua To Francesco Anichini, praising his production of a carved turquoise.212 The turquoise you carved pleases us so much that we would like to have another, carved with whatever design you choose, but most perfect in color, as our ambassador the Magnificent Giorgio Brognolo will explain in greater detail. We praise and commend your work, and we thank you for the readiness you display to serve us. We encourage you to do in the same way this other project, which you may invent and do at your leisure and as you please. We send you ten ducats, not as payment for the artwork, but as a sign of gratitude.213 We stand ever ready to do your pleasure.

Letter 120: 1496 April 20 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, sending specifications regarding glass tableware.214 We received the twenty glasses that you wrote you were sending us. We like their height, but not their shape; because they are as wide at the bottom as they are at the mouth.215 So we want you to have another twenty made of the same size but 210. This postscript would have been written on a separate sheet, for the reasons Isabella states. 211. The Italian, certo amico nostro, makes clear that this friend is male. Isabella often made gifts of clothing to both men and women whose favor she wished to reward or cultivate. 212. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 92r. Comparing this letter with the postscript added to the one she sent on the same day to Brognolo, we see how carefully Isabella managed her relations with prestigious artisans. 213. On the important rhetoric of gift giving among early modern elite purchasers, see Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 269. 214. AG 2992 libro 6 c. 94r. 215. Isabella had ordered these glasses on 11 April 1496: “We would like you to have made at least a dozen crystal drinking glasses for our personal use. They should have seams neither in the stems nor at the rims, but have a clean line, with a thin rim of gold at the mouth. They should be medium in size, tending toward smaller rather than larger. Send them to us by the first available rider.” [AG 2992 libro 6 c. 80v].

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 91 that get narrower toward the bottom and yet are no wider than these at the top, and they should be, like these, seamless.216 Have ten of them made with a gold rim that covers the mouth, meaning that there should be no crystal above the gold; but the rim should be no wider than it is on these. Have the other ten made plain with no gold, making sure that the crystal is clear and beautiful and that they have a nice shape. No reply is necessary to the rest of your letter, except to commend you for what you write us. We are sending with the present rider a hundred ducats for Pietro Albano, to whom we owe them.

Letter 121: 1496 April 30 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, instructing him to guard the pension of her Aunt Caterina.217 The Most Illustrious Madonna Caterina our aunt has informed us that that most illustrious signory has not yet assigned her any provision for her children since the death of the late Most Illustrious Lord Rodolfo our uncle. And since we bear a singular love for the mother and the children, we wish to see that they are assured this provision. We want you to use in this matter all the diligence and dexterity you would use in a personal matter of our very own, and to see that it is delegated to her by one of the chambers, so that she need have no cause to bother that most excellent senate every day. Be well.

Letter 122: 1496 June 30 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing the palio di San Pietro and the bad crops.218 Yesterday’s feast of San Pietro219 was so chilled by Your Excellency’s absence that I can’t imagine being able to give you any account of the race that would entertain 216. I have translated as “seamless” Isabella’s phrase, senza oredello, which I take to be a variant of the Mantuan ordell: Orlo; Costura. Quel punto che si fa per orlare o rimboccare la tela, ai panni, o simili (Cherubini); Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 435. 217. AG 2992 libro 7 c. 4r. Caterina Pico della Mirandola was Rodolfo Gonzaga’s second wife. 218. AG 2111 Fasc. V cc. 261r–262r. Cf. Copy: F.II.9.2992 libro 7 cc. 59v–60r. 219. Peter is the official patron saint of Mantua. The palio races held on his feast day were a favorite event where the treasured Gonzaga racehorses competed annually and other races were held for asses and female runners. Despite her claims to the contrary, Isabella recounts an exuberant day of festivity and ceremony. On the participation of female runners in European palios, see Deanna Shemek, “Circular Definitions: Configuring Gender in Italian Renaissance Festival,” Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995): 1–40; reprint in Shemek, Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 17–44, 194–207. On the palio races generally, see Alan Dundes and Alessandro Falassi, La Terra in Piazza: An Interpretation of the Palio of Siena (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).

92 ISABELLA D’ESTE you. For even I knew not how and could not be entertained for the reason I have stated. Just the same, in order not to neglect my duties, I report that for the eve of San Pietro I went at the usual hour by carriage, accompanied by the most reverend and illustrious monsignor the protonotary [Sigismondo Gonzaga] and gentlemen, to see the registration of the horses. I am sending you their numbers and names on the list included with this letter, along with the names of the asses, jockeys, and country women who signed up and ran. There were no foreign horses except two belonging to Lord Messer Antonio Maria Sanseverino, signed in under Lord Fracasso’s name.220 The next morning I went to His Illustrious Lordship Messer Giovanni our brother’s house to watch the races. They ran at the usual hour. The first to have the palio was the colt Nuvoletto; the second was Pisanello; the third Tondello who belongs to Matteo; the fourth was Tirante. Fifth came Sasinadello Rosso, sixth Scrinzo’s Toresano, and the others arrived in no particular order. In front of Lord Messer Giovanni’s door, a horse belonging to Lord Fracasso knocked down a crowd of people who had moved too far forward; and one of them fell face-forward on the ground, hurting himself terribly, not without mortal danger to himself. His name is Toresella, the wool carder. I stayed for dinner with the Most Illustrious Lady Laura, who did me great honor.221 At the twentieth hour [four hours before sunset] I went to the home of the Most Illustrious Lord Giovan Francesco our uncle, where I stayed to watch the asses, jockeys, and women run, really without enjoying it much. The prize for the asses was given to a man named de Carlo from Nuvolaro; that for the jockeys to Giovan Lorenzo from Roverbella; and that for the women to Giovanna from Gottolengo.222 Once the feast was over and the races had been run, I left for dinner in the court garden. Lord Fracasso came by in the morning, dressed like a German, with four companions and stayed to see all the races. He dismounted at the inn and did not want to be put up with honors, nor did he show his face before coming to take his leave from me in the garden at an hour when he could travel in cool weather. This is as much as I can write you about the feast day. Of my

220. On these brothers, both condottieri, see Condottieri di ventura. Antonio Maria fought with the Venetians against the French at Fornovo (1495), then with the French against Naples (switching sides in his condotta several times thereafter). Gaspare San Severino, also known as “Capitan Fracassa” traveled to France in 1494 on behalf of Ludovico Sforza to urge Charles VIII to invade Italy, then fought for Sforza in the League of Venice against the French. 221. Probably Isabella’s sister-in-law, Laura Bentivoglio. 222. Gusolengo. The woman’s lack of a surname indicates her humble status; the fact that she is a “foreigner” from a town near Brescia may be due to the ambiguous—and traditionally humiliating— character of the female race in the palio. In 1495, Isabella issued an edict declaring that the San Pietro palio would no longer be run by meretrice publice (public prostitutes) but rather by country girls. She invited volunteers and offered assurance that they would not be insulted or abused for their participation. See Shemek, “Circular Definitions,” 31.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 93 convalescence,223 of Eleonora, and of all the others, Your Excellency can inform himself at length through Baptista the rider. As for matters of state, I don’t know what else to write except that everyone is waiting to reap the harvest, which will be meager all around. The fear is that it won’t meet the demand. Since this worry was reported to me already many days and months ago, I suspended the exports Your Excellency had authorized, and I ordered that the poor could chop down two thirds of the stubble to plant millet, though the usual allowance is no more than a third. I did this on the advice of the chiefs of accounting. On the eve of San Pietro, the one-year anniversary Mass was said in memory of His Most Illustrious Lordship Rodolfo [Gonzaga], and today will be that for the late Messer Giovan Maria. They are having it early since more people are here in Mantua at present for the race than would be here if we waited a few days, for everyone will leave again. I didn’t give Your Excellency news earlier about the palio of San Raffaello of Bologna because I had no courier. Now I inform you that Pisanello won it. Nothing else remains except for me to thank you for the letters you wrote me on the 17th. To your good graces I commend myself always.

Letter 123: 1496 July 1 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting on response to an arsonist’s crime.224 Since I sent the rider Baptista yesterday with a great quantity of letters telling you every happening from here, I have little left to write to Your Excellency except that we continue to be well, by the grace of God. So as not to send Antonio Dente with no letters from me, I recount the case you will find here described. A few days have gone by since I gave Your Excellency news of a pitiable fire that happened at Castellaro in two houses of a family called Del Tomba, who had all their animals and every bit of their moveable property burned. Since we had clear evidence that this was done by Benedetto, the son of Belzane the barber who lived at Moradega, a town in the Veronese province nearby, I wrote to Giorgio Brognolo to ask him to request that the illustrious lord there hand him over. He was happy to oblige and wrote in proper form to the rectors of Verona. But it was not possible to handle this matter so secretly that the suspect didn’t notice. He took off and went roaming here and there. When several days had passed without my having shown that I was looking for him, he came back here very secretly. Once informed, I had him detained and placed in the hands of the podestà.225 The podestà, having questioned several witnesses to ascertain the accusation, had him put to torture. 223. Isabella refers to her improved health during the last phase of her second pregnancy. Margherita was born on 25 July 1496 but died the following 23 September. 224. AG 2111 Fasc. V cc. 264 r–v. 225. For the office of podestà, see n63, above.

94 ISABELLA D’ESTE But he is a very careful and able rascal, and he never confessed. He was in such spirits during it all that many villainies came out, though he never admitted to having committed even a venial sin. And so the normal avenues of reason will not be practical for prosecuting him unless we get more evidence. The podestà told me personally that he believes this man to be at fault, but that the words rise to his mouth without ever coming out; so he maintains that [the accused] possesses some sort of spell that keeps him from confessing. Therefore, having been informed by many trustworthy sources of this man’s wicked life—that he beat his father and mother, injured men, threatened to kill others, and committed many villainous deeds—I thought it would be bad to let him go so quickly. For then he would glory in the crime he committed and would be encouraged to do worse. After consulting with the podestà, I sent him to the old Castello tower, both so that he will purge himself of a part of his sins, and because the podestà says that if we keep him confined for several days he may well be induced to tell the truth, and thus we could give him the deserved punishment. I chose the tower of San Giorgio. It is exposed, and uninhabitable, and there is no other place where he could be held securely. I wanted to give you an account of this so that Your Excellency will understand how the matter has come about. Yesterday evening I got two letters from Your Excellency, from the 17th and 18th of last month. One of them notifies me of the capitulation of the Gesualdo castle, at which I took great pleasure since it resulted from Your Excellency’s actions. In the other you write asking me to have Messer Ottobono Schifo noted down in the employment book as an appellate judge for a future year when it can be done honorably on your part, at the request of the most illustrious lord duke of Milan. I had the book checked, and I found that the position is already promised for the next seven years, and that the appointment notice has already been sent out to two men: Messer Simone de Brusati, at the request of Lord Alberto da Carpi, and Messer Alessandro di Tintori of Crema at the request of Messer Evangelista, your stablemaster. Thus I don’t see how Your Lordship can keep faith and still satisfy the aforesaid lord duke. I responded in proper form to His Excellency, who had also written to me about it. I commend myself to the good graces of Your aforesaid Lordship.

Letter 124: 1496 July 10 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, expressing disappointment that she will not be coming.226 Having read the letter Your Ladyship wrote me in her own hand, I thought at first that you were only pretending not to come here, so that you could arrive 226. AG 2992 libro 7 cc. 67v–68r. The letter offers a glimpse at the support network women maintained around childbirth.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 95 suddenly and surprise me. But since today marks now four days since I heard from you, I’m beginning to believe that what you wrote me is true; and from this I surely take enormous disappointment, because I was waiting for you with the utmost longing, and I thought that if Your Ladyship would be here with me at my delivery, I could feel no distress of any sort. And if I were not certain that you are as sorry as I that you cannot come, I would cry out all the way up to heaven that you broke your promise. I will cry instead over the condition of the present times, which thwart our mutual desire. And I will hope to see you when my illustrious lord consort returns or when you make a trip here as you say, or on my way to the shrine of Santa Maria di Loreto, to whom I have again vowed [a pilgrimage] if my delivery is successful. I’m not writing in my own hand since, in this great heat and my present condition, I cannot write without enormous discomfort. I will wait until I am up after my delivery to respond to you. I thank you greatly for the hand cream and the recipe you sent me. Nothing more occurs to me, except to commend myself to you.

Letter 125: 1496 July 10 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting on her pregnancy, a religious procession, government, and an illness.227 I have had no important news since the departure of the riders Battista and Antonio. Just the same, to keep you informed of my well-being and Eleonora’s and that of all the others, I thought I would send you this postal packet and write you what few things come to mind. Though I am now in my ninth month, I feel very well. I remain in continuous expectation of my delivery, and I pray to God that he content me with a little boy, since if it should be a girl I will suffer incomparable sorrow. The most reverend monsignor protonotary, our brother [Sigismondo Gonzaga] is well, as is the Most Illustrious Madonna Laura [Bentivoglio]. The Most Illustrious Madonna Chiara [Gonzaga] is still at Revere, and from what I hear her condition continues to improve. The most illustrious lady duchess of Urbino wrote to me to say that she will not be able to come here for my delivery, because her most illustrious lord consort does not think it wise for her to leave home during this Italic turbulence. I think Your Excellency may have already heard this from the lord duke himself. 227. AG 2992 libro 7 cc. 66v–67v. See AG 2111 Fasc. V cc. 266r–267v for original. Francesco is camped in Atella near Potenza, in Italy’s deep South. The procession to which Isabella refers commemorated his victory at the battle of Fornovo (6 July 1495). Central to those Mantuan festivities was the altarpiece painted by Andrea Mantegna for the Santa Maria della Vittoria church, which was also built to honor this victory. On this altarpiece as an instance of Francesco Gonzaga’s patronage and political propaganda, see Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 65–99. On its financing as an instance of anti-Semitic persecution and extortion, see Dana E. Katz, The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 40–68.

96 ISABELLA D’ESTE Our Turkish horse won the palio of San Pietro in Bologna.228 If I didn’t notify Your Excellency earlier, blame the riders, who didn’t tell me until they brought it back to Mantua.229 The image of Our Lady made by Andrea Mantegna was brought out last Wednesday on the 6th of this month and carried in procession to the new chapel called Santa Maria della Vittoria in commemoration of the battle at Giarola, similar to last year.230 More people came than I have ever seen at any procession in this city. In the middle of the great Mass my confessor, Friar Pietro gave a beautiful oration that was very fitting for this occasion. He prayed to the glorious Virgin Mary to keep you unharmed and let you return home soon, victorious. Given my present condition, I could not accompany the procession on foot, but I stood on the borgo231 to see it go by, and returning to the castle I passed in front of the new chapel. It was beautifully decorated, and the canopied street was filled with people. Sigismondo Golfo, whom I sent to Carpi, has come back having laid down his arms and deferred once again to my illustrious lord father the dispute among those lords, though there are still hard feelings. Since His Excellency must go personally to Carpi, I sent this Sigismondo as far as Ferrara to argue the case of Lord Alberto232 and to recommend him firmly in Your Excellency’s name and mine. Sigismondo wrote to me that he had a most gracious audience and found him well disposed toward Lord Alberto. I will inform you in detail of whatever decision His Excellency makes. By way of Venice I got at the sixth hour today. Your Lordship’s letter of the 23rd of last month, and through the ducal post I got a packet yesterday with four letters, of the 20th, 21st, 22nd, and 24th of last month. Some of them are responses to my letters and some declare your happy successes, at which I always 228. Francesco Gonzaga regularly purchased Arabian horses for his stable from the Turks. 229. The palio was the prize banner awarded to winners of races (also known a palios) associated with the urban traditions of medieval and early modern Italian cities. On these contests, see Richard C. Trexler, “Correre la Terra: Collective Insults in the Late Middle Ages,” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome (MEFRM) 96, no. 2 (1984): 845–902. 230. During a part of the battle of Fornovo, Francesco’s troops were encamped in a stronghold at Giarola, on the right bank of the Taro River. For details on the battle, see Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571, vol. 2: The Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1978), 493–95. 231. Bourne identifies this borgo as Corso Pradella (Personal communication). 232. Golfo was tutor to Isabella’s daughter, Eleonora. Alberto Pio III da Carpi was in a struggle with his cousin over inheritance of the fiefdom of Carpi, about fifty-seven kilometers south of Mantua: see Alessandra Sarchi, “The Studiolo of Alberto Pio da Carpi,” in Drawing Relationships in Northern Italian Renaissance Art: Patronage and Theories of Invention, ed. Giancarla Periti (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 129. More generally, see Manuela Kahn-Rossi, Alberto III e Rodolfo Pio da Carpi: Collezionisti e mecenati (Carpi: Comune di Carpi, Museo Civico, 2004).

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 97 take extreme pleasure and satisfaction. This is especially the case when they are accompanied by news of Your Excellency’s good health. But I will feel the greatest consolation when I hear that this expedition is concluded and that Your Lordship will be coming home. To tell you the truth, I cannot otherwise be fully content. The affairs of the state are calm. If anyone commits a crime that comes to my attention, he is placed in the hands of the law and punished according to his merits. I have thought it best not to bother Your Excellency with every bit of nonsense that comes up, since things can be dealt with here through the usual procedures. The city and territory are in excellent health, and everyone is tending reliably to his proper business. Eight days ago the illustrious Lord Gianfrancesco, our uncle felt great pains throughout his entire person. These were brought on by an abundance of humidity and catarrh as well as a high fever, so that he was in some danger. At the pleas of monsignor the most illustrious bishop and the Most Illustrious Lady Antonia233 I sent him to Master Matteo [Cremasco], who administered him many remedies. We hope he will now be safe and free of this incident if he follows the instructions he got from the doctors. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good graces.

Letter 126: 1496 July 11 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, discussing her jewelry pawned in Venice.234 Since Giorgio Brognolo wrote to me a few days ago that on the 8th of this month the contract will expire for reclaiming my jewels that were pawned in Venice and that we were supposed to get back with the balance of my dowry, I wrote in duplicate letters to my illustrious lord father asking him to arrange to reclaim the jewels at his interest rate or see that we need not strike a new pawn contract. His Excellency responded as Your Excellency will see from the attached letters. I was trying to understand whether it is true that my aforesaid lord father is now due to receive the thousand ducats he says are owed him for salt transport. And I find that not only is he due the thousand, but eight hundred and twenty more, as per the enclosed receipt which was given me by our agent. Your Lordship will see for 233. Antonia del Balzo, wife of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga. 234. AG 2111 Fasc. V c. 268. See Shemek, “Isabella d’Este and the Properties of Persuasion,” 129–32. European elites regularly pawned jewelry in order to pay other expenses, and the Gonzagas were no exception. Indeed, as Luzio notes, jewels were considered a kind of liquid asset in the period, a fact that explains the enormous sums that were spent on them, completely out of proportion with incomes. Ercole d’Este pawned many gems in 1474 (the year of Isabella’s birth) that were still in pawn when she married, though they were supposed to figure into her dowry. In 1494 she volunteered to pawn her jewelry in order to finance efforts to gain a cardinalship for her brother-in-law, Sigismondo Gonzaga, and these are the ones she aims to retrieve in the above letter. In effect, the campaign to keep track of and repossess pawned jewels was nearly constant. See Luzio and Renier, “Il lusso di Isabella d’Este,” 313–16; Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 256–58.

98 ISABELLA D’ESTE himself that there is no way to get the jewels back if my father, in order to pay the dowry, needs to be repaid for these. I am not saying this to take his side—on the contrary I complained extremely to him and I am complaining again—but because the agent and our master accountants say that having known nothing of the aforesaid jewels, they had thought they would meet the salt debt with the credit of my dowry. And because Antonio de Ruberti and Pietro Albano as guarantors of the jewelry pawn give me to understand that we will have to sign a new contract if we are not to be in bad credit. I wrote to Giorgio Brognolo asking him to try to delay them until we have Your Excellency’s note, because I would never permit that we strike a new pawn, for fear that by signing so many contracts, in the end we would lose the jewels. Neither Your Lordship nor I need that. And so you would do well to think this over. Please advise Giorgio of your wishes. I pray you, please try to do all you can in order not to strike another pawn contract and so that we can have the jewels now, both to keep them from danger of being lost and so that I can wear them in my youth, when they are most suitable. For if they were to be pawned for several more years now, I would not be able to make the best use of them, nor could I wear them to my honor. And Your Excellency would pay interest on top of interest, which would be to our detriment and shame. So please take a fitting attitude toward this matter. To your good graces I commend myself always.

Letter 127: 1496 July 13 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, announcing the birth of a daughter.235 Not to announce an event that to Your Excellency or to me will be welcome, but in order to do my duty, I inform you that now, at twenty-two and a-half hours [one and one-half hours before sunset], I have given birth to a girl. The chill that has come over me, the house, and this whole city I leave to Your Excellency’s imagination. I commend myself always to your good graces.

Letter 128: 1496 July 21 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, declining to have a baptismal celebration for her newborn daughter.236 The baby is fine; nonetheless I don’t think we should have her baptized with solemnities, since as a girl she does not merit them. I would think it praiseworthy to have her baptized at home, and the sooner the better. However, if Your Excellency 235. AG 2111 Fasc. V c. 273. Copy at AG 2992 libro 7 c. 70v. This child was named Margherita. This letter and the following one both convey the sense of exhaustion and inadequacy that accompanied the arrival of daughters for Isabella, who felt keenly the pressure to produce male heirs. 236. AG 2111 Fasc. V c. 277.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 99 is still of this mind, I ask that you advise me as to whom you want for a godfather and what name we should give her, and how I should proceed. I will do as you command. To your good graces I commend myself.

Letter 129: 1496 July 23 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, pleading on behalf of Margherita Cantelma regarding her loss of property due to her husband’s offenses.237 The Magnificent Lady Margherita Cantelma, being in Ferrara and discovering that all the properties she holds in Mantuan territory under the name of Your Excellency have been taken away from her, came here immediately to know the reason.238 Once she was in my presence, not without tears and much sorrow did she lament that she has been deprived of her dowry and the paternal inheritance that her ancestors have claimed now for over two hundred years under the government of this illustrious house. And she regrets far more that in one stroke she has lost the grace of Your Excellency, which matters more to her than any property in the world, knowing that she has neither done, nor said, nor thought anything that should offend Your Excellency. Because though it may be that her husband, Lord Sigismondo, while fighting in these wars to regain his property, has done something against Your Lordship’s wishes, she is in no way to blame, nor would she be at liberty to stop him. Thus she cannot believe that she could justly lose both her property and Your Highness’s good grace. She recalled the faith and ancient servitude of his forefather and her own to Your Lordship’s forefather and with you, who well know how much devotion she has always borne you. She begged me with these and many other arguments to take her into my protection, in the hopes that with even a bit of my favor she 237. AG 2111 Fasc. V cc. 278r–v. For brief discussion of this letter, see Shemek, “Isabella d’Este and the Properties of Persuasion,” 135–36. Margherita Cantelma, daughter of a Ferrarrese notary, was the dedicatee of a treatise by Agostino Strozzi, La defensione delle donne and a close friend of Isabella’s. She held rich estates in both Ferrarese and Mantuan territory. Tiziano Ascari reports that in an effort to regain his lands, Margherita’s husband, Sigismondo Cantelmo, had fought on the French side at the battle of Fornovo. Post-invasion, Charles VIII failed to reinvest the Italian barons who had been his allies, including Cantelmo, who nonetheless continued throughout his life to claim the title of duke of Sora. See Tiziano Ascari, “Cantelmo, Sigismondo,” DBI. 18 (1975). 238. Sally Hickson, offering a narrative that differs in some details with that of Ascari noted above, reports that Margherita inherited properties and holdings in Mantua when her father died without male heirs and that her husband, Sigismondo, was rewarded by Francesco Gonzaga with a large property in Mantuan territory in 1486, including a mill and two canals. In Hickson’s account, in 1496 Sigismondo, in service as a condottiere to Mantua, contributed to Francesco’s success at the battle of Fornovo but was then accused of treachery by him, for seeking to regain territories in Naples that his family had lost to the French. This is the situation into which Isabella seeks to bring some diplomatic measure by taking up the Cantelmi cause. Francesco eventually restored these properties. Sally Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage, 46–48.

100 ISABELLA D’ESTE might be restored to Your Excellency’s grace, given your great bounty and good nature, which is not only just in regard to innocents like her, but also merciful with the delinquent. With many tears and great modesty, and with such reason did she present her part that I was not only moved to compassion, but I also felt the need to present her case to Your Excellency. I hope that when you consider that I am a woman and was raised with Lady Margherita,239 you will not fault me for feeling compassion for another woman of my household, especially in the knowledge that she has offended neither the person, the state, nor the honor of Your Excellency. If she had done so in even the smallest way, she would be my capital enemy, and I would want to take revenge on her with my own hands. And so, setting aside this consideration, I beg and beseech Your Lordship, for love of me, deign to restore her property and her grace, acknowledging that, as I said, Messer Sigismondo’s offense has nothing to do with her, and a wife should not suffer in her husband’s place. I will hold it as one of the most singular graces I have ever obtained, beyond which fact you will be acting as the magnanimous prince you are, into whose good graces I commend myself always.

Letter 130: 1496 September 5 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing the funeral for Gianfrancesco Gonzaga.240 After I had already responded to the letters from Your Excellency that were brought by the rider Ambrogio, and told you everything that had happened here up to the third hour and sent the letters via Venice, Antonio Dente arrived with your other letter of the 28th of last month, in which you notify me of your decision to leave the next day for home. From one side, I took great pleasure at this good news, which I have much desired. From the other, though, I felt great displeasure at hearing that you have a fever. Though you say it has begun to turn around, I will nonetheless be unable to rest until I am assured of your complete recovery. I encourage you and beg you to take care, and not to occupy yourself with anything other than recuperation and the maintenance of your health, so that when you arrive here we can be happy and thank God that you have returned victorious and healthy. I will make an effort to do the same. Margherita still has that swelling of her face, which has engulfed her.241 Nor is she free of fever, so I don’t know what to say. She is receiving all possible care. Eleonora, by the grace of God, is very well. This morning the funeral rites and the seventh-day requiem were performed for the Illustrious Lord Gianfrancesco, our uncle.242 Since they were done in the Neapolitan style, I’ll describe for you briefly the order of the ceremonies. I 239. Margherita was the daughter of a Ferrarese notary and was a childhood companion for Isabella. 240. AG 2992 libro 8 cc. 5v–7v. 241. Baby Margherita, born 13 July 1496. 242. Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, lord of Bozzolo.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 101 made my way to the Most Illustrious Madonna Antonia’s243 house. As soon as she saw me, she began to cry loudly and to wail, commending herself and her children to Your Excellency and to me with many sweet words. At this I could no longer hold back my tears. She was wearing a tunic with wide sleeves like the ones the Benedictine monks wear, and over that she had a cape, and the fabric was cottonlined. On her head she wore a tawny veil that covered her eyes and nose. The room was all covered in black, and the windows where closed. While I stood with the daughters and the ladies, the sons went down with the last two men (the most reverends monsignor bishop and the protonotary) and the other relatives (who were also wearing capes) and sat on the benches outside the house as though they were about to take the body to be buried. They stayed there until the friars and the priests, among whom were the friars from the monasteries outside the city, had passed by. They also made his death mask. Among the chaplains and the canons of St. Peter who were, according to custom, the last, there was the bishop’s family and that of Lord Gianfrancesco himself, all of them in capes. They came two-by-two and numbered seventy-three in all. Behind the canons and the intercessors went the children and the rest of the relatives and gentlemen. The first was accompanied by Bishop Cantelmo, ambassador of the most reverend cardinal my brother [Ippolito d’Este]; the second by Messer Girolamo Cistovello, my most illustrious father’s ambassador. The bishop of Mantua was accompanied by monsignor Agnello,244 the monsignor our protonotary [Sigismondo Gonzaga] by Count Guido Torello, and then the others by the council, knights, and doctors. When these men had gone ahead a little, we women came down. The Most Illustrious Lady Antonia was escorted by me, while next to her and delegated to support her were Count Angelo Alberto and Count Giovanni de Ippoliti. The six daughters and other women were all veiled and accompanied by the ladies, and going thus on foot we arrived at San Francesco. The church was all illuminated by torches and candles, with the funeral bed in the middle. Beside it and raised above ground were four boys in capes, with torches in their hands and the family’s coat-of-arms in front of their knees. The rest of the family sat on all sides on the benches. The relatives went into chairs and we women were before the great altar, as usual. Having sung the gospel of the High Mass, Don Agostino Strozzi, the regular canon, gave a sermon that was very elegant, from what has been said by those who know.245 After the benediction of the funeral bed and the departure of the men, Madonna Antonia wanted to go to the burial ground, which 243. Antonia del Balzo, Gianfrancesco’s widow. 244. Likely Ludovico Agnello, a clerk of the apostolic chamber. 245. It is not clear from Isabella’s phrase, chi intende, whether she was unable to hear the sermon, or unable to understand it (perhaps because it was in Latin). Despite her preparation in reading Latin, she lamented her lack of facility with spoken Latin sermons. On Isabella’s Latin studies before marriage, see Luzio, I precettori. On her continued studies, see Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 47.

102 ISABELLA D’ESTE is the same one where your dearly departed most illustrious lord father lies. So after embracing her and weeping a little, we directed ourselves out of the church. She and I climbed into the carriage with the two little daughters. The other women returned on foot. I accompanied her into her room and stayed there a little while; then I came home, afflicted with sorrow. Tomorrow the thirtieth-day requiem will be said, but it will not be with this ceremony, since today we had the funeral and the seventh-day requiem together. For now I can think of nothing else to tell you except to commend myself to the good graces of Your Excellency. P.S.: Your Lordship will forgive me for this time if this letter is not in my own hand. I am so exhausted with weeping and walking that I don’t think I would be able to write without difficulty. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good graces.

Letter 131: 1496 September 23 Marmirolo To Francesco II Gonzaga, announcing the death of their child, Margherita.246 The glad news I received of Your Excellency’s good health helped me to bear with less suffering the death of our little girl who, after a long struggle, flew to heaven this night to pray to God for us. No possible help or human care was spared her. We must patiently endure what pleases God. I arranged for her to be buried early this morning; I leave it to your brother the most reverend monsignor to tell you about the ceremony.247 No other news occurs to me, Your Lordship being away from home, where I await you with the greatest yearning in all the world, feeling as if the hour of your return will never come. Francesco da Fantino, who was sickly, has died. Paula, our daughter Eleonora’s governess, who was his daughter-in-law, wishes us to substitute in his place Francesco’s son, Paula’s brother-in-law. He is competent in book keeping and accounting. Given the tenderness with which she cares for our dear daughter, I would happily see her wish granted. I pray Your Excellency be content to grant her this favor. I commend myself to you always.

246. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 20v. 247. As this letter makes clear, Isabella was not present at the death of her daughter, nor did she attend the child’s burial. Whether out of despondence over Margherita’s grave condition or for other reasons, she had departed for the Gonzaga palace at Marmirolo some days before, leaving her brother-in-law in charge. Banks Amendola reports that Isabella left the baby in the care of Beatrice de’ Contrari and Violante de’ Preti. It was Sigismondo who informed her of the baby’s death: “At this time …the baby died like a chick and flew to heaven …. I have decided to bury her in the peace of the Lord tomorrow morning before daybreak.” Banks Amendola, First Lady, 107–8.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 103 Letter 132: 1496 September 29 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, expressing disappointment that he has not left Naples.248 Yesterday evening, Antonio the rider arrived with seven letters from Your Excellency, of the 4th, the 13th, and the 18th of this month, through which I learned in detail about the progress of your illness. I cannot deny that they were greatly displeasing to me, because though I had expectations of seeing you, I was deceived. I saw that you are not yet outside the Kingdom, and I understand that your illness is worse than Your Excellency writes. For this reason, I have decided that the day after tomorrow I will set out to meet you on your way. And so, in a boat I will rush ahead even of Maestro Matteo Cremasco [the doctor], accompanied by Guinizano so that I can come more readily and safely. I would have already embarked if he were in the city, but he went to the baths with the Most Illustrious Lady Caterina, as you will have heard from my other letters. Today or tomorrow he will be back, and the following day I will have him depart. I thought it better to defer one day rather than send another doctor not compatible and familiar with Your Excellency, beyond the fact that Maestro Matteo is as excellent as he is. I’m sending Antonio Dente back with the rider Ambrogio, with the five hundred ducats Your Excellency wrote to me about. In the ship that brings the doctor, I will send some wine and some flour for Your Excellency’s use,249 and I will tend to all the other things you wrote to me with the utmost diligence. I will also bring with me Comatre Patrizia to cook for Your Excellency, whom I ask and beg to comply with the doctors and not neglect anything that could benefit your health. The most reverend monsignore our brother will come along as well, so Your Excellency should be in good spirits while we are there. We will see that any remaining illness you still have will be lifted away from you. I need write you nothing more on matters of the state, because everything is calm now, except that Messer Benedetto Tosabezzi has returned from the emperor and has done well in his embassy there, as Your Excellency will learn from the attached letter. P.S.: In a postscript Your Excellency writes to me that I did not inform you of the death of the late, Most Illustrious Gianfrancesco. Since I remember that I did have letters written to you and that I looked at the letters as is my practice, I had the register checked. And I find that I wrote to you at length on this subject, in letters of the 25th, 28th, and 29th of last month and the 5th of this month, sending the

248. AG 2992 libro 8 cc. 25r–v. 249. Isabella uses the more evocative synecdoche favored by many of her contemporaries, per la bocha de vostra Excellentia, or “for Your Excellency’s mouth.”

104 ISABELLA D’ESTE last ones by way of Venice.250 And by the same route I also wrote you about the death of our baby girl, because since I had gone many days without letters from Your Excellency, I didn’t know where to send them. I wanted to say these few words in my own defense, and I commend myself to your good grace. Letter 133: 1497 January 5 Mantua To Ercole I d’Este, on the death of Beatrice d’Este, duchess of Milan.251 Through letters directed to my most illustrious lord consort from the most illustrious duke of Milan [Ludovico Sforza], I received this morning the tearful news of the bitterly precocious252 death of my sweetest sister, an honored mother.253 Later, toward evening, this was confirmed by Your Excellency’s sorrowful letter. I can express neither with my pen nor with my tongue what pain this unhappy news brings me; its sadness will endure for all my life as I remember that I am deprived of such a loving, honorable, and unique sister. I am at present so oppressed by this unforeseen pain that, since my wits have not yet found their way, I do not know how to find consolation or whether this is possible.254 But if the counsel of one person in this world can soothe me, it must be that of Your Excellency, both because I must obey you, as is my duty, and because when I hear from you I do not feel so abandoned. I know that Your Highness, though moved to comfort me like a prudent man, must nonetheless himself be in need, not of counsel but of merciful aid. For this reason, my illustrious lord consort thought to send Messer Girolamo Stanga to you. Being well informed of my mind, he will refer to you several things on my part and will pay Your Excellency my respects. Please deign to lend him the faith you would if I spoke to you in person. And to your good grace I commend myself.

250. Here Isabella records valuable information about how she managed her chancery. She sent multiple copies of letters by different routes to increase the chances of their arrival in the addressees’ hands, and she routinely read the letters drafted or taken down by her secretaries before releasing them for mailing. 251. ASMo Cancelleria ducale. Carteggio di principi esteri, b.1195 c. 4r. Original is damaged by holes. Copy at AG 2992 libro 8 cc. 44r–v was consulted for full transcription. Beatrice d’Este died in childbirth at the age of twenty-two. 252. acerba morte: The adjective acerba means bitter, but also unripe. Thus the bitter taste of Beatrice’s death comes from its being premature. 253. Beatrice had two children, Ercole (b. 1493), whose name was later changed to Massimiliano in honor of the emperor, and Francesco (b.1495). The baby during whose delivery she died did not survive. On Beatrice’s life, see Cartwright, Beatrice d’Este, and “Beatrice d’Este, Duchessa di Milano,” DBI 7 (1970). 254. Isabella took hard the event of her sister’s death, by all accounts. When Francesco sent his own condolences to the duke of Milan on this same day, he observed of Isabella, “Though she has shown a brave and manly spirit in many other adverse situations, in this case she is so defeated and overcome with pain that she has no resistance left.” AG 2907 libro 156 c. 57v, as cited in Mazzoldi, 2:113, 146.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 105 Letter 134: 1497 February 11, Mantua To the doge of Venice [Agostino Barbarigo], seeking a provision he owes her.255 The paternal and loving behavior Your Serenity has always adopted with me, together with the filial love and respect I bear you, persuade me that in my most urgent need I will be assisted by you, especially through that which in humanity and grace you have accorded me. I am mired in many debts with different persons who, as is proper, are pressing me for payment. But I have no way to pay, if Your Sublimity does not assist me with the remainder of my provision, which could be as much as one thousand ducats. Thus I pray and beseech you deign to order their immediate disbursement to the Magnificent Giorgio Brognolo, ambassador of my most illustrious consort, so that I can emerge from debts contracted in the hope of receiving this provision. And so that Your Highness will not be bothered further for similar things, I beg you please to order that from now on they be relayed to me by some chamber, like the one in Verona, which would also be more convenient for me. This request does not seem to me to be improper, given my fidelity and my affection for Your Serenity, in addition to the respect for my consort, and given that you granted the same arrangement for the chamber of Brescia to the illustrious Lady Caterina da Gonzaga. The aforesaid ambassador will speak to you for me also on this matter. I pray you deign to lend him your faith as if I were speaking to you in person. I will receive all of this through the singular grace of Your Sublimity, to whom I commend myself always.

Letter 135: 1497 February 12 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, praising his performance as ambassador to Venice and allowing him to come home to rest.256 No response is required to your letter of the 9th of this month, except to the part about the reminder regarding our provision. As for the rest, we can only commend you. But we must say that you have served us well not only in the commissions we give you, but also in ones we don’t think of, such as this case [of the provision] which is of no small importance to us. Your reminder was most welcome. We accept it, and we praise you for it. We wrote to His Serenity the doge, as you will see from the enclosed copy. You can now take time in your own way and, beyond what we wrote in words, take those actions we know you will. If we succeed, we will know we owe it to you. We cannot help being sorry, Giorgio, for your departure from Venice, not because we regret that you should come here to rest and to tend to your affairs, but only that your constitution does not allow you to continue in the embassy in 255. AG 2992 libro 8 cc. 54r–v. Barbarigo was the creator of the anti-French coalition known as the League of Venice. See Franco Gaeta, “Barbarigo, Agostino,” DBI 6 (1964). 256. AG 2992 libro 8 cc. 54v–55r.

106 ISABELLA D’ESTE which our most illustrious lord consort and we were so pleased that we would not have known how to wish for anything better. For our part, we already feel the loss, though the choice of Benedetto [Tosabezzi] to take your place could not have been better. In any case, you are dearer to us well in Mantua than sick in Venice. Once you are here, we will be glad to see you, and we will have at our side someone on whom we can depend for unquestionable loyalty and from whom we can take counsel. You will find us always disposed to your comforts and honors and to those of your family. Please have purchased for us four gilded mirrors of the type that Franceschino, from whom we ordered them, will explain. Send us also two jars of green ginger, preserved while still green and not dried ginger made green. You can have it looked over and discussed by a doctor.257 And send it to us as soon as you can.

Letter 136: 1497 February 14 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, ordering crystal jugs.258 We would like you to have made two or three crystal jugs in the style of this one, but a little larger with these proportions. They should all be plain, that is, without that gold rim. Similarly, in addition to these three, you should have made two more, a little bigger but also in the same fashion. So there should be five in all. And have them sent as soon as you can. Letter 137: 1497 February 17 Mantua To Francesco Castello, regarding some comedies she would like him to send her.259 We regret that the comedy of the soldier is not to be found in its entirety for copying, but in order to get what we can, we will accept those that are rendered into narrative, since you offer them. It’s true that we very much want the Amphitrion and Minichino, and if you can’t send them without the most illustrious lord our father’s knowing, we are happy for you to ask him, for we are convinced that he will not deny us.260 We are aware that they are performed and printed in verse, but 257. Isabella’s mention of the doctor suggests that she intended the ginger for medicinal uses. According to Galassi and Sarzi, ginger was available commercially already in medieval Italy, in three types: colombino, beledi, and the most common gengiovio micchino; the uses of the last ranged from aiding digestion, to improving vision, to inducing abortions. Galassi and Sarzi, Alla Syrena, 200–1. 258. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 55r. 259. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 24r. Isabella inherited a love for theater, both onstage and for reading, from her father, who sponsored a lively and lavish theater culture in Ferrara. 260. Isabella’s references are all to comedies of Plautus translated into Italian and performed at Ferrara under her father Ercole’s sponsorship: Il soldato glorioso, Amfitrion, and probably the Menaechmi. Bregoli-Russo, Teatro dei Gonzaga, 7–22.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 107 prose delights us more for reading. So act with your usual dexterity to see that we are contented. Be well. Letter 138: 1497 March 11 Mantua To Ludovico Agnello, sending him fish and cheese and thanking him for seeking items for her studiolo.261 When we heard from Tolomeo Spagnoli of the care Your Most Reverend Lordship is taking to find beautiful things for our studiolo, we felt singularly pleased, both out of our desire to decorate it and in knowing that you have not forgotten about us at all, and that you feel the love for us that befits the delight we also take in you. We thank you for your willingness. But we will thank you even more when our mutual desire is carried out. We are sending Your Most Reverend Lordship by way of these muleteers fifty lake carp and two cheeses, which you should enjoy in our love. If the carp are few, poor, and late, you must excuse us and blame the bad weather conditions, which have not permitted catching them. In compensation please accept our heart’s readiness to satisfy Your Most Reverend Lordship’s every need. Be well.

Letter 139: 1497 March 30 Mantua To Barbara, duchess of Würtemberg, encouraging her to repatriate.262 Since hearing for the first time that Your Ladyship had signaled her intention of coming to visit her homeland, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and other relatives, I have ever been in wonderful expectation to see it happen, so that I could show you in person the love and respect I have always born and still bear you. But seeing that it is taking a long time, I cannot help feeling sad, because as I want enormously to see, embrace, and enjoy Your Ladyship, the longer this outcome delays, the greater grows my desire; and every obstacle that intervenes troubles and displeases me. For this reason, since I have the convenience of this messenger, I thought I would visit you with this letter of mine and plead with you, for our mutual contentment, to agree to repatriate and enjoy the time you have left in your life with your brother and your nieces and nephews, whom you should treat as your own children. For my part, I will be as happy to see you as if you had given birth to me. Nor will I pamper and honor you any differently than I would my mother; and you will find me always most ready to serve your needs. Thus I have no doubt that Your Ladyship will be comfortable here, as you will have been assured also by letters from my most illustrious lord consort. I commend myself to you always.

261. AG 2992 libro 8 cc. 58v–59r. 262. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 64v. Barbara Gonzaga.

108 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 140: 1497 April 8 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, informing him of an important prisoner exchange.263 Tonight around the first hour [after sundown] a chancellor of the Most Reverend Cardinal Orsini arrived here, in his name and that of Lord Giulio.264 He has confidential letters to Your Excellency and to Lord Paolo Vitelli, in which, insofar as he reported to me, he gives you to understand that the lord duke of Urbino has been taken away from the Soriano castle by the cardinal of San Severino and led to Poggio Mirteto, also in Orsini territory. But that the aforesaid cardinal demanded the key and safekeeping of the castle and will not leave there until the aforesaid lord duke is free and arrived in his own territory. This will follow as soon as he has word of the liberation of Lord Paolo, according to the terms of his ruling. And he says he was sent for this purpose. And so tonight he must reach Agapeto, the chancellor of the lord duke, to order the liberation of Lord Paolo, notice of which must then be sent by courier to the cardinal of San Severino and the lord duke so that his own liberation will take place as soon as possible. This is the summary of his commission. He wanted to come tomorrow to see Your Lordship, but I encouraged him to wait until I told you about his arrival so I could understand if you want him to come or wait here. And I also made this decision in order to allow time for Agapeto to arrive before [Orsini’s chancellor] speaks to Your Excellency, who can now deliberate and advise me of your wishes. I will also write again of this to Madonna, the duchess.265 P.S.: Madonna the duchess is not writing now to Your Lordship, because tomorrow morning she will send Tolomeo, who will be informed of her thoughts.

263. AG 2992 libro 8 cc. 66r–v. Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, was taken prisoner while serving in the papal forces against the Francophile Orsini, who were holding out at Bracciano. The pope was forced to negotiate with the Orsini, at which point Francesco Gonzaga’s help was key. The marchese of Mantua had taken Paolo Vitelli hostage the previous year and was holding him prisoner by papal order. Vitelli became the precious pawn who bought Guidobaldo’s freedom. Banks Amendola reports that Isabella sent her Secretary, Capilupi, to Milan to seek Ludovico Sforza’s aid in this matter and that Sforza declared that even if he had to ruin all of Italy to do so, he would see Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, freed. On April 1, the duke of Urbino was conducted from Soriano to another location in Orsini territory. A week later, on the date of this letter, three chancellors arrived at the Mantuan court to carry the deal to completion: one sent by the Orsini, one for the duke of Urbino, and one for the cardinal of San Severino. Banks Amendola, First Lady, 110; Mazzoldi, 2, 113–14, 146–47; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 119; for Vitelli, lord of Montone, see Capitani e condottieri. 264. On Giambattista Orsini see Johann Peter Kirsch, “Orsini,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, 11 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1911), ; for Giulio Orsini, Condottieri di ventura. 265. Presumably Isabella refers here to the duchess of Urbino, Francesco’s sister, Elisabetta Gonzaga.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 109 Letter 141: 1497 May 7 Mantua To the podestà of Ostiglia, ordering him to honor an inheritance agreement.266 A Lucretia from Ostiglia currently living in Ferrara has given us to understand that she should receive a maintenance allowance as inheritance from her father and from one of her brothers who is recently deceased. Hence we want, and we demand of you, that when she or her messenger comes, you give her the quickest and most expedited justice possible, so that she is satisfied without delay.

Letter 142: 1497 May 25 Mantua To Benedetto Tosabezzi, thanking him for goods and news from Venice, but criticizing the quality of a piece of cloth he sent her.267 Your letters with the copies of those you wrote to our most illustrious lord on the 19th, 20th, and 22nd of this month were most appreciated, both because we desire always to know all about events and because they confirm our expectations of your dexterity and diligence. We commend you for all your actions and we encourage you to continue. On Sunday we received the camlet.268 We know you sent the best there was in Venice, but certainly we can tell that they were carded, because this one is not good considering the price.269 Nonetheless, since we need it, we will keep one piece, and we are sending you back the other by this rider, so that you can return it to the merchant, along with the seventeen ducats for the price of the one we are keeping.

Letter 143: 1497 June 6 Mantua To Violante Rangoni, supporting a repentant prostitute.270 We see what Your Majesty writes us in support of the unfortunate Chiara, who would like to return to decent living if her father can give her a place to live. We think this is a most holy deed; and since we wish to please Your Majesty and secure for you the full honor of this negotiation, we ordered our secretary to send for the father and to encourage him on our behalf to accept his daughter, since

266. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 70r. 267. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 73r. 268. Camlet (zambellotto = ciambellotto, ant. cambellotto, cammellotto) was a fabric made from goat or camel hair. Isabella had written with great urgency to Tosabezzi on 17 May, requesting this purchase: Volemo che subito subito faciati comprare due peze de zambellotto negro del più bello se ritrovi in Venetia. Et ce lo mandiati volando, avisandone el costo che ve remmetteremo li denari. 269. Carding was a process of combing or teasing fibers to be woven, in order to make them smooth and even. 270. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 75v.

110 ISABELLA D’ESTE she has gone into repentance.271 But since the father has been dead now for many years, our secretary spoke with one of his brothers, the young woman’s uncle, in the presence of another uncle who is a lay brother in the order of San Ruffino. The successful outcome of this meeting is that the brother is happy to take her in and treat her well, once Your Majesty confirms that she must not return to her error,272 because since he has several daughters, he would not want to place them in company that could ruin them, and this girl has been a public prostitute for a long time. She does have a mother and brothers, but the brothers are little and the mother, from what I have been told, was the cause of the prostitution of this girl and of another daughter. For this reason, the uncle is not on good terms with her, nor does it seem to him that the girl would be safe with her mother. As I have said, he offered to take her, even though he is extremely poor, if there is hope that she will live chastely. Your Majesty may now consider the deed done, and if you think you can vouch for her, you may send her, for she will be welcomed in your honor. We offer ourself always ready to do Your Majesty’s pleasure.

Letter 144: 1497 June 6 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, sending a model for depicting her emblem.273 We are sending you, here enclosed, a tablet made for our emblem. We would be very pleased if you would personally have Francesco Anichini make another one just like this one, out of those stones he uses to make seal rings.274 We want the size to be that of the black background [of this one] but in dark brown. And the figures that are gold in this one should be white in that one, but very similar. We are giving you this assignment so that you can urge him to finish it before you leave, and you can bring it here with you. It should be unset, because we will have it set here the way we want it. To clarify better: the background should be all dark brown, the same size as this black one, and the figures white. 271. The young woman may have gone into a house for repentant prostitutes, an institution of protection and religious retreat. 272. Tornare al vomito: Tornare a commettere un errore dopo d’esserne pentito (to return to one’s vomit, to commit the same fault again). See Baretti: vomito. 273. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 76v. Partially transcribed in Brown, Lorenzoni, and Hickson, “Per dare qualche splendore,” 108–9. See also Luzio and Renier, “Il lusso di Isabella d’Este,” 323. It is not clear to which of her emblems (or devices) Isabella refers. On the Gonzagas’ use of these rebus-like motifs, see Mario Praz, “The Gonzaga Devices,” in Chambers and Martineau, Splendours of the Gonzaga, 64–73. On Isabella’s devices, Giancarlo Malacarne, “Il segno di Isabella: Stemmi, motti, imprese,” in Isabella d’Este: La primadonna del Rinascimento, ed. Daniele Bini (Civiltà mantovana 112, Supplement; Modena: Il Bulino; Mantua: Artiglio, 2001),185–201. 274. de quelle petre che’l fa da anelli divisate: Isabella refers to the stones from which Anichini made rings featuring personal seals or emblems. Such rings could be worn but also served for impressing the wax used to seal letters.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 111 Letter 145: 1497 June 10 Mantua To Battista Guarino, regretting that she cannot take his daughter into her court.275 Your hopes that we will help you raise your daughters are not misplaced; and you may be assured of this, since you have seen our treatment of Isabetta.276 Nor will we neglect the others, as long as we have available resources. But just now we do not see how we can unburden you of another one as you have requested, because though we have married off Isabetta and la Brogna,277 we have so many that we don’t have sufficient housing for them all. We are so weighed down that we have had to reject many gentlemen of Mantua; and so that all the girls we have will later get husbands, we have accepted so few under such circumstances that we have not avoided displeasing some of them. We promised Niccolò Bendidio we would take one of his daughters, and then we were unable to keep our promise, though it is our nature and our wish to do so.278 You can ask him about this. Hence we pray you excuse us this time. If you have more little ones and we can oblige you after some time has passed, we will do so gladly, though we cannot say this for certain. For we have so many big and little ones that it will be many years before we can take any more. If we can satisfy you in any other needs, you will find us always disposed to do so.

275. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 78r. The famous humanist educator Battista Guarino was Isabella’s most illustrious teacher in her home court of Ferrara, and he remained in her affections throughout his life. The Gonzaga court, like many others, was an environment into which families sought to place their daughters as servants and ladies-in-waiting. Girls admitted to such positions enjoyed the benefit not only of room, board, and clothing, but also of exposure to the vastly interesting and extremely luxurious lifestyle of the court. Those who became part of Isabella’s inner entourage attended dinners and parties, wore expensive gowns, socialized frequently with celebrities, and even accompanied her on holidays and travels to other welcoming courts. Not least among the benefits of their position, each was assured that her mistress would tap her network to place her with a suitable husband. This letter illustrates, among other things, the difficult economy of early modern patriarchal Europe, in which female offspring were, at best, tools for constructing family alliances but also burdens on parental resources. 276. Gino Pistilli reports that of Guarino’s eleven children, only five were still living in 1472, one son and four daughters. The underpaid and often impoverished Guarino had evidently already placed a daughter named Isabetta in Isabella’s court. See Gino Pistilli, “Guarini, Battista,” DBI 60 (2003). 277. Eleonora Brogna de’ Lardis. 278. On Niccolò, see the letter of 3 January 1496.

112 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 146: 1497 June 15 Mantua To the lord rector of Verona, informing him that she wants to attend the jousts.279 In order to take some recreation in a place where we know we will be happily met, we thought we would come to see the joust that will take place in that city on the coming day of St. John, if it please Your Majesty, as we have no doubt it will. And so, we pray you order that we be accommodated with lodgings for about one hundred mouths, and as many horses. We will send the relevant list the day before our arrival. We offer ourself ever ready to please you.

Letter 147: 1497 July 4 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, ordering an ebony lute.280 Serafino281 told us he saw a lute there in Venice that was made of ebony. We very much want to have one. Hence we pray you make one, or have one made by whoever seems right to you. See that it is good, and medium, meaning neither too big nor too small. But see that it is of such a size that when it is tuned it goes two steps higher than the viola you made, which is a little low for our voice, as you will understand better from this messenger who can speak to you. And the sooner and the better we are served, the more grateful we will be.

Letter 148: 1497 August 11 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, revising instructions regarding an order for an ebony lute.282 We are pleased with you for your letter of the third of this month in reply to ours, because we agree that it would be an unwise expense to buy so much ebony just

279. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 82v. Banks Amendola relates that on 23 June 1497, while Isabella was still in Verona at the jousts, Francesco Gonzaga was suddenly and summarily dismissed from his post as commander of the Venetian army. To spare her embarrassment, the Venetian officials at Verona did not inform Isabella of this financially devastating political slap; Francesco revealed it to her upon her return to Mantua. There followed a period of economic hardship and, for Francesco, political maneuvering and personal depression. Banks Amendola, First Lady, 110–11; for further details, see Condottieri di ventura. 280. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 86r. This letter appears transcribed in full in Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 44–45. 281. Serafino Ciminelli was a musician and poet who enjoyed considerable popularity in the courts of Italy. See Magda Vigilante, “Ciminelli, Serafino (Serafino Aquilano),” DBI 25 (1981); also Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 89–96. 282. AG 2992 libro 8 c. 98v. Partial transcription in Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 46.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 113 for one lute neck. And so we will have them283 made of some other wood. But because we still want an ebony lute, we will be happy if you buy that beam for the twenty ducats that we are sending you by this rider. You should take of it whatever you need for making the lute. Make it excellent and of the sort we wrote about when we sent you word before. And the sooner you do it, the more we will appreciate it. Regarding the question of that bone, since we are not bothering about flutes,284 we don’t think you should buy it.

Letter 149: 1497 September 5 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, requesting information for a pilgrimage to Loreto.285 Though I spoke with Agabito286 of my desire to go to Loreto and Tolentino to fulfill vows, and asked him to inform me which road and lodgings I could take that would be safe from plague (here word is circulating that that whole territory is infected), I thought to clear things up sooner by sending this special courier to Your Ladyship. I pray you inquire carefully whether I can safely come, and what road I should take in order to avoid the suspected areas, because even if we should need to abandon the shore and take a higher road I would not mind, provided that it be free of this contagion. And so, to please me and to satisfy your wish to enjoy my company for several days, which I too desire beyond measure, I hope you won’t mind expediting this rider with reliable information, so that I can know how to proceed. I commend myself always to you, to the most illustrious lord your consort, and to Lord Ottaviano.287

283. Perhaps a scribal error: Isabella likely means we will have it made of another wood. 284. I take non se impazando nui de fiautti to derive not from impazzare, to go crazy, to go wild; but from (impacciare), to bother, to hassle. In either case, the sense here is a lack of interest. 285. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 1r. Isabella made vows during her pregnancies that if the baby should be born healthy she would make a pilgrimage to the holy shrines at Loreto and other locations to give thanks. This pilgrimage, over a year after Margherita’s birth and right after her death, may have been related to that pregnancy. Aside from her motives of devotion, these journeys provided Isabella welcome opportunities to leave Mantua, visit friends, and widen her experience of the world. Like a number of others, this letter documents her friendship with Francesco’s sister, Elisabetta Gonzaga. It also illustrates an important function of the elite epistolary network, which here provides her with a level of safety and an efficient view of the territory unavailable to common travelers. 286. The painter Pietro Paolo Agabiti resided in Jesi, which was on the route to Loreto. See Pietro Zampetti, “Agabiti, Pietro Paolo,” DBI 1 (1960). 287. Likely Ottaviano Fregoso, nephew of the duke of Urbino. See Giampiero Brunelli, “Fregoso (Campfregoso, Ottaviano,” DBI 50 (1998).

114 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 150: 1497 September 9 Mantua To Benedetto Tosabezzi, ordering stones for use in her studiolo.288 We are sending to you, attached here, a letter of Giancristoforo Romano our sculptor and a member of our court, which he writes to Master Antonio Ricio, an engineer289 in that illustrious signory, asking for certain stones from Carrara to decorate our studio. We will be grateful if you see that he gets it, and once they are ready arrange for the stones to be brought immediately to this city by some boat or barge that is available there. Let them be diligent so that we are served well and quickly. In the meantime, find out the cost of the stones and notify us; then we will send you the money. Now we are sending you the fifteen ducats given to Testagrossa, and five more to pay for the corundum.290 If you haven’t received it yet, request it and send it to us right away. If you spent more than this, write to Alberto da Bologna, our treasurer, and you will be paid without delay. Letter 151: 1497 September 12 Mantua To Girolamo Magnanimi, scolding him for not sending news of her brother’s illness.291 We cannot help being displeased with you for not informing us that the Most Illustrious Lord Don Alfonso our honored brother was ill, because we heard about it so late that we were unable to do our duty and send someone to visit him until after he was already well. We are indeed glad that our messenger was able to offer congratulations on his recovery rather than condolences for his illness, but we were negligent, and you are part of the reason why. We would therefore be very pleased if, in order to repair the damage, you would offer our apologies to His Lordship. And if a similar situation should occur again (God forbid) be sure to notify us, we beg you. Please take the trouble to tell us now how he is doing, and commend us to His Lordship. We offer ourself ever to your pleasure.

Letter 152: 1497 September 16 Mantua To Sigismondo d’Este, asking to borrow money.292 Since I happen to be in urgent need of five hundred ducats, and this city is so poor that I will never find them here, I take the liberty of turning to Your Lordship, 288. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 1v. 289. Battisti and Alessio observe that in the sixteenth century ingegnere also signified architect or mechanic. 290. The word smerio is a variant of smeriglio (used in subsequent letters in this correspondence). It translates as corundum, a mineral used in powdered form to polish stones and pavements. 291. AG 2992 libro 9 cc. 2r–v. 292. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 3v.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 115 who has never denied me his money in the past when I have come to you. I pray you be willing again this time to make me a subvention, and I promise to repay you without fail by this Christmas. I will be in your debt. If Your Lordship can help me, as I hope, let me know by this courier, because then I will send one of my agents to receive the money, and he will give you a receipt. I commend myself to Your Lordship.

Letter 153: 1497 September 16 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, ordering a lute.293 In reply to your letter, we say that we consider ourself well served regarding the lute that you adjusted. Now you can make the ebony one. We do not want you to put an ivory star on the neck, as you suggest; instead make it all black, of ebony, and fashioned in your way.

Letter 154: 1497 October 2 Mantua To the captain of Salò, asking him to help catch a robber.294 Passing in transit through our dominion, a cowherd named Lorenzo Valcamonica who was taking fifty head of cattle from Brescian territory into that of Verona, was assaulted when he came to the vicariate of Capriana by a man named the Bravo of Pozzolengo and four of his companions. They took all his cattle and led them to Pozzolengo after also injuring a companion of this Lorenzo who is not to be found. I leave it to Your Majesty to consider the enormity of this matter, both for the insult and theft suffered by this cowherd and for the presumptuous violation of our jurisdiction, which we believe you will find most offensive. We pray you be willing to take such action against the delinquent as he deserves, first of all making him give the animals back into our dominion, from which he took them. And if he claims to have any right to them, have him argue it before our judges, for he will not be denied [due process]. Beyond doing what we believe will greatly please the most serene signory,295 you will be acting as one who cares greatly for justice.

293. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 3v. Brown and Lorenzoni transcribe this letter in its entirety, in Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 46. 294. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 5r. Salò, in the territory of Brescia, lies about fifty-four kilometers northwest of Mantua, on Lake Garda. Pozzolengo lies along the way, some thirty-seven kilometers from Mantua. 295. Salò was at this time under Venetian jurisdiction.

116 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 155: 1497 October 10 Mantua To the duke of Milan, asking him to permit and facilitate a perfume delivery.296 The most illustrious madonna of Montpensier, my sister-in-law has written me several times already asking that I send her certain perfumes, which I have put together and decided to send by way of the present courier; but I did not want him to pass by without presenting himself first to Your Excellency. I pray you happily deign to let him pass and send him safely on his way. I assure Your Excellency that this rider comes from me and is sent to do this one thing only, with no other missions. You know that you cannot be deceived at my hands, and that I would sooner lose my life than your grace. To which I commend myself always. Your Highness will also see him on his way back. Letter 156: 1497 October 14 Mantua To the vicar of San Benedetto, protecting a woman abused by enemies of her son.297 Caterina de Zuanno de Crestina informed signor Blasio that a certain Pietro Pezopo and Cristoforo da Gandino together with several companions went to her house looking for her son Gianalberto, who had killed a man named Benvenuto. And when they didn’t find him, they insulted the poor woman, and threatened her in abusive language. Since she should not be punished for her son’s guilt, we want you to provide for her in such a way that she will not be bothered by anyone for her son’s crime, neither with words nor with deeds, on pain of whatever punishment we will deem appropriate. Letter 157: 1497 November [13] Mantua To Benedetto Tosabezzi and Giorgio Brognolo, seeking to buy antiquities.298 We heard that Dominico di Piero the Venetian jeweler has died and left many antiquities to be sold under the supervision of the jeweler Giovan Andrea da Fiore. Since we have an enormous desire to see them so we can buy some of them, we wrote to the aforesaid Giovan Andrea asking him to go to the appropriate people and have the antiques sent here. We will pay for those that are beautiful. But because we suspect that when our most illustrious lord father, who delights in these things, arrives, he will take the best ones, we would be very pleased if you would 296. AG 2992 libro 9 c.7r. Isabella was famous for the cosmetic and grooming products made under her supervision at Mantua. This letter, however, focuses on the suspicions that could be aroused by couriers of potentially treacherous states if they passed through a threatened city unannounced. The sister-in-law referred to is Francesco’s sister, Chiara Gonzaga. 297. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 8r. 298. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 17v. The letter is undated but appears in position in the copybook to be plausibly dated 13 November.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 117 see in every possible way that they are sent before His Excellency arrives. You could do nothing for which we would be more grateful. Letter 158: 1497 November 14 Mantua To Giovan Andrea da Fiore, seeking to buy antiques left by a deceased jeweler.299 Having heard that Domenico di Piero the jeweler, who recently died, had many figures and other antiquities that will be sold, and that you and certain other associates are in charge, we thought we would write to you with the familiarity befitting the love we bear you. And so, we pray you be willing to work with the appropriate persons to see that all the beautiful things are sent here. Once we have seen them, if they are of the quality that they are reputed to be, we will take them all or a good part of them, if we can come to reasonable terms. As you who have made other deals with us know, we will not violate such terms. You could do us no greater pleasure, especially if you see that they are sent right away. We offer ourself ever ready to please you. Letter 159: 1497 December 3 Mantua To Beatrice de’ Contrari, on the death of Anna Sforza.300 We leave to your imagination how much pain and distress we feel at the premature death of the Most Illustrious Anna, our sister-in-law and most cordial sister, for you are aware of the love we bore here. We cannot express it in this extreme pain, which is no less than what we suffered at the deaths of our dearly departed most illustrious mother and our sister.301 And we think what a great misfortune lies in the death of this lady for our house and for all the people of Ferrara. Adding to its weight is our regard for Your Majesty who, since you are entirely loving, we think must be in extreme sorrow; yet since we ourself need comforting we don’t know how to comfort you. We thank you for the care and diligence we know you dedicated to taking care of her at this time; and we also thank you for notifying us. We remind Your Majesty that you must take care of yourself, for the benefit of your daughter and the rest of us women.302 We offer ourself always prepared to do your pleasure. 299. AG 2992 libro 9 cc. 18r–v. 300. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 20v. Anna Sforza was the first wife of Alfonso I d’Este. She died in childbirth on 30 November 1497. Banks Amendola reports that Alfonso was so ill with syphilis that he could not attend Anna’s funeral: First Lady, 113. 301. Isabella’s mother, Eleonora d’Aragona, died in October of 1493: Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:103– 4, where a typographical error places this event in 1492. Beatrice d’Este had died in January 1497. 302. I thank an anonymous reviewer of this manuscript for informing me that Beatrice was much in demand for her skill in delivering babies. She had assisted Anna Sforza in her delivery, but the

118 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 160: 1497 December 5 Mantua To the duke of Milan, conveying pleasure that he liked the falcons Francesco sent him.303 Today Vicino the falconer arrived and presented letters from Your Excellency to my illustrious lord consort and me, in which you tell of your contentedness with my lord for his speediness in sending you the two falcons, of which you say you kept only the less fine one in order to send them to the lord duke of Savoy.304 His Lordship took singular pleasure in Your Highness’s satisfaction. But there was no need to thank him, since it seems to him that he has not yet done enough in this case to satisfy his debt and his own wishes. He would have been pleased if you had kept both of them. If Vicino performed well, he did what he was commissioned to do; but he returned as a servant and a herald of Your Excellency, and there is no talking to him about the affection and humanity with which you treated him. To your good graces we commend ourself from the heart.

Letter 161: 1498 March 7 Mantua To Fioramonte Brognolo, requesting an annual, comprehensive absolution of sins.305 It will soon be two years since we made through the most reverend cardinal of Santa Prassede306 a very thorough confession, as you will see by the enclosed copy of the topics. But because we wish to have a plenary remission of sins for our perbirth had proved enormously difficult and despite Beatrice’s best efforts Anna died, hence Isabella’s consolatory tone. 303. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 21v. 304. Vicino was Francesco Gonzaga’s falconer as well as overseer of the Gonzaga complex of palaces at Marmirolo. Bourne, Francesco Gonzaga, 700. Falcons were highly prized aids to hunting for the aristocracy. As early as 1250, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, penned an exhaustive treatise on hunting with birds of prey, a pursuit he held more noble than other types of hunting, due to its nonreliance on simple inanimate instruments (such as arrows and spears) and the greater difficulty of training birds of prey to work with the hunter: The Art of Falconry: Being the De arte venandi cum avibus of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, ed. and trans. Casey A. Wood and F. Marjorie Fyfe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943). 305. AG 2992 libro 9 cc. 32r–33r. Isabella seeks a dispensation from the obligation to confess one’s sins regularly and be absolved of them by a priest of the Catholic Church. Though she offers institutional excuses for her request, her more plausible motivation is impatience and perhaps shame regarding the regular obligation to confess one’s sins in order to die in God’s grace, should death come about without benefit of last rites. Despite her wish, she is notably unwilling to flout the Church’s teachings by simply ignoring the sacrament of confession. She seeks instead special, overall annual forgiveness of sins for herself and all the members of her court, as a kind of bureaucratic efficiency, a bargain convenience. 306. Santa Prassede is a titular church (a church assigned to a cardinal who holds its title) in Rome dedicated to Saint Praxedes, whose cardinal from March 1489 to July 1504 was Antonio Gentile Pallavicini: CHRC, CH.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 119 son once a year, we had our chancellor Tolomeo Spagnoli speak to the aforesaid reverend when he was in Rome. And as you will recall, [the reverend] replied that he could see such a clause was present, and that even if it were not present we should in any case take it for granted, because that was the intent of His Holiness. In these matters of conscience, we always wish to proceed with due respect, and we would like to have it in writing. Thus we pray His Most Reverend Lordship be willing, either with a brief or in some other form, to have us receive this license to be absolved once each year with plenary remission of our sins. And that all the members of our court, of either sex, now and for the foreseeable future, be included in all the graces contained in that confessional, which is currently limited only to those who were in our service at that time. We are moved to take up this issue principally because Mantua was under interdiction recently due to the arrival here of an excommunicated priest. And when our chaplain wanted to celebrate Mass, he was obliged to dismiss everyone who had entered into our service after the date of the confessional, which was certainly not possible without great confusion and dismay. We want also the damsels we have married off and those we will marry off in the future to be included in this account and its privileges. Though we know that this has been granted to other lords and ladies, we understand it is done rarely. Through the aforesaid most reverend monsignor cardinal of Santa Prassede, however, we believe we can obtain it, having heard from many sides and especially most recently from Matteo Cusatro how generously he wishes to serve us, and indeed to undertake most happily the most difficult tasks, as he did just now with Friar Polidoro’s change of habit.307 Please thank him for us as well as you know how, since it seems to us that letters will not suffice. But in conclusion, you will tell him that His Reverence has the same authority over us as the one who generated us. And if we sometimes fail in our duty, it is because we lack greater abilities. As a prudent man you must excuse us; please argue for this expedition and send it to us right away, for we could receive no greater favor from you. We commend ourself heartily to you. Be well.

Letter 162: 1498 March 8 Mantua To Francesco Castello, again requesting comedies by Plautus.308 From other letters from us you will have gathered our desire to acquire comedies or stories by Plautus. We specified those that we already have so that you would know which ones to have transcribed, and we told you how, among others, we would like Menaechmi and Amphitrion. We were sure that if you could not get 307. Friar Polidoro: possibly Polidoro Vergilio of Urbino, who would later serve in the court of Henry VII of England. Julia Cartwright [Ady], Baldassarre Castiglione, The Perfect Courtier: His Life and Letters, 1478–1529, 2 vols. (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1908), 1:180–81. 308. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 34r.

120 ISABELLA D’ESTE them without the permission of our most illustrious father, he would not be difficult, since he has already staged them and they have been printed in verse (but prose delights us more). Since we have had no reply from you, we think you are having them written and waiting to send them to us. But since at present we have nothing to read, we thought we would send you this courier of ours, through whom you can send the ones that are already transcribed. Or you can send the originals and we will have them copied right away and send them back to you without delay. We assure you that you could provide us no better pleasure than seeing that we have as many comedies or stories by Plautus as you can manage, especially the Amphitrion, the Menaechmus, and the Braggart Soldier or some other delightful things to read, because it is our only recreation.

Letter 163: 1498 March 8 Mantua To Girolamo Heremite, on her response to a man who was to have his hands cut off.309 This morning on our way to hear the sermon we saw the justice banners being raised, and when we asked why, we were told that they were about to cut off both hands of one of those men who had taken pheasants, cut off one hand of another, and give three drops on the strappado to the third. At this, we felt such compassion for the one who was to have both his hands cut off that we could not concentrate on the sermon or anything else; we thought only of that. On the way back, when we saw the preparations for the execution, we were overcome by such trembling that once we got home and the table was set for dinner we had no stomach for eating. It was impossible to quell this trembling and compassion, which had come to us on this man’s behalf without anyone in the world having spoken to us in his favor. We could not rid ourself of this feeling without knowing that he truly deserved this punishment. Finally, in order to escape this torment we decided to do something presumptuous, and we ordered that for this morning no more than one hand would be cut from the man who was supposed to have two cut. Not to grant him a pardon on our own authority, but to ask the most illustrious lord our consort about the other hand, because if His Excellency did not want to concede this, it could still be done on Saturday. And so, we would be grateful if you would speak to His Lordship immediately, and beg him, out of love for us, to be willing to grant the man this hand, and to excuse us if we have been presumptuous. Certainly our nature and our character compelled us. If it seems to you, however, that he will be very angry and displeased with us, then don’t say anything about it to him at all, and let us know through this courier. In that case we will have the man’s other

309. AG 2992 libro 9 cc. 36v–37r.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 121 hand cut sufficiently quickly that His Excellency will not have a chance to hear about it. And so we await your immediate response. Be well, Venerable Father.

Letter 164: 1498 March 20 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi, thanking him for being a faithful correspondent.310 If it were not for your letters, we would never have news of our birthplace again; we might as well be a foreigner, because we have no one else but you who tells us about it. For this reason your letters are all the more dear to us, and you merit praise and thanks for them. We refer to the reports you provided in your letter of the 18th, especially about the arrival [in Ferrara] of the most illustrious lord our consort, and the endearments that were shown him by the illustrious lords our father and brother.311 And we extremely appreciated the other parts of your letter as well. If you continue thus, we will reward your work all the more.

Letter 165: 1498 April 14 Mantua To the duke of Milan, upon the death of King Charles VIII of France.312 Yesterday at the nineteenth hour I got Your Excellency’s letter to my most illustrious lord consort and me, with the copies of the letters by Messer Maffio Pironeo and Cottino containing the first news that the Most Christian King of France is dead. And today, at the seventeenth hour, I received the letter with the copy of Lord Constantino’s letter confirming said news. I showed this one to my lord as well, and together we felt such emotions as the importance of this event merits, with all the more and less displeasure insofar as this death will bring both harm and benefit to the affairs of Your Highness. Our affairs are bound up with yours, and we live in the firm hope of always having your protection. And so, my lord consort and I thank Your Sublimity for having taken the trouble to share this news with us; and we beg you, if it is not too presumptuous to ask, to inform us of what successor there will be in that kingdom. To your good graces my lord consort and we commend ourselves. 310. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 38v. 311. Damiani notes that in April Francesco was at Ferrara with three hundred people in his entourage, as a guest of his father-in-law, and that upon his return to Mantua he was forced to dismiss one hundred men at arms for lack of money to pay them: Condottieri di ventura. 312. AG 2992 libro 9 cc. 47v–48r. Charles VIII died 7 April 1498 and would be succeeded by the duke of Orléans, who reigned as Louis XII. Four days after this letter, Isabella thanked Donato de Preti for his letter informing her of the creation of the new king (c. 49v). Louis XII would indeed be an important figure for Milan: Its conquest was a priority for him. By mid-April of 1500, Milan would be a French city and Ludovico Sforza a prisoner in France, where he died in captivity. Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 42–53.

122 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 166: 1498 April 26 Mantua To Cecilia Bergamine [Gallerani], requesting her portrait by Leonardo da Vinci.313 Having seen certain portraits today by the hand of Giovanni Bellini, we started thinking about the works of Leonardo and wanting to compare them to these that we have. And recalling that he painted you from life, we request that you send us your portrait via this courier appointed specially for this purpose. For besides the pleasure of comparing them, we would also like to see your face. Once we have made the comparison, we will send it right back and think ourself well pleased with you. We offer ourself ever ready to do your pleasure. Letter 167: 1498 May 8 Mantua To Alfonso I d’Este, explaining why the jester Diodato won’t go to Ferrara.314 Yesterday around the twentieth hour [four hours before sunset] I got the letter in which Your Lordship requests to have Diodato.315 I sent for him immediately and presented him with the letter, employing the most persuasive words in the world to encourage him to go. I reminded him that this was his good fortune, because doctors, medicines, and servants there would be more abundant; and I refuted any other doubts he might have. But he would not be persuaded, even after I gave him time to think about it. It is true that the poor man apologizes for being so affected by his illness that he couldn’t give Your Lordship any pleasure. He showed me many scars on his head; these certainly are horrifying, and he says he has other more painful ones.316 Even this did not keep me from insisting with him, and going over all the aforesaid reasons. I don’t think it is concern for his concubine that keeps him here, because he has already married her off and isn’t so crazy about her anymore. But if anything is keeping him besides his indisposition, it would likely be his daughter, who is a

313. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 54r. The addressee was the longtime mistress of Ludovico Sforza. Isabella is asking to see one of Leonardo’s most remarkable and beautiful paintings, the “Lady with the Ermine,” or portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, now in Cracow. After seeing Cecilia’s portrait, Isabella made vigorous attempts to have Leonardo paint her likeness as well, but she was only able to obtain a color drawing, now held in the Louvre. According to Jane Martineau, the latter was likely made from life and probably “the best record we have of Isabella’s appearance at the age of twenty-five.” David S. Chambers and Jane Martineau, “Isabella d’Este, the Insatiable Collector,” in Chambers and Martineau, Splendours of the Gonzaga, 159–60. 314. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 60r. 315. On jesters and other subaltern entertainers at the Mantuan court, see Luzio and Renier, “Buffoni, nani, e schiavi”; Bregoli-Russo, Teatro dei Gonzaga, 23–44. 316. Diodato was probably afflicted with syphilis: see Arrizabalaga, Henderson and French, The Great Pox; Luzio and Renier, “Contributo alla storia del mafrancese,” 408–32.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 123 public prostitute in Ferrara.317 He has sworn many times that he will not return there while she is living, though he did not say this to me today. I would have had him tied up and put on a boat if Your Lordship had not written that you did not want him to come by force. I am supremely sorry not to have been able to satisfy your request. But you can’t get from a man anything except what he wants to give.318 I commend myself to Your Lordship and pray you send me word often of your activities. Letter 168: 1498 June 5 Mantua To Niccolò da Correggio, trying to recover a lost poem.319 Madame Eleonora recently sent us a capitolo that could not have pleased us more, but unfortunately we lost it.320 We wrote back to her asking for another copy, but we have not received it or any hope from her that she will send it. And since, if we judge rightly, the composition is by Your Lordship, we pray and urge you to see that we have it, even if you should have to recompose it for love of us. If it should be a work by someone else, please instruct Madonna Eleonora on how she can satisfy our request; we will be most grateful to Your Lordship, to whom we offer ourself continuously. Letter 169: 1498 June 5 Mantua To Eleonora da Correggio, urging her again to re-send the lost capitolo.321 We cherish the sonnets you sent us, for they are good. But we would have received them more gladly if they had been accompanied by the capitolo we have been looking for. And so we pray you, for the love you bear us, to see that we get it right away. You mustn’t look for excuses, because we won’t accept them; we know the most reverend monsignore, our brother, [Ippolito d’Este] to be of such a nature that if you ask him for it for us, he will not refuse. And when you send it, tell us who composed it, even though we hold it to be a work by the lord your father. 317. That Diodato’s daughter prostituted herself is one indication of his family’s economic circumstances. His contempt for her profession captures some of the complexity in early modern European attitudes toward female chastity and sexual commerce. The latter was in some periods officially tolerated and regulated, but at the same time shunned. On the public prostitutes of Ferrara and other cities, see Diane Yvonne Ghirardo, “Marginal Spaces of Prostitution in Renaissance Ferrara,” in Looney and Shemek, Phaethon’s Children, 87–127; Shemek, “Circular Definitions.” 318. Isabella’s comments on not forcing Diodato illustrate her sense of legitimacy about her own sovereign power, in odd but characteristic combination with the benign recognition of many of her subjects’ wishes. 319. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 68v. 320. Eleonora da Correggio was Niccolò’s daughter. 321. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 69r.

124 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 170: 1498 June 8 Mantua To Benedetto Capilupi, informing him of plans to entertain the duke of Milan.322 We have decided to lodge His Excellency the duke in our rooms here in the Castello. We will give him the antechamber of the painted room, the painted room itself, the room of the suns, the room of the cassone, our camerino, and the room where we now eat.323 The room of the cassone will be his personal bedroom. We do not wish to have that room hung for him with black velvet draperies. Instead we wish to decorate it in our fashion with black and morello velvet. Though His Lordship still dresses in mourning, for us this is also a joyful time, and we thought to interrupt the black with the less melancholy morello.324 But we would very much like your advice on how to outfit the other rooms and the salon designated for His Excellency. We think you should discuss it with Messer Antonio di Costabili and Messer Visconti if you think it best not to reveal our plan to the lord duke. Write us their opinion, because even if they bring His Excellency’s own hangings, it seems inappropriate to have our rooms look bare. Find out also what kinds of wines the lord duke drinks, and inform us what the quality of our attire should be, as we requested in another, earlier letter. Regarding the speculations made by that state about our traveling there for Carnival, we charge you to discuss the matter with the most reverend monsignor cardinal our brother [Ippolito d’Este]. Continue with the contract negotiations, which we want to be concluded here in Mantua so that we can enjoy a few days together with His Most Reverend Lordship, and we here in Mantua can mend the damages inside Milan and the stresses suffered during these negotiations.325 322. AG 2992 libro 9 cc. 70r–v. Capilupi received Isabella’s letter in Milan. On his official visit, which reciprocated Francesco Gonzaga’s sojourn at Milan earlier the same year, Ludovico Sforza brought an entourage of eight hundred to one thousand people, including ambassadors from Naples, Florence, Spain, and the imperial court. During his stay, Sforza formalized Francesco Gonzaga’s condotta in the service of Milan at an annual salary of forty thousand ducats; see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:146–48, which includes her translation of this letter; and Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 130–31. More comprehensively, see also Luzio and Renier, “Delle relazioni di Isabella d’Este Gonzaga con Ludovico e Beatrice Sforza,” 74–119 and 619; and Alessandro Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e la corte sforzesca,” Archivio storico lombardo series 3, 15 (1901): 145–76. 323. The painted room, or camera picta, or camera dipinta is also known as the Camera degli sposi. Painted in fresco by Andrea Mantegna, the camera picta and its surrounding chambers are among the most beautiful interiors of the period and may still be seen in the Mantuan Ducal Palace. 324. Morello is itself a very dark color tending to black. Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, translates this word as violet. 325. Presumably Isabella refers here to the negotiations for a new league between the duke of Milan and Emperor Maximilian, whose allied forces Francesco would be invited to command. Capilupi was intimately involved in these negotiations. Meanwhile, Louis XII was rallying support from Venice, England, and Spain for his invasion of Milan. Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 45–46.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 125 Thank Messer Visconti for his offer to come in advance; we accept, and we suggest that we let him know when will be the right time. Tell Barone that we got the letter Alessio brought from him, and ask him to excuse us if we have not answered, because we are too much occupied with these wall hangings.326

Letter 171: 1498 October 14 Mantua To Tolomeo Spagnoli, instructing him on various purchases.327 No reply is necessary to your letter of the 11th, except on the matter of those two little cups costing twelve ducats. If in your opinion they meet our standards, obtain the money from one of ours, such as Antimaco or Donato de Preti. If they are still on duty, engage Pagano or Pietro Albano to get them for you, if they are so beautiful. We would have sent you the money, but the riders come [only?] for the mail.328 Find Lorenzo da Pavia the wood craftsman and see how far he has come with the bow he promised to make us. Tell him also that on the next boat that leaves for there we will send him the ebony lute so that he can make the neck more slender, since it is too big for our hand. If you bring us the tabby cat, we will be grateful. Commend us to Lord Giovanni, and tell him that we got his letters; we haven’t replied because we didn’t have the necessities for writing with our own hand. Letter 172: 1498 November 22 Mantua To Cesare Borgia, telling him she is unable to satisfy his request for some dogs.329 As I am unable to find Sausi or any other dogs that are suitable for Your Most Reverend Lordship, I cannot satisfy your request at this time, but I placed the order and arranged to find some. As soon as I have them, I will send them immediately to Your Most Reverend Lordship, because nothing is dearer to my heart than the desire to serve you. And if I didn’t respond earlier, it was because I wanted to do so with an action, which will serve to your benefit another time. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to command something else of me and to hold me in your good grace, to which I commend myself always.

326. Barone was a jester in the service of the Sforza duke. Messer Visconti is probably Antonio, a courtier and musician at the court of Milan. See Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:130. 327. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 82v. 328. ma li cavalari vengono per le poste 329. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 86v. On Isabella’s relations with this powerful family, see Alessandro Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e i Borgia,” Archivio storico lombardo series 5, 41 (1914): 469–553; 42 (1915): 115–67, 412–64.

126 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 173: 1498 November 22 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, ordering ebony boxes.330 We pray you make us three or four little ebony boxes for civet, each worked differently in your style.331 And send them to us as soon as you can, for you will be doing us a favor. P.S.: We would like to have one of the boxes in a square-ish shape, so it will be easier to extract the civet. Letter 174: 1498 November 22 Mantua To Andrea de Fiore, ordering aromas.332 We wish to have an ounce of musk and one of ambergris, of choice and perfect quality.333 Please buy them with all your usual diligence, making sure they are genuine. Send them to us through the present rider, and you will be doing us a great favor. Notify us of the cost, and the money will be sent back to you. Be well.

Letter 175: 1499 January 8 Mantua To the duke of Milan, asking his help in arranging a visit from Isabella Trotti.334 I am sending my master of the horses, Negro Trotti to Milan to bring his sister Isabella to me for several days, if her husband will agree. I desire this immensely for my recreation. Since I know how stubborn her husband is, I beg Your Excellency to use your authority in whatever way you like, to see that my wish for Isabella is granted. You could do nothing at present that would please me more. I also instructed Negro to pay my respects and commend me warmly to Your Highness, though I would more gladly perform this office in person.

330. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 87r. 331. Civet oil was among the most frequent ingredients in the scents Isabella concocted. 332. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 87r. 333. The request is for muschio and ambra. She was likely to be ordering not the fossilized resin, amber, but rather ambergris, which has long been used as a fixative in perfumes. 334. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 95v. This letter and the following two illustrate the severe restrictions typically placed on women’s movements, even when they were privileged enough to be able to afford travel. As the following letter to Francesco Casati indicates, concerns for female chastity kept women close to home and, often, far from the pleasures of society with other women. On the other hand, numerous sources suggest that once Isabella received visitors, the women’s entertainments, though harmless, were far from sedate or prim. We may for this reason detect some irony in her necessary assurances to an oppressive husband. Moreover, as Casati probably knew well, once his wife was in Mantua she would likely stay for more than a few days. Indeed, Isabella wrote to him again on 12 February pleading with him not to demand his wife’s return so soon. See the letter of 12 March 1499 on the wife’s return.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 127 Letter 176: 1499 January 8 Mantua To Francesco Casati, requesting that he allow his wife to visit her.335 Since the love we bear her causes us to desire immensely to have your wife Isabella near us for several days for our recreation, we are sending her brother Negro to pray you please not only give her permission to come, but command her to do so if she declines. And so with this letter of ours we pray you most pressingly, for you could do us no greater favor than this. Since Negro is her brother, he will take the care in bringing her that befits the bond between them. And once she is here with us, you can be sure that she will be in a place where the utmost care is taken with virtue. We will not let her out of our sight, and we will treat her not as a friend, but as a sister. If you do us this pleasure, you may be sure of obtaining even greater favors from us; and her stay with us will be of no little value and utility for you, as you yourself will understand in addition to what your brother-in-law will explain to you. Letter 177: 1499 January 8 Mantua To Giorgio Brognolo, seeking his assistance in arranging Isabella Trotti’s visit to Mantua.336 We are sending Negro Trotti to Milan to see to bringing his sister Isabella here to us. But since her husband is an obstinate man and we fear there may be some difficulty, we have instructed Negro that once he has paid our respects to the most illustrious lord duke in our name, he should use you as a means of begging His Excellency [the duke] to intervene with his authority so that we may have Isabella here for several days. Bring Negro before him, without omitting any help you can give in this matter. When Negro returns, give him the dogs that you have.337 Letter 178: 1499 February 13 Mantua To Donato de Preti, instructing him to purchase two Moorish children.338 Giovanni [Gonzaga] our brother-in-law told us that recently two little Moors were brought on a galley, one of whom is precisely the type that we would like, and the other would be suitable for His Most Reverend Lordship our brother-in-law [Sigismondo Gonzaga]. We therefore want you to buy both, spending twenty-five or thirty ducats apiece and no more. Obtain the money from Pagano or Pietro 335. AG 2992 libro 9 cc. 95v–96r. 336. AG 2992 libro 9 c. 96r 337. This is probably a reference to the regular traffic in hunting dogs between Mantua, where many of them were raised, and Milan and other courts. As master of the famous Mantuan stables, Negro may have had some responsibilities for the dogs. 338. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 2r.

128 ISABELLA D’ESTE Albano, whom I will immediately reimburse.339 We aren’t sending payment now due to our haste to dispatch this rider, through whom you can send the two Moors if you buy them. The aforesaid Giovanni told us you know where these Moors are.

Letter 179: 1499 February 26 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing a production of Terence’s Eunuch.340 His Excellency my lord father wanted to celebrate on Sunday by showing me one of the comedies he had done here this Carnival season, which was The Eunuch. He had many of these prominent ladies brought to my room around the twentieth hour [four hours prior to sunset], and from there we went into the salon, where I danced some dances. Then, around one half-hour [after sunset] the comedy began, and at the end of the first act there was an intermission performance about Fortuna with some young men, young women, and a madman. They all chased this Fortuna whenever a certain sound played, each trying to catch her, until finally the madman caught her and led her away while the others made gestures of sadness and despair. At the second intermission, some damsels were tempted by the love of certain young and old men. The young men were chased away by the old ones, who corrupted the women with money into dancing with them. But the women took the purses of the old men for themselves, rejected and abandoned the old men, and took up in the end with the young men. At [the end of] the third act came a group of five musicians with lutes, who sang a sweet and beautiful song to five damsels. At the fourth, there was a moresca with twelve people carrying torches about four ells long, which were lit at both ends. This was a beautiful and marvelous thing to see for the dexterity of those who maneuvered the torches one against the other, with very lovely, timed movements, without anyone’s being hurt. And at the fifth the play finished with a very moral, recited capitoletto.341

339. Pagano was a Venetian merchant and Albano was a banker in the same city. Isabella often borrowed money from them to make her purchases. 340. AG 2113 fasc. II. 1, c. 128. Most of this letter appears transcribed in Guido Davico Bonino, ed., La commedia del Cinquecento, 3 vols. (Turin: Einaudi, 1977–1978), 1:408, citing from Alessandro d’ Ancona, Origini del teatro italiano, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Turin: Loescher, 1891), 2:376–77. Perhaps reflecting popular tastes, Isabella seems to appreciate the entertaining intermezzi more than this ancient play. Also notably, the second intermission mirrors the plots of contemporary comedies in which young lovers triumph over old, rich husbands. 341. The moresca was a pantomime ballet performed in Moorish costume. The final four lines of this letter are largely mutilated. I omit them here.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 129 Letter 180: 1499 March 12 Mantua To Francesco Casati, taking responsibility for his wife’s long stay with her.342 The singular love we feel for your wife Isabella, since she was raised alongside us, makes us wish to have her near us at length, and for this reason we asked you to yield her to us for several days.343 Since you complied, we were very pleased. She, both due to her desire to return to you and in order to obey your commands, has insisted the whole time that she must leave; but we would never give her our permission until today, since we were sure that you would be content in any case. And so now we are sending her, accompanied by her brother Negro, and we pray you lay not a bit of the blame for her tardiness on her, but only on us, who kept her by force. We did so, however, knowing that we wanted you to ask us in return for something that would be useful and pleasing to you. Receive her, then, with the love that her goodness and the exercise of marital kindness deserve. We promise you again that for the compliance you gave us in this matter of your wife, you may count on our authority in your every need, certainly when you need the favor of the most illustrious lord duke [of Milan], but also in the particular needs of your position, as you will understand more fully from your brother-in-law Negro.

Letter 181: 1499 March 13 Mantua To the duke of Milan, sending a portrait of herself.344 I’m afraid I may be annoying not only Your Lordship but all of Italy by sending around these portraits of my face; and though I do so unwillingly, I nonetheless cannot refuse one who has the right to command me. The Most Illustrious Madame Duchesss Isabella345 has repeated her request that I send her one of my color portraits. And since I have this one, which is not very much like me because it is a little fatter than I am, I consigned it to my stable master, Negro, and ordered him to talk first with Your Highness. If it pleases you, he shall present it to the aforementioned madame duchess on my behalf. If it does not satisfy, then Negro, 342. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 7r. 343. We note here Isabella’s use of her superior position in relation to Casati as a way of working around the gender hierarchy that limits his wife’s freedom to come and go as she likes. 344. AG 2993 libro 10 cc. 7v–8r. 345. Isabella of Aragon, widow of Giangaleazzo Sforza (1476–94), former duke of Milan and nephew of Ludovico Sforza. Ludovico succeeded his young nephew when he died suddenly and, some said, suspiciously. The letter is transcribed, along with Sforza’s reply, in Luzio and Renier, “Delle relazioni di Isabella d’Este Gonzaga con Ludovico e Beatrice Sforza,” 665. Ferino-Pagden, following Luzio, identifies the painter of this portrait as Gianfrancesco Maineri, who was working in Ferrara: Silvia FerinoPagden, ed. Isabella d’Este: “La prima donna del mondo”; Fürstin und Mäzenatin der Renaissance (Vienna: Ausstellungskatalog des Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1994), 88. See also Luzio, La galleria dei Gonzaga, 196–98, who also transcribes this letter.

130 ISABELLA D’ESTE who is bringing his sister to Milan, will pay reverence to Your Excellency in my name. I commend myself to you always. P.S.: I commend Isabella to Your Lordship if her husband behaves coarsely with her because I kept her longer than he wanted.346

Letter 182: 1499 April 16 Mantua To Antonio Maria della Sala, asking to borrow a book of antiquities.347 Having heard that in recent days you lent a book of yours on antiquities to a bishop who took it to Rome, and wishing to see it, we decided to write you this letter asking that you please use all good means to recover this book and give it to Messer Ludovico Agnello, who is studying there and who will get it to us. Once we have looked at it, we will see that you get it back. You will be doing us a great pleasure. We remain ever at your disposal.

Letter 183: 1499 May 14 Mantua To Giulio d’Este, reporting that she is learning to play the viola.348 We received along with your letter the songs Your Lordship sent us, for which we are extremely grateful. And if Tromboncino were not going to Casale, we would have already begun to sing them. But once he has returned, we will waste no time. We assure Your Lordship of this, knowing you are pleased whenever you hear that we want to learn. We have a good start on learning the viola, and we hope to learn to play it very well, for after two days of practice we are beginning to make some notations so that when we come to Ferrara we will be able to play accompanist to the Most Illustrious Don Alfonso our brother.349 346. See the letters of 8 January and 12 March 1499. 347. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 12r. Brown transcribes this letter and della Sala’s reply, reporting that this book has not been identified but that Sala was unable to send it to Isabella because it was in the possession of Gerolamo Pallavicino. Brown, Lorenzoni, and Hickson, “Per dare qualche splendore,” 80, 144–45. 348. AG 2993 libro 10 cc.15r–v. Giulio was Isabella’s half-brother. 349. Prizer notes that Isabella is not displaying hubris here by saying that after only two days she is beginning to gain confidence with a new instrument. She was already adept at playing both bowed and plucked string instruments by this time and thus was learning the viola from the vantage point of a competent musician: “[B]y the end of the 1490s, Isabella therefore played lute, vihuela de mano, lira da braccio, viol, keyboard instruments, and sang. This was an impressive range of abilities for an amateur of either sex and demonstrates the importance that music and her abilities assumed for her in the first decade of her Mantuan residence. It is worth noting, too, that this is the range of expertise that Castiglione required of his ideal courtier…” Prizer, “ ‘Una virtù molto conveniente,’ ” 22–23. Prizer takes far tenore to mean “play tenor,” but this phrase is idiomatic for “play accompanist” as I have translated here.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 131 Letter 184: 1499 May 14 Mantua To Jacopo d’Atri, count of Pianella, discussing the erection of a statue of Virgil.350 We cannot tell you how pleased and satisfied we are with the discussion you had with the Magnificent Pontano about our wish to have the statue of Virgil done, and that he offered to write the inscription to be sculpted at the statue’s base.351 You should have him compose it both in prose and in verse to say that we have had the statue restored, and it should include our full name. We would like the inscription to be in duplicate—in prose and in verse—so that we can choose the one we like better. But we want very much for you to find out from him which type of statue would most please him, either bronze or marble. I will agree with Pontano’s taste, which is impeccable. We will not deny that we are enormously pleased that such an excellent man praised our idea, and that he has thought to commemorate us in his work, as you wrote to me at length. Though there is in us no virtue that merits personal fame, since we consider him so worthy and do not wish to quarrel with his judgment, we will not be displeased to have him put it into effect.352 Please convey to him on our behalf the greatest thanks and tribute you can. We commend and praise you most highly for the way in which you have served us. No other reply seems necessary to your letters of 17 March and 17 April, except that on your return we remind you to bring the table that Count Antonio Maria353 will give you, and to try to get the other one from the archbishop of Consenza.354 Please commend us to all of Their Majesties. Letter 185: 1499 May 22 Mantua To Lord Evangelista, instructing him to buy two strong horses for a transport.355 We want to have brought from France a litter like the one our most illustrious sister-in-law Chiara has, and we must get two big and powerful horses to carry it. 350. AG 2993 libro 10 cc. 15v–16r. 351. Giovanni Pontano was a prominent humanist in the service of King Alfonso I of Naples and then of Alfonso’s heir, Ferrante. Isabella is acting here on a longstanding desire of the Gonzagas to restore Virgil to monumentality in the city renowned as his birthplace. Early in the century, Carlo Malatesta had removed a statue of Virgil from Piazza San Pietro and thrown it into the Mincio River, claiming that the poet was too revered in Mantua. Isabella’s plan to have a statue produced by Andrea Mantegna was, however, never realized. For a translation of Atri’s letter to Isabella describing Pontano’s response to the proposal, see Cartwright, 1:174–76. For partial transcription of the original, as well as Atri’s letter to Isabella, see Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 248–50. 352. Pontano also expressed in a letter transcribed by Luzio his intention to commend Isabella in his nearly finished work, De magnanimitate. See Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 248–50. 353. Antonio Maria della Mirandola. 354. Ludovico Agnello. 355. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 17v. Evangelista was the Gonzaga stud groom.

132 ISABELLA D’ESTE And since we hear that in Milan the most illustrious lord duke often has Friesian horses356 brought in to be distributed to the soldiers and courtiers, we would like you to write to someone who is friendly to us in Milan who will find us two powerful ones, and two equally strong people who ride at a good pace. We are guessing that it will be easy to find someone who would be happy to be rid of some horses that are not good enough for soldiers, and those would be fine for our purposes. Once you find two of the sort we are talking about, buy them and notify us of the cost so we can repay you the money. If you see that we are well served, we will be grateful. Letter 186: 1499 July 21 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, pleading mercy for the composer Tromboncino.357 Just now, at the seventeenth hour, Alfonso Spagnolo came to inform me that Tromboncino has killed his wife with multiple wounds, having discovered her in the house of a neighbor alone in a room with Giovan Maria Trionfo. The latter was seen through the window by Alfonso, who had come to ask to borrow a ladder. When he heard noise in the house, he went in without hesitating and found Tromboncino on the stairs, attacking his wife with a weapon in the presence of his father and a young man. To his rebukes, Tromboncino replied that he could castigate his wife, for he had found her cheating; and since Alfonso had no weapon he was unable to stop him. By the time Alfonso went home and came back with a weapon, he found the wife already dead, while Giovan Maria in the meantime had jumped out the window. Tromboncino has repaired to St. Barnabas along with his father and the young man. By my duty, I wanted to explain this situation to Your Excellency and pray you have mercy on him, since he had legitimate cause to kill his wife and since he is such a good and talented man. Also for the father and the young man who, so far as Alfonso could see, did not help Tromboncino in any way except to accompany him, and he alone wounded and killed her. I commend them all to Your Excellency, to whose good graces I commend myself.358

356. Friesian horses, from the coast and inland of northwestern Europe, are especially large. The Gonzaga stables evidently did not keep Friesians. 357. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 34v. On Tromboncino, see William F. Prizer, “Tromboncino, Bartolomeo,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press), . 358. This letter is unusual in that Isabella regularly took the side of women in marital conflicts. Her different attitude in the case of the composer-musician Tromboncino may have resulted from her affection for him, or it may indicate her approval of this harsh standard of marital fidelity. In any case, the letter testifies to the severe dangers women ran if they violated strictures on female chastity.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 133 Letter 187: 1499 August 22 Mantua To Marco de Nigri, ordering a large viola.359 We would like to have a large viola from the maestro who made the other four. We would be pleased if you were with him and ordered that he make one of the type and size of the largest ones, urging him also to serve us quickly. We will be most grateful to you.

Letter 188: 1499 August 23 Mantua To Galeotto del Carretto, asking him to facilitate her acquisition of several violas.360 We are trying to obtain some good violas now that we have started learning to play, and Tromboncino told us he saw several quite perfect ones owned by Lord Constantino. Since they are not being used, Tromboncino feels sure that Constantino would happily give them to us. We can easily believe so, knowing what a big heart he has and how much love he bears this most illustrious family. But since it seems presumptuous to ask a virtuoso to give something that is sure to be dear to him, even where all the minds concerned are similarly disposed, we thought to ask you to intervene for us this first time in order to minimize the blushing. In this way, we can realize our desire, as well as invite Lord Constantino to seek us if we can satisfy his desires or his needs. And so please ask him, with all the appropriate modesty, if he would satisfy our wish for those violas, and declare to him that he could give us no greater pleasure. If he agrees, you can send them, carefully packed, on a mule to our ambassador in Milan, who will then send them here to us. We offer ourself to your convenience. Letter 189: 1499 September 13 Mantua To the podestà of Sermide, intervening on behalf of the Jew Salamoncino.361 The Jew Salamoncino has informed us that he rents a house from Pietro Rigozzo, who has now sold it to a certain Giovanni di Ferri. Following this purchase, [Ferri] wants to evict this Jew from the house, which would be a great hardship for him, in order to make an inn, which he says he wants to do. We instruct you to exhort this Giovanni on our behalf to allow the Jew to remain in the house at least until Christmas, which is the date to which he has paid rent, or that he be willing to 359. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 41v. 360. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 42r. Prizer notes that the poet and courtier Galeotto was in Monferrato. The owner of the instruments in question he identifies as Constantino Cominato, governor of Casale Monferrato. Prizer transcribes and translates this letter slightly differently than I have: Prizer, “ ‘Una virtù molto conveniente,’ ” 23–24, 48. 361. AG 1993 libro 10 c. 44v.

134 ISABELLA D’ESTE accommodate him until that time in the house where he himself now lives if he wants to move into the one he has just bought. He will be doing something that pleases us, though reason would dictate that he not be constrained to keep this Jew in the aforesaid house.362

Letter 190: 1499 October 1 Mantua To Andrea de Conradis, reprimanding him for not providing for his daughterin-law and her children.363 Since each day we see actions contrary to the good words you spoke about the agreement made with your daughter-in-law Bartolomea, who has been left by you and your son Giovan Francesco without wood, cheese, and other things she needs for her maintenance, we are little pleased with you and Giovan Francesco.364 And we are not about to neglect to favor and immediately provide for her situation. We certainly have the power and the means to do so without writing you lots of letters every day. But so that you won’t be able to complain that you were not warned of our intentions, we have decided to inform you that if you do not immediately provide for her needs and those of her children and for all the things still missing from the alimony, we will find a way to do so at your expense. It will not help you one bit to underestimate us as you are doing.

362. The Este of Ferrara had a reputation for benignity regarding the city’s Jewish population, and it is clear from Isabella’s correspondence that she brought with her to Mantua a sense of respect for the city’s Jews. The Gonzagas, nonetheless, were inconsistent in their protection of this minority, as a number of dismal episodes illustrate. On the notorious mistreatment of the Jewish banker Daniele da Norsa, see Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 73–76, 368–72, 402; Katz, The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance, 40–68. More generally, see Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and Alessandro Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e gli israeliti a Mantova,” Rivista storica mantovana 1 (1885): 183–86. 363. AG 2993 Libro 10 c. 55r. 364. The Bartolomea in question is the widow of Andrea’s other son, Zaccaria, as we learn from the follow-up letter Isabella wrote on 7 October 1499. Her situation is that that of many widows. Often rather than inheriting property and money outright from their deceased spouses, they received provisions for their sustenance (alimony) from other male members of the husband’s family, under contracts made before the husband’s death. The fathers-in-law and brothers-in-law were notoriously neglectful of the women’s needs, since widows and their children were a drain on resources newly concentrated among fewer male heirs.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 135 Letter 191: 1499 October 6 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting the assault of a Mantuan woman.365 This morning when Rodiano’s wife left her house to go to Mass, Agostino his former stableboy jumped on her with a billhook just a few steps from her door.366 He gave her an enormous gash on her head and cut off the little finger of the hand the poor woman used to try to defend herself. Once he had done this, he thought she was dead; sensing that he was in danger, he fled via the Cerese gate.367 The alarm bells were rung, but he was already gone. Alessio mounted his horse and chased him, and may God will that he catches him. After I had written thus far, news came that Alessio reached and captured him on the Te River where he was blocked by the water. Since this case is so outrageous, I will have him hanged without a second thought, as all the decent men are begging me to do, their hands folded [in supplication]. Monsignore [Sigismondo Gonzaga], who has seen her, says that he hopes she won’t die, though she has multiple wounds. If Your Lordship’s Moor had not happened by, [the attacker] would have ended up killing her. Please excuse me if I have been presumptuous in not awaiting Your Lordship’s response; the case seems so atrocious to me that your absence should not prevent us from making of him an example for other good-for-nothings. I commend myself ever to Your Lordship’s good graces. Letter 192: 1499 October 6 Mantua To Diodato, regarding Valentina, who has become a courtesan.368 We understand what you have written us about Valentina, who pretended not to know you. We are pleased that you have proven our prediction, but the fact that you found her so well dressed, in stylish clothes and lots of jewels is not so strange, because the other courtesans of Rome dress that way. Letter 193: 1499 October 7 Mantua To Costanza de Aldegheris, engaging her as a potential wet nurse.369 We took pleasure in hearing through your letter that you are pregnant, and in the offer you have made us to nurse the baby we will have, if we are pregnant as we

365. AG 2993 libro 10 cc. 58r–v. 366. A bladed tool for cutting tall grass. 367. One of the gates (or doors) in Mantua’s former city walls, the Porta Cerese lies between today’s Viale Osonzo and Viale Te. 368. AG 2993 libro 10 cc. 58r–v. See also the letter of 8 May 1498 to Alfonso I d’Este. It is not clear whether Valentina is the daughter discussed in that letter; if so, she has moved from Ferrara to Rome. 369. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 59v.

136 ISABELLA D’ESTE hope.370 It was welcome. We promise you that we won’t trade you for anyone else, if you find us coming far enough along. Letter 194: 1499 October 7 Mantua To Andrea de Conradis, following up on his treatment of his daughter-in-law.371 Having gathered from the letter you wrote us yesterday that you are prepared to provide alimony to Bartolomea and her children in fulfillment of the contract between you and your deceased son Zaccaria we wanted to see with our own eyes the list you signed in your own hand. We find that between making the list and now, except for the real estate you have given her little or nothing. Nonetheless, since Bartolomea does not want to burden you all at once with the entire sum you owe, she will be satisfied if for now you send her the provision for one year. This would be three pieces of butter, four cords of wood, eighteen pesi of cheese, and six pesi of ricotta.372 You can send these things a little at a time, but as for all the other items, see that within eight days without fail they are delivered. We will be most grateful. Otherwise, we will make such provision as we wrote to you in our other letter. Letter 195: 1499 November 18 Mantua To the count and the men of Governolo, urging them to feed a passing army.373 We see that you write to apologize that it is not possible for you to send bread to Sacchetta to feed the infantries that will pass through. We reply that we do not expect you to do the impossible. But in order to avoid their insolence, which could create disorder if they find no food there, we would be grateful indeed if you sent as much as you possibly can; because if they are paid, no harm will come to you. Gian Michele Bandello, whom we have sent to Sacchetta, will see that thanks to this bread no violence will be done to you.374 370. This letter to Costanza appears to be an early intimation that Isabella is pregnant with Federico, the long-awaited male heir to Mantuan rule. As we can see, eligible women vied for the privileged post of wet nurse to the marchesa’s babies. The position came with many comforts; at best it also brought the wet nurse into close relation to the ruling family and could lead to future benefits, including longterm employment as a governess. Of course, this position came at a certain cost to the wet nurse’s own child, which undoubtedly was fed only after her employer’s child was satisfied. 371. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 60r. See the prior letter of 1 October 1499. 372. Puoina or povina: a Venetian dialect word for ricotta. 373. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 89v. 374. Louis XII, king of France, occupied Milan on 6 October 1499 and would occupy Genoa as well by the end of that year. Entering Pavia, Louis had been greeted by Francesco II Gonzaga, who promptly assumed a condotta in service to the French. Mantua now was caught in a delicate balance, since Francesco served France and Venice (allied since February against Milan), but also remained a feudal

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 137 Letter 196: 1499 November 21 Mantua To Galeotto del Carretto, thanking him for some poems.375 In recent days we received your letter of last month with several belzerette, and now we have received another from the 11th of this month, also including some belzerette.376 As all your works are wont to do, these pleased us greatly, and we gave them immediately to Tromboncino to make a melody for singing them. If you had also sent us the comedy you wrote, we would have liked that too.377 We thank you for the letter and the belzerette, but even more for your openness and affection with us, of which we see proof every day. We thus hope to show you our gratitude every time the occasion presents itself. Letter 197: 1499 November 23 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, thanking her for pomegranates and awaiting her visit.378 I like the pomegranates from your orchard immensely. Since Your Ladyship sent me five hundred of them in this time of my pregnancy, when they are more delicious to me than usual, they were quite satisfying indeed. When I tasted them, they seemed to me the best I have eaten in a long time, and this must be because they come from Your Ladyship, who could only send me something good, given our reciprocal love. I thank you very much for the gift, which I will continue to enjoy as I think of you; and when my lord consort returns from Ferrara, where he is taking some recreation, I will share them with him, too. Nothing more occurs to me now that is worthy news for Your Ladyship, except that I am well, as subject of Emperor Maximilian Habsburg, who supported the now-ousted former Gonzaga ally, Ludovico Sforza. The troops Isabella aims to feed must have been those of the French allies, but she was sheltering several refugees from the Milanese court in this same period. See Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 139–41; Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1.151–56. 375. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 92r. Historian, poet, and playwright, Galeotto del Carretto dedicated to Isabella a comedy, Timon Greco (1498), and one of the earliest tragedies published in Italian, Sofonisba (1502). Galeotto associated with Isabella in Mantua and in Milan and was, according to Luzio and Renier, an important player in the negotiations for the engagement of Isabella’s son Federico II Gonzaga to Maria Paleologa di Monferrato. Luzio and Renier, La coltura 146–48. 376. Belzeretta is a variant of barzelletta. While in modern Italian this word means “joke,” for Isabella’s contemporaries it referred to a poetic composition for music similar to the earlier ballata. The barzeletta was of popular origin, composed usually in seven- or eight-syllable lines. Walter H. Rubsamen, Literary Sources of Secular Music in Italy, ca. 1500 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943), 2–11. For more on this correspondence see Prizer, “Isabella d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia as Patrons of Music,” 20–22. 377. Maria Luisa Doglio suggests that the play in question could be Li sei contenti, published posthumously in 1542: Galeotto del Carretto, Li sei contenti: commedia, ed. Maria Luisa Doglio (Turin: Centro Studi Piemontesi, 1985; reprint Charleston, SC: Nabu, 2011), xiii.. 378. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 95r.

138 ISABELLA D’ESTE is Eleonora and all the rest of the household. I await the time of my delivery with no other wishes than to see Your Ladyship and to have, if it should please God, a baby boy. In the meantime, I commend myself to you, hoping it will not be a burden for you to commend me also to your lord consort and to give Madonna Eleonora my greetings. Letter 198: 1499 November 23 Mantua To Caterina Fieschi, ordering sugar candies.379 As we wish to obtain an assortment of sugar candies in syrup, we are sending to Genoa the present muleteer with money to buy them. But he has no experience of such things, and we fear that without some guidance he may not serve us well. Since we have no knowledgeable agent there to whom we could give this task, we take the liberty of praying Your Ladyship be willing to order someone from your household staff to go, with the muleteer or alone as he likes, and buy thirty majolica jars of candies of different kinds, making sure they are well seasoned and utterly perfect. In addition to these, he should buy some citrons and limes. The muleteer will have twelve gold ducats to spend. Your Ladyship may order her agent to keep track of the cost and let us know. If the money should not suffice, we pray Your Ladyship add some of her own to it, and inform us of the amount; we will repay you by whatever route you indicate to us. We offer ourself at your disposal in any similar or greater task. If Your Ladyship has found some blue-gray zambelotto of the type we wrote to you about before, you can send it with the muleteer.380 We commend ourself to Your Ladyship and to Madonna our cousin, your daughter. Letter 199: 1499 November 26 Mantua To Federico di Casalmaggiore, arranging lodgings in Mantua for her brother, Ferrante.381 We saw from a letter you wrote to Malatesta di Baesio that our illustrious lord wants our brother, Lord Don Ferrante, to be put up here in the castle in His Excellency’s 379. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 94v. The addressee could be Caterina Fieschi (1447–1510), a Genoese noblewoman who married Giuliano Adorno in 1463. Caterina experienced a mystical conversion in 1473, dedicating herself thereafter to spirituality and service to the poor and the sick, but such a vocation would not preclude her performance of tasks such as Isabella requests here, in her associations with the Italian noble classes. Caterina, however, had no children; thus the closing of this letter argues against her identification fas the addressee of this letter. Isabella was related to the Fieschi through the marriage of Ludovico Gonzaga of Bozzolo and Sabbioneta to Francesca Fieschi. They produced a daughter, Caterina, who also remained childless. 380. Zambellotto was a cloth made of camel or goat hair (cf. ciambellotto, cammellotto, Fr. camelot, Eng, camlet): Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 319. 381. AG 2993 libro 10 c. 97v.

1479–1499: Letters 1–200 139 rooms. It seems to us that our duty is to put the lord’s comforts above those of any other person, and we are not inclined to let every person occupy his lodgings. So we have arranged to have the white rooms in the courtyard prepared for the aforesaid lord, our brother. We think we can take this liberty, especially knowing that what he needs is some exercise, as plump as he is. We wanted to alert you to this so that you can explain to His Lordship. And commend us to his good grace.

Letter 200: 1499 December 30 Mantua To Galeazzo Pallavicino, trying to obtain her late sister’s clavichord.382 Since the death of the most illustrious lady duchess our dearly departed sister, we have continuously desired and sought to obtain her fine clavichord. Most recently we wrote to Maestro Antonio Maria, your brother, praying he be willing to help us get it, since we were convinced that he was the best means we could use to find it. In reply we learned that he did not know where the clavichord was, but that once he returned to Milan he would make a diligent inquiry. Later we were assured that Your Majesty has it with you. This brought us great pleasure, as we judged that we would easily be able to satisfy our wish. Though we know it is not very delicate to seek from a virtuous person an instrument that delights him, nonetheless since we are a woman and subject to cravings,383 the request seems to us less blameworthy and more understandable than it would be for a man. And so we pray you, if ever you thought to do us some pleasure, please do us this one, which we would regard as supreme: to give us the clavichord, either as a gift or by selling it to us, for we will spare no expense as long as we are gratified. Don’t apologize saying you don’t have it, because we have information from a person who knows it for certain. We will be obliged to you. We offer ourself in service for whatever may please you.

382. AG 2993 libro 11 cc. 18v–19r. This instrument was made by Lorenzo da Pavia. See Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 193; Prizer, “Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia,” 95–96; also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:153–54. Isabella was making this request at a particularly stressful time, as the Sforza government had fallen and the duke, her brother-in-law, had fled. On 15 July 1499 and with Venice as his ally, Louis XII of France invaded the duchy of Milan, capturing the city on 2 September, making his triumphal entry on 6 October, and prompting yet another realignment of Mantuan loyalties. Recognizing the opportunity also to reinstate himself in the good graces of the Venetians, Francesco Gonzaga quickly cooled his relations with the Sforza court at Milan and pressed Louis XII to recognize his usefulness to the French cause. Luzio and Renier, “Delle relazioni di Isabella d’Este con Ludovico e Beatrice Sforza,” 663–74; Mazzoldi, 2:157–63. 383. Here Isabella chooses, not atypically, to portray her acquisitiveness as a function of her gender and to characterize her desire as a hunger: essendo nui donna et appetitosa.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 Here as elsewhere in Isabella’s correspondence, scenes of domestic intimacy alternate with politics, luxury consumption, and court management. Four principal concerns occupied Isabella in the year 1500: political reporting from Mantua to Francesco II Gonzaga, then in service to the French and the Venetians against the Sforza of Milan; governing the Gonzaga state; acquiring objects for her studiolo; and the birth of her third child, this time the long-awaited heir to the marquisate. Federico II Gonzaga was born 17 May. Henceforth correspondence about this favored son between the two doting parents abounds. Acquisitions for the studiolo were marked by the beginning of a long and frustrating effort to obtain a painting by the Venetian Giovanni Bellini and by Isabella’s receipt of the Spinario, a gorgeous bronze statuette cast by Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi (better known as Antico), figuring a seated young boy pulling a thorn from his foot. In 1501, she began to collect editions of classical and vernacular literature printed by one of the protagonists of the early modern publishing industry, Aldus Manutius. The year 1502 opened with a grand event, the wedding of Alfonso I, duke of Ferrara, to Lucrezia Borgia, natural daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI. This marriage tied together not only the papal and Ferrarese courts, but by extension the many states bound to them by other marriages. Isabella’s descriptions of the gala sights and events are among the most detailed to survive: From processional ceremonies and attire to jousts, from theater performances to freak accidents, she transmits a vivid sense of the wedding’s festive atmosphere, despite her frequent claims that it was all a colossal bore. After the wedding, we see her return to family concerns, but also to commissions and purchases for her studiolo. Additional letters in her lengthy struggle to acquire a painting by Giovanni Bellini are included here, as is her first correspondence seeking a painting by Pietro Perugino. Her orders for luxury goods of other kinds, including ingredients for perfumes, give readers today a glimpse into early modern trade and manufacture. As if anticipating a question from later historians, in a famous letter to her father Isabella explains how she manages her budget. While her consort was in service to the French, Isabella governed and reported to him on her decisions regarding animal grazing, property disputes, robberies, and even murders. Letters to Gonzaga functionaries show her at work on behalf of her subjects, while to friends and family she reports on political events as the wars of Italy rage on. She corresponds with the Urbino dukes, who have been exiled by Cesare Borgia, and follows the movements of Borgia enemies, the Orsini of Rome and the Bentivoglio of Bologna. 1503 brought, among other events, the most spectacular crimes of Cesare Borgia, news Isabella duly reported to Francesco by weaving together information 141

142 ISABELLA D’ESTE from numerous sources in her newsgathering operation. What could Isabella have intended when, in the midst of these horrors, she sent a gift of one hundred masks to the most dangerous man alive? By August, Cesare’s father, Pope Alexander VI was dead, the exiled Urbino dukes were restored, and a conclave was meeting to elect a new pope, the short-lived Pius III. In November began the reign of Giuliano della Rovere as Pope Julius II. Here was a pontiff from whom the Gonzagas hoped to gain certain advantages, since they were negotiating for their daughter, Eleonora, to marry Giuliano’s nephew. As Francesco Gonzaga departed again for France in league with Louis XII against Spain, a newly pregnant Isabella positioned her network of informants and gripped the reins of state, keeping particular watch on an outbreak of plague in Mantuan territory. The girl born to her in November, Livia Giulia, was another disappointment at a time when the Gonzagas needed multiple male heirs. In the relative calm of December 1503, she defended her retention of a war trophy of sorts, a marble Cupid she acquired from Cesare Borgia out of the Urbino dukes’ collection while they were in exile; and she turned her attention to theater, ordering copies of plays by Plautus. In 1504, as her correspondence with Bellini and Perugino continued, Isabella developed her relations with the sculptor known as Antico, from whom she eventually acquired a number of splendid, bronze figures. She also sought work from Leonardo da Vinci who, in flight from Ludovico Sforza’s collapsing Milan, had visited Mantua in 1500 and sketched her portrait in chalk. Isabella never obtained another work by Leonardo. Her luck was better with Lorenzo Costa, who painted two canvases for her studiolo. The threat of plague in the summer of 1504 prohibited Isabella’s long-awaited travel to Rome with the duchess of Urbino. Isabella gave birth to her second son, Ercole, in November of that year. 1505 was marked by the death of her father and the succession of Alfonso I d’Este as duke of Ferrara, as well as the official betrothal of Isabella and Francesco’s daughter, Eleonora, to the future duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria della Rovere. Also in 1505, she met Pietro Bembo, the influential poet and theorist of language. In 1506, Isabella expended considerable energy attempting to acquire items from the estate of Michele Vianello, a particularly knowledgeable collector of art and antiquities; and Mario Equicola, her future secretary, presented her with a literary work based on one of her mottoes: “Neither hope nor fear.” It was in 1506 also that Isabella’s brother Alfonso incarcerated their half-brother, Giulio, for treason. An additional casualty of that failed coup d’état was one of Isabella’s ladies-inwaiting, Giovanna Boschetta, the daughter of one of Giulio’s co-conspirators. Her father having brought disgrace upon their family, Giovanna was forced to enter a monastery rather than marry. In 1507, Isabella gave birth to her third son, Ferrante. That year, the marchesi of Mantua faced an uncomfortable consequence of their shifting alliances

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 143 in the peninsula’s military campaigns. Francesco was instrumental as a lieutenant general in the papal forces that recaptured Bologna for Julius II, but when the ousted Bentivoglio princes were forced to flee that city, the women of their family—one of whom was Isabella’s pregnant half-sister—took awkward asylum in the Mantuan court. In January 1508, Isabella’s daughter Livia Giulia died at the age of four. Copybook 20 ends in April 1508, and copybook 21 begins in May 1509. Among the originals, AG 2117 contains forty-nine letters to Francesco Gonzaga dated March–December 1508, sent from Mantua, Cavriana, Ferrara, and Sermide. Several of those from Mantua deal with local violence and unrest. A number address Francesco’s illness, the unction treatments he is undergoing, and the prayers Isabella is having said for his recovery. Ercole (Aloyse) and Ferrante’s ailments are also discussed. A letter of 5 April 1509 reports that the duchess of Ferrara (Lucrezia Borgia) has given birth. On 13 July Isabella wrote of her own imminent delivery of a child, saying she was abed and needed to keep Madonna Alda with her; this child would be her last, Livia Osanna. In August, an accident that befell the young Federico moved Isabella to reprimand his staff for not keeping closer watch over him. On 10 December 1509, the League of Cambrai was formed against Venice, uniting in “perpetual peace and confederation” Louis XII, king of France (in whose service Francesco Gonzaga was already employed); Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I; Pope Julius II; and Ferdinand II of Aragon, king of Spain. Parts of the League’s charter were published immediately, but it also contained many secret stipulations. Among these was the agreement to invite the duke of Ferrara and the marchese of Mantua to join their effort within three months’ time. On 9 May 1509 was fought the Battle of Agnadello, one of the most important events in the Italian Wars, because in it Venice lost “nearly all the lands [it] had acquired on the Italian mainland over a century.”1 As the war carried on, that August, just as Francesco and Isabella’s eldest daughter was hoping to finalize her marriage, Francesco Gonzaga was captured on the battlefield by Venetian forces and taken prisoner. The year that followed was the most difficult of Isabella’s life.

1. On these events, see Francesco Guicciardini, The History of Italy, ed. and trans. Sidney Alexander (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 194–202; Mallett and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 85–103; quotation at 90.

144 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 201: 1500 March 9 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, thanking him for a gift and reporting on military actions at Novara and Mortara.2 Since Your Lordship so graciously gave me the Soave fishponds, I will take possession and have them prepared so that we can enjoy the fish together. I thank you both for the gift and for the loving words you wrote me, though in giving them to me you make not a gift but a consignment to my custody, to your greater benefit. You are more lord of them now than you were before, as is true of all other things you have given me. If the news the commissioner of Parma gave to lord Ghiberto da Correggio that the lord duke of Milan has captured Novara is not entirely true, he at least had something colorful to write about, though he left out the parts that don’t accrue to his favor. Matteo da Fiume of Mantua, who was sent to the Most Illustrious Lady Chiara [Gonzaga] by Your Excellency and departed before Ghivizano and Gemetto,3 also arrived here this evening. Having been at Novara and at Mortara, he reported that the duke of Milan left for Novara on Wednesday and camped in the towns on the road to Milan. Immediately they engaged in battle, but the town was fiercely defended and the ducal troops had to retreat from the fighting, which left many dead. He could not say how many, only that few were dead or wounded among the people inside, and that nonetheless the duke remained camped and lodged in the surrounding towns. The first ones inside Novara were the company of the marchese of Saluzzo [Ludovico del Vasto] and two hundred Piedmontese; and the same day that the duke camped there, Monsignore de Alegni [the count of Ligny] and his company, along with three hundred Gascon crossbowmen on foot also got inside. The next day, Thursday, Messer Roberto de Rossetto too entered Novara with the company of Duke Valentino [Cesare Borgia], backed up by the rear guard of the French camp, which then returned to Mortara, where this messenger arrived that same day, and spoke with the monsignore of Legnano. He says also that by now he thinks the monsignore of Trémoille has arrived, and that lord Giovanni Jacopo

2. AG 2993 libro 11 cc. 31r–32r. This letter regards Ludovico Sforza’s attempt to recapture his city. Though Francesco Gonzaga had hedged his bets by sending his brother, Giovanni, to fight alongside the Sforza troops, he avoided any further aid to the Milanese, tied as his fortunes now were to the French and the Venetians. Indeed, when Louis XII made his triumphal entry into Milan, Francesco Gonzaga marched in his cortege. On 5 March Sforza began a siege on Novara, capturing it on 22 March, but on 10 April his Swiss troops turned him over to his French enemies as he tried to escape, disguised as a Swiss pikeman. He died ten years later a prisoner, at Loches. Ady, History of Milan, 174– 86; Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e la corte sforzesca,” 152–53; Luzio and Renier, “Delle relazioni di Isabella d’Este Gonzaga con Ludovico e Beatrice Sforza,” 667–74; Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 42–53. 3. Two Gonzaga agents, Angelo Ghivizano and Jamet (Gemetto) de Nesson. See Bourne, Franceso II Gonzaga, 52.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 145 [Trivulzio] could not be less welcome in the French field than he is.4 About his commission from Lady Chiara, his journey, where he was disarmed and despoiled of Your Excellency’s letters you will hear directly from him, because tomorrow he will be coming to you. He still affirms the escape of Lord Constantino [Cominato] but says he doesn’t know where he went, except that people were saying he was about to enter Casale and was not accepted there. Your Lordship will interrogate him now better than I, because about military matters you are learned and I am ignorant. I commend myself to your good grace.

Letter 202: 1500 March 11 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, ordering ebony, ivory, and combs of ivory and black horn.5 Send us by this rider of ours a piece of ebony, making sure, however, not to give us anything that will spoil the lute.6 We wrote again to Giovan Andrea del Fiore the jeweler asking him to send us a half-tusk of ivory. If by chance he is not in Venice, the rider will give his letter to you, instead. Please open it and see to serving us yourself. Have made for us very soon and quickly a comb of ivory and one of black horn, in the size and style of the wooden one we are sending you as an example; but they should be more delicate and well crafted. Retain the rider until they are ready, and send him back with the combs, the half-tusk of ivory, and the ebony. If you need money for the combs, ask Giovan Andrea for it, to whom we wrote instructions to give it to you. Remember to make the lute in the way written to you by Palazzo our treasurer.

4. …che’l signore Zoaniacomo non poteria essere pegio voluto in lo campo quanto è in lo campo francese. Presumably the reference is to Louis XII’s commander, Giovanni Giacomo Trivulzio, and presents him from the perspective of Ludovico Sforza. 5. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 33v. For transcription of this letter and Lorenzo’s reply, see Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 51. The same authors remark at 222, in a discussion of other objets Isabella habitually ordered, “Isabella frequently had need of small pieces of ivory, bone, and wood that were employed not only in the manufacture of maces, paternoster beads, perfume containers and pens and penpoints …but also for combs, figurines, crucifixes, chess sets, medallion cases and such frivolities as the ebony, ivory, and coral dart she received in November 1496.” 6. Here she specifies that Lorenzo should keep the best materials for production of the ebony lute he is making her.

146 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 203: 1500 March 26 Mantua To Nicolao de Puttis, requesting soap.7 We would be grateful to have two barrels of the kind of soap for silk that comes from Florence, and the sooner the better. We offer ourself etc.8

Letter 204: 1500 March 27 Mantua To Antico ordering something by his hand for the door of her camerino.9 We wish to have something made by you for the door of our camerino. And so we are sending there to you, just for this purpose, our sculptor Giancristoforo [Romano], who will explain our intentions and give you the necessary measurements. We pray you be willing to assume this project gladly and set to work immediately, for honor and utility will come to you for it, and you will be doing something to please us.

Letter 205: 1500 March 28 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia upon receipt of a lute and combs.10 We received the lute, the combs (one of ivory and the other of horn), the ebony wood, and the piece of ivory, all of which were very pleasing to us. We commend your for your diligence. We have ordered our treasurer to see that you are paid your money. To your favor etc.

Letter 206: 1500 April 4 Mantua To the lieutenant vicar of Revere, instructing him to investigate a new structure near a monastic refectory.11 The venerable friars of San Ludovico there have informed us that a man named Matteo Carrero has had a large country house12 built next to the refectory, with the intention of putting people of ill repute in it, which would be a bad example and a scandal to both the religious and the secular communities. Furthermore, he has occupied a street people were using to go between the monastery and the castle moat and that was convenient not only for the friars but for people who visit 7. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 394. 8. On the burgeoning early modern market for soaps, see Biow, The Culture of Cleanliness, 12–16; William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 134–93. 9. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 394. 10. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 394. 11. AG 2993 libro 11 cc. 40v–41r. 12. casono.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 147 the church. Though he has been told nicely about both of these things, it seems nonetheless that he has no intention of changing his plan. We want you to see with your own eyes whether the house is located in a place where it could be a bad example or a scandal for the monastery, and if so, have it removed. Similarly, see that the road is restored to its original state, without inconveniencing the friars or changing things in any way. And if this Matteo will not do out of love the things you think appropriate, then command him on legal grounds, so that he will have cause to obey.

Letter 207: 1500 April 7 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, requesting another lute.13 The jujube wood14 lute that you sent us recently is of such perfection that we gave it to our most illustrious lord consort, because he liked it so much. But as we still wish to have one just like it, we pray you be willing to make another one for us, assuring that it is in no way inferior to this one in quality. Some people say that you will never make another so fine as this one; and we reply that since your work relies on art and not on chance, we are certain you will make one that is not only similar, but even better. See that we are not deceived in our expectations. We also remind you to provide us with the Spanish style ebony one about which we and our treasurer Palazzo wrote to you.15 The sooner we are served in the one and the other of these matters, the more grateful we will be.

Letter 208: 1500 May 14, Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, welcoming her return from Rome.16 I felt singular contentment upon hearing of Your Ladyship’s successful return from Rome, though this was not without some envy, since I have yet to make that trip; and this feeling was increased by the fact that Your Ladyship did not come here after your return, as you promised me you would and as was my greatest desire, so as at least to hear from your descriptions about the things I did not see personally, as you did. Nonetheless, since conditions of the present times necessitated your doing as you have, I pray you at least allow me to participate through your letters. 13. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 43v. 14. Cartwright refers to this lute as made of walnut in her translation of Lorenzo’s letter of 13 March 1500: Isabella d’Este, 1:172. See also Prizer, “Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia,” 111–12, 120. I am grateful to Anna Maria Lorenzoni and the late Clifford M. Brown for specifying instead that giuggiolo translates as jujube. 15. Prizer, “Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia,” 112, suggests that this Spanish-style lute may in fact be what later came to be called vihuela da mano. See also James Tyler, “The Early Guitar.” 16. AG 2993 libro 11 cc. 47v–48r. See Luzio and Renier, “Gara di viaggi.”

148 ISABELLA D’ESTE As for my own condition, I’ve had some pain that was very bothersome indeed, and each day I am on the verge of delivering, but this makes me less happy than it would if Your Ladyship were here. I commend myself to you.

Letter 209: 1500 May 15 Mantua To the abbot of San Benedetto, advocating for a girl’s monastic entry.17 Moved to compassion by the tears of a poor widow whose daughter, Dorotea da Rezo is dedicated to your holy monastery of the sisters of San Giovanni and wishes to enter with the others to put her vocation into effect, we thought we would pray Your Most Reverend Paternity with this letter please be content to accept her immediately out of regard for us. Since she has no father, such an act will be most pleasing to Our Lord God and will be praised in this world. To us it will be especially welcome. Though we know that Your Lordship could object, due to the great number of women already living in that monastery, nonetheless we know that since this girl is an orphan and has been taken into our protection, you could reasonably concede her this favor without offending any other girl. We await Your Most Reverend Lordship’s reply and commend ourself always to your prayers.

Letter 210: 1500 May 16 Mantua To Protonotary Sigismondo Gonzaga, thanking him for letters.18 In two letters from Your Most Reverend Lordship, of the 13th and 14th of this month, I felt your high regard for me, since you told me all about your activities even though you had already related them to my most illustrious lord consort and had them reported by Guinizzano. I thank you very much for all of this. I need say nothing more, except that I am delighted about your cutting your beard, which I take to be a gesture of great expectation regarding both the affairs of state and my baby. I know that Your Lordship is no less anxious for this birth than I am, since you are always so sweet to me. I would have written this by my own hand, or at least signed it, but I am so heavy that even the smallest effort is too great a burden on me. I offer and commend myself to Your Lordship.

17. AG 2993 libro 11 c.48r. 18. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 48v. On beards, see Douglas Biow, “The Beard in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in The Body in Early Modern Italy, ed. Julia L. Hairston and Walter Stephens (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 176–94, 347; and by the same author, On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 181–206. Sigismondo’s gesture may be interpreted as one of rhetorical compensation: Wishing for a nephew rather than a niece, he performs an act of virtual self-emasculation, as if to displace his own masculinity onto the baby.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 149 Letter 211: 1500 May 17 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, seeking decorations for the room of her son.19 In honor of my happy delivery, I pray Your Highness deign to lend me your gold embossed wall hangings to furnish one room, as lord Borzo will have already mentioned to you. And if, as I hope, you are happy to do so, please give them to Alessandro Pincaro, my chamberlain, who came to give Your Excellency the news of my firstborn son [Federico II Gonzaga]. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace and assure you that I, along with the baby, am faring quite well.

Letter 212: 1500 May 21 Mantua To Alessandro Pincaro, seeking to obtain hangings for her new baby son’s room.20 We wrote to our most illustrious lord father asking him to lend us furnishings to cover a room with his gold-embossed leather hangings; but only the bed canopy was sent, and it does not fit our design. We wrote again asking Girolamo Ziliolo to send us all the wall coverings for an entire room. If you have not already left, we want you to urge him on, so that he is sent with such speed that tomorrow night without fail the things are here. For this purpose we are expediting the present rider, who is instructed not to abandon the muleteer. We are very satisfied with your service. If you have already left then you, Giovanni, to whom this letter will be presented, should perform this task.21 We thank you for your congratulations on our baby’s birth. May God give him all the virtues you predict for him. Fare well.

Letter 213: 1500 May 22 Mantua To Count Giovan Pietro Gonzaga, thanking him for felicitations.22 We easily believe that the joy you take in our happy delivery is enormous, because the benefit to this most illustrious house and especially to Your Lordship is similarly great. And if you congratulate us thus, you do so rightly, and you have very much pleased us. We thank you, and we offer ourself ever disposed to your pleasure. 19. AG b. 2993 libro 11 c. 48v. As Peter Thornton explains, walls in Renaissance palaces were usually decorated with a frieze at the top and left otherwise empty, spaces to be filled with tapestries or tooled leather hangings that could be removed when rooms were not on display. Here, Isabella seeks luxurious gilt leather from her father, Ercole d’Este, to mark the room where Federico will be visited by dignitaries who come to congratulate the Gonzagas on the birth of a viable heir. Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400–1600 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), 44, 85–86. 20. AG b. 2993 libro 11 c. 48r. 21. Isabella is anticipating that the letter may be passed on to another recipient, if her original addressee has already left Ferrara. 22. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 50r.

150 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 214: 1500 May 22 Mantua To Protonotary Sigismondo Gonzaga, thanking him for congratulations.23 Whatever words Your Most Reverend Lordship might find to express the great consolation you took in my baby boy, I would have to believe you to be even happier than you say, since I am very well informed of the true expectation in which you rightly awaited this joyful birth.24 Given the sweet and cordial affection between us, over and above our fraternal bond, Your Lordship must now set his heart at peace, for you have a nephew and son in the hands of someone who will raise him always to honor you and to look after Your Most Reverend Lordship’s reputation, because if he were not to be of this disposition, I would not want him to live in the world. You must now hasten to put our affairs in good order, so that you can come back to receive homage from a child of yours. In the meantime, I thank you for what you have written me in your three letters, and especially for the one in your own hand. I hope you will excuse me if I don’t reply in my own hand, given my present condition. I commend myself heartily to you.

Letter 215: 1500 July 15 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, on the baptism of Federico II Gonzaga.25 From Your Ladyship’s letter of the first of this month I learned that due to a decline in his health the most illustrious lord, your consort, had himself dare el foco ala testa, which produced a notable improvement.26 The cause that necessitated this action distressed me, since I am pained by any sickness His Excellency has, but his return back to health brought me no small pleasure. I thank Your Ladyship for sharing this news. I certainly wish that you had also informed me that you are free of your gastric problems, so that the news would have been even happier. Your Ladyship must make an effort to get better through exercise and other apt remedies, and encourage the lord your consort to do the same. I pray you keep me informed of developments for both of you. My lord, Eleonora, and Federico along with all in our household are well, thanks be to God. We had the baby baptized privately here in the castle on Sunday 23. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 50v. 24. Like the others following Federico II Gonzaga’s birth, this letter suggests how important the male heir was not only to Isabella and Francesco as rulers, but to the entire extended family whose fortunes hinged on a solid line of succession at the Mantuan court. For this reason, Isabella repeatedly discusses the collective happiness over Federico’s arrival and here presents her son not only as a nephew, but also as a virtual son to his ecclesiastically ambitious uncle. 25. AG 2993 cc. 58v–59r. 26. Dare il fuoco, in medical contexts, usually referred to cauterization. It is also possible that Guidobaldo’s doctors performed fire cupping, in which suction is created by placing a heated jar over the skin in an effort to affect circulation or draw out noxious humors. See fuoco in TLIO, 1.3.6; 1.3.6.1. My thanks to James Ward and Antonio Pagliaro for helping me interpret this passage.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 151 the 12th of this month. The godfathers were Messer Giovanni Pietro Gonzaga for the Most Serene King of the Romans,27 Messer Benedetto Tosabezzi for Duke Valentino,28 and Messer Phebus for the cardinal of San Severino.29 The turbulence in Italy deprived the baby of a more honorable baptism, because deferring until things settle down would have been dangerous for him.30 This is as much as occurs to me that is newsworthy. I commend myself to Your Ladyship and to the lord, your consort.

Letter 216: 1500 August 21 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, on the death of Antonio da Montefeltro.31 I learned at the same time of both the illness and the death of lord Antonio, at which I felt the sorrow that befits the love and the ties between these two houses and which I especially feel for lady Emilia. If Your Excellency cherished her before, you must now do so extremely and comfort her in every way possible. I know I need not remind you to do what comes to you naturally, but I wanted to put in a word on my part so as not to be remiss. I thank Your Ladyship for the communication with me. I will now give you some of our news. The lord my consort is well, except that above his ankle he suffered a bit of an injury due to a twist and had to stay home for three days. He remained dressed and is healthy in all other respects. Tomorrow or the next day he will be back in the saddle again. To judge by appearances, the baby is growing beautiful, big, and sweet. Eleonora and I are very well and long to hear of your lord consort’s and your complete recovery. I commend myself to you both.

Letter 217: 1500 August 21 Mantua To Antonio de Gonzaga, requesting an order of musk oil from Naples.32 As I understand that Your Lordship has one of his men going to Naples, in the familiarity that I feel I can use with you I ask that you be willing to have brought 27. Maximilian of the house of Habsburg; from 1508, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. 28. Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. 29. Federico Sanseverino. The Gonzagas covered their bases by choosing godfathers aligned with both the Empire and the Church. 30. Isabella refers to the belief that an unbaptized infant who dies may not enter Heaven, since it is baptism that cleanses souls of Original Sin and opens the way to salvation. According to Church doctrine, such babies are only admitted to Limbo. 31. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 76v. Antonio da Montefeltro, half-brother of the duchess’s husband and husband of the women’s close friend, Emila Pia. Emila Pia was a lady-in-waiting to Elisabetta Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, and is portrayed memorably as the outspoken lieutenant of the duchess in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. 32. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 76v.

152 ISABELLA D’ESTE back for me four to six of the largest jars of musk oil, assuring that it is good. You will be doing me a singular pleasure. I offer and commend myself to you.

Letter 218: 1500 August 21 Mantua To Lady Emilia Pia da Carpi, consoling her on her husband’s death.33 We learned of the death of your lord consort via a letter from the most illustrious lady duchess [of Urbino], at which we felt such heartsickness as follows from the love we bear Your Ladyship. And so we send you our deepest condolences. But considering that we must all make this same journey, and that he made his in contrition and with the benefit of all the holy sacraments, once Your Ladyship has performed the sorrowful duties of a good wife, you must endure patiently, and yield to reason. For when your heart has reached conformity with the divine will, then the good deeds you offer up for your husband’s soul will be more welcome and better received by Our Lord God, who we pray will take them up in His mercy. We can offer Your Ladyship nothing more than what you already know is at your disposal; we only remind you to avail yourself of us any time that your needs and your well-being dictate. If there had been time before the departure of this rider, we would have written in our own hand. We will make up for it another time. Fare well.

Letter 219: 1500 September 3 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reassuring him about Federico’s wet nurse.34 Our baby boy is well as usual. It’s true that his wet nurse has come down with a slight fever, which I don’t think will last long. Nonetheless I am having another 33. AG 2993 libro 11 cc. 76v–77r. For discussion and transcription of this letter, see Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 106–107. 34. AG 2993 libro 11. c. 81r. In reports throughout this month, Isabella informs Francesco of many details surrounding Federico’s wet nurses, including the names and family relations of all the women who provide the service. The quality and safety of the baby’s nutrition was of utmost importance to elite families like the Gonzagas, given the important role children (and especially males) were expected to play in the survival of their dynasties. Wetnursing was the vehicle of this nutrition, and privileged families chose their wet nurses carefully; but the practice had also become a political issue. Humanists regularly advised women to nurse their own infants and circulated anxious fears about possible social as well as physical dangers to babies who ingested the milk of a lower-class woman. At the same time, elite women faced the pressure to become pregnant again as soon as possible and usually rejected nursing their own babies in order to become fertile again immediately. As noted previously, the wet nurses’ own infants were the likely losers in this economy, since they must have often gone hungry in the bargain. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Blood Parents and Milk Parents: Wet Nursing in Florence, 1300–1500,” in Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 132–64; Julia L. Hairston, “The Economics of Milk and Blood in Alberti’s Libri della famiglia: Maternal Versus Wet-Nursing,” in Medieval and Renaissance Lactations: Images, Rhetorics, Practices, ed. Jutta Gisela Sperling (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 187–212.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 153 wet nurse sought for this period while she is sick. And Your Excellency may rely on me; I will not let any harm come to him from milk.

Letter 220: 1500 September 3 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, explaining more about Federico’s wet nurse.35 This morning I wrote to Your Excellency that because of a slight fever contracted by the wet nurse I was looking for another one for these few days. And so her sister, the wife of Carlo Agnelli, was sent for. The first time, since he was hungry, [the baby] nursed very well for a while. But then he was put in the cradle and slept; and upon waking, when he was taken into her arms again, he looked attentively at her face, then let go of the teat and would never take it again. We think this is because her nipple is not so large as that of his [former] wet nurse. We had him put in the arms of another whom we had also called, and who is the sister of Federico del Castellano’s wife. Having looked at her very carefully, he took her by the nipple, which, since it was larger than that of the other woman, he held onto, and he nursed at her breast. I hope he’ll continue this way. And to increase our happiness, God has willed that today the midwife from Ferrara arrived. She will be just what is needed for the wet nurse who, however, I don’t think is very ill.

Letter 221: 1500 September 20 Mantua To Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, declining to employ the dancing master Ricciardetto.36 I am at present so burdened with dependents that not only am I unable to take on any more, I really must let a few go. I would like to have Ricciardetto in my service, since I know how accomplished he is in dancing and teaching girls how to be graceful.37 But since I have no means for treating him according to his station, I don’t want to offend both him and myself, all the more because these are not times for dedicating oneself to dance.38 In order not to keep him wondering, I am speaking freely with Your Most Reverend Lordship, whom I thank for the

35. AG 2993 libro 11 c. 81r. 36. AG 1993 libro 11 cc. 84v–85r. 37. Graceful movements and dancing skills were important components of feminine education, especially for life at court. On Isabella’s relation to dance, see Luzio, I precettori, 12;.Marina Nordera, “La donna in ballo: Danza e genere nella prima età moderna” (PhD diss., Istituto Universitario Europeo [Fiesole], 2001); Barbara Sparti, “Isabella and the Dancing Este Brides, 1473–1514” in Lynn Matluck Brooks, ed., Women’s Work: Making Dance in Early Modern Europe before 1800 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), 19–48. 38. Isabella refers to the political turmoils of Italy.

154 ISABELLA D’ESTE offer and for the strambotti by Tebaldeo39 you sent me. I commend myself to you always. Fare well.

Letter 222: 1500 October 10 Mantua To Pier Luigi Borgia, regarding his recent creation as cardinal in Rome.40 If I took pleasure in Your Most Reverend Lordship’s secret creation as cardinal in recent days, as you will have understood from my other letter, I leave to you to consider how full of consolation I am now, having learned from a letter that the matter has been made public. Ever since I formed a good friendship with you when you were here visiting the most reverend cardinal legate, your dear departed brother,41 and especially since he died, I have been awaiting this and hoping to renew through you the protection I had at the [papal] court for my needs. And so, both for Your Lordship and for my own interest, I take the greatest possible delight in this publication. I thank you too for the regard you show me by sending me word of it. What remains now is for you to remember to keep me always in mind. And if you know of some way in which I can serve you, you must deign to seek me out; for you will always find me ready to follow through. And I commend myself to you.

Letter 223: 1500 November 23 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting on the children.42 Having looked at your German letters,43 I am sending them back to Your Excellency, so that if you need to see them again you will not be inconvenienced. By the grace of God, I am well, and today I will begin to go out of the house again. Our baby boy is fine, and I think he will soon start to get his teeth, because his gums are a little swollen. Eleonora, to whom I gave the pasta things you sent her, thanks you;44 and together with her I commend myself to your good graces.

39. Antonio Tebaldeo was a poet with whom Isabella occasionally exchanged verses. See Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:81, 2:87–91. 40. AG 2993 libro 12 c.7r. At times, the pope created cardinals but delayed announcing their creations for political reasons. Pier Luigi was created secretly as cardinal in the consistory of 20 March 1500, published in the consistory of 28 September, and issued the red hat on 2 October. See CHRC. 41. Giovanni Borgia. 42. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 7r. 43. littere alemane: Perhaps letters in German that Francesco had sent home to Mantua for translation, or letters simply from Germany which Francesco had shared without first having copies made. 44. It is not clear what these cose de pasta were. Possibly they were sweets, but they could also have been toys or novelties made of dough.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 155 Letter 224: 1500 November 27 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, declining his invitation to visit Rome for the Jubilee.45 By word from my illustrious lord consort and through the letter from Your Excellency, I learned how lovingly you have invited me to observe the Jubilee. For this I remain much obliged to you, and I thank you very much. But having considered well the expenses I would incur if I wanted to go to Rome, I find honestly that I would spend no less than a thousand or eight hundred ducats. If I limit things as much as possible, reducing my group to just a quarter, it could still not be done for under two hundred ducats.46 And since I find myself completely out of funds due to the heavy expenses I have had in these years, and also deeply in debt, I would not know where to find them. And so I hope Your Lordship and the Lord God will forgive me, understanding both my duties and my good intentions. I hope that during Lent when the Jubilee is over, His Holiness, who is so gracious with indulgences, will confirm my confession, on the authority of which I will receive absolution for my sins and errors.47 In this way, I will receive the benefit without spending so much. If I had come, I would have done everything possible to bring the venerable Sister Osanna with me.48 When I spoke with her, she said that to visit the venerable Sister Lucia49 and to please you, she would go to any lengths, though she would not willingly [make this trip], because some years ago she made a decision, really a half-vow, never to leave Mantua again. She thought—to use her own words—that such a wicked person as herself should not be going about. Nonetheless, if I had come, I would have convinced her and brought her along by invoking

45. AG 2993 libro 12 cc. 8v–9r. 46. …non spenderia mancho de mille aut octocento ducati a limitarla più che potesse. In modo che dovendo pagare el quarto o venire a compositione non si faria cum mancho de ducento ducati. 47. In Catholic Jubilee (or Holy) years, which have been declared with irregular historical frequency since their beginning (probably in 1300), penitent Christians who make the pilgrimage to Rome are eligible for a plenary indulgence, by virtue of which all of their previous sins may be entirely forgiven. See Herbert Thurston, “Holy Year of Jubilee,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), . 48. Osanna Andreasi was a devout woman in Mantua who, though not a nun, was attached to the Dominican order. She was a counselor to Isabella and famous well beyond Mantua. Osanna was reputed to have received the stigmata and to have a gift for prophecy. After Osanna’s death in 1505, Isabella had a tomb erected to honor her. Molly Bourne, “Osanna Andreasi tra casa, chiesa e corte: rapporti con i principi Gonzaga,” in Osanna Andreasi da Mantova 1449–1505: Tertii Praedicatorum ordinis diva, ed. Gabriella Zarri and Rosanna Golinelli Berto (Casandreasi, 2006), 31–37; Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:79, 255, 275; 2:139, 312; Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage, 17–44. 49. Lucia Brocadelli da Narni was a Dominican tertiary, a mystic who was said to be marked by stigmata that opened every Friday: Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 152; Adriano Prosperi, “Brocadelli (Broccadelli) Lucia,” DBI 14 (1972).

156 ISABELLA D’ESTE the command that Your Excellency had sent me. I will send you the litter50 you were asking me for. And to your good grace I commend myself always.

Letter 225: 1501 March 3 Mantua To the queen of Hungary, paying respects and pledging service.51 Besides the close family bond I share with Your Majesty for having been born into that most serene house, the loving gestures and affection I received from you during your stay in Ferrara move me to love you and hold you in singular reverence. Thus I cannot let anyone set out in your direction without letters from me to Your Majesty. Since Jacomino Trombetta, my most illustrious lord consort’s presenter of this letter, is being transferred there, I wanted to pay my due respects by visiting Your Majesty with this letter of mine and kissing your hand. I assure you that I, as much as any other person in this world, am at your disposal for whatever needs you might have. To your good grace I commend myself always.

Letter 226: 1501 March 3 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, thanking her for a gift for Federico, discussing lost and delayed letters, and acknowledging news of the capture of Dorotea Malatesta.52 I got Your Ladyship’s letters from the castellan who returned from there, and received also the little she-mule you sent to us for the baby. Since it could not have pleased either the lord marchese or me more than it did, it seemed to me very a propos. And so, I thanked you via letters from me to Your Ladyship and sent them with Bastiano the servant, who happened to be going out your way just then. But because of an accident in which he nearly perished in the Po River, he lost those letters along with every other thing he had with him.53 Now, since I have the availability of this messenger, I wanted to repeat again my thanks to Your Ladyship, having been unable to do so up to now because after the situation just described, Benedetto Capilupi has been ill up to this time, in which period, since I was in 50. lectica. 51. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 22r. Isabella’s maternal aunt, Beatrice d’Aragona, married Hunyadi Mátyás (Matthias Corvinus), king of Hungary, in 1476. Mátyás died in 1490 leaving no legitimate offspring, just as he was about to name as heir to his throne his illegitimate son, János. Beatrice, who had opposed this succession and wanted to reign herself, sought to keep power by marrying the son of King Ladislao Jagellone of Poland, but the marriage was annulled in 1500 when Ladislao claimed he had been coerced into it. At that point, Beatrice abandoned Hungary and returned to Italy. She died in Naples in 1508. See Edith Pàsztor, “Beatrice d’Aragona, regina d’Ungheria,” DBI 7 (1970). 52. AG 2993 libro 12 cc. 22v–23r. 53. Here and in the brief explanation that follows, the letter illustrates some of the practical difficulties of transporting mail reliably from town to town.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 157 Ferrara, I had no other chancellor who was informed of the earlier commission.54 Hence this lateness is not due to my not recognizing my duty. I received additional letters from Your Ladyship, and from these I understood the distress you are feeling at the capture of Madonna Dorotea.55 At this news, truly in every respect, I felt, and feel, the same sorrow that Your Ladyship herself feels. Nonetheless, since all possible efforts have been made to save her and none of them has come to any good effect, I urge Your Ladyship, since there is no other remedy to be found, to be patient and to leave off all sadness and mourning, so that this will not in turn result in harm to your person, and thus a double misfortune.

Letter 227: 1501 March 10 Mantua To Michele Vianello, negotiating terms for Giovanni Bellini’s work.56 If Giovanni Bellini will come down to one hundred ducats to do that work you spoke with him about, we will be satisfied with the price. But the time frame of eighteen months seems to us too long, because since we want to see our camerino finished soon, it would be annoying if we had to wait so long. And so we would be grateful if you would urge him to shorten the time, reducing it to one year. Even if he has the project of the palace of San Marco on his hands, being the good maestro he is he will be able to steal away some time to good advantage if he wants to. If he will be satisfied with one year, as we have said, then we are content for

54. Capilupi, Isabella’s trusted secretary, is here referred to as her chancellor. For security reasons as well as habit, personal trust, and convenience, Isabella tried to restrict the duties of her personal secretary to one man. On the Gonzaga chancery, see Ferrari, “La cancelleria gonzaghesca”; Lazzarini, “Peculiaris magistratus.” 55. Dorotea Malatesta of Rimini, wife of the Neapolitan condottiere Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, resided in Urbino while her husband, as Captain General of the Venetian infantry, defended the Friulian front against possible attacks by Turkish forces. On 13 February 1501, while traveling across Borgia occupied Romagna, she and two of her ladies-in-waiting were kidnapped by Spanish soldiers, who killed those in her retinue who did not flee. The ensuing ordeal became a political tangle for the Venetian Republic, caught between the injured captain, the Borgias, and the papacy. Dorotea’s fate remained unknown until October, when it was learned that she was alive. She was freed more than a year later by Pope Alexander VI’s successor, Julius II. Though the facts remain murky, Cesare Borgia appears to have been complicitious, if not responsible, in the affair. See Raissa Teodori, “Malatesta, Dorotea,” DBI 68 (2007); and Condottieri di ventura. 56. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 24r. Here begins Isabella’s concerted effort to pursue a painting by Bellini for her studiolo. For a digest of the well-known correspondence regarding paintings for Isabella’s studiolo, see Appendix 2 by Clifford M. Brown in Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 280–301. For translations of several letters in this exchange, see Kenneth Gouwens, ed. The Italian Renaissance: The Essential Sources (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 224–30. A more detailed digest regarding Isabella’s negotiations with Bellini for this painting in particular may be found in J. M. Fletcher, “Isabella d’Este and Giovanni Bellini’s ‘Presepio,’ ” Burlington Magazine 113, no. 825 (1971): 703–13.

158 ISABELLA D’ESTE you to conclude the deal at one hundred ducats. You will be doing something we appreciate. We offer ourself to your pleasure.

Letter 228: 1501 March 26 Mantua To Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi [Antico], thanking him for a sculpture and sending a gift.57 For the puttino with the thorn, we consider ourself indebted not only to the most reverend lord our uncle,58 but also to you who made it; hence we thank you as well as we can. As a demonstration of our grateful spirit, but not as your reward, we are sending one of our bordered velvet dresses so that you will give it to your wife, whom we have already understood from you that you love more than yourself.59 Since we are convinced that you continue to feel this way, we wanted to please her even before pleasing you, though you will understand that we do not consider this to be anything worthy of your merits. To your pleasure we commend ourself.

Letter 229: 1501 March 27 Mantua To Friar Pietro da Novellara, inquiring whether Leonardo da Vinci is in Florence.60 If Leonardo the Florentine painter is at present in Florence, we pray Your Most Reverend Paternity please find out what kind of life he is living, meaning whether he has begun some new work as we have been told, and what that work is. Then, if 57. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 27v. This sculpture is the Spinario or “Thorn-puller,” probably identifiable as the one now held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Figuring a seated boy pulling a thorn from his foot, the piece is based on a celebrated and oft-copied original now in the Capitoline museum in Rome. Campbell (Cabinet of Eros, 102–3) suggests that Isabella’s interest in this and other boyish figures had erotic and maternal as well as antiquarian dimensions. On Antico more generally, see Brown, “ ‘Purché la sia cosa che representi antiquità’ ”; Manfred Leithe-Jasper, “Isabella d’Este und Antico,” in Ferino-Pagden, “La Prima Donna del Mondo”; Alessandro Luzio, “Ancora Leonardo da Vinci e Isabella d’Este,” Archivio storico dell’arte 1 (1888): 181–85. 58. Ludovico Gonzaga. On Ludovico as collector of antiquities, see Sally Hickson, “Un concorrente per le collezioni antiquarie di Isabella d’Este: Ludovico Gonzaga e i vasi medicei,” in Bini, Isabella d’Este, 155–66. 59. It is not clear whether Isabella is sending a dress made under her direction or one she has herself worn. Since clothing was often passed from a mistress to her ladies or taken apart for reuse of its components in a new garment, the second possibility is most likely. The cost of fabric and the lavish designs of Isabella’s clothing was considerable, and most any woman would have been more than grateful to receive even the used item. 60. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 28r. This chalk drawing now resides in the Louvre museum in Paris. See Charles Yriarte, “Les relations d’Isabelle d’Este avec Léonard de Vinci,” Gazette des beaux arts 30, no. 37 (1888): 121–131. Leonardo fled Milan in 1499 when the French invaded that city. En route to Venice, he stopped in Mantua, where it is believed he executed the portrait to which Isabella alludes.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 159 you think that he will have to stay some time there, speak to him as though Your Reverence himself were interested, and find out whether he would accept a commission to do a painting for us for our study. If he were willing, we would allow him his choice as to the subject matter and the time frame. If you find him to be negative, try at least to persuade him to make us a little painting of the Madonna, devout and sweet as is his natural style. Then ask him to please send us another sketch for our portrait, because our most illustrious lord consort gave away the one he left here with us. For all this we will be no less grateful to Your Reverence than to Leonardo himself. We offer ourself most ready to do your pleasures, and we commend ourself to your prayers.

Letter 230: 1501 April 13 Mantua To Count Albertino Boschetto, on finding a husband for his daughter Giovanna.61 We praise you most highly for your humble desire to arrange a marriage for Giovanna, your daughter and our darling donzella. It seems to us that you are sensitive not only to your fatherly duties, but also to our needs, for we have so many young ladies that we would happily reduce their number if it were to their benefit. It is true that since there are others in the household who, according to our protocol, must precede Giovanna given their ages and longer years of service, we could not place her ahead of them through our own planning. But you, as her father, may negotiate a marriage for her on your own without regard for this order. We would not only be grateful but would be in your debt, given how much we love her. And if a marriage should work out, we would furnish her with clothes and a trousseau62 in such a way that you would understand how dear she is to us. As for money, both because we find ourself completely depleted and because we must honor the agreement we made when we took her into the house, we can issue neither a disbursement nor a promissory note. This is as we explained to Messer Jacomo your son, to whom we submit this information. We offer ourself ever most ready to serve your comforts.

61. AG 2993 libro 12 cc. 33v–34r. On the unhappy fate of this young woman, see Letters 382 and 384 in this edition, of 20 and 30 August 1506. 62. Adrapamenti could refer to many sorts of woven fabrics, from bedding to curtains to wall draperies, all elements of the “bundle” young women assembled to take to their marriage homes.

160 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 231: 1501 April 21 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, thanking him for goslings and telling him of Federico.63 The goslings Your Excellency sent me were most appreciated, but no less welcome were the ones with their plumage,64 some of which I ate and enjoyed very much. I thank you greatly for the gift, and even more for the way you think of me whenever you have something good. Our little son and I are just fine. In the mornings when he is brought to my bed, he goes all around looking to see if he will find Your Lordship!65 To your good grace I commend myself always. I’m sending here included a letter from the vicar of Medole.66

Letter 232: 1501 April 23 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, wondering whether he has ordered cannon fire and describing their son’s baby talk.67 I don’t know what orders Your Lordship gave upon getting the news of the palio in Ferrara, but as I sit here on the terrace at what must be around the seventeenth hour, I heard three bombardment shots not far away, which were then answered here at St. George, with a good interval in between.68 In confirmation of what I had heard, it was reported to me that they had answered the shots from Pontemerlano.69 Though I feel sure that Your Excellency is aware of this matter, nonetheless in the interest of greater security I thought I would send you word of it and commend myself and our big baby boy to your good grace. He is here on the terrace with me, and as he sees people coming and going from St. George, with his little hand and his mouth he calls, “Pa!” and with many clownish antics he keeps me entertained.70 63. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 37. 64. Isabella uses the Venetian word pavaro for gosling: Pizzati. 65. This letter, like many of those regarding the children, offers a rare glimpse of intimate domesticity among the Gonzagas. Isabella’s affectionate tone suggests that her marriage to Francesco was in this period happy, and her anecdotes reveal Federico as a source of fascination and delight to both of his young parents. We also learn from this letter that Francesco and Isabella shared her bedroom often enough for their baby to expect to see his father there in the mornings. 66. Medole is about 30 kilometers northwest of Mantua. 67. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 39r. 68. St. George was the patron saint of Isabella’s native city, Ferrara. The festivities for the day included an annual palio, a series of races in which Francesco Gonzaga regularly sent his horses to compete. On the palio, see Shemek, “Circular Definitions.” 69. Pontemerlano lies within the municipality of Roncoferraro, some thirteen kilometers to the southeast of Mantua. 70. On the transcription of Federico’s baby talk, see Shemek, “ ‘Ci Ci’ and ‘Pa Pa.’ ”

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 161 Letter 233: 1501 April 28 Mantua To the queen of the Romans, thanking her for a dress and sending her perfumes.71 I kiss Your Majesty’s hand. The dress you sent me as a gift was most appreciated, both for its gallantry and for the dignity of its bearer, who considered me worthy of it. I send Your Majesty as many thanks as I can. I thank you no less, however, for the kind and loving offers you made to me in your letter, which I value as no small favor and capital. Lord Giovanni has informed me that Your Majesty wishes to have some perfumes. Though I have nothing yet worthy of you, and these will rather weigh on me for their poor quality, I wanted to err on the side of obedience rather than that of circumspection. And so, may Your Majesty accept these few perfumes not as a gift, but as something sent by a servant to one who commands her, because I desire nothing more affectionately than to obey you. I beg you deign to command me for any of your needs. And to your grace I commend myself.

Letter 234: 1501 May 29 Mantua To Alessandro de Ruffino, requesting a portrait of Alfonso I.72 Girolamo da Sestola told me that you have a portrait of Lord Don Alfonso our brother that is so good and so like him that it could not be more so; and now we wish very much to have it. Considering that you have the comfort of always being able to see His Lordship’s true and natural effigy, which is something our distance denies us, it did not seem to us inappropriate to seek out this portrait, and to pray you not refuse to give it to us. We have no fear that you will, since we know you to be ever most disposed to please us. But if indeed by some excess of affection you were resistant, know that we would go through Don Alfonso, because we are determined to have it. But we will be more grateful if you satisfy our request willingly. We offer ourself ever ready to serve your convenience.

71. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 40r. This letter’s addressee is Bianca Maria Sforza, wife of Maximilian I, king of the Romans; Maximilian would in 1508 gain the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Isabella observes a difference between her rank and that of this cousin, but this formality here stands in tension with the women’s mutual desire to exchange fashions and toiletries. The letter offers a poignant instance of feminine sociality across cumbersome social divides. 72. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 49r. This letter illustrates the function of portraits, for Isabella and many of her contemporaries, as reminders of absent persons. Isabella’s principal criterion in judging a portrait’s quality is in these cases its resemblance to its subject.

162 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 235: 1501 June 3 Mantua To the queen of Hungary, responding to her invitation to Eleonora Gonzaga and announcing that Isabella has given birth to a daughter.73 I kiss your hand. When Your Majesty made me the offer at Ferrara of taking my daughter Eleonora with you if Our Lord God should allow you to return to Hungary, I was calmed and took it as a good sign. And now, having given birth three days ago to a girl, I must see that His Divine Majesty has given her to me, after your offer, to raise your hope of returning home and taking with you the girl who brought you that presentiment. I thought I should inform Your Majesty so that you may know that I had a very easy delivery, and that both my person and my daughter are in good health. I commend myself to your grace and kiss your hand.

Letter 236: 1501 June 10 Mantua To the queen of Hungary, celebrating the birth of a baby boy.74 I kiss your hand. Through Your Majesty’s letter of the 26th of last month, I learned of the happy delivery of the lady queen, at which I took such pleasure and satisfaction as is warranted by reverence and my relation to Her Majesty. And I pray Our Lord God that in his bounty he will give perpetual happiness to mother and son. I thank Your Majesty for deigning to share this good news with me along with that of your good health, which gave me no less joy, given the continuous desire I have for your well-being. I beg you deign to congratulate His Royal Majesty for me and commend me to him most highly. By the grace of God, I am well, together with my most illustrious lord consort and our children. And to the good graces of Your Majesty, kissing your hands, I commend myself.

73. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 53r. Banks Amendola, First Lady, 136, and Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 151, concur that this child is Ippolita Gonzaga. Cartwright, who identifies a baby born in autumn of this year, is mistaken: Isabella d’Este, 1:86. On 19 June 1501, Isabella wrote to her brother, Alfonso I d’Este saying he need offer no apology for not coming to visit her after this birth, since it merited no recognition whatsoever. 74. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 52v. Beatrice d’Aragona, queen of Hungary, retired to Naples following her unsuccessful bid to retain power after the death of her husband, Mátyás Corvinus. The lady queen who has given birth must be Isabella del Balzo, wife of Federico d’Aragona, king of Naples. She gave birth to a son, Cesare, in 1501, who died in infancy.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 163 Letter 237: 1501 June 18 Mantua To Alfonso Trotti, discussing a husband for his sister, Giovanna.75 Since we see that Giovanna, your sister and our dear donzella, is growing both in years and in beauty, we think it is time to consider arranging a marriage for her. But we did not want to proceed to part two without first hearing whether you are favorably disposed. And so we would be pleased if you would inform us whether you would be able to pay out her dowry if a good match should present itself, or how much time you would need to pay it. We know that your father left her only one thousand ducats. But in order to situate her well and honorably, since dowries have gone up between then and now and because she deserves no less than what Eleonora76 received, we would not hesitate to promise two hundred ducats more in your name, in addition to what we will do for her ourself. We are sure that since you are generous and loving, you will not put up any resistance to the idea, aware as you are that if she had been raised until now in your house you would have spent much more than two hundred ducats on her. We mean to do this if we should find a match so good that we could not conclude it without the increase. But if we find an ordinary one, we will not burden you more than is your obligation; and we will proceed with great circumspection regarding your affairs. As we have said, at present we have no match; we are only taking this step to understand your wishes. We offer ourself ever disposed to your comforts.

Letter 238: 1501 June 23 Mantua To Michele Vianello, sending him partial payment for Giovanni Bellini.77 We are sending you through Cipriano our courier twenty-five gold ducats, which you are to give to the painter Giovanni Bellini for now as partial payment on the painting he is supposed to make for our studio. We pray you be willing to get him 75. AG 2993 libro 12 cc. 55v–56r. As in many of her dealings on behalf of women, Isabella is careful in this letter to act as Giovanna’s advocate while also not offending a man who has considerable power over the girl. Since many men were reluctant to pay out dowries left for their sisters by deceased fathers, Isabella pointedly reveals that she is well aware of the size of Giovanna’s rightful dowry. She then proceeds not only to request explicit assurances regarding when it can be paid, but to suggest an increase in the dowry amount. Perhaps anticipating some resistance from Alfonso, she observes how much money his family has in fact saved through Giovanna’s residence in her court, where the girl has been fed, clothed, and educated over these years. The letter attests to Isabella’s surveillance and guardianship of the girl’s few rights, and to her expertise in how the marriage market worked. Girls who found good placements in Isabella’s court stood a much better chance of marrying well than if begrudging brothers were left to decide their fates, but without compliance in the disbursement of dowries by male guardians, good matches were deeply compromised. For two contrasting instances of Isabella’s marriage arrangements for her donzelle, see Rita Castagna, “Una donzella di Isabella d’Este e la ragion di stato,” Civiltà mantovana 11, no. 63–64 (1977): 220–31; Castagna, Un vicerè per Eleonora Brognina. 76. Presumably another lady-in-waiting. 77. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 58r.

164 ISABELLA D’ESTE to begin it, and that you will be pleased to urge him on, so that by the deadline— or earlier if that is possible—he will finish. We would be most grateful to both of you. We offer ourself ever ready to do your pleasure.

Letter 239: 1501 June 23 Mantua To Alessandro Feruffino, upon receipt of Alfonso I d’Este’s portrait.78 Just yesterday, Zachetto presented us with the portrait of Alfonso our brother, along with a letter from you. We were most grateful for it, and we thank you immensely; it seems to us to resemble him as much as anything we have ever seen. Zachetto explained that he was not able to give it to us earlier because of a commission given him by our most illustrious lord consort, which required that he go first to Venice to take care of several matters before coming here. We wanted to let you know this, so that you would understand why we have not sent you a reply until now. We offer ourself to your every pleasure.

Letter 240: 1501 June 25 Mantua To Cristoforo the falconer, sending dogs for him to train.79 We are sending you two Spanish beagles, which we would like you to raise and to train to do things80 like those dogs of our most illustrious lord consort were doing. If they can learn as much and more, we will be grateful. If not, then teach them what you can. They don’t yet have any names. Name them as you like, and be diligent in training them well, for we will not be ungrateful to you.

Letter 241: 1501 June 28 Mantua To Michele Vianello, responding to Giovanni Bellini’s lack of enthusiasm.81 If Giovanni Bellini is as reluctant to paint that historia as you wrote us he is, we will be content to defer to his judgment, so long as he paints some ancient story or fable or invents one that depicts something ancient, with some beautiful meaning.82 We would be most grateful if you urged him to begin, so that we have it by 78. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 58v. 79. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 59v. 80. fare acti. 81. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 62v. On Isabella’s notoriously fraught negotiations with Bellini for a painting, see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:341–61. Bellini would, in fact, never execute the painting discussed in this letter and only after several years would he produce for her a smaller work depicting a Nativity scene, now lost. 82. Here we note Isabella’s taste for antiquities and for edifying themes. See Brown, “ ‘Purché la sia cosa che representi antiquità.’ ”

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 165 the time he agreed to finish it, and earlier if possible. The size of the painting has not changed since you were here and saw the place where it is to be hung. But nonetheless for maximum clarity we are sending you the measure again; and our sculptor Gian Cristoforo will speak to you about that.83 Use in this matter the diligence we hope for in you. We offer ourself ever ready to do your pleasure.

Letter 242: 1501 June 30 Mantua To Galeotto del Carretto, requesting verses from him.84 The visit you paid us with your letter was welcome beyond measure. We accept the excuse that you have not composed any rhymes these days, for it seems to us that a man enveloped in so many travails as these times bring cannot attend to virtues, nor even to matters of love. Nonetheless, when you do compose some verse to give vent to your passions, remember to make us a copy, as we will greatly appreciate it. We thank you for the visit and we offer ourself ever disposed to your pleasure.

Letter 243: 1501 July 8 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, telling him she has received some small volumes by Virgil.85 Into this city have been brought for sale several Virgils printed in small format with fine, almost chancery print, which we like very much; and we hear that some Petrarchs are also starting to be printed. We wish to have a volume of the one 83. Isabella is most likely enclosing with her letter some pieces of string of the length and width of the painting to be produced. Since measures were not standard and uniform at the time, pieces of string were a precise way of communicating information about these dimensions. The sculptor named is, of course, Gian Cristoforo Romano, Isabella’s court sculptor. 84. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 63v. 85. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 65v. See the letters of 26 July and 7 August 1501; 22 November 1502 and 16 May 1505. The most famous Italian printer of the Renaissance, Aldus Manutius (c. 1449–1515), began in 1501 to produce in Venice a series of books in octavo (about eighteen centimeters or seven inches tall at the spine). These little volumes, printed in single-column text rather than in double columns, and lacking the baggage of commentary that had characterized medieval manuscripts and earlier printed books, became very successful among the privileged few who could afford the luxury of purchasing a book. An avid reader and ever aware of new things, Isabella refers in this letter to the very first of these celebrated Aldine octavos, which was an edition of Virgil’s Aeneid. She knew which works were forthcoming from the press and appreciated the font in which the books were printed, which Manutius invented and which we have come to know as italic. She also took particular interest in the book as tactile and visual object, specifying that she wanted to purchase a copy on vellum (made from calfskin) rather than paper. On Manutius see Martin Davies, Aldus Manutius: Printer and Publisher of Renaissance Venice (Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995; reprint Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999); Martin J. C. Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979).

166 ISABELLA D’ESTE and the other work, meaning one Virgil and one Petrarch in the same format and print. But we would like them to be on good paper. If they are going to be printed, then please buy them and send them to us, telling us how much they cost so that we can send you back the money. And if they are not yet being printed on good paper, try to find out whether they will be so in a few days, and do the same for the works of Ovid. You will be doing us a great pleasure. Be well.

Letter 244: 1501 July 10 Mantua To “Alfonso,” regarding plans for her studiolo library, and requesting the works of Niccolò Lelio Cosmico.86 To embellish our studiolo, we are taking care to have the works of every modern author, whether Latin or vernacular. We understand the late Messer Cosmico to be among the best of these, and since you were his dear disciple and heir, we are persuaded that you must have all or most of his works, or know where they are. We are sending Bernardino Mazzoni there for this reason. We pray you be willing to consign to him what you have of Cosmico’s, and to inform him if someone else has other things, setting him on the road to getting them. Because if need be, he will go with letters from us to our most illustrious father and brother.87 We will have copies made and send the works back right away. You will be doing something pleasing not only to us, but to the soul of Messer Cosmico, and something laudable in yourself for the honor it will bring to your teacher. On this subject Bernardino will speak to you at greater length. Put the same faith in him that you would in our person. And be well.

Letter 245: 1501 July 26 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, discussing the vellum for an edition of Virgil, an order of beads she awaits, and her continued interest in having a painting by Bellini.88 We have not yet seen the Virgil, because Franceschino says he was not able to bring it. We understood well what you wrote to us about those other books that will be printed on vellum, and we are very pleased. In this city good kid parchment is not available, but we will see to obtaining some from Parma. 86. AG 2993 libro 12 cc. 67r–v. Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 121–22, identify the addressee as Cosmico’s friend, Alfonso Trotti. They also transcribe this letter. The minor Paduan poet and humanist Niccolò Lelio Cosmico, they note, had previously been in the service of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga and Bishop Ludovico Gonzaga, then had established himself in Ferrara. Cosmico died in June of 1500. 87. Ercole d’Este, duke of Ferrara and Alfonso I d’Este, Isabella’s eldest brother. Presumably such letters from the duke and his heir would persuade Ferrarese book owners to lend their volumes for copy by Isabella’s scribes. 88. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 70r.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 167 We await those ebony paternosters, hoping that they will be beautiful.89 If you will urge Messer Michele Vianello to solicit Giovanni Bellini to do our painting, you will please us very much. Be well.

Letter 246: 1501 July 29 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, discussing Federico’s bout with insomnia and illness.90 Almost as soon as Your Lordship left, our baby boy woke up; and he didn’t get back to sleep until around the sixteenth hour. Then he woke up suddenly, all confused. I sent for Master Piero Francesco, who concluded that he was sick with worms and had him rubbed with ointment. And so now, at the nineteenth hour [five hours before sunset] he is fine; and he won’t be ill, as Your Excellency will hear from the doctor, whom I’m sending along with this letter. I asked the baby if he wanted me to commend him to Your Lordship. He replied immediately, “Yeth, yeth!” And so to your good grace I commend him, and myself too.91

Letter 247: 1501 July 30 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, assuring him of Federico’s health.92 At this hour of the night, which is about the seventh [after sunset] I received a letter from Your Excellency in which I sensed the anxiety that you feel over the health of our little son. To mitigate which, I can say that after the discomfort he was in for almost the whole day yesterday, in the evening he calmed down very well, so that now I think I see him returned to his healthy state. He slept peacefully, just as he has tonight, in his usual way. Your aforesaid Excellency shall be minutely informed of his progress. To your good graces I commend myself heartily.

89. The reference is to rosary beads. Paternoster translates directly as “Our Father” (the Lord’s prayer) and, by extension, to the large beads on the rosary. The humble, knotted strings used by medieval faithful to aid in counting a sequence of prayers had evolved by Isabella’s time into strings of beads, which could also be luxury items worn as fashion accessories. Cf. the English bead, from Old English biddan: to pray. 90. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 71r. 91. On the reportage of Federico’s baby talk, see Shemek, “ ‘Ci Ci’ and ‘Pa Pa.’ ” 92. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 71v.

168 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 248: 1501 July 31 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting on Federico and informing him of her recent ban on prostitutes in men’s rooms at court.93 Though last night our baby boy was still a little cranky, neither the doctor nor we women thought he had anything wrong. Today he rested well and was all cheerful and pleasant and dressed as normal. So we can only say that his teeth were causing that minor bout of worms. Your Excellency must remain in good spirits, therefore, since our boy is healthy and happy, and he commends himself along with me to your good graces. I ordered the stewards to go from room to room making it understood that from now on no one should dare bring women of ill repute into his room at court, under pain of beheading, in accordance with the ancient rules of this most illustrious house, which Your Excellency is prudently renewing by public example.94 I commend myself eternally to your good grace.

Letter 249: 1501 August 7 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia upon receipt of volumes by Virgil and Petrarch.95 We received the Petrarch, and we got the Virgil as well, both of which please us. Palazzo, our treasurer, will send you the six ducats they cost, as we have directed him to do. We will have the books bound here by a good master craftsman. When the Dante and the Ovid are printed, see that we have them on vellum, which we needn’t bother to send for from Parma as we said we would do earlier, now that you have sent us the Petrarch, because this seems good to us. But you can select them page-by-page, as you did for these, taking care to let them dry very well before they are folded, so that the letters don’t stick to the other side. If you see that we get that hat made of very fine Flanders wool, we will be grateful. Be well.

93. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 74v. 94. On early modern prostitution and the official attempts to control it, see Shemek, “Circular Definitions”; Ghirardo, “Marginal Spaces of Prostitution in Renaissance Ferrara”; Leah Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Jacques Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988). 95. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 78r. Brian Richardson reports that an Aldine Petrarch of 1501 held in the British Library bears the Este and Gonzaga arms and is probably the volume Lorenzo sent Isabella on 3 August 1501, though it has been rebound: Richardson, “Isabella d’Este and the Social Uses of Books,” 307.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 169 Letter 250: 1501 August 7 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing Federico’s first steps.96 I am sending back to Your Lordship the letters from Milan, Florence, Siena, and the Miracles of Flanders; and I thank you greatly for sharing them with me. The news I have to offer Your Excellency is that today our little boy started to walk on his own. He took four steps without being held, though he was carefully watched. He and we were as pleased as one can say, though since he moved with a bit of a wobble it seemed he was playing the drunk. And then when I asked him if he wanted to be commended to Your Lordship, he answered, “Yeth, Pa!” And so, along with him I commend myself to your good grace.

Letter 251: 1501 August 20, Mantua To the vicar of Gonzaga, supporting a woman who is mistreated by her husband.97 We have heard that Zoannegielmo, who is called Gorlino, a crossbowman, has behaved so badly toward lady Jacoma his wife that she has had to leave him. It seems to us that Gorlino is very much in the wrong regarding his wife, who is a decent woman, about which fact we are certain, since she has been in our household. We want and command that with all promptness you compel him to give back all the things that will be described here below, which he received from the aforesaid Jacoma, on pain of owing twice what he got from her. And we want you have him bring it all to Mantua. If he fails to comply we will take such action as to make him regret it. Things referred to above: Four lire in coins One bed weighing about six pesi98 One cushion99 One peso of linen One fur One dark camora One brown blanket One white sciorcha100 A pair of blouses A pair of aprons A pair of linen cloths And in sum, the chest with all the things that are inside it. 96. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 79v. 97. AG 2993 libro 12 cc. 83r–v. 98. The reference is likely to the entire bed, rather than to the mattress alone. 99. Uno cozo: See Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 428, cozo da letto. 100. Term not identified.

170 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 252: 1501 September 4 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara responding to Alfonso I’s engagement to Lucrezia Borgia.101 I can do nothing but rejoice greatly and take extreme delight in the news I received through Your Excellency’s letter on the matrimonial contract drawn between the Most Illustrious Don Alfonso my brother and Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, knowing that in all things you conduct yourself with the greatest wisdom. I hope that this will bring benefit and expansion to your state. I congratulate you most highly, and I thank you for taking the trouble to share the news with me. To Your Highness’s good grace I commend myself always.

Letter 253: 1501 October 21 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, advocating for the daughters of Alessandro Bonvesino.102 The compassion I felt for Alessandro Bonvesino, the baron’s brother, in his poverty moved me to take into my service two of his daughters, one of whom has now been married for several years already, and the other of whom is still a maiden in my household. But this did not mean that the poor man was left without the burden of other daughters. And so I would like to place one with the most illustrious 101. AG 2993 libro 12 c. 87v. Isabella’s expression of contentment about her brother’s marriage into one of the most notoriously violent families of Italy is a polite formality. Her misgivings about the match were many, and she was already cultivating an intense rivalry with her legendarily beautiful sister-in-law. Lucrezia, however, as the natural daughter of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia), represented a powerful alliance for the Ferrarese court. It is to this “expansion” of her father’s state that Isabella refers. On Lucrezia, see Laura Laureati, “Da Borgia a Este: Due vite in quarant’anni,” in Lucrezia Borgia: Ferrara-Palazzo Bonacossi 5 ottobre–15 dicembre 2002, ed. Laura Laureati (Ferrara: Ferrara Arte, 2002), 19–75. For a biography, see Maria Bellonci, Lucrezia Borgia: La vita e i suoi tempi (Milan: Mondadori, 1939); trans. Bernard Wall and Barbara Wall as The Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia (London: Phoenix Press, 2000). Subsequent citations from this text will refer to the translation. On this marriage and the wedding, see also Edmund G. Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara: A Study in the Poetry, Religion and Politics of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Haskell House, 1968; original New York: E. P. Dutton, 1904), 382–423. Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 153–54, cites several letters to Isabella from correspondents in Ferrara who reported to her on Lucrezia’s activities and preparations for the wedding. A member of Niccolò da Correggio’s staff named Prete promised Isabella, “I will follow Madonna Lucrezia as a body follows its shadow, and you may be certain that I will be able to tell you what size footprint she leaves on the ground; and where eyes cannot penetrate, I will go with my nose [. . .] This Lady dresses with her chest covered up to the neck with kerchiefs; she goes about without curls, all modest; she willingly dances new dances, and she carries herself so gently that she seems not to be moving.” For her part, Lucrezia quizzed Laura Bentivoglio, wife of Giovanni Gonzaga and resident at Ferrara, about Isabella’s wardrobe, while Laura in turn reported back to Isabella and conveyed Lucrezia’s readiness to please her future sister-in-law with any gifts or items she might desire. In subsequent days, Isabella’s letters include orders for many yards of cloth for dressmaking to prepare her wardrobe for the wedding. 102. AG 2993 libro 13 c. 2v.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 171 Lucrezia, my sister-in-law. Since I am well informed regarding the good nature of these girls, I thought I would pray Your Excellency to accept one of them out of love for me. I have no doubt that the aforesaid Lady Lucrezia my sister-in-law will be pleased with her, for all of the sisters are as graceful and as inclined to service as one could wish. I would consider this a special favor from Your Most Illustrious Lordship, to whose grace I commend myself always.103

Letter 254: 1501 November 16 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, on the death of the lord prefect.104 I took fitting displeasure at the death of the lord prefect, both for the friendship there was between him and my lord, and for the close relation he had with Your Ladyship, in which I know he was completely loving and faithful. But since there is no other remedy, after you have done your mournful and natural duty, you must remember yourself, and adapt to the will of God. You must try to keep yourself healthy, so that when you are ready you can come into this territory, where I await you with the greatest longing. What I can write to Your Excellency at present is that my lord and all his siblings and children, together with me, are well. Federico is starting to walk on his own and to pronounce a few words, but he understands and notices everything. I thank Your Ladyship for notifying me of the sorrowful event, and as is my duty I send my condolences to the most reverend prefectress, to Your Ladyship, and to your consort.

Letter 255: 1501 December 20 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, thanking him for pheasants and quoting little Federico.105 I thank Your Excellency for the twelve pheasants you sent me, which I will enjoy in your love. But I am just as ungrateful to those irresponsible people who killed them and who really deserve every punishment.106 When Capilupi asked our baby boy if he wanted him to write Your Excellency anything from him, he replied with certain words in his own language. Then, looking at [Capilupi], he kissed 103. Isabella notably does not write to Lucrezia herself, presumably because she has not officially entered the court as wife to Alfonso and because Lucrezia’s household budget would be largely dictated by Ercole as reigning duke and father of the groom. 104. AG 2993 libro 13 c. 7r. Giovanni della Rovere died 6 November 1501. He was survived by his wife, Giovanna da Montefeltro (Elisabetta’s sister-in-law) and by their son, Francesco Maria della Rovere, who would inherit the duchy of Urbino and marry Isabella’s daughter, Eleonora. 105. AG 2993 libro 13 c. 17r. 106. The suggestion is that the birds were confiscated from poachers.

172 ISABELLA D’ESTE the trunk in which he had been placed, in such a way that we could see he meant that he commended himself to you and kissed Your Lordship’s hand.107 Which I do too!

Letter 256: 1502 January 22 Mantua To Girolamo da Sestola, requesting toilet accommodations.108 If we don’t have that little room of Maestro Francesco’s, which can be accessed through the camera della capella that has been assigned to us, we don’t know how we can lodge there. You know that since there are only those two rooms, we would have no place to put our facilities, because everyone gets into that little room, and some time my lord father or my brothers could come that way past the chapel as they have already done in the past, and they could suddenly find us using the facility. Hence please be cooperative and go to any length to get us that little room, talking with the lord or Don Alfonso if you need to. If you are concerned not to let on that you gave us this information, arrange to have our Giovan Maria da Porto be the one who initiates the thing, because we are writing him that he should do whatever you tell him to do in this case. To the rest of your letter no reply is necessary, except to thank you for your diligence in our affairs.

Letter 257: 1502 January 22 Mantua To Giovan Maria da Porto, instructing him to set up a toilet facility for her.109 To accommodate our lodgings, which you will have seen are very tight, to our person, we would like to be given a certain little room of Messer Francesco da Castello’s, which is beneath the chapel vestibule; and we would like there to be made a stairway, so that we can enter and use it for our natural needs. We want you to be informed by Girolamo da Sestola regarding what you must do to get it, and to do as he instructs you, using all diligence to assure that we are accommodated. See also whether a stairway can be made for going from our lodgings to the wardrobe below without passing through the courtyard, because it would be very inconvenient if we could not get something when we wanted it. For this 107. This letter presents Capilupi in the act of taking dictation from Isabella, probably in her apartments since Federico is described nearby, playing in a trunk. It illustrates one, routine context in which Isabella’s letters were produced, while it also conveys her secretary’s familial status as a man who spent time daily with the marchesa and shared many moments of her private life. For discussion of this scene, see Shemek, “ ‘Ci Ci’ and ‘Pa Pa.’ ” 108. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 24r–v. Girolamo was Isabella’s agent in Ferrara. This letter and the following one regard accommodations for her during her stay there for the wedding of Alfonso I d’Este to Lucrezia Borgia, which would take place in February. 109. AG 2993 libro 13 c. 25r.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 173 reason we are sending you the present courier. We will be there on Thursday, if all goes as planned.

Letter 258: 1502 January 29 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing plans for receiving Lucrezia Borgia as bride and a new theater in the ducal palace of Ferrara.110 The lord my father came to my room today after dinner to discuss the order of entry for the bride, which will proceed thus: Tuesday, Lord Don Alfonso and I will go with a small number of people by boat to Malalbergo to meet her and accompany her to Lord Alberto [d’Este’s] country house, where she will spend the night. We will return home, where I will go with the duchess of Urbino; she will return then on Wednesday to keep the bride company. Madonna Lucrezia Bentivoglio will go with some of these ladies to wake her and follow her in her entry. I will remain with the others to await her at the court staircase. It’s true that in order to see the entry I will go to the tax house,111 and once she has passed, since she will be surrounded by all of Ferrara, I will return to court. Once we had settled these details, my lord father took me to see the hall where they will have the comedies, which is one hundred forty-six feet long and forty-six wide.112 In front of the piazza and also on the sides are thirteen tiers. 110. A transcription of this letter appears in Carlo D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense moglie a Francesco Gonzaga: Aggiuntivi molti documenti che si riferiscono alla stessa signora, all’istoria di Mantova, ed a quella generale d’Italia, Archivio storico italiano, ossia raccolta di opere e documenti finora inediti o divenuti rarissimi riguardanti la storia d’Italia, Appendice, tomo 2 (Florence: G. P. Vieusseux, 1845), , 300–1. Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e i Borgia,” 537–48, describes D’Arco’s transcriptions as “full of errors,” and discusses the festivities and cites selectively from a number of correspondents who reported to Francesco. Since Isabella’s mother was now dead, official welcome of Alfonso I d’Este’s new bride fell to her. Here begins a series of eyewitness participant letters from Isabella to her husband, who remained in Mantua, for reasons of state security. Running from 29 January to 7 February, her descriptions of people, ceremonies, spaces, clothing, and spectacles associated with this state wedding are among the most valuable records of the period for such events. Festivities for the wedding of Alfonso I d’Este to Lucrezia Borgia included theatrical productions. Ercole d’Este’s theater for comedies was a state-of-the-art facility unfamiliar to most Italians at the time, hence Isabella’s detailed description of this important moment in theater history. D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 301, remarks that the Venetian diarist Marin Sanudo must have had a verbatim copy of this letter, so similar is his own, secondhand description to Isabella’s. Laureati, “Da Borgia a Este,” 41, suggests that both Isabella and Sanudo rely on some sort of official press release, though other witnesses describe different details. 111. casa della gabella: presumably the reference is to a balcony off the offices of the tax collectors, which was located inside the ducal palace. See Thomas Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole d’Este (1471– 1505) and the Invention of a Ducal Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 27–28. 112. Ercole d’Este’s theater hall was erected in the Palazzo della Ragione. On his passion for theater and on performance spaces in Ferrara, see Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 257–64.

174 ISABELLA D’ESTE Two low partitions will divide the women from the men, with the women in the middle and the men on each side. The ceiling and the tiers are covered with green, red, and white fabric. On the other side, opposite the tiers, is a wooden platform rimmed like the walls of a city and as tall as a man.113 On this are the houses for the comedy, which are six and are not positioned in the usual way.114 Five thousand people are expected. The foreigners will be the first to occupy the tiers; then if space remains, the gentlemen of Ferrara will be seated. On the hall’s ceiling are five coats-of-arms: the papal arms in the center, to the right those of the king of France, to the left the Este ducal arms, to the right the Borgia and Este arms together, and to the left the old arms of the family, meaning the halfblack, half-white eagle. I saw nothing else worthy of notice. The floor beams are still bare wood, and I don’t know whether they will be covered with anything else. I will share whatever else I see here daily with Your Excellency. These gentlemen are preparing for a regatta of clothing and gold chains, but above all the women will be outdoing themselves for finery. These past two days I have not left the house for all the visits I have had from gentlemen and ladies. This evening we will go to dinner at the house of Messer Ercole Strozzi. I have sent five hundred oysters along with those who are returning on the barge; they are for you to enjoy in my love. I commend myself to your good grace, praying you please kiss my baby a hundred times for me.

Letter 259: 1502 January 30 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing the arrival in Ferrara of ambassadors for her brother’s wedding to Lucrezia Borgia.115 I wanted to send back Giovanni and Pietro on the boat, as I wrote Your Excellency in another letter, but when they found this out they hid, so that we never could find them; they only reappeared after the ships had left. They then presented themselves to me with so much begging that I had to let them stay here; but I put Messer Oldrato in charge of keeping an eye on them. I wanted to let you know all about it, so that you won’t be surprised not to see them arrive on those barges. 113. murata: Isabella uses a word that means bulwark or rampart, but she seems to refer here to the stage. 114. sopra gli sono le case de le comedie, che sono sei, non avantagiate dal consueto. 115. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 30 r–v. Isabella’s reporting on the wedding of Alfonso and Lucrezia is extraordinarily rich, not least because it provides the kind of detail that mattered to status-conscious elites who knew how to read the significance of social ritual. As she captures the flurry of activity and excitement that was building around this event (even among her servants), she attends to such hierarchical details as the order of arrivals, the degree of ceremony accorded each group’s welcome, and where each company is lodging. As we see from her account, guests for such a large celebration were housed in the palaces of Ferrarese elites.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 175 The entry procession for the bride into this city is as I wrote Your Excellency in my other letter, except that yesterday Lord Don Alfonso left for Bentivoglio and will stay there tonight. Then tomorrow he will return to Ferrara with Her Ladyship. With His Lordship went Signor Borso with about ten horses. For now I have nothing more that is newsworthy for Your Excellency, except that the Florentine ambassadors arrived the same day as I did. And since they came all of a sudden, no one was there to meet them. They are lodging in the house of Antonio Maria Guarnero.116 The Sienese arrived the day before yesterday and so did the Venetians, who were met by the lord my father with his whole court. The Sienese are in the house of Borso Pendaglio, and the Venetians in the house of Count Uguzone.117 The ambassador of the king of France,118 who is the lieutenant of Piacenza, arrived yesterday evening, met by the lord and all the court, and is lodging in the home of Messer Bonifacio Bevilacqua. Some of these ambassadors do not have very honorable retinues. I commend myself to the good graces of Your Excellency, whom I pray to kiss our little boy, for yourself and for me.

Letter 260: 1502 January 30 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, recounting a meeting with a representative of the French ambassador, describing a carriage ride through Ferrara, reporting on men who were severely injured, and predicting that this wedding will be quite a bore.119 In order not to leave Your Excellency for a single day without letters from me, I will give you an account of my day’s events. The French ambassador, who is called Monsignore Rocca Bertì, the lieutenant of Piacenza, sent to me today Count Niccolò da San Vitale, who is the son-in-law of Niccolò da Correggio (who is here with his entourage), to find out whether he could come to visit me. I replied that he could come at his pleasure, because out of reverence to His Most Christian Majesty [King Louis XII] I would see him very gladly. He arrived at the twentyfirst hour [three hours before sunset]. I came as far as the loggia to meet him and welcomed him with a pleasant demeanor. With great humanity and reverence, he touched my hand and bowed nearly to the ground.120 We went inside my chamber and sat talking for about two hours, in conversations that were always about Your 116. Guarnero was an agent in service to Duke Ercole d’Este: Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 440. 117. Probably Ferrarese nobleman Uguzone de’ Contrari. 118. Philippe de la Roche Bertie. 119. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 31r–32r. 120. Evident here is Isabella’s attention to shows of deference and honor. As we see in what follows, however, her description regards a political context of which she and Francesco are both highly aware. In this case, she seems to want to lay out for her husband the relation between the ambassador’s formal reverence to the Gonzagas and his interest in obtaining a political concession. In fact, this ambassador

176 ISABELLA D’ESTE Excellency and during which he showed himself to be your partisan. He said that if he had not traveled in such haste he would have taken the road through Mantua so that he could visit you and give you a beautiful thoroughbred racehorse, which he said he would send in any case, knowing that you will like it. Continuing the conversation, he told me that he thought he would see you here, at least in disguise,121 and that if he had met you he wanted to make a plea on behalf of Messer Evangelista. He asked me, since he could not do so, if I would carry out this function in his name, praying you to accept Messer Evangelista once more into your service, because he is willing to put himself to the test, and if he should fall short he would willingly undergo any torture. I replied that I would not accept this task, because I didn’t believe that Messer Evangelista wanted to put himself to the test, since he fled twice, and because Your Excellency had clear information from the most trusted sources that he had—and some of his associates had—poison. To this he replied that those other fellows could have made this confession in order to save themselves, and not because it was true, because to him it did not seem plausible. I took the trouble to explain the situation well, giving the reasons I had already heard from Your Excellency, but he continued to speak in his favor, and I understood that he did so with conviction. But he was not even able to speak of Messer Evangelista except to protest. Though I denied my service to the aforesaid ambassador on this matter, I did not want to keep this from Your Excellency and wanted to notify you. After these conversations, he left me, and I took a carriage ride around the city. I saw the arches that are being erected in certain cantons, the beauty of which I won’t describe out of honor for myself.122 Then I met one of the carts from Francolino123 full of Venetians; they were maneuvering through Ferrara making a most ridiculous show. I returned home at the twenty-fourth hour [sunset] and I had no sooner arrived upstairs than I ran to the window in response to some cries. I saw two men on the other side who were up on a window of the passageway to decorate it with some greenery. They were badly injured, and one of them was in mortal danger. Now I shall hurry to say the Office for dinner, then go to sleep early, because to my great displeasure I must get up at the break of day in order to take the boat to meet the bride at Vallalbergo with only my gentlemen and ladies. The lord my father will then come after dinner with the large bucentaur as far

plays to Gonzaga tastes by offering Francesco a prize racehorse. This letter also offers a find example of the “power sharing” of which Cockram writes in Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga. 121. Nobles often attended events or traveled incognito. This expedient served to protect both their states, where they could pretend to be in vigilant residence, and their treasuries, which through this ruse were spared the exorbitant outlays of wardrobe and retinue expected of princes on official travel. 122. The tone here is unclear and may be snide. 123. Francolino is a hamlet outside Ferrara.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 177 as Torre della Fossa,124 where the bride will enter. Then we will escort her to the country house of Lord Alberto, as I already wrote to Your Excellency. After tomorrow she will make her entrance according to the established order. I suspect that aside from the great pomp of gold chains and rich clothing, this will not be such a beautiful show as people expect, because I see neither organization nor set-up for it. The best thing to see will be the great number of foreigners who are here and who keep arriving even now. We brothers and sisters are arranging to do the morning song for the bride and groom; we’re doing it secretly, though, and with few people. I have no other festivity duties until Wednesday, except to commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace in this meantime, praying you kiss our baby boy for me.

Letter 261: 1502 February 1 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing the arrival of Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrarese territory and her ceremonial welcome as Alfonso I’s bride.125 It was after the fourteenth hour [ten hours prior to sunset] when I boarded the ship this morning, meaning Lord Don Alfonso’s boat, together with Don Giulio [d’Este] and just my gentlemen and ladies.126 At Torre della Fossa I disembarked and boarded a rowboat, getting almost as far as Malalbergo before we met the bride. She was on a barge with Don Ferrante and Don Sigismondo and a few others; the duchess of Urbino was also there. We came up alongside the ship, and after we had bowed to each other, I entered her boat with a glad expression, along with just Madonna Laura and the signora.127 Once we had embraced, we were on our way, and though the bucentaur was there they didn’t want to get in it in order 124. A hamlet in the municipality of Ferrara, about six kilometers from the city proper. 125. AG 2993 liro 13 cc. 32v–33v. Alfonso’s brothers Ferrante, Sigismondo, and Ippolito d’Este had served as proxies for Alfonso at the official wedding, which was solemnized in Rome on 30 December 1501. On that occasion, Lucrezia received a chest of jewels worth 70,000 ducats from her new fatherin-law. The brothers then escorted the bride (along with her company of one hundred and eighty attendants) to Ferrara, stopping in cities along the way (Terni, Spoleto, Foligno, Gubbio, Urbino, Pesaro, Imola, Bologna) where, by papal command, Lucrezia was met with royal honors. At Urbino she was hosted by the Duchess Elisabetta, who then joined the group for the rest of the journey to Ferrara. At Pesaro, she stayed in the castle that had been her residence when she was married to Giovanni Sforza. Among the accounts of the wedding, see Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 201–26; Johann Burchard, At the Court of the Borgia, Being an Account of the Reign of Pope Alexander VI Written by His Master of Ceremonies, trans. Geoffrey Parker (London: Folio Society, 1963), 192–99; Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara, 415–23; Laureati, “Da Borgia a Este”; also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:193–98; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 155–56. 126. Isabella’s reduced company indicates that this was a relatively intimate gathering. 127. Laura (Bentivoglio) Gonzaga, wife of Francesco’s brother Giovanni and marchesa of Crotone: Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:200; Laureati, “Da Borgia a Este,” 40.

178 ISABELLA D’ESTE not to waste time. Around the twenty-third hour [one hour before sunset], we reached Torre della Fossa, where the lord my father stood waiting on the banks. The crossbowmen were on horseback in a row behind the moat, dressed in red and white livery, and there were seventy-five of them. The lord’s whole court was there, and when Madonna Lucrezia disembarked, he took her by the hand and kissed her, but she first wanted to kiss His Excellency’s hand even though he tried to discourage her. We then entered the large bucentaur, where all the ambassadors were, and they came to meet her and touch her hand. We were seated in the following manner: the bride between the French and Venetian ambassadors, the other Venetian ambassador next to the French, I between the Venetian ambassador who was next to the bride and the Florentine ambassador, the duchess of Urbino between him and the Sienese, and the Lucchese ambassador next to him. The lord my father and Don Alfonso were up above, talking of various things and entertaining themselves with the two allochi or in our language, jesters, who were praising the bride and us other women by shouting, in Spanish rhymes. We arrived at the twenty-fourth hour [sunset] at the country house of Lord Alberto, to the sound of trumpets and gunfire. After we escorted her to her rooms, we all departed, and I took with me in my carriage the duchess of Urbino. I accompanied her to her lodgings, which are those at Ventimiglia, above the loggia. I write nothing about Madonna Lucrezia’s bearing, because Your Lordship has seen her.128 Her clothing was a dress of wrought gold with a crimson satin ruffle and Castilian sleeves. Over that she wore a cape of dark silk that was slit down one entire side and lined with sable. Her chest was covered, as is her fashion, and her blouse was slit down the center. At her neck she wore a string of large pearls, with a balas129 pendant and a pear-shaped pearl below that. On her head a gold cap with no band. Lady Lucrezia Bentivoglio, along with a great number of ladies, received her on the banks of the Po. Don Alfonso’s steward introduced her to Madonna Teodora and twelve Ferrarese maidens dressed in crimson silk gowns and black velvet cloaks lined with black lamb, as her entourage. Her male household has not yet been assigned. She has been assigned five carriages, one of which is covered in gold brocade with four white horses that are worth fifty ducats each; another carriage is covered in dark velvet and has four dark horses, all of them very beautiful; and three others are covered with dark satin, with horses of other different colors. I have not spoken of Don Alfonso at this meeting, because he spent the night at Bentivoglio, as I wrote to Your Excellency, and he returned to Ferrara today.130 But I met him at Torre della Fossa with the lord my father. The duchess 128. Isabella often betrayed a competitive attitude toward her beautiful sister-in-law and clearly sought to avoid complimenting her, as she does here. 129. A rose-red to orange semi-precious gem from a region in northeastern Iran. 130. Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 156, notes that an anxious Alfonso had gone to Castel Bentivoglio to pay his bride a surprise visit before their official first meeting in Ferrara. Cartwright,

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 179 of Urbino is very well and in fine form, and along with me she commends herself to Your Lordship.

Letter 262: 1502 February 2 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing the entry procession for the Borgia– d’Este wedding festivities.131 I will describe the order of this illustrious bride’s entry today and everything I noted that was worthy of report, in as orderly a fashion as possible. Well ahead of the others came my lord father’s seventy-five crossbowmen, on horseback, wearing livery of red and white cloth, with three captains dressed in different ways. Then followed eighty trumpeters, including six of the duke of Romagna132 dressed in livery that was half gold brocade and half white and dark satin. Then came twenty-four musicians: pipers and trombones. Behind these were the courtiers and Ferrarese nobles in no particular order. Among them seventy gold chains were counted, none of which was valued at less than five hundred ducats; many were worth eight hundred, and some even up to twelve hundred. These were followed by the company of the duchess of Urbino, dressed in black velvet and satin. Lord Don Alfonso walked next to Annibale Bentivoglio at the end of this squadron. His Lordship was mounted on a large bay horse outfitted with dark velvet and adorned with great pieces of embossed, beaten gold. He wore livery of gray,133 all covered with scales of beaten gold, which altogether with the horse’s outfit they say is worth six thousand ducats. On his head he wore a black velvet cap banded with beaten gold and trimmed with white feathers; on his legs, short, gray, sumac leather gaiters. He had eight squires: four small ones—meaning little boys—and four men with French-style doublets of gold brocade and dark velvet with brown and flesh-colored stockings. Then came the bride’s company, which included ten pairs of Spaniards in short tunics of gold brocade and black velvet, and capes over them of velvet lined with gold brocade. Some were dressed all in black. Among all these were twelve gold chains, which were not especially large and would compare to those worn in my retinue. Then followed the bishops: the bishop of Adria, the bishop of Comacchio, of Cervia, and two sent by the pope. Next were the ambassadors, walking two-by-two: the Lucchese with one Sienese; the other Sienese with the Florentine;

Isabella d’Este, 1:196, reports that Alfonso stayed with Lucrezia for about two hours. 131. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 34r–35r. For a transcription see D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 301–2. 132. After a violent military campaign to capture territories there, Lucrezia’s brother, Cesare Borgia, had been named duke of Romagna on 15 May 1501 by their father, Pope Alexander VI. 133. Wall and Wall (Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 214) translate bigio here as beige.

180 ISABELLA D’ESTE the two Venetians dressed in long, crimson cloaks of satin lined with panzie;134 the four Roman ambassadors with long cloaks of gold brocade lined with crimson satin. Behind them were six drummers and two clowns dressed in gold brocade and satin of various colors. The bride was under a canopy of crimson satin carried by porters. Preceding her was a large, light gray horse given to her by the lord, which was led by hand and wore trappings of crimson velvet with gold embroidery, and eight footmen in dark silk and gold brocade surcoats with matching stockings. She was mounted on a dark mule adorned in velvet that was all covered with wrought gold and little pegs of beaten gold.135 This was a most beautiful and rich thing. She wore a gown with wide French sleeves, in gold cloth and dark satin intersected by stripes. Over that, she wore a cloak of wrought embossed gold, open down one side and lined with ermine, as were the sleeves of the dress. At her throat she wore a necklace of diamonds and rubies that belonged to my dear departed mother; on her head the cap sent to her in Rome by my lord father along with that necklace. She wore no headband. Six of Don Alfonso’s chamberlains, all dressed differently and wearing thick gold chains, held the reins for her. Outside the canopy, the French ambassador walked alone at her side. Behind came the duchess of Urbino and the lord my father, together. The duchess was to the right, on a dark mule outfitted with black velvet embroidered with wrought gold. She wore a gown of black velvet studded with little pendants of beaten gold depicting astrological signs. Around her neck she had a string of pearls and on her head a gold cap. The lord duke was on a dark horse adorned with black velvet, and he wore a robe of dark velvet. There then followed two ladies: Jeronima Borgia and an Orsini woman, dressed in black velvet; and behind them was Madonna Adriana, a widow who is an old relation of the pope’s.136 The other women were on horseback. Madonna Lucrezia Bentivoglio was in the coach covered with gold brocade. Twelve more carriages full of the bride’s Ferrarese and Bolognese ladies followed this one. Behind were led two more of the bride’s mules, outfitted in black velvet decorated with beaten silver worked in various ways. Fifty-six mules covered with dark and yellow fabric and twelve covered in dark and yellow satin, some of them very rich 134. Panzie [pancie] was “the expensive soft, fine, white fur from an animal’s underbelly” often sewn together in strips to create fur linings: Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 314. 135. Bellonci reports that Lucrezia rode a mule because her stallion had reared in alarm at the fireworks. This is the horse that precedes her in Isabella’s description: Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 215. Caroline P. Murphy observes that women generally rode mules, rather than horses, within urban environments: The Pope’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 89. 136. Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 215, identifies all three of these women as Orsini: Orsina Orsini Colonna, Jeronima Borgia Orsini, and Adriana Mila Orsini. Adriana was the mother of Rodrigo Borgia’s longtime mistress, Giulia Farnese.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 181 as I wrote to Your Excellency before, represented the cantons she passed through, with certain ceremonies that don’t merit mention, and so I did not take note of them. At the twenty-fourth hour [sunset] the procession reached the piazza, where we saw the spectacle of two acrobats descending on ropes, one from the Rigobello tower and the other from the Torre della Ragione. At the steps of the court I and my company and many Ferrarese ladies received the bride. The crossbowmen filled the canopy, and the footmen of my lord father and Don Alfonso competed with each other for the mule; but finally Don Alfonso’s men got it from the ambassadors.137 The Lord Don Alfonso, the duchess of Urbino, I and all the rest were accompanied to the grand salon of the ducal chambers, which are decorated with the house draperies. After staying there all together for a while, we returned to our rooms. I think that tonight they will be accompanied. The bride brought six boys with her today, but they did not enter with her. Of whatever else happens, Your Lordship will be informed. I commend myself to you always, praying you be so kind as to kiss our baby boy for me.

Letter 263: 1502 February 3 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, sending affection for their son Federico and reporting that her brother has consummated his marriage.138 I won’t deny that Your Excellency takes more delight in seeing our little son than I do in these celebrations, because even if they were the most lovely occasion in the world, without the presence of Your Lordship and our little boy, they could not please me. But I had better not see that he doesn’t remember me, because even if he doesn’t do so out of love, he will have to remember me for the bother I will be when I give him so many kisses! So please be so kind as to kiss him sometimes for love of me.139 Last night Lord Don Alfonso slept with Lady Lucrezia his wife, without any preceding ceremony; and from what I have heard, he walked three miles, though 137. Presumably this is a competition for the bride’s mule, as she has just dismounted to be welcomed on the castle steps. 138. AG 2993 libro 13 c. 35v. Transcribed in D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 307. 139. Francesco was more often the person absent from court and from the company of their son. He was accustomed to his wife’s descriptions of Federico, many of which evidently left him feeling deprived of the pleasures of family life. Since this time it was he who remained at home, the marchese mitigated his disappointment at missing the festivities by playfully flaunting his new status as favored parent of the two-year-old heir. On 5 February he wrote to Isabella, “If Your Ladyship thinks little of [Federico], he thinks even less of you, because he can’t even remember who you are.” A few days later, he reported that when he asked Federico what he would do to his mother when she returned, “he began to pound his hands hard on the table: We think he plans to take his revenge.” Cited in Luzio, Isabella d’Este e i Borgia, 77.

182 ISABELLA D’ESTE I have not yet spoken with either of them, nor did we do the mattinata for them as we had planned, because to tell you the truth, this is a frosty wedding.140 I hope that my appearance and that of my company compare favorably among the others. I will surely bring home the palio for gambling, since Spagnolo has already won a hundred and fifty gold pieces from the Jew.141 I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace. Today we will dance until the twenty-second hour [two hours before sunset] and then we will see another comedy.

Letter 264: 1502 February 3 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing costumes and theater productions and telling of thievery among the revelers.142 To give Your Excellency an account of my day today: After breakfast, we escorted the bride from her room and went to the great hall, where there was such a great crowd of people that there was no room to dance, but we danced two dances as well as we could manage. Then my lord father displayed all the costumes that will be used for the five comedies, so that everyone could see they had been specially made for this and that no costume used in one play would be used in another. There are one hundred and ten in all, male and female.143 They are made of sen140. Lucrezia and Alfonso’s wedding was one step toward the solidification of dynastic security and strong ties between the Ferrarese and the papal court. The next step, however, had to be the production of male offspring. Weddings among nobles of their rank were openly monitored to assure that bride and groom were fulfilling their duties in this regard, and Isabella’s euphemism is unambiguous: Alfonso copulated with Lucrezia three times. Given the importance of this matter, ceremonial traditions had developed to mark publicly the night of consummation. Isabella notes here an exception, however: No ceremony was observed before Alfonso and Lucrezia’s retirement to their chambers, nor did she and her siblings visit the newlyweds with songs and bawdy jokes on the morning after the couple’s first night together. Bellonci affirms that Spanish informants had been charged with watching over the couple’s “nocturnal behavior” and reporting back to the pope: Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 218. On elite attitudes toward marriage and reproduction in the period, see Mark Hansen, The Royal Facts of Life: Biology and Politics in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980). 141. The palio was the winner’s banner in traditional Italian civic celebrations such as horse races. Isabella here extends the term as if to say her household will earn the blue ribbon for games of chance. 142. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 36r–37r. Transcribed in D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 306–7. D’Arco dates this letter 3 February 1502, while in the copybook it is dated 5 February. 143. Since at this time, all female parts were played by male actors, Isabella must refer here to male and female characters. The Italian commedia dell’arte (or professional theater) introduced female actors to the stage in the 1540s. See Richard Andrews, “The Renaissance Stage,” in A History of Italian Theatre, ed. Joseph Farrell and Paolo Puppa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 31–32. One of the most influential features of Italian humanists’ passion for ancient culture was their development of modern theater based on newly revived ancient models. Italian theater up to this point had consisted of sacred drama and various types of acrobatic and recitational street performances. Ercole d’Este’s

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 183 dal144 and some are of plain, Moorish style camlet wool. In front of them was a man dressed as Plautus, who recited the plots of all the plays: first the Epidicus, second the Bacchides, third the Braggart Soldier, fourth the Asinaria, and fifth Casina. When this was done, we went into the other hall, and before the first hour [after sunset] the Epidicus started. Neither the acting nor the verses were very good, but the morescas that were performed between the acts were staged very well and with great gallantry.145 The first one was with soldiers dressed in the ancient way, with fake armor and implements, and iron sallets146 on their heads with white and red feathers in them. One had a mace in his hand, another had a battle-ax, and the first one also had shots in hand; all of them had rapiers and daggers. They fought with the maces and then with the rapiers, and finally with the daggers, beating to keep time. Half of them fell to the ground and were captured and taken off as prisoners by the others. The second moresca was with infantrymen armed with big maces, gorgets, little cuirasses, and tassets,147 with feathers on their heads and bill hooks in their hands. First they made a show of how you enter into battle, with a drum; and then they fought each other. The third show was music that was so bad it does not deserve mention. The fourth had Moors with two candles pressed into their mouths. The fifth and last was also with Moors with lit torches in their hands; these made a lovely show. Before the second moresca a juggler came out and performed to the sound of fifes and bagpipes. By the fourth hour [after sunset] everything was finished and we all went to dine in our lodgings. On the changes and variety of the bride’s dresses, I refer you to the signora [Laura Bentivoglio Gonzaga], who is paying particular attention to them. There are many rogues here who steal money right out of your mouth. Among other things it is said that a pouch with three hundred ducats was taken from the pocket of a Venetian. This morning they hanged a man who had stolen a chain from the pride in bringing the art form of the classical comedy to Ferrara’s stage is evident, and his investment in having these plays translated especially for this occasion was a conscious choice to send a message about the cultural progressiveness and refinement of Ferrara. The comedies performed at this wedding were translated by Gerolamo Berardo, Paolo Cerasara, and Battista Guarini from ancient Latin texts by Plautus (hence “his” appearance in costume): Laureati, “Da Borgia a Este,” 42–43. Within a very short time, original Italian comedies inspired by these ancient ones would be written and performed in Ferrara. 144. A light, sheer silk. 145. On Isabella’s descriptions of the moresche for these plays, see Sparti, “Isabella and the Dancing Este Brides,” 34–36. 146. Light medieval helmets with a flared brim in the back and sometimes with a visor. 147. Gorgets are parts of traditional armor that cover the throat. Tasses (or tassets) are jointed, overlapping splints used as armor for the lower torso and thighs.

184 ISABELLA D’ESTE room of a Spaniard by pretending to be a member of the host’s household. They say that on Monday Vicino and Aldobrandino will joust and on Tuesday Paolo da Como and Bartolomeo da Verona. I have nothing else worthy of noting to you today, except that I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace and I pray you not forget to kiss our baby boy for me.

Letter 265: 1502 February 5 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting Lucrezia Borgia’s grooming routine, and an unsuccessful performance of the Bacchides.148 Yesterday we all stayed in our rooms until the twenty-third hour [one hour before sunset], because Lady Lucrezia takes such a long time to rise and dress in order to win eyes away from the duchess of Urbino and me. Since it was Friday, there was no dancing.149 At twenty-three and a-half hours [one-half hour before sunset] the play The Bacchides began; it was so long and tedious that lacking beautiful intermission shows, I often wished myself back at Mantua. It feels like a thousand years until my return there, both because I wish to see Your Lordship and our little son, and because I want to leave here, where there is no pleasure whatsoever. Your Lordship should not envy me or regret not being able to come to this wedding, because there is such coldness in it that I feel envy for one who stayed in Mantua. If only I had more time to write to you in my own hand, I would be less bored; but I no sooner rise in the morning than the lords my brothers are with me; and they stay with me the whole day. This is in addition to the vying among all the ladies who court me, since they cannot see Lady Lucrezia until she comes out into the salon. At the fifth hour [after sunset] in the evening we dine, and at the seventh or eighth hour we go to bed. Think how much pleasure I feel, and have some compassion for me. Only two morescas were danced between the acts of the play. One had ten men who were costumed to look nude, with veils draped across themselves. On their heads they wore tinsel hats, and they carried horns of plenty in their hands containing four torches lit with fuel that ignited with the movement of the horns. Before them, a young woman came out and, without a sound, moved, frightened, to the front of the stage. Then a dragon appeared and made to devour her; but 148. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 37r–38r. Transcribed in D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 308–9. Plautus’s comic play Bacchides features a love plot involving two sisters, both of whom are prostitutes named Bacchis. Bellonci paraphrases much of this letter in Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 220. In the madmen’s dance, she says the men “were made up as nudes with silvery wigs.” Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:208, and Sparti, “Isabella and the Dancing Este Brides” paraphrase it as well. See, on the music and theater present at the wedding, Nino Pirrotta and Elena Povoledo, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, trans. Karen Eales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 51–54. 149. The lack of dancing on Fridays signals observance of Catholic mores. Friday, as a traditional day for recalling the crucifixion of Christ, was marked by fasting and penitential observances.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 185 nearby was standing a man of arms who defended her. Battling with the dragon, he captured it, dragged it away, and tied it up. The girl followed him, arm in arm with a young man, while all around the nude men danced and threw fuel on the flames. The second moresca featured madmen in shirts and stockings. On their heads they wore cones, and in their hands they held empty bladders, with which they swatted each other making a very sorry spectacle. The first moresca came out at the second act, and the second came out at the fourth. At the end only yawns and quarrels could be heard among the spectators, because it was the fourth hour and a-half [after sunset]. Other news worthy of reporting doesn’t occur to me, except that I commend myself to the good graces of Your Lordship and pray you not forget to kiss Federico for love of me. P.S.: I don’t want to leave out that, to my credit, I am always the first person up and dressed!

Letter 266: 1502 February 7 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, recounting a production of Plautus’s Braggart Soldier.150 Saturday passed in a chill. The bride was not seen all day, since she spent it washing her hair and writing.151 According to what I have been told, in the afternoon she presented the lord duke, my father, with documents for the liberation [of Ferrara] from papal tribute.152 The duchess of Urbino and I, accompanied by the lords my brothers and almost the entire court, went out into the city for some amusement. When we came back home, the French ambassador, whom we had invited to dinner with us, arrived.153 At table were the aforesaid ambassador, the 150. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 38v–39v. 151. While this letter conveys disgust with Lucrezia Borgia’s withdrawal, the bride’s situation made it understandable. Unlike the royally descended Isabella, who had known her future husband since childhood and was familiar with the environment she entered as marchesa, the new duchess of Ferrara was the illegitimate daughter of the pope, who had been pawned to a total stranger in this, her third marriage, and had obligatory sexual intercourse with him shortly after meeting him. Lucrezia was also well aware of the dread and suspicion her family name aroused in Ferrara as elsewhere. Small wonder that during a week of onerous public appearances she took a morning to herself for self-care, letter writing, and unobserved conversation in her native Spanish. 152. For the sense of this passage, I follow Cartwright, here, who refers to the account by Venetian diarist Marin Sanudo: Isabella d’Este, 1:209. 153. Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 221–22, and Gardner, Dukes and Poets, 421–22, both comment on Isabella’s cultivation of the French ambassador. Bellonci views her actions as an effort to relieve French suspicions regarding the Gonzagas’ ties to the Sforza of Milan. Citing the eyewitness account of Niccolò Cagnolo of Parma, both recount that Isabella invited the ambassador into her

186 ISABELLA D’ESTE duchess of Urbino, Don Ferrante, Don Giulio, the Lord Niccolò da Correggio, Madonna Laura, myself and my married ladies, mixed in with some Frenchmen and Spaniards who will be listed for you by the signora.154 After dinner we did the dance of the hat.155 When that was over, given the many requests and torments, I was obliged to show my abilities in singing to the lute. And thus we ended the day at the fifth hour [after sunset]. Sunday morning, which was yesterday, a solemn Mass was sung for the bishop of Carinola in the Cathedral.156 Only Don Alfonso, the French ambassador, and some of the court participated, but much of the populace was there as well. When mass was over, a chamberlain of the pope named Messer Leandro presented Don Alfonso with a sealed edict, which was opened and read publicly. The contents are the following: that as it is customary for the Supreme Pontiff to bless a sword and a cap every Christmas Eve and give it to a Christian prince who is worthy of the Church, he had chosen for this year His Lordship [Alfonso I]. This he did as much due to the dignity of the [Este] house as to the moral excellence of [Alfonso’s] person. The sword is of the type that is carried before Your Excellency; the cap is of gray velvet with a tassel at the top made of tiny pearls, a braided ruffle with wrought gold around it, and hanging down from this a kind of stole lined with ermine with their tails hanging. After the edict was read, he went to kneel at the altar and the bishop, seated, said some prayers. Then he placed the cap on [Alfonso’s] head and the sword in his hand. They stayed like this for a little while, and then [the bishop] raised [Alfonso’s] hand and his head, and he himself stood up and called Messer Giulio Tassoni and gave him the sword, which had the hat on its top. They left the church to the sound of trumpets. After dinner, the duchess of Urbino, the brothers, and I went to fetch the bride from her room. While we were there, the others returned to the great hall private room (together with two of her donzelle) and that after she sang for him, she peeled the scented gloves from her hands and presented them to him. For Cagnolo’s account of all of the festivities, see G. Antonelli, Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara, sposa a Don Alfonso d’Este: Memorie storiche cavate dalla Cronaca ferrarese di Bernardino Zambotto dov’è inserita la Relazione di Niccolò Cagnolo da Parma (Ferrara: Taddei, 1867). 154. Presumably the marchesa di Crotone. 155. I thank Barbara Sparti for directing me to Simeon Zuccolo, La pazzia del ballo (Padua: Fabriano, 1549). In chapter 11 of his attack on the “insanity of dance,” Zuccolo describes the dance of the hat, in which the lady invites the man to dance and the man consents by kissing his hat, handing it to her, then receiving it back after she too has kissed it and they have danced. Appalled at this flirtatious exchange and the fact that the lady changes partners in this dance, Zuccolo devotes chapter 12 to a discussion of how it resembles adultery. See also Sparti, ”Isabella and the Dancing Este Brides.” For more on this type of dance, see Nordera, “La donna in ballo,” 55–57. 156. Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 222, Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:209–10), and other sources locate this Mass in the Cathedral or Duomo.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 187 where all the ladies had gathered. We danced for the space of two hours, and the bride danced very elegantly a French bassa with one of her ladies-in-waiting.157 At twenty-three and one-half hours [one-half hour before sunset] we went to the tiresome play, the Comedy of the Soldier. It is certainly witty and clever and very delightful, but given the length of its verses and the racket among the audience, it did not please the ears as it had at our house.158 The intermezzi were three morescas. In the first one, Love came out and strolled on the stage, shooting arrows, and recited some verses. Then came out twelve men covered in silver foil and laden with candles lit with little mirrors. On their heads they wore balls with holes in them, and their hands were also full of candles. This was not a bad show. The second one was with billy goats that butted each other and leapt around, and behind them was a goatherd. The third was with footsoldiers in jackets of gold and silver brocade with stockings all in white and red livery. They had wigs and caps of black velvet on their heads with white plumes. With darts in their hands and daggers at their sides, they played first with the darts and then with the daggers, beating out rhythms. The last act ended without a moresca, at the fifth hour [after sunset].159 These combatants won’t fight today, because they do not agree about the horse. The Bolognese wants wounding the horse to be allowed, and Vicino does not.160 The lord my father is weaving peace; I don’t know what will be the outcome. Paulo and Bartholomeo also will not compete, since no man has yet appeared for them. Cardinal d’Albret of France arrived yesterday on his way to Rome.161 I don’t know for what purpose. Nothing more remains for me except that, in hopes I will soon be near Your Excellency, I kiss you along with our baby boy. P.S.: This morning it was decided that Vicino and his opponent will joust and they can kill the horses. So at the twentieth hour [four hours before sunset] they will enter into the field. 157. The basse danse is a slow, gliding and walking dance in which the feet are kept on or close to the floor (hence the name, low dance). 158. Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 222–23, observes that Isabella herself was reported to have behaved badly during this performance, criticizing the play and bantering with her neighbors, sending for food and laughing loudly. 159. In this case, the moresca may have been a country dance. 160. Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:210, identifies this man as Vincenzo da Imola, a soldier in the service of Francesco Gonzaga, and notes of the Bolognese that he was a member of Annibale Bentivoglio’s suite. She reports that this spectacle was a single combat that took place in the piazza in front of the Ducal Palace. I follow Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 362, who identifies the Gonzaga man as Vicino da Imola and the Bolognese as Aldrovandino Piatese da Bologna. 161. The copybook here reads il Cardinale de libretto de Franza. I take this to refer to Cardinal Almanieu d’Albret. D’Albret, who was also known as Lebreto, was received in Rome by the pope in March 1502. See CHRC.

188 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 267: 1502 February 7 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing a wedding joust.162 At the twenty-first hour [three hours prior to sunset] the jousters entered the field. After half an hour they mounted their horses, and at the third blast of the trumpet they spurred them. Vicino was at the Palazzo della Ragione end; the Bolognese was at the Tariffs Building.163 Vicino’s shoulder armor met the lance, and he struck it away. They threw their lances to the ground and began to work with rapiers. Vicino injured the Bolognese’s horse with two large wounds: one in the neck and the other in the shoulder. The Bolognese broke his rapier and used it before noticing it was broken. Then he reached for his mace and lost that immediately too. He got his hands on his dagger and rode back and forth in the arena. Vicino gave spirited pursuit, looking for easy places to injure the Bolognese’s horse with his rapier. He had no lance and, with no foul move, Vicino captured him. He would have killed him, but the lord duke, who had already resolved to free him, had them pulled apart. The Bolognese put up no resistance and dismounted immediately. Vicino stayed on his horse and, to the unending shouts of the crowd, rode back and forth in the arena. The crowd never ceased to cry “Turk!” and the Bolognese, on foot, displayed his broken rapier.164 In sum, the prize is ours. What the lord [Ercole d’Este] will now decide, Your Excellency shall hear. The duel was over before the twenty-second hour [two hours before sunset]. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace.

162. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 40r–v. Transcribed in D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 309–10. 163. The Bollette (Ufficio delle bollette) was the office that collected excise and other taxes. 164. Ludovico III Gonzaga, second marchese of Mantua, was nicknamed “Il Turco,” perhaps due to Mantua’s hosting in 1459 of a papal Diet to organize a crusade against the Turks. By the late fifteenth century, Mantua had developed friendly relations with Constantinople. The “Turco” moniker passed to future generations, and in Francesco II’s time it seems to have carried different connotations. A serious collector of Arabian horses, Francesco corresponded with Sultan Bayezid II, whose envoy, Kasim Bey, visited Mantua and stayed for a week in 1493. He also made some effort to learn the rudiments of Turkish. In 1405, Francesco reported to Kasim that he encouraged his troops to use the battlecry “Turco!” when they charged against their enemies at Fornovo. See Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 287n3; Molly Bourne, “The Turban’ d Turk in Renaissance Mantua: Francesco II Gonzaga’s Interest in Ottoman Fashion,” in Mantova e il Rinascimento italiano: Studi in onore di David S. Chambers, ed. Philippa Jackson and Guido Rebecchini (Mantua: Sometti, 2011), 55n11. On Ludovico, see Isabella Lazzarini, “Ludovico III Gonzaga, marchese di Mantova,” DBI 66 (2007). On relations with the sultan, see also Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e i Borgia,” 124.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 189 Letter 268: 1502 February 8 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing a production of Plautus’s Asinaria and adding details of the previous day’s joust.165 Yesterday evening when the duel was over, we went to the performance of the comedy, Asinaria, which was truly lovely and delightful, both because it was not too long and because it was recited better than the others. There was also less din. There were three intermezzi. At the second act ten wild men came out who ran and leapt frightfully for a while; then upon hearing a horn and fearing dogs and hunters, they hid in the woods. Lying in ambush, they saw rabbits come out, which they chased with clubs, killing them and taking them. Hearing the horn again, they once again hid and saw roe bucks and chamois come out; these too they killed with the clubs and took. At the third blast of the horns they retreated into the woods and saw a panther and a lion come out. They chased them and beat them with the clubs while the animals defended themselves very fiercely and finally were captured, which was a fine show. With the animals tied, the men assembled on one end of the stage and, making a circle, four of them hooked arms. Over these mounted four others with their arms linked the same way, and in this way they danced to the sound of panpipes, while the others who had not joined arms leapt behind them and separated them. These wild men had bells on that sometimes rang and sometimes didn’t as they danced, depending on changes in the sound and the tempo. At the third act came out the band of Tromboncino, Paula, Pozino, and the others, who garnered more honor for the Mantuans than for the Ferrarese.166 At the fourth act, twelve peasants representing all of agriculture came out to the sound of a tambourin.167 First they came out with hoes and hoed the land. Then they put down the hoes and came out with baskets full of gold straw cut very fine, and they went around planting seeds. They came back again with sickles to reap the grain. They beat it with canes and shoveled it with shovels, and after them came out peasant women with flasks, bread, and pots to escort them off, with the pipers in front of them. The men put down their shovels and exited dancing in their shirts, beside the women, and the moresca ended. By the fourth hour [after sunset], the play was over.

165. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 40v–41v. This letter is fully transcribed by Iain Fenlon, who reads “Hercolano da Cosenza” in place of “Nicolao de Coreza”: Fenlon, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980, 1982), 1:171–72. 166. Bartolomeo Tromboncino at this time worked principally at the court of Mantua but, from 1505 on, he would divide his time between Mantua and Ferrara in service to Isabella and Lucrezia. The Venetian diarist Marin Sanudo reports that among the musicians playing the viola in the third act was also the bridegroom, Alfonso I d’Este: Laureati, “Da Borgia a Este,” 43. 167. The tambourin is a small cylindrical drum originating in Provence.

190 ISABELLA D’ESTE Yesterday evening in my haste to expedite the horse to tell you of Vicino’s victory, I omitted that in the first round with the lances his opponent inadvertently let fall his unsheathed rapier, which he had in his bridle hand. And also that out of respect for Your Excellency, Vicino was greatly favored among the other combatants by the Lord Don Ferrante, Lord Niccolò da Correggio, Count Ludovico della Mirandola, and Count Albertino Boschetto. Count Lodovico led him around on his arm the whole evening and gave him dinner. Vicino has earned great honor, but Your Excellency has earned more, since his valor is attributed to his being your soldier. The lord my father has not yet announced his decision, but from what I can gather he intends not to take [Aldrovandino] prisoner but to give him a certificate showing that Vicino was victorious, having brought his opponent to the point where if he had not been separated from him he could easily have taken him prisoner, and that [Aldrovandino] may no longer joust with [Vicino]. Vicino wants to take him prisoner, or to have him pay all his expenses. I spare [Vicino] no courtesy, and Lord Niccolò da Correggio, who is caught up in all of this, has become Your Excellency’s true partisan. Come what may, the whole world has pronounced in favor of Vicino. Your Excellency will be advised of the matter’s resolution. The horse of the Bolognese is dead, and he will pay one hundred fifty ducats for it. Vicino’s was not touched or harmed in any way. I commend myself to the good grace of Your Excellency, asking that you not forget to give countless kisses to our baby boy for love of me.

Letter 269: 1502 February 9 Ferrara To Dorotea Grassi and Barbara Suardi, thanking them for visiting her children.168 We took great pleasure in hearing from your letters that during this absence of ours you visited our children. We praise and commend you for that. But if our absence felt strange to you, it felt even stranger to us, for many reasons. Dorotea, your husband Gianmarco had occasion to arouse his fancy with these comedies as a model. If he wants to give his due, as we will remind him to do, then you will gain from this trip of his. Be well.

Letter 270: 1502 February 9 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing a production of Plautus’s Casina.169 Yesterday after dinner the ambassadors went to the bride’s room and presented her with gifts. Earlier, the illustrious lord my father had been most honorable, giving her almost all of the rest of his jewelry, which is very beautiful and costly. 168. AG 2993 libro 13 c. 43v. 169. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 42r–v. This letter is transcribed in full by Fenlon, Music and Patronage, 1:172.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 191 The Venetians gave her capes of crimson velvet lined with ermine; the Florentine a very beautiful piece of gold brocade thirty-five ells long; the Sienese two silver vases, the Lucchese bronze serving dishes.170 Then we went into the salon, where we danced until the twenty-fourth hour [sunset]. We went to the comedy, Casina, which began at about the first hour [after sunset]. Before that, Tromboncino’s musicians came out singing a barzelletta in praise of the newlyweds. The comedy was as lascivious and dishonorable as could be.171 These were the intermezzi: At the first act a woman came out dressed in French style to the sound of a tambourin, and behind her came ten young men dressed in silk in Don Alfonso’s livery of red and white, with books in hand in which was written, “Love wills it not.” As these men danced, the lady took the books out of their hands and threw them away. The young men exited the stage in disdain, then came back carrying darts with which they wounded the woman and left her almost swooning. But Love came on the scene, and shooting arrows at the youths he made them fall to the ground and freed the lady. After they had risen and left the stage, another musical group came on in which there were three Mantuan men who sang a frottola about hope.172 At the second act came out six wild men who went to the front of the stage tossing among them a big sphere, inside which were locked the four virtues. At the sound of a horn, the ball opened, and these virtues sang certain Spanish songs, because they were two women and two men who are with Lady Lucrezia, who sing very well. At the third act there came a musical group of six violas, one of which was played by Don Alfonso; and Your Lordship should take note that Don Alfonso and Don Giulio participated in almost all of the morescas. At the fourth act came out twelve men armed in the German fashion with breastplates, halberds, knives, 170. Cartwright reports about this occasion that “the most remarkable presentation was made by the Venetian envoys, who took off the magnificent crimson velvet and ermine mantles which they had worn all week, and laid them at the feet of the bride—‘upon which,’ wrote the marchesa di Cotrone [Crotone] to Francesco Gonzaga, ‘everyone who was present burst out laughing’ ”: Isabella d’Este, 1:211. See Laureati, “Da Borgia a Este,” 43, for further details on the gifts, as described by Cagnolo. 171. Isabella’s ostentatiously offended response to this performance of Plautus’s Casina was the subject of much reporting: She forbade her ladies-in-waiting to see it, and she was seen sitting tight-lipped and unamused throughout the play. But this behavior, which earned her the praise of her courtiers, was likely a performance itself, an acting-out of feminine virtue for the benefit of Lucrezia Borgia and the other visitors. See Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 223–24, for further remarks in this regard. Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 160 records that Isabella left the theater with several of her ladies-in-waiting at mid-performance, but clearly she did not do so, as we see from her description in this letter of all the play’s intermezzi and the post-theater retreat to dinner. Indeed, Isabella’s brief claim that the play was naughty carries, in this letter, little charge at all. Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:211, misidentifies this play as Cassaria, which would be written by Ludovico Ariosto in 1508. Niccolò Machiavelli’s 1525 play, Clizia, was inspired by Casina. 172. Barberi mantuani. Bàrbero: uomo vivace, brillante; see Zingarelli.

192 ISABELLA D’ESTE and feathers in their caps, and they did a moresca with each of these weapons. At the last act there came twelve men with long torches lit at either end, with which they did morescas making a beautiful show. And thus at the sixth hour of night [six hours after sunset] all was done, and everyone went to his own house for dinner as usual. Today and tomorrow all the ambassadors will leave except for the Roman women and all those who came from Rome with the bride, since the pope has written telling them to remain until they hear otherwise, because he may have them wait here for the wife of Duke Valentino. How well the lord my father likes this feast Your Excellency may well imagine.173 To your good graces I commend myself always.

Letter 271: 1502 February 9 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, acknowledging receipt from him of the palio of Verona.174 Colonna presented me with the palio of Verona on your behalf, for which I was most grateful; I thank you immensely. I’m glad that you are pleased with my writing to you. I am more than certain that you have had greater pleasure from my letters than I have had from these celebrations, because I have never been in a more annoying place than I have been here. Saturday, or Monday without fail, I will depart for Mantua with the lady duchess of Urbino. In the meantime, I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace, asking you please to give some little kisses to our sweet young son. If I write you no news, you may be sure it is because I have none whatsoever.

Letter 272: 1502 February 18 Mantua To the duchess of Ferrara Lucrezia Borgia, sending post-wedding greetings and sisterly affection.175 The love I bear Your Ladyship, and the desire I feel to hear that you remain in the same good health in which I left you at my departure, lead me to believe that you too feel the same for me. And so, in hopes that this will be welcome news, I report that on Monday I arrived in this city safe and sound and found my most 173. Ercole d’Este was likely eager to empty his court of guests and all the expenses he incurred to entertain them. 174. AG 2993 libro 13 c. 43v. Gonzaga horses and jockeys won the horse race in this Veronese palio, and Francesco had sent the trophy to his wife. 175. AG 2993 libro 13 c. 45v. Given the critical and competitive tone of Isabella’s letters and her behavior at the court of Ferrara during Lucrezia’s wedding, this letter appears excruciatingly correct—and hypocritical—in its elaborate and formulaic expression of benevolence toward the Borgia bride. One might indeed see this note as surpassing impersonal formality to dwell in a rhetorical realm of complete irony.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 193 illustrious lord consort in excellent condition. Now I need only hear from Your Ladyship that you are equally thriving, so that I may feel the pleasure of a most cordial sister. And though I believe it is superfluous to offer you what is already yours, I nonetheless once and for all remind you that you may dispose of my person and of my faculties not otherwise than you do your own. I commend myself to you always, praying you commend me to His Most Illustrious Lordship your husband, my honored brother.

Letter 273: 1502 April 6 Mantua To Franceso II Gonzaga, recounting the sweet behaviors of the toddler Federico.176 I understand what Tolomeo told me on Your Excellency’s behalf regarding the affection the baby shows you. I hope he will get into this habit while you are away, so that there will be no way of budging his affections, though it doesn’t seem possible to me that he could love or respect you any more than he already does. He shows signs of it at every hour of the day. Yesterday, while I was saying my prayers, he came up to me and said he wanted to look for Pa. Then he himself began to turn the [prayer book] pages and found a figure with a beard. He was immediately delighted and kissed it more than six times saying, “Papa pretty!” with the greatest joy in the world. He is doing very well, and so am I. To the good grace of Your Excellency I commend myself.

Letter 274: 1502 April 21 Mantua To Alberto Pio di Sabaudia, objecting to the neglect of Eleonora’s lessons.177 Sigismondo Golfo, our secretary, asked permission to be absent three days to put in order some of his affairs with Your Lordship. Many more days have passed, and we still don’t see him here. His absence weighs on us, because he is neglecting his duties to teach our daughter Eleonora, and especially because every few days he returns to us with these requests to bring order to his affairs with Your Lordship. If these delays are your responsibility and are not really due to Sigismondo, we ask that out of respect for us you expedite him quickly and give him such satisfaction that he will no longer have reason to ask us for leave for this purpose. Your Lordship knows how significant it is to lose time for learning. Given Eleonora’s 176. AG 2993 libro 13 c. 57v. On the construction of social identity through prints like the one mentioned here, see Sara F. Matthews Grieco, “Persuasive Pictures: Didactic Prints and the Construction of the Social Identity of Women in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000), 285–314. 177. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 60v–61r. Isabella wrote on the same day to Golfo himself, stressing that if he could not return, she would seek another tutor for Eleonora.

194 ISABELLA D’ESTE age, and the convenience of this mild weather we would take this as a great favor from Your Lordship, to whom we offer ourself always.

Letter 275: 1502 May 3 Mantua To Francesco Malatesta, asking for Leonardo da Vinci’s opinion.178 We saw the drawings of vases you sent to our most illustrious lord, two of which we are keeping in mind, if they are all in one piece and as beautiful as they look: the crystal one and the agate one. But because they are badly drawn, it is impossible to make an informed decision. We are sending [the drawings] back so that you can have them done again in their correct dimensions and painted their proper colors, and so that the crystal body and also the agate one are distinguishable from the feet, covers, and handles if those are of different material, and stating this fact. We would be pleased if you would have them shown to someone of good judgment, such as the painter Leonardo who was in Milan and who is a friend of ours, if he is in Florence now, or someone else who seems right to you. Find out his opinion regarding both their beauty and their price; then see to learning what final price the vendors would accept. Give us a full report on all of this, because if we like the vases and the price, then we would be happy to pay for them in textiles, on which it would be easy to come to agreement, since we know very well what these are worth. Conduct this deal in such a way that others do not get [the vases] until we have made a decision.

Letter 276: 1502 May 18 Mantua To Ercole d’Este, explaining how she manages her assets.179 When I first came to this illustrious house, I was assigned a provision of six thousand gold ducats per year for my wardrobe and that of my ladies, with which I was also to furnish marriages for the ladies and provide for all the servants and ladies except for the compagni, that is, two gentlemen. Besides this, the court charged me the expense of about one hundred mouths [to feed]. Later, because I had greater liberty to increase and diminish my staff in my own way, I willingly reduced it. The most illustrious lord my consort was persuaded by his managers to rid himself completely of certain burdens on his shoulders, and I was budgeted 178. AG 2993 libro 13 c. 69v. See the transcription in Daniela Ferrari, “’La vita di Leonardo è varia et indeterminata forte”: Leonardo da Vinci e i Gonzaga nei documenti dell’Archivio di Stato di Mantova,” in Leonardo, Machiavelli, Cesare Borgia: Arte, storia, e scienza in Romagna, 1500–1503, ed. Alberto Ravaioli, M. Barbieri, M. Gottifredi, and L. Chicchi (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2003), 73–79. 179. AG 2993 libro 13 cc. 71v–72v. This widely cited letter resulted from an inquiry by Ercole, prompted by Lucrezia Borgia’s request for an annual allowance of twelve thousand ducats: Luzio and Renier, “Il lusso di Isabella d’Este,” 312–13.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 195 two thousand ducats for expenses that included those of the compagni. These were assigned thus: six thousand from commission on the marine tariffs, one thousand from a tax, and for the other thousand I was given the court and possession of Letopaledano. Altogether this arrives at a sum of eight thousand ducats. It’s true that then, by my own industry and that of my staff, the income from that court rose by about another thousand ducats; from the profits I bought the courts of Castiglione Mantovano and Bondenazzo, so that now I find myself with an income of around ten thousand five hundred ducats a year. But I have also acquired perhaps fifty more mouths [i.e., dependents] for which I was not previously responsible. It is also true that my lord then gave me some other places for my own entertainment, such as Sacchetta and Porto, but the income from those does not exceed their expenses by much; on the contrary, sometimes I must spend more on them to keep them in good repair. This is as much as I can say to respond to Your Excellency, to whose good graces I commend myself always.

Letter 277: 1502 August 6 Mantua To vicar of Governolo, defending a female subject’s claim to property.180 We understand that previously you imprisoned a woman named Giovanna, wife of Domenico Furnaro [Baker], one of our subjects in that vicariate, and took away certain of her liens and assets because she had been accused of stealing some linen. And later, after she justified her action and demonstrated her innocence, you freed her and restored only a part of the property that had been taken from her, having pawned the rest—from what we understand—to pay certain expenses incurred in this process. This thing seems to us to go against all responsibility; since she was not at fault she should not suffer damage expenses of any sort. Whence we enjoin you, if this is how things stand, to provide for the full restitution of all of her things. This is our will.

Letter 278: 1502 August 22 Mantua To the marchesa of Crotone [Eleonora Orsini del Balzo], sending friendly greetings and political reportage.181 Upon return of Giovanni the footman we received the letter Your Ladyship wrote us from Rome, along with the fusi and the blouse you send us through Monsignore’s [man] Zanino.182 We appreciated these very much, both because 180. AG 2993 libro 14 c. 10v. On Isabella’s advocacy for women’s property rights, see Shemek, “Isabella d’Este and the Properties of Persuasion.” 181. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 12r–v. 182. I have been unable to verify the meaning of fusi. Fuso refers to the weaving spindle. As it also designates the lower part of the leg (shank), between the knee and the ankle, the reference may be to

196 ISABELLA D’ESTE they are new fashions and because they come from Your Ladyship’s hands. We did not reply sooner because there was no available messenger, and also because from then up to now many laborious tasks have kept us occupied. Therefore we thank Your Ladyship for the things you sent and for what you wrote to us, because when you are not here, nothing could be more enjoyable than reading your letters, though we would take incomparably greater pleasure in being able to talk with you, since it seems very strange to be without your company. We think Your Ladyship must share this same feeling, and all the more since we hear that you were ill during your journey. We are very sorry both for the harm you suffered to your person and for the discomfort and unease you must feel, finding yourself in a place where you cannot be assisted by us or by other family members, as we would wish. Nor is there anything else we can do but to regret that you did not want to listen to your friends, and to pray to God that he cure you soon and that you can come back to where you will be welcome. About matters here, there would be many things to tell Your Ladyship, but they require the mouth rather than the pen. There is one we will not let wait, because we know it will please you: Our most illustrious lord consort went to meet His Most Christian Majesty [Louis XII] in Asti and was received by him more lovingly and honorably than one could imagine, for his state was taken into protection and his person has been put to the most honorable service one can speak of. After staying many days with the king, he returned home very pleased. He didn’t stay long, for when he heard that the king wanted to go to Genoa in order to head back to France, he immediately left for the court to accompany him, which he knew would be much appreciated by His Majesty.183 stockings: Battaglia, VI, 506, 10. 183. Francesco Gonzaga had signed a contract on 4 August 1502 for a new condotta in service to France. Mantua was at this time caught between allegiance to Emperor Maximilian and to the French king, Louis XII, who were contending for Italian territory. Spanish troops had attacked Naples in July. Louis XII entered Milan on 28 July, in an anti-Spanish alliance that included the marquis of Mantua, the duke of Ferrara, the deposed king of Naples Federico d’Aragona, and the duke of Urbino. Cesare Borgia arrived in Milan on 7 August and promised the French king his assistance against the Spanish, in exchange for French help to the Borgias in capturing central Italian states. Since Francesco Gonzaga was officially in feudatory bond to Emperor Maximilian, his alliance with the French king’s efforts to expel imperial troops was potentially explosive. Complicating matters even further, the Gonzagas were negotiating with Cesare Borgia a betrothal between Federico II Gonzaga and Borgia’s daughter Luisa, though it is clear that they hoped the marriage would never come about. In a shrewd political move, Francesco entrusted the safety of his family and his state to Borgia, thus obliging him to refrain from harming them. See Mazzoldi, 166; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 166–74. On delicate epistolary machinations regarding the proposed wedding, see Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga; Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 132–40; and Deanna Shemek, “Mendacious Missives: Isabella d’Este’s Epistolary Theater,” in Writing Relations: American Scholars in Italian Archives; Essays for Franca Petrucci Nardelli and Armando Petrucci, ed. Deanna Shemek and Michael Wyatt (Florence: Olschki, 2008), 71–86, especially 75–78.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 197 Imagine life for us, who remain here with people who are in distress; all the more often do we wish we had you near. We are personally well, as are the children, and we await similar news from you, to whom we offer and commend ourself. P.S.: Our little girl’s wet nurse took ill last month with a very high fever, from which she died within ten days, to our great sorrow and that of the entire household.

Letter 279: 1502 September 7 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, instructing him on the delays of Giovanni Bellini.184 The terrazzo floor mason arrived yesterday and promised to serve us well; thus he will get down to work.185 Since Bellini has not begun the painting, ask for the return of the twenty-five ducats and repay twenty-three of them to Giovanandrea Fiore. Use the other two to send us a lot of benzoin by way of the present rider.186 We wrote to you the other day to send us an ounce of musk that should be of the very best quality. We surmise that you did not get the letter, since you did not send it with Franceschino. Thus we thought to direct this rider to you with twelve ducats, and to ask that you send us ten ounces if you have not already sent the other. If you have already sent it, you can now pay for it and send us one more. If it costs more than this, inform us and we will send you the balance. If you still haven’t gotten the money from Bellini, don’t hesitate to get the benzoin on credit, about four ounces. Greet Messer Michele [Vianello] for us; and we remain disposed to your pleasure.

Letter 280: 1502 September 15 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, confirming receipt of musk oil, benzoin, ebony, and leather.187 We received the musk and the benzoin you sent us, and the other day we got the piece of ebony and the leather, all of which pleased and satisfied us. We are sending you via the present rider the extra money that was spent, which altogether makes four gold ducats and seven marchetti. We are writing to Messer Michele regarding our intentions about the Bellini money. Be well.

184. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 15r–v. 185. Terrazzo pavement was a Venetian style flooring made of shards of tile, Istrian stone, and lime. For transcriptions and details of this project see Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 61–65, 209. 186. Benzoin is a balsamic substance used in the production of perfumes. 187. AG 2993 libro 14 c. 15v.

198 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 281: 1502 September 15 Mantua To Michele Vianello, on further negotiations with Giovanni Bellini.188 You may remember that many months ago we gave Giovanni Bellini the job of doing a painting to decorate a studiolo of ours. And now, when the painting should be finished, we find that it is not yet begun. Since we can see clearly that we will not be able to have it when we would like, we had word sent to him that he should desist altogether in this enterprise and send us back the twenty-five ducats we gave him in advance. But he replied asking us to let him keep the job, because he will give us the finished painting shortly. Since we estimate that his word this time is as good as it has been up to now, we ask that you please tell him in our name that we no longer care about that painting, and that if instead he wants to make us a Nativity scene, we will be very pleased, so long as he does not take much time. In the meantime, he can keep the twenty-five ducats toward his pay, which may be more or less, as we will estimate him to have earned it. And on this matter we defer to your judgment. In this Nativity scene I wish to have the Madonna near the Lord our God, and Joseph, Saint John the Baptist, and the animals. If he should not make this commitment, ask him for the twenty-five ducats on our behalf. And if it should happen that he is resistant or difficult in disbursing the money, make him comply by proceeding against him through the Via della Ragione.189 We assure you that we will remain much in your debt for your efforts. We offer ourself ever ready to do your pleasure.

Letter 282: 1502 September 15 Mantua To Francesco Malatesta, expressing interest in having a painting by Perugino.190 Since we wish to have for our camerino some narrative paintings by the most excellent painters in Italy, among whom Perugino is famous, we want you to contact him, using as intermediaries some of his friends if you think that would be better, and see if he will accept the job of doing a painting on a story or invention that we will give him. The figures will be small, as one can see from the other works in the camerino. If he accepts the commission, find out what price he asks and whether he will set to working on it soon. We will then send him the measurements for the painting along with our concept. Please use diligence in replying.

188. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 16r–v. 189. The Venetian Court of Justice. 190. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 13v–14r. Thus begins Isabella’s fraught relation with yet another painter. The canvas under negotiation, the Triumph of Chastity, now hangs in the Louvre. On the dealings between Isabella and Perugino, see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:329–40.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 199 Letter 283: 1502 September 23 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting a murder.191 Last night, a man who works for Basalisco the tailor was assaulted on his way home by two men at about two hours [after sunset] in the neighborhood of Santa Lucia. They inflicted several injuries on him, from which he then died. It is believed that they had eyed him for a while, because when Galetto the apparecchiatore passed by there a little earlier, he saw those same two men, and they came toward him.192 After they watched him for a while, they let him by, and he had not yet entered his house when he heard the noise and cries of the [now] deceased. Therefore, we have spared and will spare no effort in the investigation to discover who they are. If we are able to get our hands on them, we will proceed against them according to the law and to justice. I thought that I should give Your Excellency notice of this, as is my usual practice. For now no other news comes to mind, except that Federico and I are well, and Eleonora and Ippolita are getting better each day. The enclosed letter arrived from the rectors of Verona in response to your most humane letter to them about the digging that has begun between the border of the Veronese territory and Mantua. Having opened it and seen its contents, I wanted to send it to Your Lordship, to whose good grace I commend myself.

Letter 284: 1502 October 5 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, taking heart that she is safe in Venice.193 From the letters of the most illustrious lord duke and Your Excellency, I learned of your safe arrival in Venice and how lovingly you were received, both publicly and privately. At this news I felt the greatest pleasure, given the love I bear Your Excellencies, and with this letter I thank you both greatly for notifying me. I could not reply earlier for want of a messenger, but now that Alessandro is going to you, 191. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 17v–18r. 192. The term apparecchiatore refers in general to one who prepares materials for further operations, for example preparing walls for fresco painting or canvases for oil painting, or assembling stones for pavement. It can also refer to one who finishes textile products to bring out specific qualities in them: Treccani. 193. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 20r–v. The duke and duchess of Urbino were forced into exile when Cesare Borgia seized their state on 20 June 1502. Since Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro’s sexual impotence had become a matter of public knowledge as a threat to dynastic succession, Borgia had tried to force him to relinquish power and accept creation as a cardinal. Duchess Elisabetta, however, refused to separate from her husband, declaring that she would rather live with him as a brother than lose him as a husband. After their city was invaded by Borgia’s troops, the duke and duchess fled first to Mantua and then to Venice, where Isabella directs this letter. Until the death of Alexander VI in 1503, Cesare Borgia effectively held Urbino in his control. On this chapter in Montefeltro–Gonzaga relations, see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:228–41; Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 140–43; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 170–75. On the Borgias’ actions, see Burchard, Court of the Borgia, 210–18.

200 ISABELLA D’ESTE I did not want to delay any longer. Your Ladyship will hear from him that my lord and all of us are well, except for Eleonora, who has still not recovered from her fever.194 We weaned Federico, and after the first day and night, he didn’t seem to mind. The aforesaid lord [Francesco] will leave tomorrow on orders to go to France. Think what a state I will be in, being deprived of your conversation as well. If you will visit me often with your letters, you will give me much consolation; and I will do the same with you, to whom I commend myself, as well as to the most illustrious lord duke and Madonna Emilia [Pia].

Letter 285: 1502 October 8 Canneto To Giovanni Bentivoglio, seeking confirmation of the movements of Orsini forces.195 Just as our most illustrious lord consort is leaving for France, some uncertain news has arrived that the Orsini have made some move. In order to verify, we are dispatching the present courier to you, and we ask Your Lordship to advise us not only of the Orsini but also of your own situation, so that we can rapidly notify the aforesaid lord, our consort, who has charged us to do so. We remain ever ready to do your pleasure.

Letter 286: 1502 October 20 Mantua To the podestà of Sermide, instructing him on the grazing of animals.196 Since the manager of our pastures has some livestock that he will be grazing there, we think it best that others not also do so. Please therefore see that the fields are kept untouched by any livestock except that of our most illustrious lord, because everything between the two of us should be shared. Do this just as you did when you maintained His Excellency’s pastures there.

194. Duchess Elisabetta, who would remain childless, took a consistent and affectionate interest in Isabella and Francesco’s firstborn. Eleonora was later crucial to the Montefeltro succession. In January 1505, she was betrothed to Francesco Maria Della Rovere, nephew and heir to Duke Guidobaldo. In December 1509 she made her entry to Urbino as a bride; and at the death of Elisabetta Gonzaga in January 1526, Eleonora became duchess of Urbino. 195. AG 2993 libro 14 c. 20v. The powerful Orsini family was a historical rival of the Borgia pope, whom they saw as a threat to their own power in Rome. In late October, the Orsini would lead a conspiracy against Cesare Borgia from within his own forces. In chapter seven of The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli supplies an account of these relations and the exploits of Cesare Borgia in the following months. 196. AG 2993 libro 14 c. 25v. Here as elsewhere Isabella invokes an ideal of shared property between husband and wife. On her regard for questions of property, see Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, 67–86; Shemek, “Isabella d’Este and the Properties of Persuasion.”

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 201 Letter 287: 1502 October 20 Mantua To Michele Vianello, on further negotiations with Giovanni Bellini.197 We are pleased that Master Giovanni Bellini has agreed to paint us a Nativity instead of the narrative painting, as you wrote us in your letters. We wish it to be not the size we wanted for the narrative, but rather in the dimensions you will be given by Battista Scalona, our most illustrious lord consort’s secretary, who is handing you this letter, because we want this painting for a bedroom. As for the price, it does not seem appropriate to pay as much as we offered for the narrative, which was to have many more figures than the Nativity scene. You can make him an offer of forty or fifty ducats, which seems to us an honest and fair price, though you may still take the liberty of promising him more or less, if in your judgment he deserves it. And good Lord! Urge him to serve us soon, and well. If for some reason he appears inclined to abandon the Nativity and paint one of his other new inventions of the Madonna, we will agree, though it is true that we would be happier with the Nativity, as you will hear at greater length from Battista, who is fully informed of our thinking. We remain ever disposed to your pleasures.

Letter 288: 1502 October 29 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, availing herself of a departing courier.198 Since the dispatch of the rider Ambrogio I have no news worthy of reporting to Your Excellency. Nonetheless, since the muleteer Capelletto is going in your direction, I did not want him to arrive without letters from me. And so, I inform you that our darling little son is very well and becomes more beautiful every day; he has a good memory of Your Excellency and speaks your name daily in one situation or another. Eleonora has started to dress herself, though because of her long illness she is regaining strength slowly.199 Ippolita is very well, as am I, and as is the rest of the household. Your Lordship will please excuse me if this letter is not longer; it’s partly because there is little to write about, and partly because since it will arrive by mule, I fear it will be slow in coming into your hands. To your good graces I commend myself always.

197. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 25v–26r. 198. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 28r–v. 199. It bears recalling that children’s clothing among the sixteenth-century nobility was nearly as elaborate as that of adults. Learning to dress oneself was accordingly a far more complicated ordeal than it is today; indeed, most men and women of rank required assistance in dressing.

202 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 289: 1502 November 12 Mantua To Michele Vianello, approving Bellini’s painting idea and adding a St. Jerome.200 Since Bellini has decided to make a painting with the Madonna and child and St. John the Baptist instead of the Nativity, we would like, and we request, that he include also a St. Jerome, along with other inventions that he thinks fitting. On these terms we agree to the price of fifty ducats. But we want you to supervise everything so that he serves us soon and well, and so we will be pleased with this deliberation of his. Be well.

Letter 290: 1502 November 13 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, recounting local and regional news.201 Gianpedrone’s departure is so fresh that I don’t know what else to write to Your Excellency for this rider of Madonna of Montpensier [Chiara Gonzaga] who has happened by here on his way back to her from Florence, where she had sent him on some business regarding the condotta, as Francesco Malatesta wrote to me. But to begin writing something, so that he won’t leave without letters from me, I will say that having heard from the mouth of the rider mentioned above that Your Lordship is well and that the Most Christian King had shown you such warmth, I take delight and I congratulate you. But on the other hand, I am saddened, for I fear this means you will stay longer in those parts than I would like, especially because I hear that His Majesty is headed for Brittany, and thus I live in continuous desire of Your Lordship’s letters, which put my soul at peace. As for events of state, I live in tranquility; nothing sinister has happened since Your Lordship’s departure. Last night, though, Bovetto Varrotaro’s shop above Piazza della Massaria, which contained merchandise worth three hundred ducats, was robbed.202 No means will be spared in finding the thieves, and they will be executed by hanging, as was done the other day to two others. The captain of justice, who is now on the other side of the Po River to interrogate evildoers, is going to have two infamous ones hanged at Gonzaga. An unfortunate accident befell that poor notary, Cristoforo Boso, who was kicked so furiously in the shin by a bay horse of Messer Mercurio’s, which was being led by hand under the vault of Palazzo Librari, that [the bone] broke, and he fell backwards to the ground, smashed his forehead, and died two days later. Another foreigner whom no one recognizes was found dead under a horse, in a ditch here at the village of Carpenedolo; he had another horse with him that we suppose he was returning to someone. 200. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 37v–38r. 201. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 40r–41v. 202. Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 172, identifies Varrotaro as a furrier.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 203 To balance these grave events with happier news, I inform you that Messer Paride da Ceresara got married, taking as his wife the daughter of Count Odorico d’Arco; and to please and honor him I sent Jacopo d’Atri to officiate at the wedding. From Bologna I hear that the peace between the Romagna allies and the duke is practically agreed, and that its first chapter stipulates the exclusion of the duke of Urbino and the lord of Camerino.203 I have heard no further details; I believe these things are better known to Your Excellency than to us here, because they all depend on the favor of the Most Christian King. Regarding the negotiation for the Florentines’ condotta, I refer you to what has been written to you by Francesco Malatesta, to whom I wrote duplicate letters saying that Your Excellency’s commission remains unaltered, though he was of another mind. The monsignore, Vismara, Collecchio, and I consulted together on how to find the bank securities the pope wants for twenty-five thousand ducats, and despite difficulties that presented themselves due to the length of time, it was concluded that we should first try the route of the Magnifico Lorenzino de’ Medici, since he feels affection for Your Excellency. And so we will send Vincenzo Bolzano with other parties proposed by Vismara and Collecchio; and Your Excellency will be informed of what is done.

Letter 291: 1502 November 15 Mantua To Lorenzo de’ Medici, presenting a messenger who will ask a favor.204 We send Your Majesty our chamberlain Vincenzo Bolzano, the deliverer of this letter, for a reason you will learn from him and which is of such great importance to the honor and well-being of this illustrious family that it could not be closer to our most illustrious lord consort’s heart and to us. Thus we pray you please hear him graciously and dispose yourself to satisfy the request he will make of you in our name. If we have chosen to come to Your Majesty in this matter, it is because of the enormous confidence we have in you. And if you respond to our need as we hope you must do, your favor will be counted by our most illustrious lord and by us as the greatest we could have ever desired from you or anyone else in these times, as you will hear at greater length from our aforesaid chamberlain. Please put your unquestioned faith in him, no less than you would in us if you heard us 203. Giovanni Maria da Camerino. 204. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 42v–43r. Also known as Lorenzino, the addressee is Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici who, in 1501, had been suspected of allying with Cesare Borgia to invade Florentine territories. The substance of the favor Isabella asked through Bolzano is clear from her letters to Francesco of the previous and following days. Her letter here illustrates several important additional features of diplomatic correspondence, however: the preference not to put into writing matters of high state security, the importance of highly trusted and skilled men who could present the case of their employer prince, and the perception that letters and emissaries might fall short of the rhetorical power of face-to-face conversation between sender and recipient.

204 ISABELLA D’ESTE speak to you with our own mouth. To Your Majesty’s pleasures we offer ourself ever ready.

Letter 292: 1502 November 16 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, updating him on political news she has gathered.205 Up to now, I have informed Your Excellency in detail of everything that seemed to me newsworthy in the city and in other places. It is true that since it was believed that in that court you must be better informed of all the news of Italy and of other countries, I did not tell you of events so diligently as I will do now and in the future, since you have assigned me the task of reporting to you about what happens here.206 And since it is hard to learn the truth about anything, as Your Excellency can very well imagine given the great variety of talk that goes around, I begin by excusing myself if you should hear any lies from me, because I can write you only what is written to me, or what I hear from the mouths of others. I tell you, then, that today I heard in letters from Florence from Francesco Malatesta of the 12th of this month that in consistory, in front of the ambassador of that Most Christian King, the pope spoke very ill of Vitellozzo and his followers, threatening to take revenge on them for the contradiction and reluctance of the accord they struck with him and with the duke of Romagna.207 And as part of 205. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 44v–45r. Francesco Gonzaga was in France, having spent time August– October in Lyon. On 7 November 1502 he wrote to Isabella that so much news was coming to him daily, “indeed, hourly,” that he was unable to sort it out to advise the French king of what was going on in Italy. He directs his wife: “Your Ladyship must expedite a special messenger immediately here carrying news of all that is going on in Italy, so that we can satisfy the Most Christian King as well as ourself. Nothing could be more fitting or more honorable than such news in these times and places, because everyone pricks their ears to hear something from me as if I were the Gospel, believing that I am privy to the truth about all events in Italy”: AG 2115 fasc. II, cc. 50 r–v. 206. This letter illustrates well the different kinds of reporting and information gathering that went into forming a composite picture of current events on the fast-changing political scene of early sixteenth-century Europe. Noteworthy are the amount and the range of information Isabella has at her disposal, her careful documentation, and her efforts to corroborate news by noting multiple sources when they are available. 207. The consistory is a meeting of the Sacred College of Cardinals. In early October 1502, Vitelozzo Vitelli, lord of Città di Castello, together with the Baglioni of Perugia, Paolo Orsini, Oliverotto da Fermo, and the duke of Gravina, were plotting a rebellion against their commander Cesare Borgia, because it had become clear that he aimed to swallow up their states in his campaign to capture all of central Italy. While these men strategized, the people of Urbino rose up against the occupier Borgia. Guidobaldo da Montefeltro hastened back from exile in Venice to reclaim his duchy, aided by Vitelli and the Orsini, while other members of the rebel alliance distracted Borgia. Urbino was recaptured by Valentino, however, and Guidobaldo again fled, this time falling ill in Città di Castello and making it back to Venice only in January 1503. The rebels had been pardoned by Borgia’s father, Pope Alexander VI, but as Isabella reports here, the pontiff was unconvinced of their loyalty.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 205 this plan he began to stir up and to favor many of their enemies, ordering Silvio Savello to be put at the border of the Savelli state against the Orsini, and to do similarly at the border of Perugia against Paolo Baloardi, and at that of Città di Castello against Vitellozzo. And in Florence they say that peace and accord will follow between Bologna and the lord duke of Romagna. I have the same news from Bologna, where Trozo [Francesco Troches] and Remolino [Francisco de Remolins] are now for this appointment, both men of the aforesaid lord duke. And I am told that they are trying to do their best by means of a marriage offer between His Holiness and Messer Giovanni Bentivoglio, promising a relative of His Holiness for the firstborn son of Messer Annibale.208 If this is agreed and if news of it comes to me, as well as of all other things, I will let Your Excellency know. For now I say nothing more, but commend myself and our Fedrighino209 to you, whom may Our Lord God long preserve and take from good to better, as He has done up to now and is doing still.

Letter 293: 1502 November 21 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, sending family news, and an update on the Borgias.210 Though it arrived late, I received a letter from Lord Gian Giacomo [Trivulzio] that came through Ferrara, in which he confirmed what Your Excellency had written me earlier about your reaching His Most Christian Majesty and the affection and loving gestures he continuously made you. The above-mentioned Lord Gian Giacomo put himself completely at my service for whatever I might need during Your Excellency’s absence, saying also that if I needed to write to you and have no available messengers I should direct the letters to him, and he will send them faithfully since he dispatches riders daily. Since I was singularly pleased at the good news he had brought me, I gave him due thanks, and in order to show that I Francesco Gonzaga was at this time in France on salary to Louis XII, as a consultant in the French campaign against the (Spanish) emperor’s grab for Italian territories. The marchese was employed by this king as a condottiere, but in Mantua Isabella governed an officially neutral state. Thus when Francesco’s brother Giovanni departed in early November for Bologna to aid his fatherin-law, Giovanni Bentivoglio, against Borgia, the Gonzagas (who were unofficial sympathizers with the Bentivoglio), felt that their city’s neutral status in these Italian wars was threatened. Isabella issued an official edict announcing that Giovanni was in Bologna against her and Francesco’s wishes, but in truth he had her support. Burchard, Court of the Borgia, 210–18; Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:242–50; Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, 130, 132, 154; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 172–74. 208. Annibale II was the son of Giovanni II Bentivoglio. 209. This name is a locally flavored diminutive form of Federico: “our little Federico.” 210. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 47v–49r. On Isabella and Francesco’s masterful and nerve-wracking management of their relations with Cesare Borgia and his father, Pope Alexander VI, see Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, 127–57.

206 ISABELLA D’ESTE trust him, I thought I should send a mail pouch through him, even though nothing of great importance is happening.211 Having written to you recently at length through Gianfrancesco della Grana, Zoppo the rider, Joan Pedrono Arciero, and lastly four days ago through Madonna [Chiara Gonzaga] de Montpensier’s courier, I have no topics at the moment except for that of good health. But in order to fill the page, I will tell you what I can.212 Federico, by the grace of God, continues to recover and becomes more beautiful every day. He has not forgotten one bit about Your Lordship, whom he often names; and he calls you in his defense every time he does not get his way. You will find him much more agile, both in his person and in his speech, than you would expect. Eleonora is all better, but she is a little thin and still awaits the strength and ability to play as much as she would like with the youngest daughter of the Most Illustrious Madonna Antonia,213 whom I have kept on until Christmas so that she can teach Eleonora a bit of her daring. Ippolita recognizes Eleonora’s needs and becomes more clownish every day, so that I find I have to cuddle her in spite of myself. I, like the rest of the household, am very well; in fact we lack nothing except the presence of Your Excellency, who is everything and all that I would wish for. It is not clear whether the accord that I wrote you was being negotiated between the duke of Romagna and Messer Giovanni Bentivoglio has been reached, though people think it will be. It seems the one with Orsini has been signed, but I do not know the terms.214 It appears that Vitellozzo, Baglioni, and Oliverotto da Fermo do not now want to be part of the agreement, because they trust neither the duke of Romagna nor the pope; they want instead to remain firm for better or worse with the duke of Urbino and the lord [Giovanni Maria] da Camerino. And it seems that that duke [of Urbino] has been cured of his gout in this enterprise, because he is armed day and night and has taken several castles in the countryside of Rimini, which surrendered to him. In his own state, he is having all the fortresses razed, beginning with those of San Leone di Fossombrone, Gubbio, and Urbino and beyond, expecting to fortify them very well, and he is gathering as many people as he can to defend him. On the other side, the duke of Romagna 211. Isabella’s political sensibilities tell her that a show of trust is needed in response to Trivulzio’s protective gesture. Notably and in accord with the times, she stops short of saying that her trust in genuine. 212. Pressed to come up with a subject to write about, Isabella produces in the following paragraph a vivid evocation of her rapport with her children, all three of whom in this instance are described with tenderness, humor, and maternal concern. Then, remembering many more things, she provides further political reporting. 213. Perhaps Antonia del Balzo. 214. Giambattista Orsini, who had been made cardinal by Alexander VI, had been among the Orsini conspiring against Cesare Borgia in 1502. In November, he agreed to a settlement with the Borgias. Burchard, Court of the Borgia, 222.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 207 is preparing to raid him and will embark on this venture as soon as he has sealed with Bentivoglio. They say that once he has conquered the state of Urbino he has in mind to extirpate the majority of the old population and to make a Spanish and French colony there. From the Kingdom [of Naples] I have no news, nor have I of any other place that is worthy of Your Excellency’s attention. Our affairs proceed well, but we universally await your return, and we commend ourself to you.

Letter 294: 1502 November 22 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, ordering lapis and works by Petrarch and Dante.215 We liked the lapis sample you sent us so much that we have decided to use that piece to make an ointment bottle, if that can be done, but we would like to have it on approval. Please send it with the first available rider, and if assurance of the money is necessary, we are writing to Taddeo Albano, and he will give it. If it is not possible to have this piece and you find another, send that to us on approval. In the round spaces where you were saying we should put this lapis, have them put serpentine or another stone that you think will make good contrast, for we trust your judgment. Palazzo [the treasurer] will send you the money and write to you how you should proceed in reporting the expenses to me. Buy us a Petrarch and a Dante on vellum in that new print in the small binding and send them to us with the lapis.216 Be well.

Letter 295: 1502 November 22 Mantua To Michele Vianello, expressing delight that Giovanni Bellini will paint a Nativity.217 Though we last wrote that you should have a painting done of the Madonna with those other saints instead of the Nativity that we wanted Bellini to do for us before, nonetheless we will be happy if he paints the Nativity without St. John the Baptist, if he is satisfied to do so. We made the change thinking that he was hesitant to accept the job of the Nativity, which is the thing we desire without compare, since we don’t have one.218 Thus you must urge him to start it; he can make it as he likes, as long as it is beautiful and lives up to his fame as a painter. On whether to paint it on canvas or on wood, I defer to him, as long as it is of the dimensions and the size that we sent you. Be well.

215. AG 2993 libro 14 c. 50v. 216. Isabella clearly refers to the new Aldine editions or editions inspired by them. 217. AG 2993 libro 14 c. 51r. 218. Isabella’s sensibility here is that of the collector, who notes a genre missing from her collection.

208 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 296: 1502 November 22 Mantua To Vincenzo Bolzano, embracing Perugino’s willingness to paint for her.219 Francesco Malatesta wrote us the other day that Perugino the painter was content to do a painting for our camerino, and that we should send him the concept220 and he would tell us the price he would ask and the time he would need to do it. Since you are now in Florence, we thought we would give you this task. So that you can come to clear terms, we are sending you here enclosed the written instructions for the invention, and you will receive another one as a sketch from Alberto the courier. Give these to Perugino so that he can see and examine them carefully, and understand from him whether he wants to accept the job. If he accepts, find out clearly what price he will want and the time he will take to give us the painting, encouraging him to say freely if he wants to do it and to serve us. If he is of a mind not to begin it, or to begin it but not to finish it, he must rather give us a negative reply than keep us in false hopes. If he is willing to serve us, remind him to estimate rather one or two extra months than one or two less and then not keep his promise, because we have had so many delays from others, as you know, that we are exhausted. If he wants to do it, leave him the sketch. If not, then bring it back. Give him the measures of the painting that Alberto will hand to you, and alert him that it should have the same mood as the sketch, and it must be done on canvas, as the others are. Encourage him to be diligent and artful. This seems superfluous, because we are certain that he will not want his work to be inferior221 to his fame, especially since it will be compared to the paintings of Mantegna.

Letter 297: 1502 December 1 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting on events in Italy and on reliable news sources.222 Before receiving Your Excellency’s letter of the 7th of last month from Palisse, in which you enjoin me to please advise you immediately of all events in Italy so that through me you can know what is true amid the variety of news that comes to those parts and can clarify things for His Most Christian Majesty and the most reverend monsignore legate, who have requested this of you, I wrote in detail through Gian Pedrone, via Madonna de Montpensier’s [Chiara Gonzaga’s] courier, and through Lord Gian Giacomo di Trivulzio’s riders through whom I 219. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 53v–54r. 220. Derived from classical rhetoric, the Latin term inventio (Italian invenzione, here Latinized as inventione) refers to the creative search for a fitting subject on which to speak, or for effective arguments. The same term served artists who similarly sought to devise the concept or subject, especially of a narrative painting. 221. The manuscript here reads maiore (superior), which I take to be a secretarial error. 222. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 56v–59r.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 209 dispatched a mail packet on the 22nd of last month, about all those things in Italy that had come to my attention through very thorough investigation. Thus I did not think I would send another rider so soon, since I had nothing important left to say. I planned to wait for replies from Florence and Bologna where I had sent riders for this purpose, because as Your Excellency knows, from other places we get no news, or we no longer get the truth, as is your case in France. In Italy the only operations are for the duke of Romagna, who acts in such secrecy and caution that neither his aims nor his designs are apparent until after he has carried them out. Given the long road and the passions of those who write, such varied news arrives about the Kingdom [of Naples], and it is so confused and baseless, that I would not know how to send you any information about that area. In one moment it is the French, and in another it is the Spanish who are on top in that Kingdom, and nothing that is said or written is ever verified. So Your Excellency will please excuse me if I don’t write of those things. I will tell you what has happened in Romagna since I sent my other letters. From the lady duchess of Urbino I have a letter of the 25th of last month in this vein: ‘I received yesterday evening through one of my lord consort’s chancellors the news that an agreement had been made between the lords in league and Duke Valentino, and that it not only excludes His Lordship [the duke of Urbino] but obliges them to stand with [Valentino] for damages against my above-mentioned lord. I wanted to inform Your Ladyship so that you may understand what conditions I find myself in and what my state of mind is. I say nothing more to Your Excellency, except to commend myself to you and to ask that you commend me to the most illustrious lord, my brother.’ From Bologna I have news that the agreement with the lord duke of Romagna has the cause and the form that I will tell you here. They say that the Orsini were negotiating the accord without the knowledge of Messer Giovanni and deferring to the judgment of Cardinal Orsini. When the above-mentioned Giovanni Bentivoglio heard this, he began to negotiate for himself alone, without the Orsini’s knowing, in order to pay them back in their own currency. And finally, through Messer Mino di Rossi, one of the sixteen from Bologna, the deal was concluded thus: First, His Holiness makes peace with the city and regiment of Bologna and with the house of Bentivoglio, and he pardons all those who have erred in these new events, and he promises to dismiss and banish all the Bolognese rebels and to confirm the present government along with Messer Giovanni Bentivoglio and his sons. To secure this agreement, he promises to obtain guarantees from our Most Christian King, the most excellent Republic of Florence, and the lord duke of Ferrara my most honored father, from whom he will obtain commitments that in the event the pope should not observe the present articles and should want to harm the Bolognese and the other included parties, [these three] will unite in defending

210 ISABELLA D’ESTE the Bolognese against the pope and the duke of Romagna; and vice versa, they will promise to go against the Bolognese if they should fail to observe the obligations written herein. That the city of Bologna and its regiment, together with the Bentivoglio, will be faithful to His Holiness and will abide by what is written in the bull of Pope Nicola.223 That they will give him one hundred men at arms and two hundred light cavalry who will be paid for four months. That they will give him ten thousand ducats per year for five continuous years, but that if it should happen in this period that the Bolognese have need, the lord duke [Valentino?] promises to provide them with one hundred men at arms. That no payment will be made until the stated securities have been given. Lastly, to strengthen the unity and security of this accord, the pope will give a daughter of the sister of the bishop of Ennia [sic], who is His Holiness’s nephew, to the firstborn son of Messer Annibale. These are the articles of the agreement, which I believe Your Lordship will have heard about first through that court [of France]. But in order to obey you and to carry out my duty, I wanted to report them to you. From Florence I have no news of the moment, except that people are making signs that this accord will not last, because it was made not in good faith but in order to stall for time and to wait for a better season. I myself do not know how to read any signs about it and will wait to see what happens. The Florentines have chosen a new ambassador to the papal court, who is the brother of the gonfaloniere for life224 and of the bishop who came as representative to His Most Christian Majesty. The reason for his mission was not written to me. Francesco Malatesta writes to me that he is waiting with great desire for letters from Your Excellency, regarding the consent and resolution of your condotta. The general talk of the most serene king of the Romans225 is that he will come into Italy with a great army, but from our merchants coming from Bolzano I hear that there are no preparations whatsoever being made. The Venetians are keeping calm and taking no actions of any kind. Nothing else worthy of Your Excellency occurs to me, except that I await your return with desire, and I commend myself always to your grace.

223. Pope Nicholas V issued a bull commanding Christian princes to bury their differences and unite behind the papacy in defense against the infidel. Thomas Scannell, “Pope Nicholas V,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, 11 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1911), . 224. Piero Soderini. The position of gonfaloniere was that of a chief magistrate representing a centralized government in Italian city states. 225. Maximilian of the house of Habsburg, after1508 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 211 Letter 298: 1502 December 2 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting on efforts to find a governess for Federico, and on the child’s demonstration of generosity toward a beggar.226 Ever since we started to wean Federico, I have been seeking with these ladies of ours to find a woman fit to instruct and care for him. Up to now, no one with the appropriate qualifications has appeared, so I was compelled to turn to our Maddalena Tagliapietra, whom I had had in mind from the beginning but, since I feared she would turn down the job, I had thought it best not to try her. Since I was reduced to this state of necessity and she had heard independently of my wishes, motivated by great respect and loyalty she offered her services on her own, not only for this purpose but also for more strenuous tasks whenever she understands that it will be welcome to Your Excellency and me, whose commands and signals she will never oppose. Given the state of mind in which I found myself, I more than commended and thanked her, since it seems to me that a more appropriate woman than she is could not be found, for she was raised with the children of lords and will not need to be trained for the court, as would be the case with someone new from the city. And all the more is this true if Your Excellency should wish to take the baby out sometimes with you, as you have been thinking of doing.227 And so I assigned her to his care and let go the wet nurse, whom I had kept on up to now in order to find first a governess for the baby, and also to await Your Excellency’s return so that your views could be taken into account in choosing a woman. But seeing that it was not so easy to find someone as I hoped, I made this decision, thinking that if Your Excellency likes Maddalena she can stay, and if not, someone else may be sought whom you find more satisfactory. The wet nurse went back home yesterday evening. Last night he asked for her several times but without waking up, and he seems to be taking it without displeasure. He asked for her also this morning, but once he was occupied with other pleasures, he calmed down on his own and let it pass in his usual way, as children do who easily take to those who show them affection. After I had finished the letter in my own hand, he wanted to dine with me, and he behaved in the most charming way in the world. Then when he was set down to play at dice with ten ducats in front of him, I purposely had someone knock at the door of the room and say that there was a poor man who was asking for charity.228 At this, on his own and without anyone’s prompting him to do so, 226. AG 2003 libro 14 cc. 61r–62v. 227. Male children were often taken out of court by fathers and other male guardians, who taught them traditional masculine pursuits such as hunting and arms, thus counterbalancing the “effeminacy” of domestic life at court. 228. This anecdote, one of many used by Isabella to reinforce Francesco’s affections for her and the children, is particularly rich. The two-and-a-half-year-old Federico’s toys include dice and a significant sum of money. Isabella’s insistence on the toddler’s spontaneity—not to mention the articulate,

212 ISABELLA D’ESTE he immediately took one ducat and had it given [to the beggar] saying, in his own words, “Tell him to pray to God for me, and also for my Pa.” This filled everyone present with wonder, so I hope the inspiration of this child will move Your Excellency to return home soon, where you are most greatly desired. Eleonora is well; the day before yesterday she began to leave the house and went to dine with Maestro Petro Francesco Benaduso. Ippolita too is well and becomes more delightful and beautiful each day.

Letter 299: 1502 December 23 Mantua To Francesco Malatesta, discussing a marriage agreement for the daughter of Cesare Borgia and Federico II Gonzaga.229 Yesterday we got your letters of the 15th, having already received the others of the 13th of this month, to which no reply is necessary except to commend you for these notices. And since you write that the Magnificent Lorenzo, Giacomo Merli and Angelo Tovaglia repeated the same things that they said to Vincenzo Bolzano, we would like you to find out from them, and especially from the Magnificent Lorenzo, if he will be content to pledge, in forma camere, if not all at least half of the twenty-five thousand ducats, because the pledge that we would give would oblige them in forma camere, as Vincenzo offered.230 The pledge must be made to the duke of Romagna or his daughter in case we should fail on our side to make the marriage. This will not happen from our side if we come to agreement, and as a consequence they will have no reason to complain. The term will be ten to twelve years, until the children are of the perfect age. And if in the meantime one of them should die—may God prevent it—then the pledge will be dissolved. And the same will hold if from the side of the lord duke the promise of the rest of the dowry should not be kept, and other details that will have to be stipulated. We write all of this to inform you, and so that you can assure the Magnificent Lorenzo and those other friends of ours in case they would like to pledge in some way. Keep in contact with me on this matter and inform me then in detail about their intentions, and do so as soon as you are able. P.S.: We are sending through this agent of Vincenzo Bonzani twenty-five gold ducats, which you are to give to Perugino the painter, asking him to be willing to charitable, and mindful response he makes to a beggar at the door—strain plausibility, but the vignette furnishes a credible glimpse of child-rearing in the Gonzaga court, where Federico was learning to be generous, merciful, devout, and loving toward his subjects, and where Eleonora was practicing social skills. 229. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 71v–72r. 230. in forma camera: legal proceedings in camera are proceedings carried out privately, without witnesses.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 213 set to work and serve us as befits his fame and our desire, so that we can have the painting by the time for which he promised it to Vincenzo.

Letter 300: 1503 January 3 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting an anecdote about Federico, the latest news about Cesare Borgia, and negotiations for the liberation of Urbino.231 Yesterday through lord Gian Giacomo Trivulzio I received letters in Your Excellency’s own hand from the 21st of last month. They were as welcome to me as you can imagine; but since I hope that you are well on your way here, and I don’t want my letters to fall into the wrong hands, I did not think I should tire myself to no purpose. I hope to be able to speak with you myself before you read this. And for the same reason, Milanese and the others will not respond to Your Most Illustrious Lordship. But so that you will hear what news we have here if this happens to reach your hands, I tell you that I am very well and so is our big baby boy, who has grown so much, both physically and in cleverness, that Your Lordship will not believe it. On the first day of the year, the merchants presented the sword to me according to custom. After accepting it and thanking them in Your Excellency’s name, I handed it to Federico who, all by himself and without any reminders from anyone, said these exact words: “Many thanks, we will save it for our lord Pa.” This caused everyone present to wonder at such readiness. The girls are also well, along with the rest of the household, and affairs of state proceed calmly as usual. Monsignore232 had to leave Venice yesterday, from what he wrote me, notwithstanding that reply from the duchess, about which I wrote to Your Excellency in other letters.233 Lord Giovanni writes me from Bologna what is recounted here below.234 The lord duke of Romagna had the head of his governor Lord Ramiro cut off and had it left for a whole day in the piazza of Cesena.235 People say various things about the reason why, but it is believed that it was because of suspicions that he was negotiating with some of the forces in those movements in Romagna. His Excellency then left Cesena very suddenly and headed toward Fermo with 231. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 75r–76r. 232. Perhaps Francesco’s brother, Sigismondo Gonzaga. 233. The reference appears to be to the distress signal sent out by the duchess of Urbino on 1 December 1502, above. 234. Giovanni Gonzaga, husband of Laura Bentivoglio and thus an ally of the Bolognese against the Borgia. In November 1502, Giovanni had entered Bologna with 100 men to defend it against Valentino’s aggressions. 235. Machiavelli recounts in chapter seven of The Prince that Cesare Borgia, having appointed Ramiro de Lorqua as governer of Romagna and seeing that he had brought order to the territory, had him killed as a demonstration that he himself was not to be associated with Ramiro’s cruelty.

214 ISABELLA D’ESTE his army. It is believed he plans to go to Rome and maybe then into the Kingdom in support of His Most Christian Majesty. Fracasso [Gaspare Sanseverino] left Cesena and is believed to have been dismissed, since no provision of money or expenses was made for him as was done for the others. The affairs of Urbino too are in the hands of the lord duke of Romagna, but not without some suspicion (because Vitellozzo went down to speak with Gianpaolo Baglioni and Pandolfo Petrucci on Lago di Perugia under cover of taking some recreation) that the renunciation of Urbino and the poor duchess are still under discussion, with the insistence that [the duke of Urbino] be made a cardinal and the promise that he will sing the mass in order to dispel all worries.236 And it appears that because of those movements in the Marche this agreement is being drawn up. This is as much as I have from the above-mentioned Lord Giovanni, nor do I have news from any other place that is worthy of Your Lordship, to whose grace I commend myself always.

Letter 301: 1503 January 10 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting on political events.237 Although I feel the most immense longing for Your Lordship’s return, and it seems to me it will yet be a thousand years before I see you, I understand from your letter of the 17th of last month which was delivered by Zoppo the rider that the reason for your delayed departure will be both honorable and useful to Your Excellency, while also pleasing His Most Christian Majesty.238 I am content and grateful for all of your considerations, and I take no small pleasure and consolation in the many signs of affection and regard he has shown you, as well as in the money he has added to your salary, which seems to me a great sign of his love, since he took this from his own funds before his checks were paid him. And so I thank you greatly for the detailed explanation you have given me. I relayed all of it to our 236. Cesare Borgia systematically sought to eliminate all contenders for power in the territories he had conquered. Given the known fact that the duke of Urbino was impotent, Borgia aimed to annul the marriage between him and Elisabetta Gonzaga, thus dispelling any chance for them to claim a right to succession. 237. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 81r–84r. Cf. Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:244–47 for another translation of much of this important letter. 238. Here and toward the close of this letter, Isabella cites two virtues cultivated by humanist educators and moralists: utilitas et honor. I have translated the terms literally, but given the stakes of the events at hand, one might translate them more instrumentally, as profit and prestige. The extreme care with which Isabella recounts herein the shocking deeds of Cesare Borgia demonstrates an appropriate degree of circumspection, both because the duke was highly volatile and because she and Francesco were in negotiations to tie the Gonzaga and Borgia houses together through marriage. If a disparaging or disloyal letter were to fall into unfriendly hands, its weight as evidence of treachery would be devastating.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 215 most reverend lord protonotary [Sigismondo Gonzaga], the Magnificent Messer Giovanni Pietro da Gonzaga and the other gentlemen, all of whom take no small pleasure in your every success, and they commend themselves to you. After my last letter of the 3rd of this month, in which I informed you of all that was happening to me, I would not have thought to write again if I had not received one of yours, from which I see that this one could reach you before your departure from Lyons. And so I shall inform you of all that seems to me worthy of you. Though I am convinced that you will already have heard of the capture and death of the confederates of La Marca, I wanted nonetheless to inform you of it in the way that I got it from Lord Giovanni our mutual brother. In a letter of the 4th he wrote that the lord duke of Romagna was expressing his satisfaction to [Giovanni’s] father-in-law, Lord Giovanni Bentivoglio, on having captured Lord Paolo Orsini, Vitellozzo, the duke of Gravina, and Levorato [Oliverotto Euffreducci] da Fermo at Senigallia.239 He justified this action by saying that despite having been pardoned for the blatant and notorious rebellion they had made in previous days against His Holiness and himself, once they understood that the French were returning home, under pretense of aiding his exploit in Senigallia they had come full force to capture His Excellency; and that having heard of this, he anticipated them and did to them what they wanted to do to him.240 In another letter, of the 5th, [Giovanni] describes the capture thus: According to a report by Cavaliere Orsini and Messer Ranieri della Sassetta, who cautiously fled Senigallia for Ravenna (and which has been confirmed by Stefano in Ferrara), the above-mentioned detainees got a commission and safe passage from the aforesaid duke to go to Senigallia with their armed men, and they captured it in His Excellency’s name. All four of them went out to meet him, touched his hand and kissed him, and entered the city accompanied by the duke of Gravina and Vitellozzo, talking together the whole time. But once inside, Valentino took them prisoner with his own hands and immediately subjected them to the strappado and a trial. The next morning, he had Vitellozzo and Levorato beheaded. From the same letters I have this news: The prefectress, having learned of the duke’s departure, left the fortress well defended and headed for Genoa via 239. On 31 December 1502, Cesare Borgia captured the city of Senigallia. As many contemporaries recounted, Giovanna da Montefeltro, who had been left in control of the town, fled with her young son to Venice for fear of facing Borgia. She left the keys to the fortress in a silver basin for him. Valentino then used a number of ruses to round up his opponents and killed them. See Burchard, Court of the Borgia, 213–15. For Machiavelli’s account, see Niccolò Machiavelli, “Description of the Methods Adopted by Duke Valentino When Murdering Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, the Signor Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina Orsini,” in The Prince, trans. W. K. Marriott, 101–107, in The Electronic Classics Series, ed. Jim Manis, Pennsylvania State University-Hazleton, 2001–2012, . 240. It is not clear whether this phrase was intended to convey its evident irony: abandoning any pretense of princely virtue, Cesare Borgia congratulates himself on an effective inversion of the golden rule.

216 ISABELLA D’ESTE Florence to get to San Pietro in Vincoli;241 this was confirmed for me also by Francesco Malatesta. The aforesaid lord Giovanni writes me in another letter of the 5th that the lord duke [Valentino] reported the deaths of Vitellozzo and Oliverotto to Giovanni’s father in-law, and that the duke of Gravina and Paolo Orsini were still in custody, and word was awaited from Rome of Cardinal Orsini’s capture so that they could be sent together [to be executed] with the others. But I have letters from Rome from Messer Giovan Lucido242 from the 3rd of this month saying that on that same day the pope had already taken prisoner the aforesaid cardinal, the archbishop of Florence,243 and Giacomo Santa Croce, and that Rome was all up in arms, not in a new assault but for their own defense. Thus the pope is secure, because he made good provisions.244 Letters from Lord Giovanni tell me that the lord duke departed Senigallia leaving it completely sacked and hastened to Perugia, where Gianpaolo Baglione has gone with his armed forces. He also writes that in Siena a plot has been discovered against Pandolfo Petrucci, who has jailed twenty-two citizens, of whom he immediately had three leaders hanged.245 The lord duke [of Romagna] wrote a very kind letter to Lord Giovanni Bentivoglio, asking him to send word about the joining of the two families, for which reason Messer Girolamo da San Piero will go to him with the mandate for this marriage contract. He then sought from Lord Giovanni Bentivoglio and the Bolognese one hundred light horses and thirty men at arms, which were granted. As captain they are sending the cavaliere dalla Volta.246 People continue to say that the Lord Giovan Maria da Camerino has abandoned him, and that those ladies have gone to France.247 From what has been written to me the people of Ancona have sent an envoy to the duke to profess obeisance. The whereabouts of the duke of Urbino are still unknown, but it is believed he was taken from Città di Castello 241. The reference is to Giovanna’s brother-in-law, Giuliano della Rovere, cardinal of the Roman basilica San Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains). Giuliano, who was at this time in voluntary exile in Genoa, would himself be elected Pope in 1503. 242. Gonzaga envoy Giovan Lucido Cattaneo. 243. Rinaldo Orsini. 244. D’Arco glosses this passage: “The pope imprisoned Rinaldo Orsini, archbishop of Florence; and Orsini the protonotary. Then in a friendly way he summoned Cardinal Giovanni Battista Orsini and had him locked in the Borgia tower and had him poisoned there. After this, Valentino saw to it that Paolo Orsini and Francesco the duke of Gravina were strangled.” D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 264 n2. 245. Again, D’Arco notes, “Gian-Paolo Baglione ceded Perugia to Valentino but recuperated it from him the same year. Pandolfo Petrucci, who commanded in Siena, handled things in such a way as to keep the city from falling into Borgia’s power.” D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 264 n3. 246. Antonio dalla Volta of Bologna, Condottieri di ventura. 247. Giovan Maria Varano of the former ruling family of Camerino had fled the Borgia terror and taken refuge first in Aquila and then in Venice. The ladies may refer to women of the Varano family.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 217 via the Casentina road; and Modesto the rider, who has just arrived from Venice, says that he has found safety there, and that soon he will be in Venice. But I have no news whatsoever on this from the duchess or from anyone else. After I wrote to Francesco Malatesta to learn whether the Magnificent Lorenzo would be willing to pledge security in forma camere, he decided, making many excuses, that he would not do it unless it were in forma consueta et mercantile but it seems that Agnolo Tovaglia would do it for six thousand ducats with a year of contraband, so that it would be equally insured, in forma camere.248 I will await the pope’s response regarding the inquiry I made with him about naming the dowry and these pledges to be divided among Florence, Milan, and Ferrara. Then, depending on his reply, I will know how to respond most honorably. I hope that Your Excellency will return here in the meantime, which I desire immensely, for many reasons.249 On the affairs of the state, I don’t know what to write, since all is calm and is being governed according to your orders. Yesterday Giacomo Crespellano, castellan of Canneto, departed this life. He had in his care three young sons who, from what I have been told, are good fellows well-disposed to similar occupations. I appointed them along with his uncle, the count of Crespellano, who is a mature man, until Your Excellency’s return. Francesco Malatesta writes that Your Excellency’s particular friends maintain that the duke of Romagna is having such great fortune that they wish you to be at home, because they could better decide on a course of action if they knew they could count on you and your forces. He also says that the pope has revived negotiations with the Florentine lords, and just today I have the same news from Rome, but people say they won’t trust him. Nonetheless, if Your Excellency has not by this hour concluded your alliance, I encourage you to do so without fail, provided that you maintain your own utility and honor, while you have the Most Christian King nearby to assist you, given all that could happen. They say that the Venetians have decided to send some men at arms and a good number of foot soldiers to Ravenna, in addition to those already there, in 248. See n230, above. Lorenzo was insisting on a customary business agreement, presumably with witnesses. 249. Isabella’s wish for Francesco’s presence (here expressed for the second of three times in this letter) appears in context as a sizeable understatement. The events she describes in letters of late 1502 and early 1503 are cataclysmic, unpredictable, and (in historical perspective) highly consequential for sixteenth-century Italy. As for Mantua, she and Francesco had up to this point produced only one male heir. The procreative imperative for a dynasty based on male succession was more apparent in such turbulent times than ever, and that crucial project required not only spousal collaboration, but also physical proximity. Indeed, as Francesco headed home in January, Isabella got word that he came, “with his spirit set on acquiring a brother for lord Federico”: Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 177. He arrived in Mantua on 7 February 1503 and Isabella became pregnant without delay, but the child born in November of that year was another daughter.

218 ISABELLA D’ESTE the interest of its security. Of the affairs of the Kingdom of Naples people speak so variously that I would not know how to make sense of it, and so I defer to what Your Excellency must hear daily at court. All that remains is for me to assure you that I and Federico and our other children are healthy and we commend ourselves to your good grace.

Letter 302: 1503 January 15 Mantua To Cesare Borgia, thanking him for letters and sending him one hundred masks.250 Upon hearing of Your Excellency’s successful endeavors, of which you informed us in a loving letter, we took such pleasure and contentment as befits the mutual friendship and benevolence between you and our illustrious lord consort and ourself. Hence on his part and our own we congratulate you on your complete safety and prosperity. And as we thank you for sharing your news with us, and for your offer to keep us informed of your successes, we pray you, in your kindness, continue to write. Because loving you as we do, we desire to hear often of your activities, so that we can enjoy your success and elation along with you. Thinking that after the torments and labors you have lately endured in these glorious campaigns of yours, you might wish to find some recreation, we thought to send you a hundred masks, which are being delivered by Giovanni our footman. Not that we don’t recognize the paltry nature of our gift in comparison to the greatness of Your Excellency’s merits and our affection for you. Take them rather as a testimony of our esteem; because if there were something more worthy and appropriate in this our city, we would much rather send that. If the masks are not so beautiful as befits Your Excellency, you must blame the Ferrarese craftsmen who, because there has been a ban in that city for many years against wearing masks in public, have forgotten their art.251 Please accept in compensation the sincerity of our gesture and our affection for Your Excellency. Regarding our 250. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 88r–v. Partially transcribed by Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, 212, who cites also Gregorovius. The rhetorical force of this letter is difficult to gauge. Isabella could not afford to cross the demonstrably ruthless Borgia. Borgia was known to wear masks, perhaps to hide the disfigurement of syphilis, which he contracted in 1497. Yet a gift of one hundred masks suggests that the notoriously insincere (and theatrical) Valentino was not two-faced, but onehundred-faced. As translator of Burchard, Geoffrey Parker notes that Borgia often traveled masked or disguised: Burchard, Court of the Borgia, 211; see also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:249–50, for a similar observation and a translation of Borgia’s reply. On Cesare’s illness, see Arrizabalaga, Henderson, and French, The Great Pox, 133; Sarah Dunant, “Syphilis, Sex and Fear: How the French Disease Conquered the World,” The Guardian, May 17, 2013, . 251. Bans on masks were instituted as a security measure against vandals and other criminals who took advantage of festival occasions to commit various offenses.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 219 negotiations, there is no need to reiterate, until we hear from Your Most Illustrious Lordship what decision our lord His Holiness has taken on the matter of the security, which we had Brognolo set out for him.252 We await the opportunity to bring things to conclusion, and we offer and commend ourself to you.

Letter 303: 1503 January 16 Mantua To Negro de Trotti, ordering fruit for her household.253 Vincenzo the confectioner wrote us the other day asking us to please see that he gets as many citrons as possible, and to tell him the price and he will use it as a credit toward the cost of the preserves we will order from him.254 We have just received thirty-six, which weigh five Mantuan pesi and which we are putting into a basket. We want you to deliver them to him, saying that we do not wish to tell him a price, because we do not want to play the merchant with him, but that he should keep whatever preserves he wants.255 And because we would like a citron vine, and a small cotogna apple tree, and another tree—a peach—have him order them and inform us how much all these preserves will come to over the cost of our citrons. Giovanni the footman can bring them here on his way back from Romagna, where he is going with a mule. If you should depart earlier, you can inform the excise manager256 and give him the task of settling accounts with Vincenzo and sending us the preserves.

252. Isabella refers here once again to the marriage negotiations regarding Federico and Borgia’s daughter, Luisa. These negotiations eventually failed. As Cesare Borgia was himself the illegitimate son of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, this girl was a papal granddaughter and her marriage required his approval. 253. AG 2993 libro 14 c. 89r. Isabella persevered in certain tasks of household management despite the distractions of the political events she had recounted to Francesco five days earlier. Since products like the ingredients for preserves were seasonal and sometimes difficult to obtain, they had to be ordered in season, so that the household would be well supplied for the rest of the year. 254. The speziali were confectioners and pharmacists who handled not only medicinal herbs and other curatives but also cosmetics (such as soaps and perfumes) and complex concoctions such as sweets and the preserves (confecti) that interest Isabella here. These fruit-based gelatins were used in desserts and as a condiment for meats, and versions containing mustard are available in Mantuan cuisine today as mostarde. For discussion of this letter and Isabella’s relations with the confectioner, Vincenzo da Napoli, see Malacarne, Mensa del principe, 207–9. 255. As Evelyn Welch notes, with certain people, Isabella preferred to keep relations on a terrain of mutual favors and obligations rather than one of commerce: Shopping in the Renaissance, 266–69. 256. il massaro di Gabella.

220 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 304: 1503 January 26 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting that Cesare Borgia has killed the duke of Gravina and Paolo Orsini.257 It is now the fourth hour. Letters of the 23rd of this month have come from Francesco Malatesta, in which he writes that the duke of Romagna has suffocated the duke of Gravina and Lord Paolo Orsini at Sarturana; and that the Florentines fear that a league is being formed by Spain, the pope, and the Venetians, because in Rome they see much closeness between the ambassadors of those lords and Our Lord [the pope]. For this reason, the Florentines desire your presence at home soon. I informed Francesco of your departure and wrote him to keep that magnificent gonfaloniere well edified because Your Lordship will be here soon, will not fail them, and will be ever at the ready for their benefit and freedom. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace, along with our big baby boy. P.S.: It is the second hour of the night [after sunset] and the duke of Urbino has not arrived, nor has any further word. I suspect either that the podestà of Viadana has been tricked258 or that [the duke] has gone by another route. I commend myself to Your Excellency.

Letter 305: 1503 April 23 Ferrara To Francesco II Gonzaga, recounting the performance of a sacred drama.259 Though I received fewer visits yesterday from the great many gentlemen and ladies here, these lords my brothers were with me almost constantly. Around the twenty-first hour [three hours before sunset], the lady my sister-in-law [Lucrezia Borgia] came to my room. After we had talked for a while about pleasant things, she escorted me through Ferrara in a carriage until late; then she returned me to my rooms, accompanied by the above-named lords. Today, since there was to be a show of the Annunciation, I went to the castle to fetch the signora. Continuously showing me honor and demonstrating her love and delight, she accompanied me to the Duomo.260 There we found the lord my father with a wooden stage apparatus that was enormously expensive and most sumptuous. 257. AG 2993 libro 14 cc. 96r–v. 258. prendere la saiotta: to be tricked. See Alessandro Luzio, Studi folenghiani (Florence: Sansoni, 1899), 36. 259. I have been unable to locate this letter in Isabella’s copybook 14 or among the originals for this period (AG 2115 bis, fasc. VI.2). Transcribed in D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 310–11. For further commentary on Isabella’s viewing of this play in the context of the sacred drama genre, see Kristin Phillips-Court, The Perfect Genre: Drama and Painting in Renaissance Italy (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011), 23–56. 260. Vescovato usually means the house of the bishop. I translate here as Duomo (or Cathedral), the bishop’s church and the location of these performances. The story of the Annunciation is told in Luke

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 221 The show began with a spiritello who recited the argument of the play, speaking of the prophets who foretold the coming of Christ. And during this narration, these prophets came out, each of them speaking his prophecy in turn, translated into vernacular gestures. Then Mary, who was standing under a capital raised on octagonal columns, also spoke some verses from these prophets. And with her words, the sky suddenly opened, revealing one dressed as God the Father, surrounded by angels who circled him slowly. One could not see what they were standing on, for their resting feet were barely visible; and there were six other angels suspended in the air by wires. In the center was the angel Gabriel, to whom God the Father spoke. After his order, Gabriel descended with marvelous artifice to a height just above the organ, and as he hovered there, suddenly an infinite number of lights ignited that shot from the angels’ feet and formed a ray that covered them all in light. This was truly something worthy to see. Once these lights were ablaze and countless others shone in the sky, the angel Gabriel descended low, suspended on invisible wires that supported him, so that he appeared simply to have alighted from a cloud; he was hanging from a wire, just touching down with his feet. Once he had spoken his part, he returned to the other angels in heaven, where songs and music could be heard and where the spiritelli performed gestures of reading. They held white torches in their hands and swayed, rocking on their foot supports in a way that was almost frightening to watch. When they were all gathered up there, heaven closed up, and several scenes were played from the visitation of Saint Elizabeth and Joseph, on earth. Heaven opened up again, and another marvelously contrived angel descended to manifest to Joseph that Jesus had fulfilled the Incarnation. Joseph’s earlier doubts of the Virgin conception were quelled, his vision was recounted,261 and the spectacle ended. It took about two-and-a-half hours and was delightful, due to the wonderful machinery I have described and also some others I have omitted. But the heat was great, due to the large number of people. I believe that Thursday there will be spectacles of the Magi and the Innocents.262 I will tell Your Lordship how they go. I am sending you by way of this rider a basket of fresh fava beans. I commend myself to you always.

1:26–38. 261. Matthew 2:13–15 recounts that Joseph dreamed of an angel, who warned him to take his family out of Bethlehem and into Egypt to escape King Herod’s plot to murder the baby Jesus. 262. The story of the Magi tells of three wise men who came to pay homage to the newborn Jesus, as told in Matthew 2:1–12. The story of the massacre of the innocents that follows in Matthew 2:13–23 regards the decree of King Herod that all male children under the age of two in and around Bethlehem be slaughtered, in a political effort to assure the death of the baby Jesus, whose whereabouts were uncertain. We see from Isabella’s report that the plays were proceeding chronologically, focusing on the birth and early life of Jesus.

222 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 306: 1503 June 17 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, on the death of Chiara Gonzaga, duchess of Montpensier.263 Considering my own feelings at this moment, I imagine Your Ladyship in a state of enormous bitterness and sorrow for the death of the Most Illustrious Madonna Chiara, our mutual sister, for I felt and feel such unhappiness at this miserable fact that I know not how to cope with so much pain. For this reason, though I would sooner need encouragement myself than be able to give it to another, I nonetheless wanted to use what faculties I have at my disposal to urge Your Ladyship to be patient and to do what I have proposed in my own mind: to want nothing except what pleases God, especially because it is a natural and necessary thing that each person born into this world must die. I have no doubt that in this matter Your Ladyship will be no less prudent and virtuous than you have been in your past actions, so I will say no more on this subject, knowing that as the wisest of women you will know better than I how to withstand the pain resulting from such a loss. I will not omit that behaving as I have faith you will, you will be fulfilling the expectations of everyone who knows of your prudence, and you will especially please me and my illustrious lord consort. I commend myself to Your Ladyship.

Letter 307: 1503 August 11 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, recounting current events, including the conclave to create a new pope and the return to power of the duke of Urbino.264 The joy and satisfaction brought by your letters from Bologna of the 29th of this month were as great as my longing to hear the developments regarding Your Excellency’s illness and your journey. Through them I am amply informed of your condition, which is nearer to my heart than any other thing. I hope that since no further misfortune has befallen you, your improvement and good convalescence will progress each day. Thus I thank you for writing, and I beg you to continue, for you could do me no greater favor. I am pleased that those poor exiled lords are restored to their state; given what they owe Your Excellency they should reasonably be forever attached and grateful to you.265 It pains me greatly that in this important and rare moment, due 263. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 14r–v. As we see from previous letters, Isabella was close to Francesco’s sickly elder sister, Chiara Gonzaga, who was residing in France as the duchess of Montpensier. This letter is one of several she wrote on the occasion of Chiara’s death. Elisabetta, in exile in Venice, took the news very hard, writing to Mantua that after Fortune had deprived her of her state, it was also taking her blood, with the death of a sister who had been like a mother to her. See Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 180. 264. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 19v–20r. 265. The dukes of Urbino. On the night of 17 August, Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) died of malarial fever, setting off a chain of maneuvers to reorganize power throughout the Italian peninsula. For

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 223 to a broken shin266 the most reverend monsignore my brother267 cannot be present in the conclave for this papal election, which must weigh on him to his very soul. But as the popular proverb goes, we must consider all things to be for the best. Still, I am sorry that the bishopric of Novara did not fall to Monsignore our protonotary as we had hoped.268 Perhaps another time he will have more success, now that His Most Christian Majesty has seen Your Excellency’s readiness and fidelity in service to him. I am sending back, attached here, the letter from Jacopo d’Atri, which you sent me. I kissed Federico more than a hundred times, as you wrote me to do, for love of you. This morning we found a truly white hair on the front of his head, and when we ask him where it came from, he says it is from the melancholy he feels over the departure of Your Excellency! Alessandro da Baese is preparing to follow Your Excellency as soon as he can. I gave the unicorn belt to the courier, so that you can soon begin to use it; I encourage you and ask you as a favor to take good care of your person, if not for your own sake then for love of our son and me, who need you.269 The duchess of Urbino wrote me that the lord duke fully reentered his state and was met by his subjects, from Ravenna on, with great shows of love. She asks your pardon for not writing individually to Your Excellency, saying that this results from her having estimated that you had already left Mantua, as you have. She adds that the most illustrious signory of Venice, both at her departure from Venice and at the news of the recuperation of the state, indicated that [Urbino] is favored and under [Venetian] protection and made many offers to maintain it thus. I thought that to please the aforesaid lady duchess I should tell you this. On matters of our state nothing worthy of your notice occurs to me since your departure, except that we are all well and await frequent word that Your Excellency, to whose good grace I commend myself always, is also so.

example, Cesare Borgia’s campaign to capture all of Romagna for himself had been financed and supported by his father, but since the dead pope could no longer bankroll his son, the exiled Guidobaldo da Montefeltro hastened back from Venice to reclaim control of Urbino, while his wife, Elisabetta remained in Venice to argue for support of Urbino, returning home only after the election of Pope Julius II. Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 148. 266. per la rotta della schincha. 267. Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. 268. Francesco’s brother, Sigismondo d’Este Gonzaga, was pursuing a career in the clergy. 269. This accessory was meant to ward off illness or evil.

224 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 308: 1503 August 20 Mantua To Niccolò da Correggio, sending a gift of salted goose and requesting poetry by Correggio and by Petrarch.270 I am sending the crock of salted goose that Your Lordship requested of us. Have the most illustrious lord our father taste it and tell him that if he likes it he should let us know; then when the season is right we shall have some salted for him. Please commend me to His Excellency. We offer ourself ever most ready to do Your Lordship’s pleasure. Please also accept the burden of commending us heartily to the lady duchess our sister-in-law and most honorable sister. Since we would like to have some music written to sing one of Petrarch’s canzoni, we pray Your Lordship please choose one that you like and send us the first line; and with it please send one or two of Your Lordship’s that you like best, and remember also the capitolo and the sonnets you promised us.271

Letter 309: 1503 August 28, Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, assuring Mantuan loyalty as Francesco II Gonzaga departs for France.272 I cannot easily express what delight I took in the turn events in Your Ladyship’s favor, but you, who know that I love you from the heart, will easily be able to estimate. I am pleased with this hope-filled beginning, and I look forward to enjoying the desired outcome. Regarding the request Your Ladyship made to my most illustrious lord, I spared no effort. But since His Excellency was about to ride out and departed immediately as lieutenant to His Most Christian Majesty, he could not come to a decision until he hears the royal thoughts and inclinations regarding the situation in Romagna. Of one thing I can well assure you: he could not be better disposed toward the most illustrious lord duke and Your Excellency, for whom he will forever do all that is in his power. And I wish so much to restore you freely [to power in Urbino] that I would spare neither my property nor my person for love of Your Ladyship, to whom I heartily commend myself. My lord left yesterday from Gonzaga and went to lodge at Concordia to resume his journey. I 270. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 33r. Salt was used as a preservative cure for poultry as well as for pork and other meats. In the opening sentence of this letter, Isabella uses the more familiar “I” rather than the first-person plural “we” that appears throughout the rest of the text. In fact, her relations with Correggio were very affectionate. The slippage into informality suggests some of the familiar relations that were often eclipsed by the formalities of letter writing. 271. Isabella had ordered a volume of Petrarch’s poems from Aldus Manutius in August 1501. Her request to Correggio that he choose a song to be set to music may indicate that she did not know the Canzoniere so well as to have favorite poems of her own, or it may more likely result from her appreciation for Correggio’s tastes. 272. AG 2994 libro 16 c. 15v.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 225 returned with Federico to Mantua, where I will employ all my available energies for Your Ladyship’s benefit and honor. I commend myself to you eternally.

Letter 310: 1503 August 29 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, requesting more correspondence while he is away.273 Regarding the matter of the Magnificent Lady Bianca de la Mirandola and her obedient children, I will conduct myself in every way most willingly in the manner Your Excellency has written to me, every time that I am sought out by them.274 Your Excellency informs me with two words of postcript that you are well and faring happily. I took singular pleasure at the news, but to tell you the truth I was not entirely satisfied. I would like to understand your successes and fortunes more particularly, because since you only recently recuperated from illness and are not yet entirely well, I will be ever anxious and fearful for your health. Hence I beg you for now and for the future to keep me most minutely informed of Your Excellency’s every progress, and most especially about your convalescence. As for me, nothing more occurs to me to tell you now, except that we had great trouble calming Federico down after Your Excellency’s departure. We went that evening to Borgoforte, and the next morning after getting up early I arrived for lunch at Mantua. We are all well in body, but Your Excellency can imagine our spirits. I will surely pray to Our Lord God for your health. To your good graces, together with Federico, I commend myself always.

273. AG 2115 c. 358. On Isabella’s need for a regular flow of news, especially from Francesco, see Shemek, “In Continuous Expectation.” 274. Bianca Maria d’Este della Mirandola was Isabella d’Este’s paternal aunt. When her husband, Galeotto Pico, lord of Mirandola, died in 1499, her three sons commenced a struggle over their inheritance. Galeotto had designated their firstborn, Giovan Francesco, as sole heir, but Bianca Maria sided with her other two sons, Lodovico and Federico, who demanded a share of the patrimony. Bianca sought the help of Francesco Gonzaga as well as of her brother, Ercole d’Este, against Giovan Francesco, who had ousted his brothers and taken his mother effective prisoner in Mirandola. In 1502, Lodovico made an armed intervention, expelling Giovan Francesco and freeing their mother. In the ensuing years, Bianca Maria often governed Mirandola and, indeed had to fend off her eldest son’s attempts to take the city. She disinherited Giovan Francesco in her will. See Simona Foà, “Este, Bianca Maria d’,” DBI 43 (1993).

226 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 311: 1503 September 3 Mantua To Cristoforo da Poggio, asking him to be her informer about events in Rome and Romagna while Francesco II Gonzaga is away in service to the French king.275 Since, given the departure of the most illustrious lord, our consort, we do not have the means we had previously for learning news of Rome and of the circumstances there, we ask you not to feel burdened if you provide us singular contentment and satisfaction by informing us of whatever you hear from Rome, and especially of the lords of Romagna and which of them has returned home.276 You could do us no greater pleasure. And if in the future you receive other news worthy of our notice, be equally pleased to share it with us, even if this requires a special messenger, because we will order one to respond to your courtesy. To do your pleasure we remain ever ready.

Letter 312: 1503 September 28 Mantua To Monsignor de Chiamono [Charles d’Amboise], defending David Hebreo from accusations of contraband.277 Detained in the governor of Parma’s fortress is a man named David Hebreo who, though he is not a Christian, is our friend and favorite, because he is full of goodness. He has been charged with having run contraband food near that dominion, which we cannot believe, since he is not a man capable of that activity but rather completely alien to it.278 And so, since we would be very sorry if he were to suffer harm, we wanted to write this letter to Your Lordship, praying you cordially, for love 275. AG 2993 libro 15 cc.23r–v. For brief mention of this Bentivoglio agent, see Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e i Borgia,” 503; Ludwig Freiherr von Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages: Drawn from the Secret Archives of the Vatican and Other Original Sources, ed. Frederick Ignatius Antrobus, vol. 5 (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1902), 400. Pastor refers to Poggio as a Bentivoglio secretary. 276. Given Isabella’s copious reporting to Francesco about the Borgias and the wars in Romagna during his previous absence, her implicit claim that her husband was her only source of information appears to be more rhetorical expedient than true description of her access to current news. This letter provides one more view of Isabella’s diligent and efficient efforts to keep information flowing into Mantua from multiple sources. 277. AG 2993 libro 15 cc. 31v–32r. Isabella addresses d’Amboise as “Illustrissimo Monsignor como nostro fratello honorato” [Most honored Monsignore, honored as our brother]. He was Louis XII’s viceroy in Milan. Rendered into into English, this detainee’s name is “David the Jew” or “David Hebrew.” 278. The active market in contraband food distribution ranged from moving victuals across borders without paying taxes to trading foods that were otherwise monopolized by the rich and powerful. The latter especially reserved for themselves, for example, what meat and fish were available. See Letter 114, of 17 March 1496, on restrictions against fishing. Contemporary comedies also allude to this market. See, for example, Lodovico Ariosto, La Lena, 2.3 and 5.1, in Davico Bonino, La commedia del Cinquecento, I; an English version appears in The Comedies of Ariosto, trans. Edmond M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 227 of us, not to spare your help in any way that you can be of assistance to him, so that he may be freed from custody without harm, even if he has in some way disobeyed and transgressed the laws of the aforesaid city of Parma; for we will consider it a singular favor from Your Lordship, to whom we offer and commend ourself.

Letter 313: 1503 September 30 Mantua To the vicar of Governolo, chastizing him for not informing her of deaths from plague.279 If our magistrate280 wrote you that we complained because you did not inform us about the inn and those other people who died of suspected plague, he wrote the truth, because you ought to get a fine punishment.281 And now you would give me to understand that this is a great lie and that you did write, and for this you deserve a double punishment. A fine excuse it is to say that you sent the letter, that it was given to one of our pages, and that you asked three times for a reply and could not get one. If it had been given to one of our pages, we know that he would have presented it to us. But no page whatsoever received it, and no courier got a request for a reply: so you are lying through your teeth in justifying yourself, and you have freely declared your own guilt. We have not yet absolved you of this sin, because its importance is too great. But if you hope for remission you will spare no diligence in seeing that the damage goes no further. And pay close attention to what you are told by Cristoforo Malcalazato, who has been given this charge. You must compensate for your error with good behavior and diligence, carrying out what is written to you by our magistrate.

Letter 314: 1503 October 1 Mantua To Angelo Ghivizano, praising his writing to her about her husband’s activities.282 Your judgment that we must be in continuous expectation of news about our most illustrious lord consort is not false, for we have gone so long without that it seems 279. AG 2993 libro 15 c. 32v. 280. The term here is collaterale, which could have one of two meanings: giudice delegato ad accompagnare e a coadiuvare il massimo magistrato dell’amministrazione dei comuni medievali; or: parente che appartiene alla stessa linea laterale (con origine comune), ma non in discendenza diretta: see Giacomo Devoto and Gian C. Oli, eds., Dizionario della lingua italiana (Florence: Le Monnier, 1971). 281. The tone of this letter is unusual in Isabella’s correspondence and reflects the strategic importance of her communication network. 282. AG 2993 libro 15 c. 44v. Francesco II Gonzaga left Mantua in late August of 1503 to serve in the French campaign to recapture Naples from the Spanish. On 27 September, he was outside Rome, and by 2 October he wrote from Valmontone. Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:255–64; Mazzoldi, 168–70; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 184.

228 ISABELLA D’ESTE a thousand years since we last had letters from him. If it were not for the relief we take from your occasional letters and similarly those of our Giovanni Lucido about the activities and movements of His Lordship, we would find ourself low in spirits. And so we exhort you and urge you, insofar as you wish to do us a welcome favor, to continue to write with the same detail and copiousness as you did in your letter of the 26th of last month, which we appreciated beyond measure.

Letter 315: 1503 October 1 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga [in Venice] on the complications of sending reliable and secure correspondence.283 Up to this moment I was amazed that I had no answer from Your Excellency to many letters I have written you, which were eleven counting proposals and replies sent since the 26th of last month. But now I realize that what happened to mine is what is happening to yours, for yesterday a pack of letters from Your Excellency and many other people was brought to me from Milan, almost all of which were opened but especially those with large seals. I got three of your letters, two of which (the longest) were opened: one of the 19th and the other of the 22nd; the third, shorter one of the 22nd, in which you complain of not having letters from me, was sealed. I think that seeing it contained few words, the French did not bother with that one. Those from Milanese, one from the duke of Urbino, and those of many others were opened. When I first saw them all wet, I thought that they had come open in your postal service through a combination of accident and water.284 But then when I read a letter from Niccolò Scaldamazza that had been forwarded to me by Mazzo, I understood that they had been sent by the Parma post as far as Milan and, falling into the hands of Monsignore Gran Maitre [Charles d’Amboise], they were opened and then returned to Niccolò with the explanation that this was done to see if there was anything in them for their purposes. I, and those who were in my room when I received them (among whom were Messer Gasparo Visconti, Messer Giovan Pietro da Gonzaga, and Messer Ludovico degli Uberti) took this as a great villainy and a show of scant respect for Your Lordship. One thing consoles me: that in my letters there was nothing very important. I sent the others immediately to their addressees without reading them. Your Excellency touched in only one letter on the bad conduct of the French and the hatred they were thus inciting among the locals.285 There was nothing noteworthy in the rest. I don’t know how they will like the fact that this part was written by Your Excellency; hence I thought I should immediately notify you so that you can 283. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 42v–44r. 284. Cf. AG 2115 bis fasc. VI.2 c. 384r: per sinistro et aqua da sua posta fussero aperte. 285. This letter would thus be the only potentially damaging one, since it criticized the French, in whose service Francesco was employed.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 229 order that letters no longer go to Parma but stop instead at Bologna, and that Antonio Bugatto, the rider for the royal post should send them here as usual. I have already written to him saying that for each dispatch he should give instructions to pull out the letters from Your Lordship and others directed to Mantua and send them here by one of his men. If you wanted to be still more certain that letters will be opened neither in Florence nor elsewhere, you could send them through the lord my father’s post in the hands of your rider in Bologna, Bernardino, who has served Your Excellency for some time, as you know. I have made no sign of displeasure to these French lords in Milan, in order not to make them more suspicious; let it suffice that I have told Your Excellency about this; you will take the attitude you think best toward them. It would not be a bad thing if you had a cipher devised and sent me its code through the first available of our riders, so that if we need [to write] something confidential we can exercise greater caution by using it. Your Lordship complains that you receive no letters from me, and I too have complained of having none but a few from you. I don’t know now who is more justified. I know well that it does not seem to me I have been lacking in diligence. Nor could I be deceived by Capilupi, even if he wanted to save himself the labor [of writing], because I see all the letters before he sends them out.286 But whatever the case, your admonitions give me great pleasure, because I take them as indication that you have me always in mind, as I do you; and so I thank you for all you wrote in the three above-mentioned letters, to which no further reply occurs to me. It pains me at this time that Mantua is situated in such an out-of-the-way place that we never hear any news whatsoever, for I know that if news came to me I would not appear negligent. But after I have reported to you on my well-being, that of Federico, and of our others, I have no other material, since the affairs of the state are proceeding according to your orders. And yet what there is to tell Your Lordship will understand from my other letter. To your good grace I commend myself along with Federico and Eleonora.

Letter 316: 1503 October 1 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, on an outbreak of plague in Governolo, the rising waters of the Po river, the theft of her silver inkwell, and the weaning of baby Ippolita.287 To give Your Excellency an account of what occurs to me at present, you must first know that a bit of plague that we judge to have been brought by some nonlocals 286. Isabella here reveals an important part of the routine workings of her chancery. Though her secretary made drafts of her dictated correspondence, she approved the letters before they were dispatched. This final check would have been a security measure aimed at preventing treacherous misrepresentation as well as unintentional errors at the letters’ point of origin. 287. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 44r–46r.

230 ISABELLA D’ESTE was discovered a few days ago in Governolo, at the inn.288 The innkeeper, his wife, and the priest who heard their confessions died from it, and two other women died. And Chiappino Panazza (the innkeeper at Revere and father of the innkeeper of Governolo) died as well, because he attended these people’s funeral; and at Revere a housewife died. We got no news from the vicar of Governolo until, since we had heard of the matter by another route, he was written to and someone from here was sent to learn the truth, which we found to be what I said above. The vicar of Revere wrote once that the housewife had died after the case at Governolo, adding that as early as the 8th of last month a daughter of the innkeeper of Revere had died, but having had her looked at by doctors they concluded that she had not died of plague. Then after what followed at Governolo he became more suspicious. Good and vigorous provisions were made as soon as the situation was discovered, and we will lack neither effort nor vigilance in working with [Gonzaga agent and secretary] Giancarlo Scalona, whom I have ordered to spare no labor or expense, so I hope this will develop no further. Mantua and the rest of the state are healthy and free of any suspicion [of plague]. And because the rumor was, as usual, already spreading, I wrote to the rectors of the nearby cities that Mantua and the whole state with the exception of Governolo and Revere is clean, and that by my faith merchants and others can freely come here and interact. If Your Excellency heard of this situation first by another route, you must not be amazed, because rumor is more powerful than the diligence of writers; besides which, since this was a small matter I did not bother to send a special dispatch. Let it suffice that you have now received the truth from me and may be in good spirits that the news is not worse. Since the other time I wrote, the Po has never dropped, and it is still so high that no man living remembers seeing it bigger. It seems also that there was great flooding at Quadrelle, and flooding has also occurred at Maccastorna above Casalmaggiore. On our shores we have spared—and will continue to spare—no provisions. At Borgoforte I have kept Messer Donato de Preti, and he is still there; and at Serravalle I have Messer Peregrino the engineer, since those are two places at the greatest risk.289 I hope they hold. In Mantua the lake covers from one escape hatch to the other of the mills; one can go by boat over the Pallata bridge. The market is entirely covered with water, and I have seen a boat go from one end of it to the other. The nuns are marooned and I had to give them a boat in case they need to get to this part.290 The bastion of the Cerese is falling in many quarters of 288. See Letter 313, of 30 September 1503, to the vicar of Governolo. 289. Donato de Preti was a trusted Gonzaga agent who, for a period, held the office of maestro delle entrate (minister of revenues). Peregrino [Pellegrino] is mentioned in the correspondence as a builder-carpenter who worked on Francesco Gonzaga’s palace at Gonzaga. Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 52n83; 58n104; 67; 180n65, doc. 255; 157, docs. 156, 160; 406–7; 410. 290. The reference may be to the nuns of Santa Paola, also known as Corpus Domini. Their monastery was near today’s Piazza dei Mille, a very low part of the city.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 231 the city,291 and water is coming from the Chiavichetta drains, in a way that now would make foreigners compare us to Venice. This is the news that pertains to public matters. Of private matters, one remains. Yesterday made fifteen days since on a Saturday a silver inkwell was stolen from my Camera delle Armi, by a domestic thief who had no respect for the ancient servitude received from the lords your grandfather, father, and wife.292 It has not yet been possible to discover the name of the thief, though yesterday Friar Pietro Arrivabene told me that he would see that I have the silver, because the inkwell has been destroyed.293 It has not been possible to extract the name [of the thief] from him, which I would rather have than the silver.294 Still, I hope it will be discovered, nor will I be lax, because I think that the other silver thefts from Your Lordship and me are due to this person. He must not die unpunished. Monsignor the protonotary is well and thriving in Polesine. Federico, more beautiful and alive than ever, sends Your Lordship bunches of kisses and hugs. Eleonora and Ippolita are well, and I am similarly so. I commend myself to your good grace. P.S.: Friday was the third day since we used bitters to wean Ippolita from the teat. She said to the wet nurse several times, “The teat tastes more bitter,” but she is forgetting about it without a fuss. I will send Your Lordship’s letter to the duke of Urbino with Messer Alessandro Spagnoli, who is leaving tomorrow. I commend myself to your good grace.

Letter 317: 1503 October 24 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, on a portrait of Federico II Gonzaga, and how she discovered the thief of her silver inkwell.295 Our little Swiss soldier is now finished and looks as natural as can be. I had outfitted a rider to send him to Your Excellency, but after the death of the pope, I changed my mind, having (also) heard that the roads are so damaged that the

291. The reference is to the Porta Cerese, one of Mantua’s five city gates, which was protected by bastions or ramparts that encircled the city. 292. The Camera delle Armi (Room of the Weapons) was a reception room in Isabella’s apartments, which took its name from its decorative motif. 293. disfacto: perhaps melted down. 294. prima voria cha rehavere duatantata di argento. 295. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 58r–61r; original AG 2115 bis fasc. VI.2 cc 398r–400r. Francesco Bonsignori made a portrait of little Federico II Gonzaga dressed as a Swiss soldier, which was later sent to the pope. See Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 54.

232 ISABELLA D’ESTE riders can’t make their way.296 So I will retain him here until the new pope has been created or until I hear that the roads are secure. On the 19th of this month I got two of Your Excellency’s letters via the Parma mail, from the 3rd and the 5th, sent from Ferentino, thanks to which I was fully informed of all your news and that of the field up to that day.297 This gave me enormous pleasure, especially as I learned that your fever had subsided to a minimum. So I hope things will go from good to better, given all the many prayers being said here by all the religious. I thank Your Lordship immensely for continuing to write, and I pray you not desist, because this is the only consolation I have in your absence. I am glad that those who were in Gaeta have joined with Your Excellency. But I am quite displeased that the Orsini have turned Spanish, which cannot but be a great loss to that French army.298 I hear from various sides how much prudence, skill, and patience Your Excellency shows in maintaining and governing it, settling the quarrels that arise each day among so many nations of different affinities and customs. For that, you garner high commendation and praise. I have this news from Rome, Venice, Milan, and from our ambassador in France, who wrote me that His Most Christian Majesty never tires of praising you, both for the grand entry you made into Rome and for your circumspection, which is so useful in the leadership of his army. These things also give me satisfaction and some hope for good news, even though the death of the pope keeps me in suspense, since I don’t know what will follow. Having been advised by the Most Magnificent Lady Bianca della Mirandola [Bianca Maria d’Este] that a plot by Count Giovan Francesco della Mirandola was discovered in Mirandola and that private persons had offered to let him in through a door, I immediately sent twenty-five crossbowmen on horseback and what additional urban militia were available with the captain of Doveto.299 I also sent him Cerarossa with an artilleryman to provide some cover. The machinators were captured. Count Giovan Francesco, who had shown up with horses and foot soldiers, came back in despair once the plot was discovered. Count Achille Torello had sent him twenty-five mounted crossbowmen without having had the plot ex296. Pope Pius III died on 13 October, having served less than one month in office. It was he who appointed Isabella’s brother, Ippolito d’Este, as bishop of Ferrara. The bad roads mentioned in this letter resulted from heavy rains in the autumn of 1503, but Isabella also alludes here to the rise in crime due to power struggles at the center of the papal state. 297. Francesco Gonzaga was dispatching mail in these days from south of Rome. My thanks to Carolyn James for sharing with me Francesco’s coordinates. 298. The fact that the French had negotiated an agreement with Orsini enemy Cesare Borgia in the wake of Pius III’s death turned relations between the Orsini and the French sour, moving them to sign a condotta with the Spanish in the fight for Naples: Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 76–77. On the disorderly troops over which Francesco Gonzaga presided, see Mazzoldi, 168–70, who cites letters from Francesco to Isabella. 299. See Letter 310, of 29 August 1503, and note. cernede: milizia urbana: Du Cange, 2.274.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 233 plained to him, but once he was alerted by me not to get involved in this thing out of reverence for Your Lordship, who has Count Lodovico and Count Federico in protection, he called back the crossbowmen immediately with very kind words in response to my message. Between the aforesaid Count Achille and Count Giovan Pietro certain differences have arisen regarding borders, and some incursions have been made and livestock prey has been taken by the one side and the other. It is my understanding that Cristoforo was fomenting these scuffles, which from small beginnings could spark large blazes, and this does not seem appropriate to me. Your Excellency being absent, I wrote to Count Cristoforo that it would seem to me he should get out of the middle of things and not promote something that could give rise to scandal, but rather see now to keeping what he has and await the return of Your Excellency, who can more securely answer his needs and in one sweep repair all the damages he has suffered from Count Giovan Pietro. Out of shame, Count Francesco della Mirandola has not wanted to return to Carpi but has gone to Correggio in despair. This move will be good for Count Lodovico, who must know how his men feel; it will give him reason to establish himself better and deprive Count Giovan Francesco of all hope. Revere and Governolo are by now secure and out of danger of plague, and Mantua has remained free of it, by the grace of God. In Sermide Francesco, the natural son of Giovanni Mastino, was killed by Giovan Pietro Fornasaro, one of Your Excellency’s field guards, over certain words they exchanged, in which also the wife and daughter of this Giovan Pietro intervened.300 All of them have been arrested, and through the podestà of Sermide, we are proceeding legally, both against them and against Girolamo Mastino, the legitimate brother of the dead Francesco, who was questioned for having cracked the head of the daughter of the aforesaid Giovan Pietro. No other incidents have taken place in the state these days; rather all is quiet and intent on hearing good tidings of Your Excellency. Federico is well and very active; he is growing marvelously, and on no day does he forget to speak Your Lordship’s name. The girls are well. I am well, but since I am in my eighth month, I go out of the house little. My life is being in public all day, in the vaulted room.301 In the evenings, we play games. Francesco has come back from Modena and should not be recalled. Abrama is ill.302 300. Camparo [=campaio] seems to refer to agricultural fields and not military ones. Presumably Fornasaro guarded Gonzaga crops against poachers and other intruders. 301. Given Isabella’s advanced pregnancy, her use of birthing metaphors in several of her expressions above is noteworthy. This child, Livia Giulia, was born 12 November 1503 and died 23 January 1508. The references to the public and the vaulted room, the Camera della Volta, indicate that Isabella regularly received visitors, ambassadors, and petitioners in this, one of the decorated rooms in her apartments. 302. These are obviously bits of news Isabella forgot to relate above, in her more general description of current events.

234 ISABELLA D’ESTE After receiving the money for the stolen inkwell, I had many edicts issued offering twenty-five ducats to the accuser and pardon to accomplices. I finally found that Maestro Giovan Francesco Donato, the doctor, had taken it out of my room, where he had gone to write a prescription. This was on a Saturday evening. The following Monday, having broken it in several pieces and smashed it, he had it glued by a blacksmith and sold it to a goldsmith. This was discovered via an indirect route. I had the blacksmith and the goldsmith, who were not guilty since they did not know what silver this was, detained. But on account of the edict, the goldsmith spoke of his suspicion to Friar Pietro Arrivabene, and the latter, who wanted to resolve things in such a way that Maestro Giovan Francesco would not be discovered, persuaded [Giovan Francesco] to pay for it, though [Giovan Francesco] never wanted to confess to [the friar] that he had taken it. The blacksmith, then, told his wife about his suspicions. She told one of her neighbor ladies, who told a man, and thus [Giovan Francesco] was reported to me for the reward. I had him spoken to and presented with the evidence by Benedetto Capilupi. He never would confess, but he was persuaded by the friars to disburse the money in order to avoid the risk of detention, and the silver he glued together contained some bits of fabric and salt that he possessed.303 Since the aforesaid blacksmith and goldsmith and one of his boys who had sold the silver were under detention in the hands of the captain of justice and the trial had been constructed on the basis of their testimony, which was quite clear, Maestro Giovan Francesco thought it was time to confess the truth. Friar Pietro sent him to me to request a pardon, which I granted out of respect for his family and compassion for the poor old man, Antonio Donato, who is tormenting himself. The detained men have now been released, and [Giovan Francesco] has gone away out of shame. He apologizes, saying his poverty and the opportunity caused him to fall into this error, but that he never took other silver or anything else after this. The above-mentioned smiths were questioned by the captain of justice about other silver items, but no fraud or knowledge on their part was discovered. The waters have started to rise again in this bad weather; we need them to stop. As for the silver items that are ruined and spoiled, we will wait diligently to have them remade. I am directing this letter via the post, so that Your Excellency will not lack what news occurs to me, though I am not sending a special courier. To your good graces I commend myself along with Federico. I had another edict made for Your Lordship’s silver pieces, offering a reward in the way I did for my inkwell.

303. ma che questo arzento che l’havea facto collare era de mazi de tessuti et salini che l’havea. The sense here is that the ingredients in the glue were traced to products in the doctor’s possession.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 235 Letter 318: 1503 October 31 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, denying a request for grain.304 From the very outset, if it were possible for me to satisfy Your Ladyship’s request for trade in grain from this land, I would not have awaited a second request on the matter but, with no delay whatsoever, would have satisfied your wish with utmost cordiality, as much because I have the greatest willingness to please you and inclination to gratify you, as because those for whom you are interceding are men who deserve to be accommodated in much greater matters than this. But as I said in several other letters to Your Ladyship, in addition to the great poverty of grain we have this year in our state, where I am constrained sooner to consider bringing in than sending out any type of it due to the meager and weak harvests, I have the strictest instructions from the most illustrious lord, my consort, not to allow any grain to leave. So please put Your Ladyship in my shoes, and see if it would be possible for you to satisfy others in this. I pray you please not to ask again or to write to me about this, because it only results in my greater pain and displeasure for not being able to satisfy you, besides which I don’t know what other answer I can give you. But in any other thing that is possible for me, I commend myself to you well, as I am most disposed. I commend myself to you.

Letter 319: 1503 November 7 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, informing him of a domestic scandal.305 Since I came into Your Lordship’s house, I have never found myself so concerned as I am now in the fear that one day some great scandal will result, nor can I find counsel or any solution to this problem. I am all the more sorry to have to trouble Your Excellency, given that you unfortunately have more important matters on your mind. But so that I may never be criticized by you, who perhaps will better be able to resolve things with a letter than I can with words or actions, I thought I should inform you of this latest news. Federico is in love with Antonio da Bologna’s daughter! His head is so turned that he keeps to no road or path. He caresses her with abandon, gives her necklaces as gifts, and favors her in other ways. I make sure that he is well chaperoned, but since he is who he is, everyone is his accomplice. I fear I won’t be able to contain his flame. May our house be spared great shame! Your Excellency may be able at this point, with a letter or by some other means, to mediate and

304. AG 2994 libro 16 c. 65r. Elisabetta Gonzaga Montefeltro was at this time still in exile in Venice and would not return to her city until early December 1503, after the election of the new Pope. Her request for grain thus comes from Venice, on behalf of the deserving populace of Urbino. For one contemporary account of the duchess’s re-entry into Urbino see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:259–60. 305. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 65v–66r.

236 ISABELLA D’ESTE remind him that while his father is on the battlefield, it is not appropriate for a son to pursue love. I wanted to write Your Excellency this jest in my own hand, because it is true, but I feel so heavy and uncomfortable that I would not have been able to write without discomfort. Surely Your Lordship will excuse me, until I am lightened by my delivery. I commend myself always to you, along with our lover.306

Letter 320: 1503 November 7 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, on the election of the new pope.307 Once we had certain news that St. Peter in Chains308 has been created pope, it seemed to our monsignore that it would be appropriate to show signs of joy here, with bonfires and bells, since [the new pope] has always shown himself to be Your Excellency’s friend and a supporter of the actions for your promotion.309 So I consented and ordered that bonfires be burned for three days, as is customary, even though for the other pontificates this was not done, from what I have been told. Hence this will be all the greater demonstration of the hopes we have for His Holiness, as well as a show of respect for France, because we have news here that this pope was created with the support of the Most Reverend Rohan, which, if it is true, I consider to be good news, and I think Your Excellency’s endeavor willl

306. This letter exhibits Isabella and Francesco’s playful rapport as well as their shared delight in the three-year-old Federico’s antics. Amused by Federico’s affectionate displays for the courtier’s daughter, Isabella projects the tot as much older than he is and imagines him involved in the kind of cross-class relations many elite men indulged in, to the chagrin of moralizing onlookers. Isabella’s ability to joke about such goings on suggests a kind of sophisticated irony that must have contributed to her success in the social sphere. For other letters written in jest, see Shemek, “Mendacious Missives.” 307. AG 2994 libro 16 c. 66r. 308. Giuliano della Rovere, whose titular church as cardinal was Rome’s St. Peter in Chains. Cardinals were often referred to by their titular church rather than by name. 309. On 1 November 1503, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was proclaimed pope and took the name of Julius II. Isabella’s enthusiasm was not misplaced, for Julius II’s papacy was to be an extremely important one for the Gonzagas and their allies. As she indicates, Julius had favored Francesco’s appointment as captain of the French army. The monsignore mentioned in this letter must be Francesco’s brother, the apostolic protonotary Sigismondo, who would directly benefit from the new papacy, most evidently by being made cardinal in 1505. In fact, the ambiguous possessive adjective “sua” may refer in this sentence to Sigismondo’s, rather than Francesco’s, promotion, since “actions” had been underway for some time to realize his advancement.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 237 be easier.310 Nothing more occurs to me now, except to commend myself to your good graces, along with the lover.311

Letter 321: 1503 November 7 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, on rumors, postal delays, a wedding, waiting to give birth, and new wine.312 So much chatter comes our way from different sources, one time favoring your French army and another time the Spanish, depending on men’s inclinations, that for many days I was entirely perplexed and not without notable irritation. And several times I complained to myself about the tardiness and rarity of Your Excellency’s letters, especially since the rider’s manager arrived without my letters, though he made it through unharmed and secure. I excused Your Excellency who, given the heap of duties that you must perform, may not have time to dictate them, but I regretted that you had not once-and-for-all commissioned the secretaries to keep me informed day-by-day of your activities. I justified them by saying that they would not write unless instructed to do so. Then I criticized them roundly for not having reminded Your Excellency to do this, and I thought they were avoiding work by not reminding you and thus not being ordered to write. And in this state, not without an unquiet mind, I remained until yesterday, when I received four of Your Excellency’s letters by post, from the 12th and the 21st of last month. This washed all that irritation away, as I learned of your well-being, though I was sorry and I feel enormous compassion in hearing of the inconvenience, discomfort, and suffering you endure. Still, as long as you remain healthy, all the rest can be tolerated. I thank you, then, for the copious contents of these letters, which restored my spirits. I pray you be willing to order that at least every week I be written to and that letters be sent through the occasional postal delivery, as I did with many of the letters and replies I industriously sent you. I hope that some, if not all, of those have come into Your Excellency’s hands. The latest ones were carried by the servant of Federico, your meat steward, and I don’t doubt that you must have been well pleased with my writing, since I omitted nothing, however minimal, that I knew you would welcome knowing, in order to grant Your Excellency’s wishes. I will do everything I can regarding the chapter house of St. Peter to assure that Ghivizzano’s brother is elected as a canon; it seems to me Your Excellency does very well to favor and benefit Ghivizzano in payment for his good service 310. Georges d’Amboise, archbishop of Rouen and cardinal of San Sisto, had also been a contender for the papacy. On his role in the power struggles of this time, see Banks Amendola, First Lady, 166; Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 77, 83–88. 311. The toddler, Federico II Gonzaga. See the preceding letter, also of 7 November. 312. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 67r–68v. For original see AG 2115 bis, fasc. VI.2, cc. 410r–11r.

238 ISABELLA D’ESTE and many labors. I will also see that Gianfrognino’s house is not sold until Your Excellency’s return. This is all I need say in reply to your letters. It now remains for me to tell you that Federico, along with the girls, is very well. I feel so heavy that I can barely walk, and for this reason I rarely go out of the house.313 On Sunday (not the day before yesterday), having been invited by Messer Antimaco to his daughter’s wedding, I went with Federico and Eleonora. Monsignore and Madonna Laura314 came along, and we had supper together there. The decorations and the meal were lavish and much more than one would have expected. Nothing was lacking but Your Lordship’s presence, which was wished for and invoked by him [Antimaco], by me, and by everyone else a thousand times. There was dancing during the day in the courtyard, and after dinner in the salon until the fifth hour [after sunset]. I sent the boy home right after dinner. To honor the bride, I stayed on, with little pleasure since I could not dance and had no wish to, for I recalled that at that hour Your Excellency was perhaps in armor and burdened with work, hunger, sleepiness, water, and cares. If Milanese had not appeared at the party dressed as a nymph with Vigo [di Camposampiero], Horologio, and Lacioso315 as his three companions, the party would have been colder than ice though, as I said, the decorations, the crowd, and the expenditure were sumptuous. Now that the pope has been created and the roads will be secured, I will order a rider and send Your Excellency the guizaretto.316 Uberto degli Uberti will give you an oral account of the affairs of the city which, by the grace of God, are proceeding quietly; in fact only the administration of justice occupies us. Madonna Beatrice,317 the midwife, and my wet nurse have been here now for eight days, and nothing remains for me to do but to put down this weight.318 Yesterday, Mother Sister Osanna was here to visit.319 I consoled her greatly by sharing with her the letters I have received from Your Excellency, warming her to pray for your health. 313. Isabella refers here to her pregnancy, which is close to term. 314. Perhaps Laura Bentivoglio. 315. For discussion of Vigo as one of Isabella d’Este’s constant denigrators, see Cockram, Isabella d’Este, 108–10; also Roberto Zapperi, “Camposampiero, Ludovico,” DBI 17 (1974). “Lacioso” is perhaps Gabriele Lazioso, a massaro who would later be involved with the construction of Francesco Gonzaga’s villa of San Sebastiano: see Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 444, 446, 450–53. 316. The portrait of the young Federico discussed in the letter of 24 October. 317. Perhaps Beatrice Contrari. 318. Again, Isabella returns to the topic of her baby’s imminent arrival. The three women she names were on hand to assist in the baby’s delivery and neonatal care. When she speaks of parturition, Isabella uses the common vocabulary of “unloading” [scaricare] the baby and “putting down the weight’ [mettere gioso el peso] she has been carrying. 319. Isabella and Francesco’s spiritual advisor, Osanna Andreasi.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 239 In recent days I sent to have new Malvasia bought to send to Your Excellency along with some preserves, since I know you like it and that you will appreciate it for your own refreshment and as a good gesture to the French lords.320 It has been perfectly ready for eight days, according to the tastes of Monsignore and Sguagna, who bought it. In order not to put it at risk, I awaited the creation of the pope for the safety of the muleteer, whom I will now send soon. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace, along with Federico, who is very well and sends you four kisses.

Letter 322: 1503 November 13 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, announcing the birth of a daughter and other news.321 Though I know Your Excellency has probably been informed of my childbirth by the Magnificent Madonna Beatrice and the Magnificent Pietro Francesco322 via the post, as is my duty I nonetheless wanted to direct the present rider your way, so that he can assure you personally of my good health and that of the baby girl, on which subject, out of shame and unhappiness, I prefer not to expand.323 It suffices that Federico is well and that he is so beautiful and prosperous that he could count for two sons. While I am in bed, I will leave to Monsignore the protonotary and these others who usually write to you the task of reporting news from here. I will only repeat a few things I wrote via the post, so that if the letters were lost you will be informed through the present one. I wrote Your Excellency some days ago now that these gentlemen and citizens of ours were not content to have Giovanni dal Pozzo as customs judge.324 It seems to them he is not suitable, since he lacks experience and interest in the customs office; and instead they pray you be content to elect one of these three that they have balloted: that is, the count of Crespellano, Jacopo di Acerbi, and Antonio Tridapali. Messer Donato de Preti and many citizens who have seen the count at work praise him for competence and vigilance, and for this reason I had delegated the office to him before I heard of Your Excellency’s choice of Giovanni 320. In Isabella’s day as today, the Malvasia grape was used to make wine. She is clearly referring to new wine and not to grapes, to be shared with the French officers. 321. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 71r–72v; original AG 2115 bis fasc. VI.2, cc. 416r–417r. 322. The doctor. Apparently Isabella was attended by both a midwife and a doctor. 323. This child was Livia Giulia, who died in January 1508. The disconsolate tone of this report is a consequence of early modern inheritance practices. At the age of twenty-nine, Isabella had survived five pregnancies, producing four daughters (one of whom had died) and only one son. One consequence of her newborn’s sex was the imperative to conceive again as soon as possible and thus to embark on another nine months of pregnancy. 324. Judice de la degagna.

240 ISABELLA D’ESTE dal Pozzo, on which matter I await your final wishes in order to carry them out. Through Galeazzo, the brother of Cavaliero,325 I sent the portrait of our little Swiss soldier. I wish I had sent the wine this way as well, to please you. Your Lordship wrote to me that I should order the Counsel to expedite the case of Messer Paris within eight days, on pain of a thousand ducats each, and that none of them should leave the city before then to a place where they cannot be found. I wrote to Messer Tommaso Raimondo that he should come, and he came, and I gave him the commission word for word, for which reason they say they will drop everything else and expedite it. They apologize for not having yet gotten the developments of the case nor heard the allegations, due to the fact that some pieces are missing. In fact, Messer Paris wanted the case to be postponed, because he wanted several witnesses to be questioned, which I did not want—insofar as it is up to me to decide—because I didn’t want to change Your Excellency’s instruction. So I turned the whole thing back to the judges who received Your Lordship’s intentions in writing. In the affairs of Romagna, nothing more has happened since my letter of the 22nd of last month, except that the Venetians captured the castle of Faenza and showed signs of wanting to continue their mission, though the Florentines favor Lord Francesco Manfredi, who had entered the city. The count of Pitigliano326 is riding toward Ravenna. I don’t know now whether due to the creation of the new pope they will change their minds. The duchess of Urbino will leave Venice Wednesday, called by the lord duke to go quickly to govern the state, since his presence in Rome has been requested by His Holiness for the coronation. For this reason she asks my pardon for not being able to visit me as she had earlier decided to do. In another of my letters from yesterday that was sent through the post to Your Excellency, I judge that what Jacopo della Columba’s son told me about the death of the duke of Bourbon, of Monsignore Angoulême, and of the eldest son of the duke of Burgundy is not true, because Jacopo d’Atri made no mention of it to me whatsoever in his letter of the third of this month, in which he wrote of how happy His Most Christian Majesty is with Your Excellency, praising you and glorifying you to the greatest degree.327 I took singular pleasure at this. For now nothing more remains for me to write, except to pray you keep me copiously apprised of Your Excellency’s news. I commend myself and Federico to your good graces always.

325. Per Galeazzo fratello dil Cavaliero ho mandato…. Rather than referring to a rider or courier, il Cavaliero here is likely the courtier Enea Furlano da Cavriana, known as “il Cavaliere.” 326. Niccolò Orsini. 327. Pierre II, duke of Bourbon, had indeed died in October 1503. François d’Angoulême, who would later reign as King François I, and Philip IV of Habsburg, duke of Burgundy (d. 1506) were still alive.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 241 Letter 323: 1503 November 15 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, regretting that the duchess cannot visit her.328 Since Your Excellency is constrained by such urgency as you wrote to me about and must go to Urbino without delaying for the short time you were supposed to come to spend here, where you were awaited and desired with the greatest affection, may you have a most successful and safe journey, and may Our Lord God bless and favor you and fulfill your every wish. I must admit that I cannot help lamenting my fortune, which denies me such a longed-for pleasure, or being so disappointed that I dare say, if you had told me that His Holiness would do this, I don’t know whether I would have hoped so fervently for your sake to see his promotion to the pontificate. But patience! I will live through this too as best I can. It will be a great help to me if I hear often of your activities and those of your most illustrious lord consort, whose success I desire no less than that of the lord marchese my consort, and my own. My brother-in-law, the most reverend monsignore, who is coming to visit you, will tell you the details of my condition, without needing to justify it to you, all the more insofar as I know you must have heard about my having had a girl, in a very easy delivery, thanks be to God. I commend myself to Your Ladyship and pray you do this in my name with your most illustrious consort.

Letter 324: 1503 November 21 Mantua To Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, announcing the birth of a baby girl.329 On the 12th of this month, at the fourth hour, I very easily put down the weight I was carrying. I did not notify Your Most Reverend Lordship, because the birth merited no notice. I wanted to send you this letter now so that you know that I am alive and well, along with the baby. I received the letter written in your own hand, which Your Most Reverend Lordship sent from Florence when you passed through, to which I made no reply because I was so heavy and uncomfortable that my hand could not write. Once I am out of the birthing bed I will make up for this failure. I commend myself to you from the heart.

328. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 72v–73r. Despite its self-centeredness, this letter conveys understandable post-partum exhaustion and discouragement. As Italian states rose and fell around her, and while Francesco exposed himself to constant danger, Isabella’s delivery of a daughter “failed” to increase the security of the Gonzaga dynasty. Small wonder that the presence of a close female friend appeared so vital to her in this moment. 329. AG 2994 libro 16 c. 75r.

242 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 325: 1503 December 4 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing Federico’s excitement at his father’s return.330 Though yesterday via the Ferrara post I gave you a very detailed account of all events that seemed noteworthy up to that day and informed you that I had received your letters of the 19th and 20th of last month, I wanted to take advantage anyway of the departure of this rider who is being dispatched by Milanese, and visit you with this letter, reiterating that I, Federico, and all the girls are in excellent condition. Indeed, we lack nothing but Your Lordship’s presence to make us wholly content. Now that he knows Your Lordship is on his way home, he has become so eager to hug you and kiss you that he doesn’t let an hour go by without asking when you will be here, making gestures to show how he will behave when he welcomes you and promising you an infinite number of hugs and kisses. May Your Lordship proceed happily on your way, and take care against accidents and mishaps; I ask this as a favor to me. I commend myself always heartily to you, along with Federico.

Letter 326: 1503 December 29 Mantua To Giovan Lucido Cattaneo, explaining how she acquired a marble Cupid from Urbino and why she should be allowed to keep it.331 By way of your letter and from Ghivizzano in person we heard of the instruction the duke of Urbino gave you for the restitution of the marble Cupid we received from Duke Valentino, in order to set an example for others who have things of his. Truly, we believe His Excellency has few friends and relations in the world who took greater displeasure at his expulsion and, as a consequence, greater pleasure in the restoration of his state, than we did. On this matter we seek no other witness than the most illustrious duchess, who has always seen into our heart, in times of adversity as well as in times of prosperity. Thus we are very pleased that the duke is seeing to the recuperation of things that were lost and dispersed against his will. But since you inquired after the Cupid, we surmise that His Excellency does not recall the careful steps we took before we asked for it, which were these: Since we wished to have it, given that he was without it, we sent Benedetto Capilupi, our secretary, to understand from the aforesaid lord duke if he would be pleased for us to request the Cupid and the Venus from Duke Valentino, for we were convinced that, not caring for antiquities, [Valentino] had it in any case at his disposal, and it

330. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 80r–v. 331. AG 2994 libro 16 cc. 88r–v. For an Italian transcription of this letter, see Brown, Lorenzoni, and Hickson, “Per dare qualche splendore,” 178–79. For discussion of Isabella’s “cupidity,” see Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 87–113.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 243 might have ended up in the hands of enemies. And we told him that if we had it, we would be beholden to His Lordship, who was its real owner. The answer was this pronouncement, made in the presence of the lady duchess: Not only would he be pleased if we requested it of Duke Valentino and made every effort to get it, but if he had had it freely in his possession and had known of our desire, he would have immediately sent it to us as a gift. These and still more generous words were repeated later by the duchess once we were able to talk together, and she expressed her dismay that we had not asked for it when they were still instated, for she would have gratified us all the more freely insofar as we would have been able to recognize their feelings. Having thus received permission and the gift from the lord duke of Urbino, we asked Valentino for it. And once we had obtained it and brought it to this city with the Venus, His Excellency expressed great pleasure that it had come into our hands. And we, considering it to be more from him than from Duke Valentino, have always been grateful to him and remain so. We don’t believe that he wishes to take back something he has given away, as if we were to set an example for others who have things from him; this would not do us honor, because we would be going contrary to our modest nature and to the good will and consent of His Excellency, which he did not show to others who received things from the aforesaid Valentino. See that the lord duke of Urbino hears our reply, for which we have no doubt he will be pleased with us, because since the matter came about the way we have described, and knowing that he has fond memories and generosity of spirit regarding us, we think he must have spoken with you about this in jest and in casual conversation rather than so that you would repeat it to us. Please commend us to His Excellency and congratulate him again for us in all his happiness, which we regard as mutual, given the ties between us. You need not have apologized for writing to us on this matter, for we are more content that it came through you than through someone else, though just the same we would have found it irksome from anyone.

Letter 327: 1503 December 31 Mantua To the elect lord of Mantua, requesting comedies by Plautus.332 I understand that Your Most Reverend Lordship has in his possession two comedies by Plautus translated into the vernacular: the Curculio and the Aulularia. 332. The addressee is Ludovico Gonzaga, bishop-elect of Mantua. Relations between the Mantuan court and this uncle of Francesco II Gonzaga were strained, since in 1487 he was accused of plotting with his brothers to usurp the Mantuan succession, but apparently this did not preclude cultural exchanges such as book borrowing. Ludovico resided principally in Gazzuolo, where he cultivated a refined court atmosphere for poets and artists and took a special interest in theater. Ludovico’s court is evoked in Bandello’s famous tale of Giulia da Gazzuolo (novella 1.8): Tutte le opere di Matteo Bandello, 106–14.

244 ISABELLA D’ESTE Since I very much want to have these, I pray Your Lordship content me by sending them via the present rider, whom I am directing to you for this sole purpose. Your Lordship will be minimally inconvenienced, for as soon as I have copied them, I will surely send them back to you. I will take this as a singular favor from you. I commend myself to Your Lordship; may you be well. P.S.: I mean the Curculio translated by Cornazzano.333

Letter 328: 1504 January 12 Mantua To Pietro Perugino, sending him measurements for a painting.334 The enclosed paper and the string wrapped around it are equally sized measures for the height of the largest figure there is in the paintings by Andrea Mantegna, next to which your painting will go. Other figures may be as you like, from this size down. Now you know how to manage. We pray you above all speed up the work, for the sooner we have it the more we will appreciate it.

Letter 329: 1504 February 14 Mantua To Pietro Perguino, with new measurements for a painting for her studiolo.335 As plans have changed for the camerino where the painting you are doing for us will go, we fear that the measurements we sent you may not be just right. Thus we thought we would send them again to be more sure, so that you can adapt or reform to this size the canvas you will paint, if the one you have is different from this.336 We pray you set to work immediately and not leave off until it is finished, for the sooner we have it, the more grateful we will be. We offer ourself ever ready to do your pleasure.

333. Luzio and Renier note that here Isabella prefers the translation of this work by Antonio Cornazzano rather than the other existing at the time, by G. B. Guarino: Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 204. 334. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 4v. For discussion of the saga of this acquisition and of the painting itself, see Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 169–90, with a digest of relevant documents supplied by Clifford M. Brown in Appendix Two. 335. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 10r. 336. No measurement figures appear in the text of this or the previous letter. Since units of measurement were not standardized across territories, Isabella often communicated precise measurements for paintings and other objects by sending a piece of string cut to the correct length. The dimensions of Perugino’s finished painting, now in the Louvre (Paris), are 158 x 180 cm. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 169–90; Ferino-Pagden, “La Prima Donna del Mondo,” 221–27.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 245 Letter 330: 1504 February 20 Mantua To the podestà of Viadana, and in similar form to the vicars of Revere, Seravalle, Governolo, Borgoforte, Marcarìa, Sacchetta, San Benedetto, and the podestà of Ostiglia, commanding that all fish caught in Gonzaga dominions be sent to Mantua.337 Due to the scarcity of fish here this year, we ask that in our name you universally notify all fishermen within your jurisdictions, under pain of whatever punishment you think best, that they must bring or send to this city the entire quantity of fish they catch, no matter what its quality. Order that they first consign it to our seneschals, who will take whatever part they like for us at a fair and attractive price. [The fisherman] will then be free to sell the rest in the piazzas here or elsewhere. Do not neglect this. Note all violators, and send us word of them.

Letter 331: 1504 March 7 Mantua To Galeazzo Sforza d’Aragona, inquiring about purchasing horses.338 Having been told that in Ancona certain beautiful Turkish horses are for sale, and finding ourself in need of some, we are sending Gaspare, our rider and the bearer of this letter, to see them, with instructions that if they seem suitable for us he should finalize a sale and bring the horses here. And so that he may carry out our instructions more easily, we have insisted that he refer to Your Lordship, whom we pray please for our sake send a man with him who is knowledgeable and expert and who can direct him in this affair. In addition, if our rider comes to an agreement with the sellers of these horses, whatever the price, we would be singularly pleased if you had the money disbursed to him. Besides the fact that we will be repay all of it well, we will also feel most singularly obliged to you. We offer ourself always to you.

Letter 332: 1504 March 8 Mantua To Benedetto Capilupi, ordering a figure of St. John the Baptist by Antico.339 The love I bear Your Most Excellent Lordship makes me show little regard in using you, just as I hope you will do with me. And so you must help me to pay a debt. I would like you to have made a petite gold figure of St. John the Baptist, which should be no larger than the enclosed paper. I pray you please order Antico to make a wax figure that is utterly perfect, noting that I want it to be nude, or wearing such garments as will leave his person uncovered; and however he thinks it will look best, forming the hands so that in one he holds a cross and in the other 337. AG 2993 libro 15 c. 91v. 338. AG 2993 libro 15 cc. 98v–99r. 339. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 12r–v.

246 ISABELLA D’ESTE a scroll on which can be written, “Behold the lamb of God.” If it is not possible to make the cross and the scroll out of wax, he should make the hands open so that they can be added in the gold version. The sooner he serves me in this, the more I will appreciate it. Have him send me the wax one so that I can then have a gold one made here. I will be obliged to Your Lordship, to whom I commend myself. I’d like to put this little figure on a chain in the portable crown.340 P.S.: I want him to look like a three-year-old boy; and though I said he should have a cross in his hand, now I regret that. I would like his right hand to be pointing with the index finger, and in his left the scroll. I commend myself to you eternally.

Letter 333: 1504 March 8 Mantua To the sculptor Antico, commissioning a figure of St. John the Baptist.341 You will hear from the most reverend monsignore that we wish you to make a wax form for a small figure of St. John the Baptist. It seems superfluous to us to encourage you to do a good job, because a good maestro would not know how to do a bad one, but we pray you make it in your manner, and soon, for you know that we relish these things. We will be obliged to you for it, and we offer ourself to your pleasures.

Letter 334: 1504 April 2 Mantua To Antico, with further details about the St. John the Baptist statuette.342 After writing to you this morning, we have better considered the St. John the Baptist holding his finger pointing straight, and we fear that some will think it is a God the Father who is depicted that way. It would be better if he held it not so straight, but clearly pointing to heaven, as if he were indicating the sun, and if he also turned his eyes in that direction if this is what art requires, just as this one you made seems to be looking in the direction where his finger is pointing. You can then adapt the other hand where the scroll will go accordingly. And since there is no way to have it cast here by Easter, we thought we would send it back to you, asking you please to reshape it, finish it, and clean it at your leisure. If you would 340. The figure is to represent someone just a little younger than Federico II Gonzaga. Anne Hersey Allison takes Isabella to be saying she wants to hang the figure as a ferroniere, a jewel held to the forehead by a flexible crown or chain, and suggests the piece may have been intended as a votive: Allison, “Antico e Isabella d’Este,” in “Isabella d’Este: I luoghi del collezionismo; Mantova-Palazzo Ducale, appartamenti isabelliani,” Civiltà mantovana series 4, vol. 30, no. 14/15 (1995): 91–112; reprinted in Bini, Isabella d’Este, 129–53. In the coming days, Isabella changed her mind repeatedly about the position of the figure’s hands and eyes. 341. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 13r. 342. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 13v–14r.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 247 find it more convenient to have it cast there, in order to have it done your way, we would send you the gold and then not worry about it anymore, knowing that you would see that we are served well. But if you think that we would be better served here, advise us without reservation. Because we wish to have it turn out well, we will embrace your judgment.

Letter 335: 1504 April 4 Mantua To Antico, with further details regarding the figure of St. John the Baptist.343 We need not repeat anything more regarding the St. John the Baptist, because it seems you have understood. Note, however, that though his finger and eyes are still turned to the scroll he will have in his left hand, they should be directed toward the sky. Thus you will make the ring at the top of the head so that it can be strung.

Letter 336: 1504 April 10 Mantua To Alvise Marcello, seeking a refund of money she paid to Giovanni Bellini.344 Three years have gone by since we gave the painter Giovanni Bellini twenty-five ducats in payment for a narrative he agreed to paint for us to put in our studiolo.345 Later, not wanting to do the narrative, he agreed to paint us a Nativity scene of the Savior for the aforesaid twenty-five ducats, about which matter Michele Vianello and Lorenzo da Pavia are fully aware.346 He has never fulfilled our agreement, nor do we believe he ever wanted to finish the work to give to us. We don’t know where this behavior comes from, except that he must hold us in low esteem. Since he has never even given the smallest excuse, as though he were not obliged to us, we have decided to get our money back; and since we have no one in Venice in whom we have greater confidence than in Your Majesty, we thought we would use you as an intermediary and ask you please to call him to you and ask for our twenty-five ducats, and to accept neither excuses nor promises to furnish us with the work, because we don’t want it anymore. And if he does not want to give the money back nicely, may Your Majesty not mind saying a word about it to His

343. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 14r. 344. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 14v–15r. Isabella finally received the Nativity from Bellini in the fall of 1505. According to J. M. Fletcher, the painting has not been traced: “Isabella d’Este and Giovanni Bellini’s ‘Presepio,’ ” 711. 345. As in her other letters on this subject, Isabella refers to the narrative or mythological scene as an historia. 346. Isabella wrote on this same day to Lorenzo da Pavia, saying she could no longer stand such villainy from Bellini and declaring that it was time to get out of relations with such an ingrate.

248 ISABELLA D’ESTE Serenity the doge, or to another magistrate whose orders you think he must follow, so that he will give it back and we will not be so scorned. If he should deny he has the money—which we doubt, however—it can easily be proven by Vianello or Lorenzo da Pavia. Please know that from Your Majesty we could receive no greater favor at present, not so much for getting the money back as for enabling us not to tolerate the offense from Bellini. We offer ourself to whatever may please Your Majesty.347

Letter 337: 1504 April 16 Mantua To Pietro Perugino, proposing a young painter as his apprentice.348 The Mantuan of ours who is showing you the present letter is named Lorenzo di Liombeni. He has been applying himself to painting, practicing that art in this city, and having heard of your great fame, he comes with the desire to learn and improve under your direction. We, who are always prone to favor whomever we have seen inclined to any skill whatsoever, and especially that of painting, which we appreciate extremely, wanted to recommend him to you vigorously with the present letter and pray you, out of love for us, please not refuse to demonstrate for him faithfully and give him direction, knowing that this will especially please us. We will be most notably pleased when the narrative painting you have on your hands for us is begun and when you are proceeding energetically to finish it, as we very much desire. We pray you do so. If, on the other hand, you have not yet started it and have other tasks that keep you from attending to it, you will be doing us a singular favor by returning the money to Angelo Tovaglia. We will not on this account hesitate to be most disposed to you if we can ever gratify you in any way.349

347. Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:348–349, provides another translation of this letter and observes that Marcello was too timid to take strong measures with the seventy-seven-year-old Bellini, who refused to refund Isabella’s money but promised that the painting was three quarters finished. On 6 July, Lorenzo da Pavia wrote to Isabella that the painting was finished. A translation of his letter to Isabella appears in Cartwright, 1:351. 348. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 17r–v. This painter is also known as Lorenzo Leonbruno (or Leombruno). He worked with Perugino for two years in Florence and, upon his later return to Mantua, would execute a number of works for Gonzaga palaces. “Leonbruno, Lorenzo,” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, . See also Leandro Ventura, “Leonbruno, Lorenzo,” DBI 64 (2005). 349. After her difficulties with Giovanni Bellini, Isabella changed her approach to painters and, as we see in this example, spoke openly and early in the process about the possible necessity of cancelling her commission. Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:328–40, provides a lively account of Isabella’s dealings with Perugino for this painting.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 249 Letter 338: 1504 May 14 Mantua To Angelo Tovaglia, attempting to obtain a painting by Leonardo da Vinci.350 From the letters we wrote in Ferrara you will have learned that we are content for Perugino to do our narrative painting, since he has promised to finish it in twoand-a-half months. We pray you lack no diligence with him. As we most exceedingly wish to have something done by Leonardo da Vinci, whom we know both by reputation and by personal acquaintance to be a most excellent painter, we are writing to him with the enclosed letter asking him to please paint us a figure of a young, twelve-year-old Christ. We hope you won’t mind presenting him with the letter and, by adding whatever words you think appropriate to the occasion, encouraging him to serve us, for he will be well rewarded. If he offers the excuse that he has no time due to the work he has begun for that most excellent signory,351 you can reply that this would be an opportunity for recreation and respite when he is weary of the narrative painting, and that he can take his time and pleasure. It is true that the sooner he gives us the finished painting, the greater will be our obligation to him. To your pleasures we offer ourself.

Letter 339: 1504 May 14 Mantua To Leonardo da Vinci, attempting to commission a painting of Christ at age twelve.352 Having heard that you are now in Florence, we have begun to hope we might realize a dear wish, which is to have something done by your hand. When you were in this city and you did our portrait in charcoal, you promised that one day you would do one in color.353 But since that would be almost impossible, given that you are not at leisure to come here, we pray you wish to satisfy your promise to us by converting our portrait into another figure we will appreciate even 350. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 19v. 351. The Florentine government. On Isabella’s dealings with Leonardo, see Francis Ames-Lewis, Isabella and Leonardo: The Artistic Relationship between Isabella d’Este and Leonardo da Vinci, 1500–1506 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012); Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:171, 317–28; Luzio, “Ancora Leonardo da Vinci e Isabella d’Este”; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 192; Françoise Viatte, Léonard de Vinci: Isabella d’Este (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux; Paris: Musée du Louvre, Département des arts graphiques, 1999). See also note 365, below. 352. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 20r. For discussion, transcription and another translation of this letter, see Ames-Lewis, Isabella and Leonardo, 193–221, 234–35. 353. Fleeing an invaded Milan, Leonardo passed through Mantua on his way to Venice in late 1499. The drawing to which Isabella likely refers now resides in the Louvre museum in Paris. On the recent discovery of an oil painting based on this drawing and its highly contested attribution to Leonardo, see Veronica Artioli, “Ritrovato dopo 500 anni il meraviglioso ritratto che Leonardo da Vinci fece a Isabella d’Este,” Sette (4 October 2013): 36–41; Pier Luigi Vercesi, “Il Leonardo mai visto: Scoperto il ritratto fatto a Isabella d’Este,” Corriere della Sera (11 October 2013): 28.

250 ISABELLA D’ESTE more—which is to say a young Christ of about twelve years, which would have been his age when he disputed in the temple—and to paint it with that sweetness and serene air in which you particularly excel. If you satisfy us in this, our greatest desire, know that aside from the payment you yourself ask, we will remain so obliged to you that we will think of nothing else but how to do something you will appreciate. We offer ourself to your every comfort and pleasure, as we await your positive reply.

Letter 340: 1504 May 24 Mantua To Count Federico de Ippolito, admiring his son’s dog and ordering him to give it to her as a gift.354 Having learned that your son Francesco has a very beautiful, white Turkish dog which we most greatly wish to have, we thought it best not to ask him for it, so that he cannot make the excuse that it belongs to you. Asking you, who have rights over your son, we feel even more certain of obtaining it, though it be his. Whether it belongs to the one or the other of you, however, we pray and encourage you be willing to give it to us, for you could do nothing we would appreciate more.

Letter 341: 1504 June 11 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, obeying his order to send Federico to him.355 Obeying the command given in Your Excellency’s letter of yesterday that I send Federico, our mutual son, down to you, I have sent him now, which is about the seventeenth hour [seven hours prior to sunset].356 But since the baby boy’s body has suffered again from diarrhea, more likely due to the winds that have governed these days than to anything else, I think it appropriate (not because I think Your Lordship will be insufficiently vigilant, but moved by the overabundant love I bear him) that I lovingly remind you to keep him out of the wind and away from animal droppings, and to forbid him to undress down to his shirt or to ride horseback too much, especially in the evening right after dinner, all of which things 354. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 21v. 355. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 24v. 356. Evident in this letter is the tension between Isabella’s sense of wifely obedience and her maternal protectiveness toward their only son. Francesco had been displeased to hear of Federico’s recent attendance at the theater and had announced his intention to bring the four-year-old out to be with him to learn more manly arts. Isabella’s emphasis on Federico’s tiny and vulnerable body as well as on their shared claim on him reflects her conviction that Federico was too young to be away from home and her understandable dismay at this, her first long separation from him. Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:261–62; D’Ancona, Origini del teatro italiano, 2:389; Alessandro Luzio, “Federico Gonzaga ostaggio alla corte di Giulio II,” Archivio della società romana di storia patria 9 (1896), 563; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 187.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 251 the doctors condemn as extremely harmful to him. And don’t forget to keep me informed of all the loving kisses that I am certain he will give you every day. To your good graces I commend myself from the heart.

Letter 342: 1504 June 11 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting on the health of their daughter, Eleonora.357 It is true that the illness that struck Eleonora came and persisted all of yesterday with quite notable vehemence, so that the doctors were understandably in great suspense. But now that she has been checked by them and additionally by our Antonio da Grado whom I sent for this morning since Maestro Pietro Francesco could not come because he is sick, at about the twenty-second hour [two hours before sunset], they all tell me in unison that the girl is in very good condition and has quite notably improved, though she is not entirely free of fever, as you will hear in more detail from the letters of the aforesaid doctors. So I think I can assure Your Lordship that you should take this calmly and put your mind at rest, all the more because she lacks nothing that she needs. To your good graces I commend myself always. P.S.: Eleonora commends herself to Your Lordship and to Federico.

Letter 343: 1504 June 17 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, on plans for a trip to Rome.358 From Your Ladyship’s letters in recent days I learned of your great pleasure at my proposal and my thoughts about a trip to Rome. Your delight, which I am sure is even greater in reality than you wrote, is not in the least bit alien to my own opinion. The most illustrious lord, my consort, persists in his willingness to allow me to absent myself, and thus I have determined to start my journey as soon as the time is right, if nothing notable happens to necessitate a change in my plans. And since I am told that Rome is not certain to be free of plague—which, if it were true, would be more apt than any other thing to disrupt my plans—I pray Your Ladyship please be vigilant and seek to get a very clear sense of the truth, and send me notice about it so that I will know how to proceed. Once I have heard the truth from Your Ladyship, and when it is possible to journey safely, I am thinking of traveling incognita, dressed in black with all my silk belongings. If Your Ladyship wishes to go publicly, I will put myself in your entourage and perform some lady-in-waiting service for you, and I will be at your 357. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 24v–25r. 358. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 27v–28r. Plans for this trip were thwarted in September by an outbreak of plague in Rome. Isabella would not make her first visit to the Holy City until 1514.

252 ISABELLA D’ESTE command.359 It seems to me a thousand years until Lord Giovanni, our mutual brother who may now have reached Revere where my lord is, will be here to speak with him [Francesco] at length about this pilgrimage of ours and of things that happened when he was staying with Your Ladyship, which I hope will be no small pleasure.360 In these past few days my most illustrious lord was at Revere for pleasure, and with His Lordship was Federico, who is coming home today. Tomorrow His Excellency too will arrive with his entire court. We are all well, except for Eleonora, who was vexed by a bad and dangerous kind of fever over the last few days. Nonetheless, by the grace of God she is now restored, and she has begun to get out of bed and move around her room. To my great pleasure I learned that Your Ladyship has accepted Pagano della Torre into your service, because since he is the gentleman that he is, you cannot but receive faithful and excellent service from him. And though I hope that through his goodness and his praiseworthy ways he will easily obtain your grace, nonetheless for the love I bear him and out of respect for Benedetto Capilupi, whose nephew he is, I commend him to Your Ladyship at this time of his arrival, because he is a person who deserves to be treated well.

Letter 344: 1504 August 20 Mantua To Ferrante d’Este, sending a gift of cheese.361 I am sending our father and Lord Don Alfonso each a half-wheel of cheese, because they care more for quality than for quantity. But because Your Lordship cares more for quantity than for quality, I am sending you two pieces that together make a whole wheel. Enjoy these for love of me. To Your Lordship I commend myself.

Letter 345: 1504 July 5 Mantua To Gasparino Angelo, informing him that she has married off his daughter.362 As an honorable match for your daughter Bartolomea presented itself, we thought it best not to let her pass up her good fortune; and so in the name of God and 359. See n121, above, and in the previous section, n192. Here, Isabella gleefully imagines herself disguised as one of Elisabetta’s servants, obliged to wait on and follow her sister-in-law’s orders. 360. Isabella often proposed her travels as pilgrimages to fulfill vows made in hopes for the successful outcome of her pregnancies. Evidently, Giovanni Gonzaga is in this case helping to arrange the trip for the two women by speaking to Francesco on their behalf as he moves between the Urbino and Mantua courts. 361. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 33r. 362. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 29r.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 253 with the approval of the most illustrious lord, our consort, we have married her to Federico Cattaneo, a gentleman of this city who is rich and a person of intelligence and valor.363 In order to close the deal we promised the husband, in addition to the dowry we gave her, that after your death your Bartolomea will inherit half of your property. We pray you confirm this in a letter responding to this one, so that your son-in-law may be fully satisfied and may love you as a father. We offer ourself most ready to do your pleasure.

Letter 346: 1504 October 31 Mantua To Leonardo da Vinci, inquiring about a painting he may do for her.364 In recent months we wrote you that we would like to have a young Christ about twelve years old, done by your hand. You had a reply sent to us through Messer Angelo Tovaglia that you would be happy to do it, but given the many commissioned works you have on your hands, we fear that you may not remember ours. So we thought we would send you these few lines, asking that when you feel weary of the Florentine history painting you be willing to take recreation by making this little figure, for you would be doing something much appreciated by us and profitable for yourself.365

Letter 347: 1504 November 10 Mantua To the humanist Paride da Ceresara, complaining about the slowness of artists and asking him for a new “invention.”366 We don’t know which of us is more vexed by the delays of painters: we, who see our camerino still unfinished, or you, who daily have to devise new ideas for works which, given the extravagance of these painters, are carried out neither as quickly nor as accurately as we would like. Hence, we have decided to try some new painters, in order to finish the studiolo in our lifetime. When the protonotary Bentivoglio367 was here, he offered to have a painting done for us in Bologna by an 363. Isabella regularly sought marriage partners for young ladies in her court:. Castagna, “Una donzella di Isabella d’Este”; Castagna, Un vicerè per Eleonora Brognina. As we can see in her negotiations on behalf of Bartolomea, she was especially attentive to providing for the women’s financial security. 364. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 44r. 365. Here as elsewhere, Isabella uses the contemporary term historia (or istoria) to mean not only “history painting,” but any painting that tells a story (narrative painting). In this case, Leonardo was working on an historia (narrative painting) on a historical topic, the Battle of Anghiari, for Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. This work is now lost. See also note 351, above. 366. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 46r. Paride had already supplied Isabella with plans for the composition (what she calls “invention”) of the paintings by Perugino and Bellini intended for her studiolo. 367. Antonio Galeazzo Bentivoglio, a member of the most prominent family in Bologna, had visited Isabella and admired her studiolo in the summer of 1504: Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:372.

254 ISABELLA D’ESTE excellent master and to see that we are quickly served.368 We ask that you not mind exerting yourself again by composing a new invention that pleases you yourself, on whose satisfaction our own depends. Once you have devised it, send it to us immediately, for you could do nothing that would be more welcome to us.369 Be well. And greet your wife on our behalf.

Letter 348: 1504 November 27 Mantua To Antonio Galeazzo Bentivoglio, sending the concept, drawings, and measurements for a painting to be done by Lorenzo Costa.370 We fear that our lateness in sending Your Lordship the idea for the painting we would like may make you think we care little about it. But we don’t want you to be of this mind at all, for we are most studious! Our lateness results from our wish to send you a drawing, so that the painter can better understand what he is being asked to do, because many times one cannot explain a concept well in words. I am sending you therefore this drawing, along with the narration of the poem, so that in seeing both, the painter will better know how to proceed. The painting should be on canvas like our other ones, four braccia and three onze long, and three braccia and three onze high, in Mantuan lumber lengths, which we are sending you on a chart marked with the onze, so that if your Bolognese braccio is not the same as the Mantuan one he cannot err in the size of the painting. We have done similarly with other foreign painters.371 Now that Your Lordship understands our concept, our requirements, and our wishes, we hope you will set yourself to carrying them out as, in your kindness, you promised us you would do. We pray you come to an understanding with the painter such that we will not be wearied372 by him, as we were by Perugino and Giovanni Bellini, and that the work will be nonetheless good and worthy of keeping company and being compared with these other excellent painters. When the painting is begun and, in Your Lordship’s opinion, may be expected to proceed, we will send you whatever portion of the money you advise, in the conviction 368. The master in question is Lorenzo Costa, two of whose paintings, would eventually hang next to Mantegna’s in the studiolo. For discussion of this painting, completed in 1506 and now known as Coronation of a Woman Poet, see Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 191–204. 369. Cartwright (1:373–77) reports that Paride sent his idea for the painting’s subject and composition within five days. This painting also suffered repeated delays, due to Costa’s ill health and his other, more substantial commissions, but Isabella was very pleased with the end result. After the expulsion of the Bentivoglio by Pope Julius II, Costa accepted Isabella’s invitation to transfer his workshop to Mantua and assume Mantegna’s former position as court painter. 370. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 50r–v. 371. By “foreign,” Isabella means not from Mantua. 372. I take stanghezata to be a local variation of stancheggiata: worn out, tired, wearied.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 255 that you will not fall short of your role as good friend and agent, and in return for which we hope to do the same for you in satisfying your every wish. We commend ourself to you.

Letter 349: 1505 January 2 Mantua To Floramonte Brognolo, asking him to procure two globes for her.373 We understand that in the pope’s library there are two solid spheres. On one is depicted the map of the world; on the other, the celestial signs, which is to say the zodiac, with the images of the north and the south accompanied by zodiacal signs. These two spheres are set on two pedestals that are about two ells high, and held in the top half of the library. We immensely wish to have copies of them, as they are most singular. We pray you, through the authority of the most reverend monsignore our cardinal [Ippolito d’Este], even if you should have to pretend that you want them for him, please do all you can to have them made, finding a good painter or other kind of master who knows how to paint them and compass all the lines correctly, and make every effort to have them similar to these, which we understand to be most accurate. And we would like them both. For the cost that will be incurred, we will make good on our debt as soon as you notify us. Once they are copied, send them to us with all diligence by the first means that presents itself. Please commend us to the good grace of the aforesaid monsignore.

Letter 350: 1505 January 10 Mantua To Count Ludovico della Mirandola, requesting pardon for a young man who has been condemned to die.374 We understand that there in Mirandola a poor young man, son of Lucca de Fuzio, who comes from a good family and decent parents, and who was more likely drawn into this immorality by bad company than by his own will, is in custody and sentenced to be hanged. Because we have compassion for his family and for his youth, it does not seem inappropriate for us to intercede on behalf of a person who can be rehabilitated. Thus as a close relation we pray you, out of love and respect for us, please be willing to grant him his life and pardon any other penalty he may have incurred. You will be doing something for which we are immensely 373. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 55v. Isabella’s language in describing these globes suggests their novelty to her as cartographic images of the earth and the heavens. For context and a transcription of this letter, see Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 229–52, 415–16; and Molly Bourne, “Francesco II Gonzaga and Maps as Palace Decorations in Renaissance Mantua,” Imago Mundi 51 (1991): 51–82, where she notes at 75 n90 that the oldest surviving terrestrial globe is one completed in 1492, Martin Behaim’s “Erdapfel” (earth apple), and that when Isabella learned that the two globes would cost as much as 200 ducats, she opted for the terrestrial globe alone. 374. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 60r.

256 ISABELLA D’ESTE grateful, and you will console his devastated parents, whom we understand to be deeply devoted servants of Your Lordship. We hope we will not receive a negative response from you, for we promise to be most obliged, and we offer ourself ever ready to serve your convenience and your pleasure.

Letter 351: 1505 January 27 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara [Alfonso I], on the death of their father, Ercole I d’Este.375 Though I have had his death before my eyes for many days, given the advanced age and long infirmity of the most illustrious and excellent lord, our father of happy memory, nonetheless when I read the letter in which Your Excellency notified me of his passing, I felt that shock and sorrow that befit filial love and natural indebtedness. In this moment, I can say nothing more than may Our Lord God have mercy on his soul, as I believe indubitably he will, since our father lived and died so deeply in the Catholic faith.376 Your Most Illustrious Lordship’s peaceful succession to the state and the great applause and jubilance with which that loyal populace rightly greeted your assumption of principality and government will give me cause to leave off my tears and sighs more quickly, persuaded as I most greatly am that Your Lordship, out of the tender and cordial love you always bore me as a brother, will love and protect me as a daughter now that you have taken the place of a father.377 Thus I congratulate you, for after our father’s long and happy life, and with written confirmation, you have come into your hereditary succession at a vigorous age. I pray God grant you the same good fortune as he did that lord of happy memory. I thank Your Excellency for notifying me, and I commend myself to you from the heart, until such time as I may send a man to visit you.378

375. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 66v–67r. Ercole d’Este died peacefully in the Castello Vecchio of Ferrara on 25 January 1505. For a discussion of his final years, see Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara, 424–67. More generally, see Trevor Dean, “Ercole I d’Este, duca di Ferrara, Modena e Reggio,” DBI 43 (1993); Werner L. Gundersheimer, Ferrara: The Style of a Renaissance Despotism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 173–228. 376. Ercole d’Este had indeed lived a life of religious devotion. For a portrait of his reign, see Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 164–85. 377. The second half of this letter discloses an important political purpose. Aware that the state is now in her brother’s hands, Isabella is writing her first letter to the new duke of Ferrara. By invoking intimate family ties, she aims to assure most favored relations with his court. At the same time, she acknowledges that the power to construct or decline such relations lies with the duke. 378. Since for reasons of state security it was not possible to leave the court unattended, Isabella often sent representatives to pay condolences in her stead, even at the death of a close family member.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 257 Letter 352: 1505 January 27 Mantua To Giovan Battista Vismara ordering mourning garb.379 We and our ladies must veil ourselves in observance of the death of our most illustrious lord father of happy memory. Thus we pray you send via the present courier four pieces of silk veiling, of the finest you can find in Milan, which should be chosen by your ladies. In addition to these, please have specially made-to-order one piece that is the finest possible, having the silk selected and scrutinized, and have it made extremely thin and worthy of us, because we want it for our personal use. Send it to us as soon as it is made, by the first available delivery. We offer ourself ever ready to do you pleasure.

Letter 353: 1505 April 29 Mantua To the prefectress Giovanna della Rovere, expressing pleasure at the betrothal of Eleonora Gonzaga to Francesco Maria della Rovere.380 Having gone to the monastery for Holy Week to devote ourself to communion, we received from your man Trombetta the letter sent by Your Ladyship, in which you convey your delight in the ties of affinity that now bind us through our children. We told Trombetta that he must excuse us with Your Ladyship if we did not reply just then, since we had no secretary at our disposal and were intent on our devotions. Once Easter day had passed, we went to Ferrara to visit the lord duke, our brother, with the understanding that the messenger being expedited by the most illustrious lord, our consort—a chamberlain of Lord Giovanni, our brother-in-law—was going to pass your way. But he took another road, and to our immense dismay, we are now derelict in our duty to Your Ladyship. Given your goodness and prudence, you will accept our explanation and also appreciate that we take the same pleasure as you do in this marriage agreement, for it seems to us that if our daughter is with you, she cannot but be well situated. It remains to us only to pray God to grant such love between the bride and groom that they will always live in unity, peace, and contentment. I would have sent Eleonora’s portrait to Your Ladyship, as you asked, if there had been a painter here who is adept at coloring. Once I can obtain one, I will immediately have the portrait done and will send it to Your Excellency, to whom I offer nothing, since it seems to me superfluous to offer you what, thanks to this new contract, we now hold in common. The lord marchese, the bride, and I, together with our other children are well, and we commend ourself to you.

379. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 66v. 380. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 90r–v. This marriage was to be immensely important for the Gonzagas. Francesco Maria della Rovere was nephew and heir to the duke of Urbino (his mother was Giovanna da Montefeltro) and nephew as well to the newly elected pope, Julius II.

258 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 354: 1505 April 29 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, discussing the engagement of Eleonora Gonzaga to the nephew and heir of the duke of Urbino.381 I made no reply to Your Ladyship’s letters of the 22nd and the last day of March, because when I received them I was in the monastery of San Giovanni. After Easter, I went to Ferrara, where no messengers whatsoever came to hand, because Lord Giovanni’s messenger, against all orders he had been given, chose not to pass through there. Nor have I been able to respond to the lady prefectress, as I am doing now via the enclosed letter written in my hand, which Your Ladyship will see that she gets. Upon the contract of marriage between the lord prefect and Eleonora, I took singular pleasure in many respects, but most especially for Your Ladyship, who I know loves Eleonora no less than I do and who, when she is with her, will seek nothing more than to show her affection. All that remains now is to pray to Our Lord God that He send love and harmony between them and preserve them long in prosperity, so that we may be completely content. Your Ladyship must now make every effort to see that soon our monsignore becomes a cardinal, as I am sure you will do to please and honor him.382 I was terribly pleased in Ferrara these recent days at the great affection that was shown me by the most illustrious lords my brothers and sister-in-law. Upon my return, I found my lord and all our children in good health. For the illness Your Ladyship had this Lent, I wish not to express my sympathies, though they may be in order from what I have been told, but rather I congratulate you on the recovery you are now enjoying. I pray you will want to stay well and see to living without such austerity.383 I commend myself to Your Ladyship and pray you commend me to lady sister Chiara, and greet Madonna Emilia for me.384

Letter 355: 1505 May 16 Mantua To Aldus Manutius, ordering a complete set of his editions in Latin.385 We wish to have a copy on vellum of all the Latin books you have had printed in small format. We ask you to please send, unbound, all those you have in stock that 381. AG 2994 libro 17 cc. 91r–v. 382. Isabella refers to Elisabetta and Francesco’s brother (her brother-in-law) Sigismondo Gonzaga, who was aiming for an appointment as cardinal. Isabella clearly felt that his chances were improving, given his niece’s betrothal to the pope’s nephew. 383. The implication is that Elisabetta had fasted and perhaps performed other Lenten penances too rigorously. 384. Madonna sore Chiara, and Emilia Pia. Francesco’s older sister Chiara Gonzaga died in 1503. I have not identified this Chiara. She may be a nun, Sister Chiara. 385. AG 2994 libro 17 c. 95r. For Manutius’s reply of 23 May 1505, see D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 312. See also Letter 243 of 8 July 1501 and note, above.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 259 have been corrected, excepting Virgil, which we already have. And if you must have them printed, please remember to have printed on vellum whichever ones you don’t have on hand, seeing that they are produced with care. Please advise us of the cost, and we will send you the money. We offer ourself as most disposed to your comfort and pleasure.

Letter 356: 1505 June 15 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi, consenting to take his daughter into her court.386 We have gladly accepted your daughter Eleonora, whom we like both on her own account and because of whose daughter she is. We hope to be served well by her and that you and your wife will be consoled, for we will treat her well. Set your mind at ease about this and think no more about it. Turn instead to raising and placing your other daughters. No further reply to your letter is required, except that you must promise us again to allow us to gratify you always in anything you need, both in memory of the service you gave to the dear departed madonna, our mother, and for your own virtues and goodness. We thank you for the little bone rings387 you sent us; they are pretty and we like them. Be well, and give your wife our greetings.

Letter 357: 1505 June 30 Mantua To Pietro Perugino, upon receipt of a long-awaited painting.388 The painting arrived unharmed. We like it for its good design and color, but if it had been finished with greater care, it would have done you greater honor and contented us more, since it must hang next to the very refined ones by Mantegna. We also regret that that Mantuan Lorenzo [Leonbruno] dissuaded you from painting it in oil, because we wanted it in oil, knowing that oil is your forte and is more beautiful. Nonetheless, as we have said, we are content with you and we offer ourself ever ready to do your pleasure.

Letter 358: 1505 July 4 Mantua To Antonio Tebaldeo, thanking him for arranging a visit by Pietro Bembo and Paolo Canale to Mantua.389 Messer Pietro Bembo and Messer Paolo Canale stayed with us a few days, which gave us as much pleasure and satisfaction as one can possibly imagine, since we 386. AG 2994 libro 18 cc. 14r–v. 387. annelletti dosso. 388. AG 2994 libro 18 c. 18v. See Letter 328 of 12 January 1504 and relevant note. 389. AG 2994 libro 18 c.19v. A transcription appears in D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 312. Isabella

260 ISABELLA D’ESTE found their virtues to surpass by far our expectation and what we had been told about them, though these were indeed great and optimal. Since you were the cause of all this, as you wrote to us, we remain in your debt. We thank you for performing an office that could not have been more welcome and appreciated, and we promise we will not forget it. Be well.

Letter 359: 1505 September 23 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, congratulating him on the birth of a son and pleading clemency.390 From my other letter, Your Excellency will have understood the enormous pleasure I felt, and feel, for the male child that has been born to you. This pleasure could not be greater, as you may well understand, since you know my feelings. It pains me that I do not find myself in a position to make an external show of what my heart would dictate.391 Again I congratulate and rejoice with Your Excellency who, I am sure, has never felt greater happiness. It is therefore reasonable that, for public example and delight, you have made and will make such public demonstration as is customary for lords and persons of our rank, by opening the prisons, commuting sentences, and restoring the banished and the interned. I say this not to remind you, for I am quite certain that you have already done this, and it would hardly be my place. I only wish to say that if you have exercised the privilege that the birth of a firstborn male allows, benefitting extraneous persons and those who out of natural and real malice would deserve to continue serving their sentences and remain in Your Excellency’s had wanted for years to meet the Venetian poet Pietro Bembo and had already invited him to visit her a number of times; but events had conspired to necessitate postponements. In spring 1505, however, Bembo traveled to the papal court in Rome and, on his return north, stopped in Gubbio. There he was welcomed by the dukes of Urbino, who had been given asylum in Venice during their city’s occupation by the Borgias. From there, in late June Bembo was able to visit Mantua as well, bearing a letter of introduction from the duchess of Urbino. Bembo appeared to have been as delighted as Isabella was with this occasion. Having seen her studiolo, he promised to help her reopen negotiations with Giovanni Bellini for a large painting; and having heard Isabella sing and play music, he sent her a number of his own poems. Bembo’s letter accompanying theses pieces refers explicitly to Isabella’s musical performances: “I am sending you ten sonnets and two strambotti… not because they deserve to come into Your Ladyship’s hands, but because I too wish to have some verses of mine recited and sung by you, as I remember the sweetness and mildness with which you sang someone else’s on that most happy evening….” Bembo adds that his lines will be “most fortunate” if they have Isabella’s “lovely and graceful hand” and her “pure voice” to convey them to listeners. I translate from Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 199. See also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1: 271–74, who also translates Bembo’s letter; Vittorio Cian, “Pietro Bembo e Isabella d’Este Gonzaga: Note e documenti,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 9 (1887): 81–136. 390. AG 2994 libro 18 cc.33r–v. This child, born on 19 September 1505 and named after his grandfather, Pope Alexander, lived only twenty-five days. 391. The sort of external show she would like to be in a position to make becomes clear from Isabella’s argument below.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 261 bad graces, so much less would there be any grumbling if you pardoned a brother, who fell into error not out of malice but out of heedlessness.392 And so again I pray Your Lordship be willing to readmit Don Giulio to his homeland and your grace, because aside from the fact that you cannot reasonably refuse, you will please me incredibly. This is not a time to insist on legalisms, or for contempt, or hatred; and if the most reverend lord cardinal [Ippolito d’Este] were nearby, he would surely give you the same counsel. Nor do I believe that by any of Your Lordships I can be thought to lack respect, for I make this plea dispassionately, out of fraternal love. If in my first letter of congratulation to Your Excellency I did not touch on this argument, it was not because it is not close to my heart, but because I was more afflicted by fever than I am now, though it still prevents me from writing in my own hand, as would be my duty and my desire. I commend myself to Your Excellency and to my most illustrious sister-in-law and honored sister, whom I congratulate on her health as well as on her delivery.

Letter 360: 1505 October 15 Mantua To King Louis XII of France, pledging her ties to him and sending him some Mantuan caps.393 I kiss Your Majesty’s hands and commend myself humbly to you. Since I cannot personally show you reverence, as would be my duty and desire given my many debts for the great kindness you continue to show me through both words and gifts, I have sent you Alessandro da Baese, my seneschal, so that he may show you reverence and explain to you how grateful I am and how disposed to do something welcome that will serve you. At present, since I understand that Your Majesty wears his hair shorn, I am sending you several caps in the style that is worn here. I do so not because they are as lovely as they ought to be for so much majesty as yours, but to make a testament of my faithful service, which will be 392. Isabella refers to their half-brother, Giulio d’Este. Giulio’s chaplain had been arrested and imprisoned by their brother, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, then freed in a nighttime raid by Giulio and Isabella’s third brother, Ferrante. For this act, Giulio was banished. Rumors were circulating that the real reason for animosity between Ippolito and Giulio was a personal one. Both of them were smitten with Angela Borgia, cousin and lady-in-waiting of Lucrezia the duchess of Ferrara. Indeed, though Ippolito was probably unaware of the fact, Angela was already in the first months of a pregnancy, plausibly with Giulio’s child. Isabella’s efforts to obtain clemency for Giulio finally succeeded, as she learned from a letter of 12 October 1505 from Bernardino Prosperi. Giulio’s troubles had barely begun, however, for which see Letter 386 of 20 September 1506. On this extended episode in Este family history, which was much commented on by contemporaries, see Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 286–87; Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:265–66; Luzio, “Isabella d’Este nelle tragedie della sua casa, 1505–1506,” Atti e memorie della Accademia Virgiliana di Mantova new series 5 (1912): 55–95; Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara, 496–506; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 203–5. 393. AG 2994 libro 18 c.38r.

262 ISABELLA D’ESTE more clearly laid out by my seneschal. I beg you please deign to give him the same credence as if I myself in person were speaking to you. To Your Majesty’s good grace I commend myself, praying God will happily keep you well for many years.

Letter 361: 1505 November 22 Mantua To the nuns of Corpus Christi in Ferrara, announcing the birth of a son.394 We think you in Ferrara must have been so fearful for us that you did not budge from the feet of Christ until you were certain that we had given birth to a boy. We did produce a beautiful and healthy boy, tonight at the second hour [after sunset]. May God be praised forever! Pray to His Majesty to keep him well, along with Federico. I commend myself to the prayers of the mother abbess, to all the other sisters, and to Your Reverence.

Letter 362: 1505 November 28 To Ferrante d’Este, apologizing for his not being notified by letter of Ercole Gonzaga’s birth.395 Your Lordship is right to complain and be irritated that you were not sent word of my giving birth. But you certainly cannot be unhappy with me, because I was in no condition to commission letters, or indeed to think of anything but myself. My illustrious lord apologizes for not having specified anyone when he ordered that letters be written to the relatives. If there was a mistake, it must be attributed to the secretaries who, under such pressure to write, neglected Your Lordship and the lord Don Sigismondo, our uncle.396 Thus I must be all the more grateful for Your Lordship’s having written, insofar as you sent us letters without our having merited any. I had them read to my lord, who took great pleasure from them. I am well, as is the baby, and I will kiss him three times for love of you. I commend myself to Your Lordship. I am pleased to hear of Don Giulio’s improved condition.397 394. AG 2994 libro 18 c. 50v. This is one of numerous letters sent by Isabella upon the birth of Luigi (Aloyse, Alvise) Gonzaga, on 2 November 1505. This second, long-awaited son of Isabella and Francesco II Gonzaga was welcomed to the world with much fanfare. Named for Louis XII, King of France, Aloyse would later come to be called Ercole, in honor of his maternal grandfather. 395. AG 2994 libro 18 c.51v. 396. Isabella sent a number of letters to other recipients who had been unintentionally excluded from the circle of official communication about this birth. As she notes, in the excitement over a long-awaited second Gonzaga son, the secretarial staff lost its usual, orderly composure. The situation affords a glimpse at the workings of a Renaissance state chancery as well as of Isabella’s impulse to correct diplomatic errors rapidly and graciously. 397. The reference is to Giulio d’Este, who is also discussed in Letter 359 of 23 September 1505, above. The quarrel between Giulio and Ippolito escalated after the episode with Giulio’s chaplain.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 263 Letter 363: 1506 May 8 Sacchetta To Giulio da Gonzaga, asking him to restrict his guest list for her imminent visit in order to guard against plague.398 Because we would not want to happen in your house what happened yesterday in the house of Francesco di Riva where, in order to honor us, people came from all the surrounding area to dance and to see, we would be pleased if you ordered that [in your house] there be only those people that you are certain have not been in any place suspected of plague. And if it seems difficult to do this given that the planned day is Sunday, you could defer [our visit] until Monday. We await notification from you as to what you have done. Be well.

Letter 364: 1506 May 8 Sacchetta To Francesco II Gonzaga, commending his efforts to contain the threat of plague in Mantua.399 I took great pleasure in hearing from Your Excellency’s letter that you have imposed such order and provisions in the city that you hope to stem the tide of plague, because as you prudently write, it is no wonder that in this full moon there have been discovered more cases of infection than there were thought to be. I also praise you most highly for your suspension of the plan to send the children down to Revere, because the truth is that Gorno was at the house of Francesco da Riva yesterday, where I went to dinner and supper, and he played with me without my knowing of the case that had surfaced in the house, nor that he had been to Mantua. But since he is a careful person, I think he will not have mixed with those members of his household from whom he could have caught it. For this reason, I want to hope for the best about it. But because I am also invited on Sunday to Messer Giulio da Gonzaga’s, I picked up on the topic of Gorno’s arrival, and wrote him that he should order that no one from the surrounding areas comes to his house and that he should be well on his guard. I thank Your Lordship for your news. Here I have nothing else to report except my good health and that of the little baby, though today I had blood drawn from my hand on the advice of the In a moment of exasperation at the unwanted attentions of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, Angela Borgia one day exclaimed that Giulio’s eyes (which were reputed to be very beautiful) were worth more than all the cardinals one could have. Ippolito’s response was to have Giulio attacked by thugs who were instructed to kill him, and to put his eyes out. Though Ippolito’s henchmen largely succeeded in blinding Giulio, he did survive. On 22 November 1505, Bernardino Prosperi wrote to Isabella on Ferrante d’Este’s behalf, suggesting that there was some hope that Giulio might regain partial vision. Ippolito went virtually unpunished, because Duke Alfonso I d’Este had come to depend on him for numerous administrative responsibilities in the state of Ferrara. 398. AG 2994 libro 18 c. 86r. 399. AG 2994 libro 18 cc. 86r–v. The comment about playing probably refers to card or board games.

264 ISABELLA D’ESTE doctors.400 I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace, accepting your apology for not coming here because you are awaited there by Lord Giovanni our brother, to whom I pray you commend me, and also to the monsignore our most reverend [Sigismondo Gonzaga] etc. I commend myself to Your Lordship.

Letter 365: 1506 May 9 Sacchetta To Giovanni Michele, giving instructions for housing her scudero until they can be sure he is free of plague.401 We want you to house our squire, Spagnolo, in the plant nursery, where he should stay a few days until he is safe to come and serve us, even though we understand he has no sickness whatsoever. Since he is in Mantua now, it seems to us he should be isolated for a while before he comes to court. Find some way to provide a bed and bedding for him. For his expenses, tell Jacopo the pantry manager to have some wine brought to the plant nursery for him; and the money he was to get for bread will be returned according to the instructions given by our seneschal. You can have our baker give him either flour for a month, or bread, as he prefers. For food to go with the bread, we are sending two ducats he can spend as he likes. See that the vegetable gardener of the nursery has his wife cook for [Spagnolo], and order that for a few days they don’t mix with other neighbors.

Letter 366: 1506 May 11 Sacchetta To Taddeo Albano, discussing grain prices and the death of Michele Vianello.402 Since the price of grain is so low in Venice, we will keep ours here and try to pay back as soon as possible the money you and Pietro Saracino are owed for the spices and the candles.403 We felt very sorry at the death of Messer Michele Vianello, for he was a virtuous man and a friend of the first order. Because we recall having seen in his house, among other beautiful things, an agate vase and a painting of the drowning of the Pharaoh, which we would like to have, we pray you join with Lorenzo da

400. Bloodletting, also known as phlebotomy, is a medical practice dating back to the ancient Greeks. In Isabella’s day, it was recommended for numerous ailments, usually to “rebalance” the vital humors, of which blood was one. 401. AG 2994 libro 18 c.87r. 402. AG 2994 libro 18 cc.89v–90r. 403. Isabella had evidently planned to pay with Mantuan grain for items purchased in Venice. The terms appearing here (spices and candles) are spezierie and cere. The former refers to all the things produced by the speziale; see n254, above. Cere (literally: waxes) could be not only candles and wax torches for lighting, but conceivably also wax figures.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 265 Pavia and find out together whether his heirs want to sell these things.404 Operate in such a way as to see that we are contented at a fair price, which you should understand and communicate through the present rider whom we have sent for this specific purpose. If, in order to get these things, you should need the authority of a gentleman, rely on Magnificent Messer Pietro Bembo, to whom we are writing in the attached letter; and do everything possible so that we get these things before they are given in payment to creditors. We are pleased that you have arranged with Maestro Angioletto da Murano for him to supply the glass items. As for the other things we have yet to receive, please buy the items noted in the enclosed certificate, seeing that they are absolutely excellent, and send them with the rider. And if by chance he cannot bring them, send them with the first Lombard barge, with orders to leave them at Seravalle or here at Sacchetta as it comes up the Po. We will be grateful to you for all of these things. We offer ….405

Letter 367: 1506 May 11 Sacchetta To Lorenzo da Pavia, inquiring after possessions of the recently deceased Michele Vianello.406 We heard with the greatest displeasure that Messer Michele Vianello has departed from this life. Both for his virtues and for the affection he showed us, we loved him singularly, and so in his memory we wish to have something that he held dear. Among other things, we would like the agate vase and the painting of the Pharaoh’s drowning. We wrote of our wishes also to Taddeo Albano. Please work with him to see that our money may satisfy us, asking whoever is in charge what was the most recent price paid for these things. And if you should need the favor of gentlemen, turn to the Magnificent Messer Pietro Bembo, to whom we have written in a suitable way. Please send us word through the present rider of what you do. 404. Isabella had met the Venetian citizen Vianello and admired his collection of antiquities on her visit to Venice in 1502; he then became her agent in negotiations with Giovanni Bellini. Since Vianello had died with debts of over 2,000 ducats, his possessions had to be auctioned to pay his creditors; here Isabella seeks to circumvent the obligation to bid against other contenders. Though she did not succeed in the immediate sense, with the assistance of several key advocates and through the kindness of the top bidder for the painting (Andrea Loredan, brother of the Venetian doge), she eventually owned both of these items and more, for less money than she intended to pay. For transcriptions of all relevant correspondence, see Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 91–96, 114, 169–86. The painting of the Pharaoh Drowning in the Red Sea by Jan Van Eyck is now lost. For discussion, see also Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 271–73. 405. As preserved in the chancery copybook, the letter prescribes a formulaic commendation as closure without writing it out. 406. AG 2994 libro 18 cc. 90r–v.

266 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 368: 1506 May 11 Sacchetta To Pietro Bembo, on a commission for Giovanni Bellini and on the death of Michele Vianello.407 Your Magnificence may be amazed that we have not yet sent the measurements for the painting Bellini is to do, but do not think that we have lost our appetite for it. Our delay was caused by the sudden arrival of plague in Mantua, since we were compelled to leave as soon as we returned from Florence, without having time to have the measurements taken. Please do not cease to keep Bellini well disposed and compose the poesia408 to his satisfaction, because as soon as the plague turns back, we will send the measurements of the painting, the figures, and the mood.409 Having heard that Messer Michele Vianello died, we felt the sorrow that his virtues and the affection he bore us would dictate. We recall having seen in his house an agate vase and a painting of the Pharaoh’s drowning, which we would like to have. We have put Taddeo Albano and Lorenzo da Pavia in charge of this, with the instruction that if they need the favor of a man of authority they should call upon Your Magnificence. Hence we pray you do what you can if it is needed, to see that at a fair price our money may satisfy us. This will be one of the great pleasures you can do for us. We offer ourself etc.

Letter 369: 1506 May 12 Sacchetta To Alessandro Amadori, thanking him for trying to obtain a painting by Leonardo for her.410 We were grateful to hear through your letter of the 3rd of this month that you called upon the lady gonfaloniera in our name, as was also confirmed by a letter 407. AG 2994 libro 18 cc. 90v–91r. Isabella was at this point negotiating with Bellini for a second painting. On the Vianello episode, see Clifford M. Brown, “An Art Auction in Venice in 1506,” L’Arte 18–19/20 (1972): 121–36; Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 169–86; Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 271–73. 408. Poesia refers to the narrative subject to be represented in the painting. The poesia, as we have seen in letters related to Costa’s painting, was often devised by a learned literary associate who could elaborate a mythological or other narrative to be depicted by the painter. In this case, she relies on Bembo to devise the subject of the painting. 409. The copialettere reads “lara.” Brown in the Campbell Appendix quotes this as “aiere” from an original of 2 December 1505. Battaglia’s definition: Aere (aira aiere, aire, are): aria, atmosfera, vapore; aspetto, sembiante, disposizione d’animo, indole. 410. AG 2994 copialettere 18 c.92r. Amadori was canon of Fiesole and the brother of Leonardo’s stepmother. Transcribed in Ferrari, “ ‘La vita di Leonardo è varia et indeterminata forte.’ ” For English translations of Amadori’s letter of 3 May 1506, see Ames-Lewis, Isabella and Leonardo, 238–39; Gouwens, The Italian Renaissance, 90. The woman referred to here is Argentina Malaspina, wife of Piero Soderini, gonfaloniere or first magistrate of the Republic of Florence (1502–1512).

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 267 from Her Ladyship. We are no less pleased with the dexterity you are using with Leonardo da Vinci to get him to agree to content us with those figures we asked him for. We thank you for all of this, and we urge you to continue and to commend us again to the lady gonfaloniera. Be well.

Letter 370: 1506 May 18 Sacchetta To the vicar of Poletto Mantovano, instructing him to deal with a possible case of prostitution.411 The men from Sustinente were here to complain to us that in their village there is a public prostitute, to whom different persons from various places come, which, in these suspicious times, could easily cause a scandal. Thus we want you to inform yourself well about how she lives, and if you find her so dishonest and public as we are told she is, have her removed from there and from this surrounding area.

Letter 371: 1506 May 18 Sacchetta To Mario Equicola upon receipt of his book composed on Isabella’s motto, Nec spe nec metu.412 Your letter and the book Margherita Cantelma sent us, which you composed on the meaning of our motto, Nec spe, nec metu, was more delightful as a commemoration of our birthday than any gift of gold or other precious thing would be. Since in our honor you have lifted our little emblem so high and rendered it sublime, our debt to you is such that it is better for us to acknowledge it with solemn thanks than to appear to think we could repay you with prolix words. We will keep it in

411. AG 2994 libro 18 c. 96v. The suspicions to which Isabella refers are likely those of plague. As we see in previous letters, she limited as much as possible her contacts with extraneous persons, because any of them could be carriers of plague. Here, she acknowledges that everyone is at this time suspicious of outsiders, whose previous contacts are impossible to know. Since public prostitution, by definition, involved intimate contact with diverse and often transient men, it was extremely dangerous in times of plague. 412. AG 2994 libro 18 c. 96v. For Equicola’s letter of 22 November 1505 from Blois, see D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 313–14. Isabella included this motto (“With neither hope, nor fear”) among the decorative motifs in her studiolo. This and other personal emblems, such as the candelabra bearing the inscription, Sufficit unum in tenebris (“One suffices to light the darkness”), the number XXVII, and a bar of musical notation consisting entirely of pauses figured often as patterns and motifs in her clothing and personal possessions. On Equicola’s gift, see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:279–82; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 208. On the multiple and enigmatic meanings of these rebuses, see Malacarne, “Il segno di Isabella”; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 208. On Equicola himself and his relations with Isabella, see Kolsky, Mario Equicola; Villa, Istruire e rappresentare Isabella d’Este.

268 ISABELLA D’ESTE mind until the occasion arises for us to repay you more satisfactorily. And in this meantime, be certain that we love you and wish to do something to please you.413

Letter 372: 1506 May 18 Sacchetta To Margherita Cantelma upon receipt of Mario Equicola’s book composed on the motto, Nec spe nec metu.414 We could receive nothing more welcome and delightful in celebration of our birthday than your affectionate letter, for we think there is no one in the world to whom it matters more than to you. Nor could there be any better gift and wishes415 than yours, since you sent us the book written on our emblem, Nec spe, nec metu, by our Messer Mario, whose great intelligence will exalt a motto we devised without thinking of so many mysteries as he attributes to it. And since we think of it as coming no less from you than from him, you deserve the highest commendation, and we send you many thanks. We thank you equally for your visit.416 We are truly sorry to hear from Cesare of your illness. Since Pincharo has come to visit you on orders from us, we will not go on any longer here in this letter, except to assure you that we are sound of body and wish the same for you and all of yours.

Letter 373: 1506 May 29 Sacchetta To Taddeo Albano. A further effort to obtain objects from the collection of Michele Vianello.417 We heard from Giovan Francesco di Ruberti about developments regarding the late Messer Michele Vianello’s things. We are pleased that you bought the agate vase but very sorry that The Drowning of the Pharaoh was taken by someone else, because we wanted that more than any of his things.418 We do not want on this account to stop trying to get it, with whatever profit the Magnificent Messer Andrea Loredan wishes to make. So write the enclosed to him in the most effective way possible and go to him, either along with Lorenzo da Pavia or separately, as you 413. Equicola shifted his service from Cantelma to Isabella and the Mantuan court in the fall of 1508 and later succeeded Benedetto Capilupi as Isabella’s personal secretary. 414. AG 2994 libro 18 c. 97r. Isabella was born 17 May 1474. 415. Isabella’s word here is the oddly chosen imprecatione, which means “curse,” precisely the opposite of the good wishes the context implies. 416. Since Margherita did not personally visit Isabella on this occasion, the reference is presumably to the letter itself as a visit. On Isabella’s letters as a substitute for personal contact, see Shemek, “In Continuous Expectation.” 417. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 1v–2r. 418. Isabella’s mentality as a competitive collector comes into relief in her dealings for this painting by Jan Van Eyck.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 269 both think best, and use whatever means and expedients you know how to persuade him to comply with our wishes. You could do nothing at present that would give us more satisfaction. Once you get the vase, see that it is sent immediately and securely. And send us word about what you have done about the painting. We await arrangements to repay your money. For the Rheims cloth obtained by Ottolano, you must tells us the cost, because your letter is not here where we are; then he will have you paid back immediately. You must ask Messer Francesco Valerio for the money for the cloth.

Letter 374: 1506 May 29 Sacchetta To Andrea Loredan, attempting to bargain for a painting.419 We sent to Venice to buy some of the things that belonged to the late Messer Michele Vianello. And above all other things we wished to have the Drowning of the Pharaoh, which we understand from our agent was taken by Your Majesty as credit, for one hundred and fifteen ducats. Since we understand Your Majesty to be of most noble spirit and to have shown great affection and favor to our representative, we have found the courage out of our enormous desire to have this painting, to pray you be willing, in your courtesy and gentility, to give us this picture. We will happily reimburse your money with whatever profit you wish, out of which you will gain not only the money but also our person, and our obligation to remain always in your debt, ready to gratify you in your every need. You may communicate the result of your deliberation to Taddeo Albano and Lorenzo da Pavia, who will speak to you in our name. We commend ourself to Your Majesty.

Letter 375: 1506 July 9 Sacchetta To Eleonora Gonzaga, scolding her for presuming to replace her own footman with that of her mother.420 We see that you have written to our Madonna Colonna requesting fifteen braccia of cloth to make shirts for your footman Olivero. We were much amazed that with so little regard you ask after Olivero and refer to him as your footman, since we never gave him to you. We remember well that our seneschal told us when we were on our trip to Florence that he would happily accompany you as your footman when you marry. We replied that when the time came we would leave that choice to you. But we made no further confirmation of this. A wise and thoughtful daughter would have sought to clarify the matter, and not take action by asking others for something without thinking carefully about whether it would inconvenience her mother and father. If from now on you are more heedful, you 419. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 1v–2r. 420. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 19v–20r. Eleonora was at this time twelve years old.

270 ISABELLA D’ESTE will earn greater praise and love from us, because one cannot behave too timidly or with too much reverence toward one’s parents. Keep yourself, your brother, and your sisters healthy.

Letter 376: 1506 July 18 Sachette To Bernardino Prosperi, complaining about the quality of some gloves she has received.421 We gave Sanz ten ducats when he went to Spain so he could buy us many Ocañan gloves for our personal use, and when we were in Ferrara we spoke to him, urging him to serve us well.422 It has been many days since he returned, yet only now did he send us twelve dozen [pair]. These are so sorry looking that if he had searched all over Spain in order to find poor gloves we don’t believe he would have found so many. In Rome, Genoa, and Florence, doubtless, there are better ones, and a diligent person could find gloves of this quality or better even in Ferrara. We have therefore decided to send them back to him, so that he won’t take us to have such poor judgment of gloves as to think that these are good. We would have kept them to give to our ladies-in-waiting and to some female friends, but we would be embarrassed to give these to anyone we love, and they would not wear them. May it please you, then, to give the gloves back to him and say that we have been very poorly served. If he is unable or unwilling to refund our money, tell him to keep both [the gloves and the money]. But in order to justify our action, in case he slanders us for returning them by saying that they were good, please do us the service of showing several pair to the most reverend cardinal our brother, who has excellent judgment; ask him to turn them inside out and see if these are Ocañan gloves for the likes of us. Then, if he should hear talk of this matter, he can testify to their condition and the meager diligence of Sanz.

Letter 377: 1506 July 22 Sachette To Bernardino Prosperi, praising his handling of the matter of inferior gloves.423 We are not at all displeased that you spoke with Sanz before going to the cardinal, because we wanted in any case for him to understand that we are not so undiscerning as to accept these gloves as good ones. But on the other hand, you did well to resolve things as ordered by the cardinal, to whom we are happy you gave the gloves as a present from us. Do not accept money for them under any 421. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 25r–v. 422. Ocaña, in the province of Toledo, was famous in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for its tailors, glove makers, and dressmakers. 423. AG 2994 libro 19 c. 26r.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 271 circumstances. Rather tell him that we regret giving him as a gift something we refused, which is like the old woman who gave pears to Duke Borso [d’Este] because they were left over from the pigs!424 The gloves are exactly like that. If His Most Reverend Lordship is happy to take them, we are pleased to oblige him. Please commend us most highly to him.

Letter 378: 1506 July 26? Sacchetta To Gian Cristoforo Romano regarding a medal she wants him to make for Bernardo Accolti [Unico Aretino].425 We received a letter from Unico Aretino in the spirit that you will see from the enclosed copy. In order not to spoil the lady duchess of Urbino’s fabrication, which we know she explained to you in person, and since he suspects us, we have written the response that you will see. Now you must make a show to him that we are upset that you didn’t give him the medal, and you must defend yourself in some way. And in order to add real color to this fiction, you must cast [a medal] if you don’t already have one, and give it to him with all the necessary pleasantries and excuses. This will please us greatly. You must then let us know what happens and how things stand with you in the end. But take care that Aretino does not find out about our trick, because he would never trust us again. Greetings to friends. Be well.

Letter 379: 1506 July 26? Sacchetta To Bernardo Accolti [Unico Aretino], playing a joke on him.426 It is quite true that we ordered Gian Cristoforo, our court sculptor, to reach Fossombrone, or wherever you were to be, on his way from Urbino to Rome, so that he could pay you a visit and give you one of the medals he made bearing the likeness of our head. We wanted this for two reasons: the first was to honor the sculptor for his skill by putting him in contact with a person of such virtue and good judgment as Your Lordship. The second was to let you know that we hold you in such esteem, for given the affection that we understand you bear us, we are 424. Borso d’Este (1413–1471) was Isabella’s uncle and the first duke of Ferrara, preceding her father Ercole as the city’s ruler. 425. AG 2994 libro 19 c. 30v. This letter and the following one lack dates but bear the Latin notation uts (ut supra, or “as above”), for which reason I suggest the date of the letter immediately preceding it in the copybook. 426. AG 2994 libro 19 c.31r. The medal discussed in this letter may be a version of the one Romano cast for Isabella in 1495–1498, on which see Luke Syson, “Reading Faces: Gian Cristoforo Romano’s Medal of Isabella d’Este,” in Mozzarelli, Oresko, and Ventura, The Court of Mantua, 281–94. On this and other uses of the letter in practical jokes, see Sarah Cockram, “Epistolary Masks: Self-Presentation and Dissimulation in the Letters of Isabella d’Este,” Italian Studies 64, no. 1 (2009): 20–37; Shemek, “Mendacious Missives.”

272 ISABELLA D’ESTE in your debt. We were more than a little surprised that after making the model Gian Cristoforo didn’t give it to you and still hasn’t. We complained about it in a letter to him and ordered him once again to give you [the medal] and also to explain to us the reason for his retaining it. If Your Lordship would like to know any more about this from us, you will always receive a frank reply, with no trickery.

Letter 380: 1506 August 3 Sacchetta To the queen of Hungary, on exchange of letters and gifts.427 I kiss your hand.428 I received your letter from the venerable Friar Marco di Viadana and heard from him personally429 that you are well, and every other particular that he communicated to me from you. This contented and satisfied me greatly, since I could see that you keep me always in your memory. I thank you as much as I can. In reply to Your Majesty’s wish to know whether I got the letters and things you sent me through the late venerable Friar Girolamo di Orlando, I say yes. But for some time I awaited his return from Germany to give him my reply, as we had agreed, and when I heard of his death I replied to Your Majesty. I marvel that [my letter] has not come into your hands. As I replied also to Madonna Teodora, who wrote to me in the last few days on behalf of Your Majesty, this often results from messengers who don’t give good service. I also received Your Majesty’s letter the day before yesterday from Friar Marco. I hope you will excuse the late reply. Since I received it at a time when I was gravely ill, and my illness lasted several months, and Friar Girolamo did not return as I had expected, I answered late. Your Majesty will be pleased to hear that now, through God’s grace, I am healthy, as are my illustrious lord consort and children. And our city of Mantua, which has for several months up to now been vexed by the plague, is at present in good condition and almost completely free of it.

427. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 31v–32v. Once again, Isabella accords her aunt the title of queen, though Beatrice d’Aragona, widow of Mátyás Corvinus of Hungary, had relinquished her throne and returned to Naples. At the time of this letter, the struggle over the Hungarian throne after Mátyás’s death had been won by the Bohemian Jagiello, known as King Ulászló II. In 1505, Ulászló’s son Louis was engaged to Mary, granddaughter of Emperor Maximilian Habsburg, while Anna of Hungary was betrothed to Ferdinand of Habsburg. This complex of marriages would bring the Hungarian Crown of St. István (Stephen) into Habsburg hands in 1526, thus maintaining the relevance of the Hungarian court to Mantuan and Italian affairs for some time. 428. Isabella rarely uses this locution, even in letters to royalty. Notably, it survives today in Hungarian as a warm greeting (Csókolom), and to a lesser extent in Austria and southern Germany (Küss die Hand) where its tone is more antiquated and deferential. 429. Isabella’s literal expression is, “I heard from his mouth,” which emphasizes the contrast between letter writing and physical presence.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 273 In obedience to Your Majesty’s strict commandment that I ask for something from you,430 it occurred to me, since that I am in terrible need of gloves, to pray you see that I have several good pair from Valencia and some of those that are sold folded, with the inside out; because I have had very good ones of this kind before. And the sooner Your Majesty deigns to see that I have them, the greater will be my debt, since I am in great need, as I said. Once again, I kiss your hand and I commend myself to you.

Letter 381: 1506 August 5 Sacchetta To Gian Cristoforo Romano, following on the trick letter she has sent to Unico Aretino [Bernardo Accolti], and speaking of her growing collection of antiquities for a studiolo.431 After your departure from Mantua, we were much amazed not to receive any response from Unico Aretino about the medal bearing the likeness of our head, which we ordered you to give him from us by visiting him in Fossombrone on your way. Now we hear through two of his letters that you did indeed show him the medal, and that you promised to send it to him from Rome once you had made a copy of it, according to my orders, but that you never did give it to him or send it. This causes us great displeasure for two reasons. One is that you have paid so little heed to our command. And the other is that you have given Aretino reason to think that we would want to toy with him. We would find his thinking so most regrettable, because we not only love him, we revere him for his singular virtues. You have behaved very badly indeed, and you deserve more than verbal punishment. See that Aretino gets our portrait immediately, for though you may have no regard for your own reputation, we certainly hold dear our good faith. And see that you behave in such a way that he understands this error to be yours and not to emanate from us. We believe you must have heard that we received the agate vase from A. Vianello, and also the Drowning of the Pharaoh. We will also be getting Mantegna’s Faustina,432 and thus little by little we are constructing a studio. Please be on the alert for any beautiful and ancient bronze medals and other excellent things and 430. Here Isabella gestures toward a gift economy, in which it was important not only to give gifts, but to be willing to receive them, in order to reinforce ties among loved ones and relations. Her wish for good gloves, however, must have been sincere, given her letters earlier this month on unacceptable gloves she had received from Spain. 431. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 34r–35r. The postscript to this letter reveals it to be part of the practical joke that Isabella and her sister-in-law are playing on Aretino. See Letters 378 and 379, of 26 July 1506, above. 432. Isabella took advantage of the financial difficulties of aging court painter Andrea Mantegna to make him sell her one of his prize possessions, a Roman sculpture in the likeness of the head of Faustina.

274 ISABELLA D’ESTE inform me of their price and quality. But you can also just buy the medals if they are good without awaiting other response, and we will send you payment for them, provided that they are absolutely perfect. Be well. P.S.: We wrote this letter in such a way that you can show it to Aretino. But insofar as you care to remain in our grace, do not let him hear of the artfulness and fiction we are employing, so that the duchess and I may remain in good relations with him. You will understand how to keep us safe.

Letter 382: 1506 August 20 Sacchetta To Cassandra da Correggio, on behalf of Giovanna Boschetta.433 As our lord consort appropriately wishes to be rid of la Boschetta, and our desire to do so is no less than his, we reply to your letter that we would like her to enter a convent. Since her father found no husband for her while he was prosperous, he is much less likely to find one now that they have this stain upon them, and the danger is that she will be corrupted, which we would regret terribly. And because persuading the girl of this, and choosing a convent, and dealing with nuns is more a woman’s task than a man’s, we thought to impose upon Your Ladyship out of the love we bear you. We ask that with the reasons you, better than we, will know how to summon, you bring her around to the idea, making clear to her that she cannot expect a husband, and much less can she go to her mother’s house or that of any other person save Messer Jacomo, her brother. Once she has been persuaded, which we think will be easy if she is not out of her mind, she must choose a location. It will be up to your lord consort to see that the most illustrious lord duke [Alfonso I] has someone speak with the appropriate nuns and friars to see that she is accepted immediately. If Your Ladyship thinks this would be easier to carry out with your nuns from Correggio, we will trust your decision, knowing that in your own household you must have such authority that you will not be opposed. As we wrote to Lord Niccolò, we are not obliged to give her a dowry. Nonetheless, we are happy to provide as a charitable donation all that Your Ladyship thinks appropriate, and we authorize you to pledge two hundred ducats in goods and cash combined. On this account we will have sent to you immediately all necessities indicated on the 433. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 42r–44r. Giovanna was one of Isabella’s ladies-in-waiting and the natural daughter of Count Albertino Boschetto, one of the Ferrarese subjects who joined Ferrrante and Giulio d’Este in a plot to overthrow their brother, Alfonso, as duke of Ferrara. When her father’s crime was exposed, Giovanna was whisked off to Ferrara where she was sheltered by Niccolò and Cassandra Correggio. Recognizing her stunning reversal of fortune, Giovanna wrote to Francesco II Gonzaga on 9 August 1506, seeking pardon for her father and mercy on her own, guiltless situation. For an account of this episode and transcriptions of relevant correspondence, see Castagna, “Una donzella di Isabella d’Este.” See also Letters 230 of 13 April 1501, and 384 of 30 August 1506.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 275 list that will be sent to us. We will provide the rest in cash, for which we would like a little time, since we find ourself without money due to the disturbance of plague. In this meantime in which we retain the money, we will pay in victuals for interest on the delay, as is done with dowries, augmenting our charitable donation sufficiently as to make everyone happy with us. For this Your Ladyship will give assurance and promise on our behalf, and we promise you, on our good faith, that we will not let you suffer any loss or embarrassment. Furthermore, we will be in perpetual debt to you and desire to gratify you in your every need. Your Ladyship will conduct this matter with your usual goodness and prudence. We pray you inform us of your decision.

Letter 383: 1506 August 29 Sacchetta To the duchess of Urbino, replying to a request to borrow furnishings for the pope’s visit to Urbino.434 Having seen what Your Excellency wrote to my most illustrious lord consort and me on your need for furnishings for the visit of Our Lord, I consulted with the staff and made every effort to accommodate you as much as possible. But since we lent a set of knotted brocade hangings, and one of crimson velvet, plus several other hangings and sparvieri435 to the most reverend monsignore our cardinal, who sent them to Rome already months ago, we were not able to oblige Your Ladyship except with two sets of bed hangings (one in gold brocade and the other of crimson damask), a crimson, floss-silk sparviero, and two copertori di panno d’oro436, as indicated on the enclosed list. The other sparvieri we usually lend Your 434. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 49v–50v. The duchess’s request, together with Isabella’s response and her description of her court’s available furnishings, provides a look behind the scenes of conspicuous consumption associated with Renaissance court life. Behind closed doors, even splendid courts like those of Mantua and Urbino moved furnishings around, disassembled and reassembled objects, borrowed and lent showy belongings, and scrounged for more when large groups of guests were expected. Hospitality was a carefully constructed spectacle into which the noble classes poured vast amounts of money. But when guests were not around, bedrooms and salons were stripped of their lavish decor, and even the wealthiest of early modern Italians could not shun worn and tattered items for everyday use. 435. Sparvieri were parts of the canopy (or cupola) structures above beds in this period: “From the lower edge of the cupola were fixed curtains that fanned out to surround the bed below; the baldachin was generally suspended between the tester and the center of the bed, so that it was positioned above the slumbering individual’s head in a manner that resembled a bird of prey in flight, with wings extended, giving rise to the term sparviero, or sparver [sparrow hawk].” Daniela Ferrari, “Arredi tessili e abbigliamento alla corte dei Gonzaga nella prima metà del Cinquecento,” in Scritti per Chiara Tellini Perina, ed. Daniela Ferrari and Sergio Marinelli (Mantua: Arcari, 2011), 102. See also Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga. 436. Bedspreads or other covers into which threads of gold have been worked.

276 ISABELLA D’ESTE Excellency have been disassembled for whitening.437 I regret that Alessandro438 was not here, because I would have shown him all the hangings. There are no more than six table carpets, and all of them are in use. Those for the floors are all worn through. It’s true that we have several cloth sparvieri, but they are ordinary, and so lacking in honor that I would be embarrassed to send them. I won’t deny that we have several new sets of brocade and velvet hangings, but because my lord has the idea when the pope is in Bologna of inviting, I won’t say His Holiness, though he is considering it, but undoubtedly some cardinals, we would like to honor them with new things they have not seen elsewhere. Thus, Your Excellency, who is prudent, will excuse us if you are not more amply served, and I pray you send these things back as soon as the [papal] court has left Urbino. I leave it to your messengers, who have seen us, to report on my lord’s, the children’s, and my health. The satin hangings are all spread out among Gonzaga, Goito, and Mantua due to all the foreign guests we have had, and continue to have, these days. I commend myself to Your Excellency and pray you commend me to the most illustrious lord duke.

Letter 384: 1506 August 30 Sacchetta To Giovanna Boschetta, advising her to enter a convent.439 Since what happened with your father has stained his family to the extent that we believe no one can be found who will wish to become his relative or yours, and because we raised you at court and would not like to see you end up in a situation that is not useful and honorable for you, we think the best thing would be for you to be willing to serve God and enter a convent; and we have written to Madonna Cassandra to speak to you about this in our name. But then we decided also to write you this letter encouraging you to take this path as the safest and most honorable one. If you do so, we will provide you with the things you need and will never fail to favor and support you just as we do our other girls, so that the convent you enter will know that we hold you dear. Think hard and well about this, and listen to the advice of Madonna Cassandra, who is informed of our wishes. You will be happier with each passing day, given the many troubles of girls who marry and stay in this world.440 437. Scositi [scuciti: unsewn] per farli bianchi. 438. Presumably Alessandro del Cardinale, agent in service to the Urbino dukes. See Letter 389 of 13 February 1507. 439. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 52r–v. This letter follows Letter 382, of 20 August 1506. 440. Girls who entered into service in Isabella’s court were virtually guaranteed a husband, either of their choosing or handpicked by the marchesa. Giovanna’s change of situation through no fault of her own thus represented a devastating loss of opportunity and a drastic reorientation of her future. Since the monastery, too, functioned according to class politics, Isabella’s open support may have afforded

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 277 Letter 385: 1506 August 31 Sacchetta To Battista Vismara, thanking him for anchovies and advising him about postal communication.441 We received the three thousand anchovies you sent us, which we enjoyed. We had the money for them given to the rider along with the pay for his journey. Be advised for the next time, and inform your brother similarly, not to send a special courier unless we write telling you to do so, because the money for the journey would cost more than the things sent to us. When you have something to send us, you can direct it through the cargo cavalry, and not by special courier unless, as we say, we write to you to do that. We offer ourself to your pleasure.

Letter 386: 1506 September 20 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing the prison conditions of Giulio d’Este.442 Since I was not able to send any of my household with Don Giulio, as Your Excellency wrote I should do, because everyone was occupied with my journey to Mantua, I sent Battista Scalona, with orders to commend him to the lord duke, to stay there until justice was done to the others,443 and then to see and talk with Don Giulio in order to view the prison and observe whether he had any bodily injuries whatsoever. Upon his return, he reported that [Giulio] had no injuries but that the prison seemed to him quite grim, and damp. Nor did he have any company Giovanna some advantages. As Castagna documents, though Giovanna eventually resigned herself to a cloistered life in the impoverished monastery of Santa Caterina Martire of Ferrara, and though she maintained a minimal correspondence with Isabella, she did not take the veil willingly. Ludovico di Campsampiero reported to Francesco II Gonzaga on 3 September 1506 that “the unfortunate Bosca was forcefully brought in among the nuns with unspeakable fury, and she was not even dressed before they wanted to cut off her hair. And she, her words drowned out but full of disdain, said, ‘Cut it if you like; I will never stay inside here!’ ” Castagna, “Una donzella di Isabella d’Este,” 225. For a fictional evocation of similar situations set in Santa Caterina, see Sarah Dunant, Sacred Hearts (New York: Random House, 2009). 441. AG 2994 libro 19 c. 52v. 442. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 67v–70r. See Letters 359 (23 September 1505) and 362 (28 November 1505), above. Following his reinstatement from banishment, Giulio d’Este had been nearly blinded by henchmen of his half-brother, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. The two brothers were forced to make a hypocritical peace, but Giulio soon joined forces with Ferrante d’Este in the plot to depose Alfonso. Their coconspirators were executed on 12 September 1506, their heads then fixed on pikes and displayed on the Palazzo della Ragione. Giulio and Ferrante were led to the scaffold, but their lives were spared at the last minute and Alfonso commuted their sentences to life imprisonment. 443. A reference to the executions of the co-conspirators, who included Count Albertino Boschetto. Luzio reports that Giulio had taken refuge in Mantuan custody. Once evidence compelled Francesco Gonzaga to extradite him, Giulio was brought through Sacchetta on his way to Ferrara, but Isabella abandoned her villa there and returned to Mantua in order to avoid the pain of seeing him. See Luzio, “Isabella d’Este nelle tragedie,” 75–76.

278 ISABELLA D’ESTE whatsoever, and when [Scalona] told the duke this, he replied that the prison was fine and that the dampness resulted from his having recently whitewashed it for better illumination, and that he had no better prison. He said he would happily provide him with some company but could find no one who wanted to go there, though he would find someone in any case. Hearing this I was disturbed, and worried that the lord duke would start to break his promise to Your Excellency, in addition to the compassion I felt for Don Giulio. So I immediately sent Benedetto Capilupi to complain for me about this and insist that [Giulio] be moved and given some company and that he be treated in such a way as not to give Your Excellency reason to complain of [the duke’s] good faith. The lord duke replied to Capilupi that he was not failing in any way to keep his promise, but that when Your Excellency was in Ferrara and resolved to hand [Giulio] over, you asked only that he not be put in the tower dungeon, which [the duke] promised; and that he has kept his promise and put him in the best prison he has in the castle. Then he personally got up and went to show it to him, pointing out that it was even with, or even higher than, the courtyard and level with the marquisate room, because this is in the other wing facing the Porta del Leone. And below it there is another prison, but that this one looks so grim because he had the door walled in (not now, but at another time) and had an overhang constructed from which, by means of a rope, things may be lowered. This is horrifying in every way, for which reason Benedetto declined to descend, though the duke offered to let him do so, so that he could better consider the place and see that the whitewashing had already dried. [Capilupi] saw Giulio walking, dressed in his heavy jacket, and he appeared healthy. But he did not wish to talk with him or be recognized by him for fear that he would say something that the duke might take badly and that this would cause him harm. Having examined the place, Benedetto did not agree that it was a good prison; on the contrary, he insisted that Giulio be moved. He was unable to obtain this, because the duke said he had no better place if he wanted to keep him well guarded. But he said he would have a paneled room built for him, or rather panel the wall and give him a cloth sparviero, and he will see that one of his commissioned men keeps him company, since none of his servants wants to be there. And just then he ordered the captain of the castle to send a commissioned man there weekly at something more than the normal pay, so that they will go willingly. He added to Benedetto that he was certain Your Excellency would like this prison better than he and Scalona did, because you have better judgment than they do, and that if you pass through there on your way home as you have promised, he will show it to you, and if you don’t like it he will set it up it wherever and however Your Excellency wishes. He said

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 279 that in the meantime, he would see that [Giulio] lacks no comforts whatsoever, and gave instructions for this to the captain. This was as much as [Capilupi] was able to achieve. The lord duke then showed him the room he is preparing for the lord Don Ferrante, which is above that of Don Giulio. He is having a low window walled up and another one made higher up, under the small vault, with two sets of bars. He wants to wall up the door and make an entrance through an overhang like Don Giulio’s. He says he wants to be sure they don’t escape and that this was the purpose for which Your Excellency gave him Don Giulio, but that they will never lack for food and good treatment out of respect for Your Excellency. As for their rations, Benedetto understood from Masetto that each of them is to receive a capon, four pounds of veal, and four of beef, alternated according to season with meals and wine to their taste. When I also relayed a complaint about certain villainies that it seems were done [Giulio] by the cardinal’s men when he arrived in the castle—they spat in his face and picked his cap off his head—the reply was that one cannot always keep servants from committing errors against the will of their masters, and that once these things are done they cannot be taken back. I thought I should inform Your Excellency of everything, so that when you go back to Ferrara you will know how to behave. Since I wrote to Your Excellency, Federico has improved. Yesterday he took two pills, which had a good effect, such that today he dressed. True, the doctors say he is not completely clean and free of fever, but his sickness now is so minor that we can say he is well. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace. Our sweet peteghino is doing marvelously.444

Letter 387: 1506 November 3 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, congratulating him on his recent military successes and expressing regret at the defeat of the Bentivoglio of Bologna.445 I am pleased that with the help and favor of Your Excellency, our lord His Holiness has recaptured his city of Bologna, bringing it to obedience and government by the Holy Mother Church. This is something that will redound to your perpetual glory and fame, not only during the present pontiff ’s reign, but also among all his 444. The italicized word is a term of endearment for baby Ercole. 445. AG 2994 libro 19 cc. 93v–94r. Once he was elected pope, Julius II set to winning back all territories formerly claimed by the Holy See, including Bologna. Threatening excommunication, he ordered Giovanni Bentivoglio and his clan to abandon the city and appointed Francesco Gonzaga lieutenant general in the mission to recapture it. On 2 November 1506, the Bentivoglio fled, and nine days later the pope entered their city in triumph. Giovanni Bentivoglio headed with his wife, Ginevra, for Milan, while Annibale and his pregnant wife, Lucrezia, found safe harbor first in Ferrara and then, ironically, in Mantua. See Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:283–84, 292; Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara, 506–11.

280 ISABELLA D’ESTE successors. I am, however, sorry for the ruin of the Bentivoglio family, which is truly an illustration of Fortune, and of the changeableness of human life.446 If any of them should come here, they will be lovingly received by me, both out of my natural instinct and in order to obey Your Highness. I thank you for the news of Bologna’s capitulation and of your receipt of the hat.447 I am happy that it arrived in time to do you honor for your entry into the city, and that you were pleased with it. Federico still has a bit of tertian fever, but I hope it will subside soon. The others are all well, and I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace.

Letter 388: 1507 February 3 Mantua To Ippolito d’Este, thanking him for sending Ludovico Ariosto to her.448 Both through the letter of Your Most Reverend Lordship and from the mouth of Messer Ludovico Ariosto I heard what delight my happy delivery brought you, which was most welcome to me. I thank you for the visit, and particularly for having sent me Messer Ludovio, because in addition to the fact that I welcomed him as Your Most Reverend Lordship’s representative, he gave me much pleasure in his own right. By recounting to me from the work he is composing, he caused me to pass the time of these two days not only without discomfort, but with enormous pleasure. In this as in all your other actions you have shown good judgment in choosing the right person for my situation. About the things we discussed together besides your visit, Messer Ludovico will give a full account to Your Most Reverend Lordship, to whom I commend myself. P.S.: I pray Your Lordship, for love of me, provide the position you promised him to Gabriele, who has taken as his wife the servant of Madama of happy memory.

446. Isabella refers to the popular image of Fortune as a blindfolded woman turning a wheel with people positioned around its rim. As the wheel spins and stops, those in high positions may stop at the bottom (as has happened with the Bentivoglio), and those who were once unfortunate may rise to the height of their success. 447. Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:287–88, translates a letter of 5 October 1506, in which Isabella accepts Francesco’s request to have a hat made for him. 448. For this evocative piece of evidence regarding Isabella’s friendship with Ludovico Ariosto, I rely on the transcription published in Girolamo Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 7 (in four parts): Dall’anno MD fino all’anno MDC, prima edizione veneta, dopo la seconda di Modena riveduta, corretta ed accresciuta dall’autore (Venice: n.p., 1796), 1195. Isabella’s seventh pregnancy resulted in a third son, Ferrante. The work from which Ariosto read to her as she recuperated from childbirth was, of course, the Orlando Furioso. See also Rodolfo Renier, “Spigolature ariostesche,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 20 (1892): 301–7.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 281 Letter 389: 1507 February 13 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, thanking her for congratulations and declining to lend her tapestries.449 I am certain, given the love Your Excellency feels for me, that you took uncommon pleasure in my happy delivery. I thank you for your congratulations as much as I can, and as much as I know how. About the tapestries and other things Your Excellency requests for the arrival there of His Holiness, if Alessandro del Cardinale from your staff were not here, having personally seen all of them being used for the comedies my most illustrious lord consort is putting on, I would be very worried in offering my excuses to Your Ladyship. We cannot even think of depriving him of these things in order to accommodate you, because every day it appears more certain that His Most Christian Majesty [the king of France] will be coming to Italy and that we will need them, for if he comes, we can only assume that the French lords will also come to visit us. The pain at not being able to satisfy you goes straight to my heart, as Alessandro will explain in detail. In exchange, please accept my spirit, which is disposed to gratify you on every other occasion. I commend myself to Your Excellency.

Letter 390: 1507 April 13 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, requesting permission to delay the enforced departure from Mantua of Bentivoglio women.450 Since today is the departure date stipulated in the concessions made by the bishop of Tivoli for these Bentivoglio women, poor Madonna Ginevra was determined to leave, even though she has been sick these days and still is, so as not to place 449. AG 2994 libro 20 cc. 16v–17r. Louis XII’s aim in this trip was to meet the pope to discuss possible joint actions against Venice and the Romagna, and to suppress a rebellion of the Genoese. Mallet and Shaw indicate that the pope’s sympathies with Genoa were a factor in his avoidance of this meeting with the French king. As tensions mounted between France and the papacy, Louis XII met in late June with Ferdinand II of Aragon, king of Sicily and Naples (who had married his niece, Germaine de Goix, in 1505). Their conversations set the stage for the formation of the League of Cambrai, in which Louis XII, Ferdinand II, Maximilian (duke of Austria and emperor-elect), and Pope Julius II waged war against Venice. Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 82–95. 450. AG 2994 libro 20 cc. 37v–38r. After they were ousted, the Bentivoglio were pursued by the papacy wherever they took refuge in papal lands. The papal legate of Bologna, Antonio Ferreri of Savona, set a date in early April by which they were required to leave Mantua, though he allowed Lucrezia (Isabella’s half-sister) to stay a little longer, because she was pregnant. Giovanni and his wife Ginevra Sforza also stopped in Mantua on their journey to Lombardy. This letter, with its details about Ginevra’s menstrual crisis, reveals something of the toll that political upheavals took on women’s bodies. Isabella’s assiduous campaign to protect Ginevra illustrates both her personal tenacity and her solidarity with women in dire straits. While continuing to plead for postponements of Ginevra’s departure, Isabella made plans to lend her a mobile bed (letica) to ease her travel.

282 ISABELLA D’ESTE this city in violation of the prohibition that begins today. And her things were already practically on the road. But just now, she has been overtaken by a flow of menstrual blood such that, as I am told by Maestro Antonio da Grado, who has examined her every day, it will be difficult for her to survive even if she keeps resting as she is, and if she moves, he fears for her health. The poor woman is grateful on the one hand, for all the comforts and benefits she has received up to now from Your Excellency and does not want to be a bother to you any longer. On the other hand, she surely does not want to die, either. She had her apologies and her situation communicated to me, asking me to please allow her to stay here for ten days and to write in the meantime to the legate in Bologna, urging him to have compassion for her and allow her to dwell here unpunished until she is in a condition to be able to get out of bed without endangering her life. I, who am naturally compassionate, and who found her request worthy of being granted, agreed to everything: both to letting her stay, and also to dealing with the legate. I wanted to give Your Most Illustrious Lordship word of this, commending myself heartily to your good grace. I have no other news worthy of report besides the two enclosed letters, from Castiglione delle Stiviere and Cavriana.451

Letter 391: 1507 June 19 Mantua To the cardinal of San Vitale, requesting permission for Lucrezia Bentivoglio to stay in Mantua until she recovers from giving birth.452 Your Most Reverend Lordship will recall that when I recently sent Messer Francesco to you, to make pleas regarding the prohibition that has gone into effect against the Bentivoglio, among other promises you made me through him was to allow Madonna Lucrezia, who is my sister and the wife of Messer Annibale Bentivoglio, to remain freely in Mantua. By virtue of this promise, she has remained here and is here now. It seems, however, that in my absence a suspicion arose among the Mantuan clergy and religious community about Madonna Lucrezia’s staying here, caused, I gather, by their concern to observe the contents of the apostolic brief which allows her to remain only until she has recovered from childbirth; and they did not recognize the concession Your Lordship tacitly made to me. Hence again in recent days, out of a desire to be extremely cautious, and thinking that we could not err by making every effort to obey His Holiness, we turned to Your Most Reverend Lordship for this permission, which now however is not to exceed one month. Placing much hope in Your Lordship’s promise, and even more in your authority, I now wish to prevent the raising of new questions about this situation, which I fear may cause the clergy to suspend celebration [of Mass] and 451. Two towns under Gonzaga rule. 452. AG 2994 libro 20 cc. 57v–58v. The addressee is Antonio Ferreri.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 283 the carrying out of their offices. I pray you concede me this favor, which I will consider the greatest of the many debts I owe you: that Madonna Lucrezia be allowed to remain here freely, along with some of her female children, her newborn, and her staff, without fear of any prohibition whatsoever. I call to your attention the condition in which the poor woman finds herself, shouldering responsibility for these small children, with no other place to go, and not knowing where her husband is.453 And as Your Lordship knows, she is not the sort of person who would know how to plot any sort of new machinations in the affairs of Bologna. Rest assured, for, as I said, such thoughts are so foreign to her that, in my opinion neither she nor anyone of her staff would ever think of disturbing the peace of the ecclesiastical state, residing as she does here with me, where she is also mindful of my lord and the reverence in which you must be certain we hold the Holy Church and Your Lordship. If you satisfy this supreme wish of mine, the tranquility of the situation will not be disturbed. And you will place me in your perpetual debt. I commend myself to you.

Letter 392: 1507 June 19 Mantua To Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, seeking his assistance for Lucrezia Bentivoglio.454 Your Most Reverend Lordship told me that the most reverend legate of Bologna was pleased to have the Most Illustrious Madonna Lucrezia, our sister, remain in this city as he had promised me she could. But because of a brief from His Holiness to that legate, a copy of which was sent here and which obliges Madonna Lucrezia to distance herself by one hundred miles once she is recovered from childbirth, these religious men of ours, who are more scrupulous than they need be in observing their duties, did not consider the legate’s tacit permission; and in my absence they refrained from celebrating [Mass] and renewed the interdict.455 About this fact His Most Reverend Lordship was advised, and he lifted the interdict, giving her the prior deadline, which allows her to stay here for this whole month. Your Most Reverend Lordship can imagine the sorrow and despair in which the poor woman finds herself, with so many little daughters and a son in the cradle; nothing ever moved a person to more compassion than seeing her. I am writing to the legate and pleading with him to allow her to stay for these reasons, 453. Annibale Bentivoglio had been forced to flee, leaving Lucrezia and some of their daughters behind. In this period, Lucrezia conducted a letter campaign to be allowed to take refuge in her native city of Ferrara, along with some of her ten children. 454. AG 2994 libro 20 cc. 58v–59r. 455. The papal interdict, a form of ecclesiastical censure, excluded its objects from the privilege of participation in certain Church rites. In this case, the priests of Mantua were acknowledging that Pope Julius II had placed under interdict any cities where the Bentivoglio were given sanctuary.

284 ISABELLA D’ESTE and also because she is not a woman capable of scheming. And because I know that Your Most Reverend Lordship commands more authority and respect with him than I do, I thought I would send the present rider to ask you to please write to him with such effectiveness that we will be satisfied. You could do me no greater favor. I commend myself to you.

Letter 393: 1507 June 24 Mantua To Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, again on the case of Lucrezia Bentivoglio.456 The rider who delivered my letter to Your Most Reverend Lordship regarding the case of Madonna Lucrezia Bentivoglio, our sister, tells me that you don’t want to write to the legate but will indeed write to Rome. I believe you must have already known the reply you would receive from the legate, because when the rider returned, he brought letters from the legate saying his hands are tied by Our Lord [the pope], and that he cannot any longer allow Madonna Lucrezia, her daughters, and her newborn to lodge here. He could only postpone the date of her departure to the middle of next month, which is July. In order to make this case in Rome, since you have already begun, and since I know that the pope would grant little to me, given his hard feelings toward my most illustrious lord,457 I ask that you please write again if you have not yet received a reply to what you wrote based on my letters, and make every possible argument for permitting Madonna Lucrezia to stay here with her daughters and her newborn. Otherwise, I think she will despair, and will do our house little honor by leading a life of hardship. Even if Our Lord does not wish her to remain within the city of Mantua, beg him at least to let her stay in a remote place outside it, because it will be more beneficial, honorable, and comfortable for her to be here than elsewhere. If Your Most Reverend Lordship thinks it would be good to involve also the most illustrious lord duke our honored brother [Alfonso I], you may give him the enclosed letter I wrote him. Then send this rider of mine to your agents in Rome, with [the duke’s] and your letters, for which I sent money from here. Order him to be diligent and to return here in time with an answer. Madonna Lucrezia and I will be most obliged to Your Most Reverend Lordship, to whom I commend myself.

456. AG 2994 libro 20 cc. 59v–60r. 457. In addition to the Gonzagas’ harboring of the Bentivoglio, Francesco may also have earned Julius’s disfavor for his service to Louis XII of France in the French king’s recapture of Genoa, Julius’s homeland, in late April 1507. Mazzoldi, 174, places Francesco in Savona on 24 June 1507, at the meeting between Louis and Ferdinand the Catholic to discuss the European international situation. See note to Letter 389 of 13 February 1507.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 285 Letter 394: 1507 June 25 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, soliciting his help for Lucrezia Bentivoglio.458 When recently there were sanctions against this city due to the failure of the Bentivoglio women to depart, I received a concession from the Bolognese legate, which said that, if Madonna Ginevra left, Madonna Lucrezia our sister could, by his tacit permission, stay as long as I wished. I saw that he promised the same thing in a letter to Your Most Illustrious Lordship, which was sent here to Madonna Lucrezia by the most illustrious duchess [Lucrezia Borgia] in Your Excellency’s absence. This is how things remained up to now. But on account of a brief which Our Lord [the pope] is said to have written to the aforesaid legate, in which he allows her to stay only up to her postpartum purgation, these clergymen of ours have, in the absence of my most illustrious lord consort and me, refrained from celebrating Mass; and they sent to Bologna for a clarification of the pontiff ’s wishes. The legate postponed the deadline for this month. When I returned, I wrote to him and reminded him of his promise, praying him to permit her to stay here, recognizing that she is not a woman to organize anything or to stir up the Bolognese state. Nor does she have anywhere where she could go if she were well, since she does not know where her husband is. He replied that his hands are tied by Our Lord, and that not only can he not allow her to lodge here, he cannot postpone her departure deadline past the middle of next month, for which he requires permission from Our Lord. Since I know His Holiness must have much more regard for Your Excellency and for the most reverend cardinal, our brother, than for me, I pray you please write to your ambassador asking him to plead this favor of Our Lord. Otherwise, if she has to depart from here, I think she will be in despair and live a life of great hardship with these daughters of hers, which will do little honor to our house. Even if he doesn’t want her to remain inside the city of Mantua, at least, as a last resort, negotiate for her to stay in a remote place outside it. If Your Excellency writes to Rome, you may give the letters to my rider along with those of the most reverend cardinal our brother, because I sent money for the journey from here. I, along with Madonna Lucrezia, will remain obliged to Your Lordship, to whom I commend myself.

Letter 395: 1507 August 23 Mantua To Antonia Gonzaga, requesting an ointment for Federico’s eyes.459 For several days now, my little son, Federico, has been ill; and now he has acquired an eye malady, which is on the outside, however, on the eyelids. Recalling that Messer Ludovico Calza’s ointment is good for that, I pray Your Ladyship send me 458. AG 2994 libro 20 cc. 60r–61r. 459. AG 2994 libro 20 c. 69.

286 ISABELLA D’ESTE some to cure my son, instructing me how it should be applied. You will be doing me an enormous favor. In addition, it will be very dear to me if Your Ladyship sends me word of how the lady countess of Caiazzo [Barbara Gonzaga] is faring with her illness, because I wish for her to be in the best of health. I commend myself always to Your Ladyship.

Letter 396: 1507 November 23 Mantua To Suardino [Jacopo Suardo], regarding a marble sea monster.460 On previous occasions we sought out the most illustrious monsignore grand maestro, asking him to oblige us by writing to the most reverend grand maestro in Rhodes, praying him let us know if he should obtain any worthy antiquities.461 If he acquired them, our idea was to have him send them to us, since we delight in such things. And though the monsignore wrote to him in good time, nonetheless we have not received anything. We now learn through a good source that the maestro of Rhodes has in his possession at present a marble sea monster. Please ask monsignore the gran maestro to write to the monsignore of Rhodes, explaining to him that having heard through letters from the Most Reverend Friar Sabbà, Knight of Rhodes, that His Most Reverend Lordship has a marble sea monster, we ask him to please us by consigning it to Friar Sabbà, who will take responsibility for seeing that we get it. In order to be more confident of getting this antiquity, have the monsignore gran maestro write to him asking for it, and once he has been given the monster, have him send it by way of the Venetian roads. Have the monsignore add to his letter that if, in addition to the monster, he has at present or in the future should have many bronze, silver, or gold medals he should please share them with us and send them via the same road. For God’s sake, spare no effort in pleading for these two letters, and once they have been expedited, send them here, for we will have means to send them safely on their way.462

460. AG 2994 libro 20 cc. 76r–v. 461. Isabella had asked Monseigneur de Chaumont, the French Viceroy in Milan, to write to his uncle, the Grand Master of the Knights of the Order of Saint John on the Greek island of Rhodes. The latter was reputed to have lying around his garden a great number of antiquities for which he had little interest. Isabella’s inside contact and accomplice in her efforts to acquire antiquities from Rhodes was the fascinating young friar, Sabbà da Castiglione, who is mentioned later in this letter. On her relations with the friar and on this episode, see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:14–19, which is based on Luzio, “Lettere inedite di Fra Sabbà da Castiglione,” Archivio storico lombardo series 2, 3 (1886): 91–112. 462. The grand maestro’s initial response to Sabbà’s suggestion to send Isabella the sea monster was that he could never send so insignificant an item to so great a lady. Nonetheless, Isabella eventually succeeded in obtaining this piece, along with a number of others brought back from Rhodes by the friar when his Rhodes residency came to an end.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 287 Letter 397: 1508 January 23 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, announcing the death of her daughter, Livia Giulia.463 Today makes fourteen days since a fever came upon my youngest daughter, Livia, with such malignancy that tonight, at about the seventh hour [after sunset] she was forced to render her innocent soul to its Creator, leaving us to grieve over her body. I thought I should notify Your Excellency of this, so that you may be aware of all my fortunes, as is my duty. I commend myself to you. Letter 398: 1508 February 20 Mantua To Galeazzo da Correggio, attempting to obtain a work written by his father, Niccolò, and dedicated to Isabella.464 We heard from our emissary the excuse Your Lordship makes that you are not able for now to make a decision regarding our request for the book of the lord, your late father’s works which is dedicated to us, given all the tasks that fall to you now due to his recent death. [We are told] that you want first to have all his things checked and corrected, which you will then share with us as we please. We reply that for now we accept your excuse and consider it sufficient that in this visit of ours we have notified Your Lordship of our right to the bound book of the works of the lord, your father, though it was not untimely either for us to ask for it nor for you to give it to us as a gift without any other prompting, since we are the true heir of this book, just as you are of his other things and assets. Indeed, you need not put this matter any further in question, because having the book in your possession as you admit, and not having heard any contrary wishes from the author, you could look at it if you haven’t already, see its dedication to us, and send it to its proper owner, especially since we promise you not to circulate it without notifying you, as we rightfully could do. Clear testimony that this dedication is authentic, in addition to the work itself, which we believe is not defective,465 may be supplied by many men in Ferrara who may have heard of his will. And the epistle which the late Prete466 placed in front of several of your lord father’s strambotti which he sent to us, which Your Lordship has seen and recognized as dictated precisely by the lord, your father, 463. AG 2994 libro 20 c. 87r. Livia Giulia, born 12 November 1503, died 23 January 1508. Isabella’s copybook contains a note to write “in similar form” to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, the duchess of Ferrara, the duchess of Urbino, Lord Sigismondo [d’Este], Lord Ercole [d’Este], Lord Alberto d’Este, Lady Beatrice de’ Contrari, the abbess of Corpus Christi, the queens of Hungary and Naples [Beatrice d’Aragona and Giovanna d’Aragona], the Duchess Isabella [d’Aragona, of Bari], and the Lord Antonio de Gonzaga. 464. AG 2994 libro 20 cc.91r–93r. Niccolò had died the night between 1 and 2 February 1508. 465. viciata. 466. Luzio and Renier mention a mediator in the Ferrarese court who often urged Correggio to write and to send new poems to Isabella, the “so-called prete da Correggio” whose volume of sonnets appears in the 1540 inventory of Isabella’s library: La coltura 129.

288 ISABELLA D’ESTE give and will always give full proof. And Valtellina, if he wishes to tell the truth, will recall that when we were in Ferrara while the most illustrious lord, our father, was living, signor Niccolò showed it to us in his presence, in the room over the chapel where we were lodging, and had us read the book, which was bound and organized into three parts. In the first part were placed the sonnets, in the second the capitoli, in the third the canzoni; and preceding each part there was written a letter to us, as a sign that he was dedicating the work to us so that it would be published under our name. Among other things, we recall that in one epistle there was this sentiment: that he felt he was dedicating this work to us as those men do who paint a saint on the corner of their house, to prevent people from putting their trash there. In the same way, he wanted us to be the protectress of his book, which we say not out of arrogance but to show that it is ours. And furthermore, we assure you that when the lord your father was in Sacchetta on account of Don Giulio’s situation,467 he confirmed the same thing to us, saying that he wanted to send it to us soon and give us the liberty to publish it, which due to various impediments we think he put off. When his death then occurred, to our enormous displeasure, we thought it appropriate to ask you about that which we received by inheritance, by which we mean only this book. We make no request for other things he composed before or after or outside of its pages, nor would we ever do so. We leave it to the author and the heir to dispose of these things as he wishes. Nor should you believe that we ever requested or sought this dedication from the lord your father. On the contrary, spontaneously and out of a long familiarity and acquaintance we shared, which began before Your Lordship was born and when we were so small that we do not remember it, he wanted to honor us with the dedication of this book of his. We are certain it has no need of correction by others, because since he made the selection of his compositions and put them into a volume, we have to believe that it had been edited absolutely and approved, by him and by others he trusted. So, if you will follow our advice, you will not give it to anyone to correct, for it would more likely be corrupted, as we see every day in the example of other authors. Rather, let it please Your Lordship to send it to us, if not by this rider, then within a few days. Otherwise we will send one of our men to understand better your feelings and the reasons you would give for not giving us that which is by every reason ours. And we would be obliged to resent it if you thought to make some other kind of arrangement. We offer ourself etc.468 467. The reference is to Giulio d’Este’s imprisonment for plotting against his brother, Duke Alfonso. See Letter 386 of 20 September 1506. 468. This book was given to Niccolò’s secretary, Antonio Valtellina, for editing, and at Valtellina’s death Lucrezia Borgia, too, sought to have it. Neither she nor Isabella appears to have succeeded. The British Library’s manuscript Harleian 3046, in Valtellina’s hand, contains 400 compositions by Niccolò da

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 289 Letter 399: 1508 February 25 Mantua To Giovan Galeazzo da Correggio, pursuing the literary work dedicated to Isabella.469 Since Your Lordship does not deny that the book of your dear departed lord father is dedicated to us in the manner that we wrote to you, and you have decided that in eight or ten days you will send your man to resolve this matter in a way that will leave us pleased with you (for we could not believe that you would not have understood our reasoning with all due respect) we will reply no further on this matter. We will, however, respond to some other necessary parts [of your letter]. First, Your Lordship says the book we saw in Ferrara with the dedication to us is not the one you have to give us, since [the latter] is annotated in some places and has no cover and is not decorated according to the wishes of the lord your father. We admit that this is true, because he was most generous, and he told us he wanted to have it transcribed again and would then give it to us. But it is not the case that for this reason we do not have the same rights to it as we would if we had it in our possession, since it was found upon his death among the other things, with a dedication to us. Regarding what you say about the corrections, we did not discourage you because we do not desire your lord father’s honor and fame, but because we recall what often happens when someone intervenes to try to interpret the thoughts of another person. If the book is marked and annotated, you are right to have it checked by someone who is aware of his thinking and who is learned, which we too would have done, because we are most desirous, as we have said, of his honor. And with no offense to Your Lordship, we are no less of this mind than you, both because of the love we bore the writer and because of the dedication to us. Certainly Your Lordship is quite right to say that you value the works no less than the other property left to you by the lord your father, because they will bring you no less credit and reputation. Therefore the more correct and approved they are, the more appreciative we will be to have those that were already dedicated to us come out with that dedication. For this we will always feel and owe an obligation to Your Lordship, who must not be offended that we said we would resent it if you thought of making another contract, because we did not say this without justification, and you must attribute this to his glory and our feeling upset and Correggio and represents the most complete known, surviving manuscript of his poetic production. It may be the edited copy made by Valtellina of the autograph collection. Farenga avers that no references to Isabella d’Este appear in it, while Richardson (citing Dionisotti) notes two mentions of the marchesa. Correggio may have withdrawn his dedication and planned to rededicate the work to Lucrezia Borgia. See Carlo Dionisotti, “Nuove rime di Niccolò da Correggio,” Studi di filologia italiana 17 (1959): 135–88; Paola Farenga, “Correggio (Correggio Visconti), Niccolò Postumo,” DBI 29 (1983); Richardson, “Isabella d’Este and the Social Uses of Books,” 313–14. 469. AG 2994 libro 20 cc.94r–95r. For Isabella’s letter of 16 March 1508 to the same recipient see D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 315.

290 ISABELLA D’ESTE longing for the things of your father. Nor were the words we had sent to you with our emissary and that we wrote in our letters meant to infer anything else, if Your Lordship thinks on them with some maturity. Indeed, we would have them said to you again, and we affirm that we want Your Lordship to be sure you may rely upon us no less than did your dear departed lord father, in whose place we have accepted you, in love and benevolence. And if you come to experience this, you will find that the effects correspond increasingly to the offer as time goes by. Now it remains for Your Lordship to hold us in that esteem in which he held us. To your pleasures and those of the lady, your mother, to whom this will always equally apply, we offer ourself ever ready.

Letter 400: 1508 July 27 Cavriana To Francesco II Gonzaga regarding jewels he has requested from her.470 Since the jewels and every other thing I possess belong to you, it is both fitting and my duty to obey you. Thus I am sending there two jewels, one is a gugolo ruby with two diamonds and an emerald and a tavola with a pendant pearl; the other is an emerald and a ruby with a pendant pearl.471 It seems to me better to send you two jewels rather than one worth so much as that. But I confess that I do this reluctantly, not because the Vismali don’t deserve our service, but because Your Lordship deprives himself of jewels too easily, and every time I hear that they are going for something other than your personal need I am saddened, remembering that we lost a cross among the jewels that were lent to count Filippo Rosso, which if we could get it back would be worth the price.472 And we should also remember what Cesare da Milano got, because if Eleonora is to be married at the end of October we will need to have the jewels all at home, since Your Lordship is obliged to give her jewelry. Now that Your Lordship has assured me that Federico is out of any danger or harm, I would set my soul in peace and think only of my delivery, which seems to me a thousand years away. To your good grace I commend myself.

470. AG 2117 fasc. V.1 c. 204. Francesco Gonzaga was in this period in Mantua. 471. Gugolo is a variant of cogola (codolo) and refers to an irregular cut of precious gem; see Battaglia; and Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 427. The word derives from ciottolo, a piece of gravel smoothed by running water. Tavola (or table) refers to the large facet in the crown of a jewel, though Isabella’s meaning here is not clear. 472. The name Vismali [Vicemala / Vismara] refers to one of the noble families of Lombardy.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 291 Letter 401: 1508 August 14 Cavriana To Francesco II Gonzaga, on baptizing their daughter Livia Osanna.473 Following the instructions Your Excellency wrote me, this morning the baby girl was baptized in the way your wrote and given the names Livia and Osanna. She was so peaceful the whole time that she seemed to be sleeping. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace.

Letter 402: 1508 September 24 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, thanking him for quails and a pheasant.474 I received the twelve quails and the pheasant Your Excellency sent me, which I appreciated immeasurably, and I enjoyed them for love of you, commending myself to your good grace.

Letter 403: 1509 May 28 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi, inquiring about a sundial and other items.475 On a previous occasion, we received this little clock from Messer Pellegrino Prisciani. We have always appreciated it for its beauty and quality, and we have treasured it. There is just one thing that it lacks, which we now aim more than ever to remedy: we would very much like it to be lighter and more portable than it is. On this account, we pray you be pleased to take it, and using it as a model, have another one made for us, all in gold, but smaller and as light as it can be, even if it has to be made hollow where its size permits. If you need Messer Pellegrino’s advice in compassing and mapping it, we will appreciate your seeking his services. In the attached letter, we write to Messer Girolamo Ziliolo not to deny you gold or any other thing you need, so that he will supply you, with all possible speed. If you think this can be of use, we leave it up to you. Of one thing we assure you: that we have no greater wish than to be well and quickly served. We also pray you please give Maestro Gregorio the shoemaker to understand that he should make us two pairs of sumac gaiters, one white and the other yellow, making sure that the sumac is as soft and supple as possible; otherwise, we won’t be able to wear them. As soon as they are ready, please arrange for us to 473. AG 2117 fasc. V.2 c. 211r. Isabella and Francesco’s last child, Livia Osanna, was born on or around 29 July 1508. Named for their spiritual counselor Osanna Andreasi, this daughter was destined from birth to enter the religious life. A letter of 13 August 1509 (c. 210) informs Francesco that Antonio Bernero has arrived to hold the baby during the baptism as the proxy for Galeazzo Pallavicino, her godfather. 474. AG 2117 fasc. V.2 c. 215. 475. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 3v–4r. In a following letter, Isabella refers to this clock as an “orologetto da sole”: a small sun clock.

292 ISABELLA D’ESTE receive them, for we will be a courteous payer, beyond the expenses incurred for all these things. We remain singularly pleased with your work for us, and we offer ourself ever to you.

Letter 404: 1509 June 11 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, sending him preserves.476 Maestro Vincenzo da Napoli sent me some preserves from Ferrara, which I wish to share with Your Excellency. I am sending you six jugs of marinade and a small majolica jar of lettuce, which are good and refreshing things in this weather.477 There is also some rose-infused sugar, but since I don’t know if Your Excellency likes it, I have not sent you any for fear you might give it away. If you don’t want it for your own consumption, it is better to keep this at home for use by the sick, since it is so delicious it would resuscitate even someone half-dead. The Spanish ambassadors are being honored, and so the lord duke of Ferrara [Alfonso I] will be here tomorrow morning.478 Bagno says that the cardinal479 will be here soon on his return to Ferrara, and for this reason the Aquila Inn will be off to a good start. The children are very well, and I commend myself to Your Highness’s good grace.

Letter 405: 1509 July 12 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, explaining the escape of three prisoners.480 Today Bardassino and some of his comrade mounted soldiers481 removed from the communal jail three prisoners captured in the battle, who had up to then been guarded in said jail; they wanted to take them to Milan. But as they passed through the piazzas, some shopkeepers, perhaps moved to compassion at seeing these prisoners tied up and crying, rose up. And all at once the whole piazza started to chase the soldiers, so that the prisoners escaped. They went first to San Francesco [church]. Upset by the novelty of this occurrence, which truly one cannot deny was bad luck, and by the laments of the soldiers, I sent word to the friars at San Francesco asking them to please give over the prisoners, which they could 476. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 7v–8r. 477. I translate as “marinade” the term marinata, which, then as now, meant a mixture of herbs with some acidic substance (vinegar or wine) for preparing meats, fish, or game. On the rise of salad in early modern Italy, see Laura Giannetti, “Italian Renaissance Food Fashioning or the Triumph of Greens,” California Italian Studies 1(2) (2010), 16 pp., . 478. Isabella writes here to Francesco on the battlefields, but a recurrence of the debilitating symptoms of syphilis was keeping him from fighting. 479. Presumably Ippolito d’Este, returning from Rome. 480. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 17v–18r. 481. stradiotti.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 293 do without violating the sacred space, because their case was not a capital one and these men could be redeemed with money.482 The friars replied that it was true those men had fled there, but that then they disappeared, and that if they were found again they would be happy to give them over, provided that the authority of the archpriest would intervene. I was tending to this when I heard that they had been seen crossing the lake in a rowboat. I offered Bardassino a license he could use to go follow them, but he preferred to come directly to Your Lordship without delay. So I wanted to explain the situation to you as it was, anticipating that you will write if we are to take any action to demonstrate that this disorder displeased you. Among the other things weighing on Bardassino is the fact that he paid the prison guard, as usual, and now he is left with no money and no prisoners from whom he expected to profit. I commend myself to Your Lordship.

Letter 406: 1509 July 17 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, regarding arrangements for their daughter Eleonora’s marriage to Francesco Maria della Rovere.483 Via a special courier from Urbino, I received letters from the lady duchess in which she notifies Your Excellency that the pope has decided to send you a man who will finalize the marriage agreement for Eleonora. With great insistence, as you will see from his attached letter, the lord duke informs us what the contract should include. I thought I should send the letter I received immediately to Your Excellency, so that you may be forewarned before the arrival of Our Lord’s [the pope’s] nuncio. In the letter to me was a policy from the duchess directed to you, which she left it up to me to show you or not, since she feared you might be irritated by it. But I, who want to keep nothing hidden from you, wanted to send it to you. I’m sure you will know very well how to keep to yourself what you want and put up with the duke’s appetites, because what he says should be taken in large part as arising from his desire to enjoy his new bride. Your Excellency must make every effort to satisfy him in this and not leave him dissatisfied. For benefit of our daughter, the duchess would not like the pope’s man or anyone else to know that she wrote, so that neither the duke nor the pope may learn of it. Your Excellency 482. The friars would have been compelled to give asylum to the prisoners if the latter had been condemned to death. Having taken refuge in a sacred space, the escapees would not be turned over by Franciscans to face execution. Isabella indicates that these men’s release could be bought, and Bardassino makes his living in this sort of exchange. 483. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 19v–20r. Francesco II Gonzaga was in Milan on 17 July 1509 when the Venetians recaptured Padua from Maximilian and unleashed popular insurrections in the countryside against the Empire and Ferrara. Louis XII immediately sent Francesco Gonzaga and Alfonso I d’Este, duke of Ferrara, home to protect their territories, but by 21 July Francesco was being importuned to occupy Legnago in the name of Maximilian. Caught between two loyalties, Francesco heeded the orders of Louis XII to head for Verona. Mazzoldi, 210–11.

294 ISABELLA D’ESTE will conduct yourself with your usual prudence. I commend myself to your good grace.

Letter 407: 1509 July 17 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, on arrangements for the marriage of Eleonora Gonzaga to Francesco Maria della Rovere.484 When I saw what Your Ladyship wrote me about Eleonora’s marriage, I immediately took the expedient of sending a special courier to my most illustrious lord. And so that His Lordship would know how to conduct himself with the messenger being sent by Our Lord [the pope], I also sent him Your Ladyship’s postscript and tried to make the duke’s words appear more acceptable, so that they will sooner be attributed to his great desire to have his bride with him than to any other sinister purpose. Your Ladyship must be regarded as having acted very lovingly in this matter, as the best of sisters. I feel certain that my aforesaid lord is ill equipped at present to satisfy Our Lord’s and the duke’s wishes that he send them the bride, since, given that he has had a war at home (as everyone should be aware) and is still in Milan with His Most Christian Majesty [Louis XII of France], he has had and still has many daily expenses, such that His Excellency is completely out of money. We hope that Your Ladyship can take these things discretely into account. For my part, I will not fail in whatever I can do, for nothing in the world is so important to me as this. I wish Eleonora had already been married six months, for the happiness and honor of everyone, and I prayed and urged my Lord in this direction. About the matter of Madonna Dorotea, which Your Ladyship commended to me so persuasively: as soon as my lord is here, I will talk with him about it. I will make every effort to consider and work out what is possible, so that Madonna Dorotea’s wishes may be granted. I commend myself continuously to Your Ladyship.

Letter 408: 1509 August 3 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, on a messenger from Rome who would like to meet with him.485 Having opened in Your Lordship’s absence a letter to you from Messer Massimo, I saw that he asks if he can come and talk to you in the name of our lord His Holiness, and he requests that you tell him where he can meet you. As I imagine that he wants to talk with you about the dealings to give Eleonora away in marriage, I thought that in order to unburden Your Lordship of this task to which you cannot attend now, I should reply to him that Your Lordship has left home 484. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 20v–21v. 485. AG 2995 libro 21 c. 30r.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 295 to provide aid to His Christian Majesty, and that it would be almost impossible to determine a place where he could find you, because you are riding now here and now there, wherever the necessities of the mission require.486 I said that if he does not have to speak with you about matters of state importance or immediate actions but rather of things that could be deferred, he should for the moment stay where he is, because you are completely occupied with matters of war, and all the more because the roads would be very unsafe for him since the whole countryside is in tumult due to peasant incursions.487 And that even if the matter is very important and cannot be deferred, he should write me back, because in the meantime I would write to you by special messenger to try to find out where Your Lordship could best be met. I thought I should inform you of this decision of mine taken to unburden Your Lordship. The letter from Messer Massimo was sent from Bologna. To the good grace of Your Excellency I commend myself.

Letter 409: 1509 August 3 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, on the discovery of a swindle involving the Spanish ambassador.488 I thought I should notify Your Lordship of a Spanish hoax, which we discovered in time so that neither you nor I was duped. That young man who was here in recent days, and who presented himself as the brother of the Spanish ambassador and by virtue of this title had been lent a mule by Your Lordship and a horse by me, stayed here two more days after taking his leave from Your Lordship and me. I was told this by the most reverend monsignore, my brother. In past days [the man] had been in Ferrara, where he pretended to be ill and received ten ducats from the monsignore by presenting himself not as the ambassador’s brother as he did here, but as his friend and employee. And His Lordship affirms that he had seen him earlier at the table of the aforesaid ambassador. Because it seemed odd to me that he would want to go to Ferrara, as he said he would, since he had just come from there, I immediately suspected a hoax, a feeling confirmed for me by his tardiness in leaving here after being dismissed and his presenting himself differently in Ferrara and here (there under the name of employee, and here as the brother of the ambassador). 486. Eleonora’s fiancé was nephew to Pope Julius II della Rovere, who took interest in this political alliance. 487. Francesco Gonzaga had rushed from Mantua on 2 August 1509 to Verona, which he was to defend for the League against new Venetian incursions. Since at least 17 July, the Venetians had been unleashing peasant insurrections in the countryside in a rally of force against Imperial and Ferrarese troops occupying territories for the League. See Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 93–95; Mazzoldi, 210–11. 488. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 30v–31r.

296 ISABELLA D’ESTE For this reason, I had him followed last night on the San Benedetto road where, this morning, the emissary found him dressed for departure; and on my orders he took back Your Lordship’s mule and my horse. He brought those back here, leaving the young man to go on his way. The man had also tried to swindle the friars there out of a horse, but he hadn’t succeeded, because the friars talked separately with his servant and found their stories to be different in several ways. So, up to now only the most reverend monsignore my brother is left swindled out of ten ducats. I did not want, however, to do more to this man than dexterously take away from him our riding animals, which is what I ordered the messenger to do, so that our respect for the ambassador may be seen to hold even with someone who has been caught in flagrant fraud, if that person has made use of the ambassador’s name. I thought I should inform Your Lordship of this matter, so that you may better understand the duplicity of that race from this hoax. I have certified that he is a Neapolitan, though he presents himself as a Spaniard. But the one and the other nation is capable of such occupations as these.489 To the good graces of Your aforementioned Lordship I commend myself forever.

Letter 410: 1509 August 6 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, on the difficulties of making wedding arrangements while at war.490 I received two letters from Your Ladyship, from the 22nd and 23rd of last month: one pertaining to the matter of my daughter Eleonora and the other with your recommendation of Messer Roberto Orsello. As to the part regarding Eleonora, Your Ladyship will have understood from my other letters what I have already written you. No other deliberations or decisions have been possible up to now, because the lord, my consort is always occupied with other business. He has not been able to attend to this matter, nor has Messer Massimo ever come, as Your Ladyship wrote he was to do. Even if he had come, nothing more could have been done, because the lord, my consort, was just about to ride out. Now, times are even worse, both because His Lordship has ridden out and will not stop in any place where he could attend to this, and because there is no way to have the money, due to the great and intolerable costs incurred by my lord, which are still mounting because he has gone out entirely at his own expense. For this reason, we cannot come to any resolution, but this is not because we don’t share a common desire. My lord and I desire to send Eleonora no less than Your Ladyship and the duke 489. The reference appears to be to the fame of Naples as a city known for its clever swindlers, a reputation already celebrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in Decameron 2.5. Since Isabella herself is half Neapolitan, she seems here to delight in having recognized and thwarted a con artist’s designs. 490. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 33v–34r.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 297 wish to have her. But since this impossibility prevents us from carrying out our will, I was very happy to see Messer Roberto Orsello, and the visit he made me on Your Ladyship’s behalf was most welcome. I thank you very much, and I assure you that wherever I can please this Messer Roberto you have commended to me, I will do so willingly, both out of respect for Your Ladyship and due to his own virtues. I commend myself to you.

Letter 411: 1509 August 8 Mantua To Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga, announcing that Francesco II Gonzaga has been captured by the Venetians.491 My lord consort went yesterday to the Isola della Scala with his Italian and French men and those of Count Ludovico della Mirandola and other assembled infantry, to attempt to take Legnago. According to the reports, in the middle of the night three thousand cavalry who had arrived there that same night and perhaps six thousand peasants came out of Legnago. Having killed his guards, they silently arrived at the lodging of His Lordship; and killing whomever they met, they battled long at these lodgings where, after a protracted defense, the person of the aforesaid lord remained prisoner and under the enemy’s power.492 I am not yet certain whether he has any bodily injury. 491. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 34v–35r. Thus begins the most trying period of Isabella’s life. On 7 August 1509 Francesco Gonzaga left Verona on an independent mission to capture Legnago, a village lying along the Adige River. He was taken prisoner near an outlying village, Isola della Scala, and conducted first to Padua and then to Venice. As a first-rate condottiere, Francesco was a prize catch; his capture, however, was narrated inconsistently. As Francesco Guicciardini recounts it in his History of Italy 8.3, when Luca Malvezzi’s Venetian forces surrounded the marchese’s lodgings he fled “almost naked through a window,” taking refuge in a grain field, where he was found by several peasants and turned over to the Venetians for capture. Key documents may be found in Luzio, “La reggenza d’Isabella d’Este durante la prigionia del marito, 1509–1510,” Archivio storico lombardo 4, 14 (1910): 5–104. For concise accounts of these events and of Isabella’s leadership, as well as for corrections of several errors by Luzio, see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:32–34 (which erroneously cites 9 August 1509 as the date of Francesco’s capture); Mazzoldi, 210–16; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 244; also Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, 162–72. 492. In this moment of crisis, Isabella employs the technical language of sovereignty, referring to the capture of the person of the marchese and not of the marchese himself. Francesco Gonzaga, too, upon being brought to Venice as a prisoner, is reported to have responded to those who greeted him as the marchese of Mantua, “The marchese of Mantua is not here, because this man with whom you are speaking is Francesco Gonzaga, and the marchese is presently in Mantua”: Luzio, “La reggenza,” 20–21; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 247. The implication is that upon capture of this title’s bearer, the title and its office transferred automatically and seamlessly to Francesco’s heir, Federico II Gonzaga. See Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, with new preface by William Chester Jordan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997; original 1957). Luzio, who makes no secret of his perennial disdain for Francesco Gonzaga, cites the negative

298 ISABELLA D’ESTE Given this most bitter news, which is worse than any I have ever received, my sole hope lies in our lord His Holiness, who has shown that he loves and esteems our house, and in whom I know—and Your Lordship also knows—my aforesaid lord has always placed all his faith. Thus I pray you beg His Beatitude to deign to use his authority to lend this case that assistance which I know he will want to give to the person of the aforesaid lord. Our debt to him will be great, and still greater will be the praise earned by the one who gives freedom and life to his aforesaid servant. And as ready as I am to go to every length to preserve this city and state against enemies, nonetheless because Your Lordship’s presence near me would be very helpful, I pray you, when you can do so with the contentment and permission of Our Lord [the pope], please come to Mantua. Ask also that the most reverend legate in Bologna be commissioned to lend me proper and necessary aid whenever I request it. I commend myself to Your Lordship.

Letter 412: 1509 August 8 Mantua To Count Lodovico della Mirandola, describing her state of mind after Francesco’s capture and requesting assistance.493 We are certain that Your Lordship is greatly dismayed by the capture of our lord, for this is our mutual misfortune; and we would gladly accept your advice to be at peace, if we could do so. But although we are beside ourself and unable to think, we nonetheless have not neglected to take necessary measures either for the safety of our state or for the liberation of our lord. We have sent our men to the pope, the emperor, and the king of France. All that remains is that for our particular contentment Your Lordship stay at the border of this state until we are quite sure of what our enemies will do, which is no less in the interest of the pope, the emperor, and Your Lordship than in our own. Your Lordship can make our excuses to His Majesty the emperor, for we do not doubt that your person and your men will be much more appreciated here than on the battle field, as there are so many there already, as Your Lordship writes and as we have also heard from other sources. We offer and commend ourself to you.

impression Francesco made on the Venetian diarist Marin Sanudo and interprets Francesco’s forlorn letters home as a sign of his cowardice. 493. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 36v–37r. Ludovico had been with Francesco on his venture to capture Legnago; see Mazzoldi, 211–12.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 299 Letter 413: 1509 August 9 Mantua To the vicars, podestà, and commissioners of Mantuan territories, assuring them that she will not give up the state.494 Because we are certain that those most beloved men of ours, as the faithful persons they are, are completely dismayed by the unhappy news of our lord consort’s miserable capture and may be stunned by it, we want you to exhort them in our name to keep their spirits up. Because even we—though we are very disheartened by this sudden event—are not so bereft of spirit and counsel that we are not aiming to do what is possible to preserve this state in its entirety. We have already made many provisions, and we have sought the powers of His Most Christian Majesty, of the emperor, and of His Holiness, our lord, to aid and favor us and our affairs whenever we are in need. We place such hope in them that not only do we have sufficient spirit to keep this state unharmed, we also promise the speedy liberation of our aforesaid lord. You, before all others, be of good spirit; and be more vigilant than ever.

Letter 414: 1509 August 12 Mantua To the queen of France [Anne de Bretagne], confessing near-despair over the marchese’s capture and asking for help from the French king.495 I believe you have been informed of the miserable capture and captivity of the lord, my husband, into the hands of the Venetians, his mortal enemies. Nothing could be harder for me to contemplate and to bear. And because, Madama, the means for his liberation and what hope he and I can have rests in the king, I beg you, Madama, as humbly as a poor and unworthy servant can supplicate a high and singular patron, to please be his advocate with His Majesty. Bear in mind, Madama, regarding the unfortunate circumstance of my aforesaid lord, that he was a most humble and most loyal servant of His Majesty and desired nothing but to serve him. Believe, Madama, that but for the hope I have in His Majesty and you, I think I would have killed myself with my own hands; for I believe this would be far better for me than to remain alive without my lord. Because when I think of where he is, I die a thousand times a day. Madama, I pray God grant you a most good and a long life. 494. AG 2995 libro 21 c. 38v. Isabella and her counselors recognized the grave danger to which Mantua was exposed due to the marchese’s capture. By sending this letter to multiple recipients in key positions throughout Gonzaga territory, she aimed to prevent a toppling of the state from within, disseminating the crucial information that there was no power vacuum at the Mantuan court. Her final instruction that these Gonzaga functionaries be vigilant acknowledges the possibility of attack by foreign states. 495. AG 2995 libro 21 c. 49v. On 11 August 1509, letters pleading assistance went out to Emperor Maximilian and to the king of France. The copybook includes the instruction to write this letter in the latter case in French, and a note that the text was adapted for sending to at least a dozen additional, high-ranking recipients.

300 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 415: 1509 August 17 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, reporting that she hopes to send Francesco a doctor.496 I took much pleasure in hearing, as attested in Messer Cesare Gonzaga’s letters, of His Holiness’s good will regarding the most unhappy circumstance of the most illustrious lord, my consort, and how readily he is acting to find a solution that will free His Lordship and preserve this state. It was an enormous comfort to me in the midst of such affliction, and I thank Your Ladyship for sending me the aforesaid letters. About my lord I have heard that, after putting him immediately in that small tower, they have now taken away his entire company and separated them, too, from each other, which is a very horrendous thing. Keeping His Lordship’s person company are eight gentlemen, who are changed three or four times a day. I tried to get permission to send him two servants, a doctor, and a chamberlain; I don’t yet know whether I will be granted this grace. I fear that I will very rarely hear of how His Lordship fares, because all information will be kept from me. I thus pray Your Ladyship, try to hear continuously of him through your friends in Venice, and share [your information] with me, for I hope to learn more from you than from any other source. To Your Ladyship I commend myself from the heart.

Letter 416: 1509 August 26 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, arguing that given Francesco’s imprisonment, she cannot hold a wedding for their daughter Eleonora.497 I understood from Messer Alessandro Picenardi, the secretary of the most reverend and illustrious lord, our cardinal, among other things he told me on behalf of Your Ladyship and the most illustrious lord duke, who is like a son to us, that you wish to finalize Eleonora’s marriage. I think your wish is great, but no greater than mine, for many and infinite reasons.498 And every time I think of it, I am wracked with pain, seeing myself unable to content the lord duke, His Holiness, Your Ladyship, or myself. Your Ladyship knows that the earlier impediments were genuine ones. The present one is not only genuine but also forced upon us and impossible [to surmount]. But I think that such prudent persons as Your Ladyship and His Holiness do not fail to recognize that with my lord in captivity, the state in danger and incurring countless expenses, and a dearth of funds, it would be neither appropriate nor honorable to marry off our daughter so soon. His Holiness, who is most 496. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 61v–62r. 497. AG 2995 libro 21 cc. 76r–77r. 498. One of these reasons was that Eleonora was marrying into the family of the pope, whose help was critical to Francesco Gonzaga’s liberation.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 301 wise and most clement, had delegated count Ludovico della Mirandola to guard this state. I do not think he would want him to be disarmed of whatever funds he has until things are secured, much less would he praise us for spending down our accounts, which don’t contain a penny. As you have heard, the lord lost the money, silver, and what quality goods there were in the household, because he had it all with him.499 I have certainly thought and am thinking about how, with all due diligence, to limit expenses and put together a sum of money for this sole purpose, and to waste no time in satisfying the duke and bringing myself out of debt and trouble. And as soon as I have thought and devised how to get the money, I will try to inform my most illustrious lord, without whose permission I would not carry this out while he is still in prison, since I know that Eleonora is dearer to his heart than anything, as I understood from a letter written in his own hand.500 For this reason, I pray and beg Your Ladyship to put herself in my place and appeal to the lord duke in the fashion that I hope you will and that my situation merits, so that he accepts this delay. Give him my promise that I will not fail to content him as soon as possible. His hunger consoles me, since it comes from the great love he bears his wife.501 But since he is also prudent, he will rein in his hunger with reason and await such time as I will be allowed to carry out his wishes. Neither stress nor extreme limitations shall deter me from this goal, as I have said. I commend myself to Your Ladyship and to the aforesaid lord duke, asking that you be compassionate with me, for if you knew the half of my cares, you would be no less confounded than I. The emperor wants infantry and artillery from me. You can see whether I have the means. Denying him is dangerous; satisfying him is impossible. I have the Gran Maestro502 with an army at the border, crossing into our territory and

499. Citing Lettere storiche di Luigi da Porto vicentino dall’anno 1509 al 1528, ed. Bartolommeo Bressan (Florence: Le Monnier, 1857), , 106–107. Cartwright notes at Isabella d’Este, 2:32–33, “The joy of the captors was great, especially as Francesco’s camp, with all its silver plate, his sumptuous hangings and pavilions, his rich furniture and splendid suits of armour, fell into their hands, together with ‘some of the finest horses in the world.’ ” 500. Francesco’s affection for his daughter is well attested, and his permission would eventually arrive. In a letter of 16 December to Jacopo d’Atri, count of Pianella, Isabella reports that Eleonora departed for Urbino and Rome with “the blessing of all of us who were present and of her father, in a letter to us from His Lordship written in his own hand with the greatest tenderness in the world. The said letter was full of paternal affection […].” 501. Isabella refers to Eleonora rhetorically as the duke’s wife, though the multi-step marriage clearly has not yet been finalized. Whether Francesco Maria’s hunger to marry her daughter consoled Isabella is open to question. 502. Charles d’Amboise.

302 ISABELLA D’ESTE sacking it; and I fear that there is worse to come.503 And so, a thousand times I day I wish for my own death. I commend myself eternally to Your Ladyship.

Letter 417: 1509 August 29 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, trying to trace the source of a letter from her imprisoned husband.504 In the past few days Your Excellency sent me, enclosed in one of yours, a letter from my most illustrious lord, written in his own hand and addressed to me, which you said you had received through a friend. Now, my brother-in-law, the Most Illustrious Lord Giovanni writes me that Lord Ludovico [Gonzaga] of Bozzolo, who happened to be in Montagnana, intercepted a Venetian rider with the letter from my lord, along with another letter from the Signoria505 in which the Provveditore of Legnago506 is ordered to take every possible measure to see that the letter from my lord comes faithfully into my hands. Since Lord Giovanni sent me the copy he got from Lord Ludovico, which is word-for-word and dated the same day as this one, except that a few words are missing, either due to the copyist’s errors or because it was duplicated, I am now thrown into confusion. Thus, I pray Your Lordship please, in order to content me, inform me by what route and whose means you got the letter. You could do me no greater favor at present. So that Your Lordship may better understand the situation, I am sending you Lord Ludovico’s letter to Lord Giovanni, with a copy of those from my lord and the doge,507 which I ask you to send back to me by this rider. 503. Mazzoldi, 212–14, notes the swirl of responses by the major European potentates to the capture of the marchese of Mantua: Julius II manifested sincere dismay and set about immediately to assist Isabella; King Louis XII of France took advantage of the situation to introduce one hundred French soldiers into Mantua on the pretext that they could safeguard it; and Emperor Maximilian’s response differed little from that of the French king; he offered to send governing assistance to Mantua. Isabella, as Luzio notes, fended off both of these attempts with gracious thanks and reassurance that all in Mantua was proceeding in secure calm. While the French, in hopes of provoking open hostility between Rome and Venice and thus abetting their war, encouraged Julius to arrest the Venetian ambassadors to Rome, the pope himself aimed to avoid such hostility, as he had in mind an eventual rapprochement with Venice so that he might later enlist the Venetians in a Crusade against the Turks. He thus advised the French to offer a prisoner exchange to free Francesco Gonzaga, throwing the ball back into their court. They refused. See Luzio, “La reggenza,” 19. 504. AG 2994 libro 21 cc. 81v–82r. 505. Venice. 506. The provveditore was a high functionary state office, usually a provincial governor or administrator. 507. At no other time was the authenticity of letters so important to Isabella as it was during Francesco’s imprisonment, because false letters could potentially direct her to take action that would put the state in danger. In this particular instance, the marchesa is concerned about the number of copies of Francesco’s letter that seem to be circulating. These copies confront her with concrete evidence of the porous security system to which Mantua was subject.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 303 Letter 418: 1509 December 7 Mantua To Ludovico Brognolo, discussing the pope’s wish to have Eleonora Gonzaga visit Rome as a bride.508 By your letters of the 22nd, 27th, and the last day of last month we are well informed of events and news there. We commend your diligence. Answering the parts that require reply, we say that we are pleased that His Holiness has decided he wants to honor our duchess bride in Rome, for this, along with his other gestures, gives us great hope that His Beatitude will free our lord soon. We take this as good news from you. We praise your energetic efforts to push those cardinals to do a good thing. As for Messer Antonio Magistrello, we are responding with the enclosed letter. You should now assist him in demanding the renunciation.509 We would like to hear how His Holiness fares, since we very much hope His Beatitude is well. From France we have no views on the king of England’s action,510 which news we take to be false since Jacopo d’Atri is most diligent in informing us of what he hears. We are very pleased to hear that His Holiness is well disposed toward the most illustrious lord duke of Ferrara, insofar as his affairs are in obvious danger, as we wrote you in other letters and as you must be hearing about there daily. The most illustrious lady duchess of Urbino was supposed to depart today [for Rome] with the duchess bride, but Her Ladyship was overcome by a pain in her foot. Whether this is an injury or gout, she has a bit of fever. This can only mean that the departure will be put off for at least four or six days, to Her Ladyship’s enormous displeasure, and not without great inconvenience and expense for us, but our greater concern is for her displeasure.

Letter 419: 1509 December 10 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, sending him weapons.511 Now that Alessandro has returned, I had the munitions checked in hopes of supplying Your Lordship with some arquebuses.512 Altogether, there are thirty metal 508. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 24r–v. Brognolo was in Rome as a Gonzaga ambassador. 509. As may be gleaned from the letter of the same day to Magistrello, he was involved in the transfer of a benefice regarding the women’s monastery of Santa Paola. On these monasteries, see Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage. 510. Henry Tudor was crowned king Henry VIII of England on 24 June 1509. 511. AG 2995 libro 23 c. 27v. Alfonso and Ippolito d’Este were fending off Venetian attempts to capture Ferrara. 512. The arquebus (harkbus, hackbut) was a firearm invented in the fifteenth century. A muzzle-loaded weapon, it was a forerunner of the rifle. Since before Francesco’s capture Isabella did not occupy herself with arms supply or trade, this letter illustrates her expanded duties in his absence. Ferrara was a key Mantuan ally. The marchesa’s willingness to supply her brother with firearms in this vulnerable period is calculated to increase security in the Gonzaga territories as well as in Ferrara.

304 ISABELLA D’ESTE ones here, which I happily send Your Lordship via the present exhibitor, Pavono. As I would like to content you with a greater number, I sent word to various surrounding locations, reducing our supply in places that are less vulnerable.513 As soon as I get them, I will send as many as possible to Your Lordship. Because my most illustrious lord sent some of these arquebuses to equip our castles, those being sent to Your Lordship now come from as far away as Forme. You can order to have some made there, to meet your demand. I thank Your Excellency for what you wrote me, and I commend myself to you heartily. P.S.: May Your Lordship be pleased to write me upon receipt of these thirty arquebuses.

Letter 420: 1509 December 10 Mantua To Ludovico Brognolo, on the dowry of Eleonora Gonzaga and other matters.514 Yesterday, in God’s name, at eighteen and one-half hours, our daughter the duchess and the duchess our sister left here. They were accompanied by us and all the nobility as far as the gate, which they would not suffer us to surpass because there was an extremely thick fog. Monsignor Cardinal [Sigismondo Gonzaga] went with them as far as Gonzaga, but when night and great darkness came upon them, there were some who lost their way, for the astrologer miscalculated the first day.515 Nonetheless they arrived safely and hope for better days. We gave the lady duchess four pieces of gold cloth and several brocades in gold and silver weave to make four camoras;516 a buffet silver service; a few pieces of jewelry for everyday use; and the five thousand ducats that were promised of late to Messer Massimo. We would have likewise given the rest of the jewels, which will be worth about two thousand five hundred ducats, if the jeweler we were expecting from Bologna on orders from His Holiness had arrived. These will be turned over to her procurator at the duchess’s pleasure. I consigned and relinquished these things here in this city, even though His Excellency517 sent neither authorization to accept the jewelry and money nor insurance for them, as I reminded him to do over two months ago. We did this willingly so that it would not be thought that from our side we were posing any dif513. minuendo el numero alli loghi che mancho sono suspecti. 514. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 28r–29v. 515. Isabella and her friends regularly consulted astrologers regarding all sorts of matters, but especially when deciding to undertake travel. The duchess had apparently taken the advice of her astrologer when deciding on which day to begin this journey. Having both prayed to God and consulted the stars, they could confidently set out. 516. On the camora, see section 1 of this volume, n50. 517. The groom, Francesco Maria della Rovere.

1500–1509: Letters 201–420 305 ficulties. And likewise we estimated the property without counting any of the cut dresses or camoras, though many of them are of such beauty and value that they ought to have been included in the appraisal.518 By virtue of the contract which the dear departed Lord Duke Guido and Lord Giovanni stipulated in Rome,519 they were obliged to accept these things, in addition to many other furnishings and adornments for her person and her chamber. We thought we should tell you this so that you will be informed. Not that you should say anything to His Holiness other than whatever you think you should, as pleases Count Ludovico [da Canossa], unless it becomes necessary for our honor and justification. We tell you this because there was also some strangeness on their part. You must not, however, speak a word or give any signs whatsoever about this, because in the end, we did what they wanted, though at a loss of more than five hundred ducats and sufficient other things such that we would sooner have dealt with Messer Massimo. But this is how it is when one negotiates with family. We write nothing more to you about the affairs of Ferrara, since we know that the ducal ambassador must receive true information from there daily. As we wrote to you, Valeggio is now under French guard, and the same can be said of Verona, since there are perhaps five hundred French soldiers520 there. Monsignore Gran Maestro [Charles d’Amboise] is expected at Peschiera with the rest of the army and with six thousand infantrymen and artillery for the push forward. And if they take Legnago, they will hold it in pawn until he is paid expenses, which is a very wise thing on the part of His Imperial Majesty, since he now has no way himself of recuperating them. At this hour, he should be in Innsbruck to meet with a Diet and then return here to join the French. The French territories have given His Imperial Majesty gifts of one hundred thousand florins. The Venetian camp is spread out over Lonico, Soave, and surrounding areas. Today we got letters written in our lord’s hand, which were old, from the 24th of last month, in which he writes that he is over the illness he had in previous days and that he has been granted visits by some gentlemen friends of his. But he still has no servant besides Giorgino. The doctor, Maestro Antonio, whom we sent to him, has not yet been admitted to see His Excellency, but Maestro Andrea Spagnolo has been allowed to visit him several times.

518. The reference may be to garments that have been cut out but are not yet sewn together, or to gowns featuring fashionable slashes, through which the underblouse could be pulled for a puffed effect. 519. The contracts for this marriage were signed in February 1505 by Francesco’s brother, Giovanni Gonzaga for the bride’s side. The dear departed Guido was presumably Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, who died in 1508 and had previously adopted Francesco Maria della Rovere as his heir. 520. Isabella employs a common metonymy and speaks of five hundred French lanze (lances).

306 ISABELLA D’ESTE We fear that if His Holiness does not soon do something more in his favor, he will remain in this misery, and we in our continuous travail, for a long time. We do hope that when His Holiness sees before his feet the sister and daughter of his servant, he will be moved by mercy to obtain his freedom.521 We commend ourself to His Holiness and kiss his blessed feet.

521. Elisabetta Gonzaga, Eleonora Gonzaga, and Francesco Maria della Rovere, heir to the duchy of Urbino, had been invited to Rome by the pope to celebrate Eleonora and Francesco Maria’s marriage. Isabella’s hope was that the two women would make especially effective pleas for Francesco Gonzaga’s release. See Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:35–44; Luzio, Mantova e Urbino, 191–95, with a partial transcription of this letter at 191–92; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 251–57.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 This decade opened with Francesco Gonzaga’s release from Venetian captivity; it closed with his death, leaving Isabella a widow. Marking European affairs throughout the 1510s were the reigns of two highly consequential popes (Julius II and Leo X) each of whose politics had direct impact on the Gonzagas of Mantua. In the year 1510, Isabella struggled to keep their state solvent during her consort’s imprisonment. She stayed close to home, kept their heir nearby, and conducted a vigorous letter campaign for Francesco’s release. Obtaining the support of other princes was difficult, when she had little to offer in return. All eyes were on Francesco Gonzaga and his loyalties under duress. Mantua was suffering a famine that forced Isabella to turn down requests for grain from starving allies, while marauding armies continued to destroy whatever crops were planted. Over the eleven months of Francesco’s imprisonment, Isabella proved her mettle as a political leader and strategist, maintaining Gonzaga control of Mantua despite threats, intrigues, and power grabs from many sides. In 1510, the queen of France requested a Gonzaga daughter as lady-in-waiting, a placement Isabella delayed for the moment and was eventually compelled to decline. Motivated by fears that Francesco Gonzaga might shift his loyalties away from their alliance in order to obtain his freedom, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and King Louis XII of France each proposed taking Gonzaga heir Federico II into his court as security. Their suspicions were well founded: From his prison cell, Francesco accepted a secret condotta to lead the Venetian army against his current allies in exchange for his own liberation. The final request for Federico II Gonzaga thus came from an unanticipated source, his father, who was willing to secure his own release by giving the Venetians custody of Federico. Isabella rejected this deal as well, but she did not succeed in keeping Federico out of the political fray. In the end, it was the pope who took him hostage as human collateral for a new alliance between Rome and Venice, Francesco’s new employer. Both Isabella and Francesco emerged from the harrowing ordeal of Francesco’s imprisonment altered by the experience. They were hardened, wiser, and somewhat estranged from each other. Having served in the (1508) League of Cambrai (France, Rome, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire against the Venetians), Francesco Gonzaga officially joined the pope’s Holy League (Venice, England, Spain, and the Empire against France and Ferrara) in 1511. By 1513, the Venetians and the French were again allied, and Francesco Gonzaga was at their side. Meanwhile, the politics of instrumental marriages and family bonds added color and complexity to the Italian wars.

307

308 ISABELLA D’ESTE Eleonora Gonzaga was conducted to Urbino as wife to Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere in January 1510, though her consort was, at the time, in Rome. The following year Isabella’s new son-in-law committed the indiscretion of murdering a cardinal, thus creating a political incident that strained his status as favored papal nephew. In August of 1510, as Federico II Gonzaga commenced his sojourn of nearly two-and-a-half years amid the papal court’s sophistication, Isabella began parenting him from afar. It is to this distance between mother and son that we owe the beautiful portrait of the child Federico by Francesco Francia, done in 1510 and now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Isabella’s two younger daughters both took monastic vows in this decade. Ippolita surprised everyone by insisting on entering the convent of San Vincenzo in 1511 rather than going to live at the French court, as her aunt Chiara had done. Livia Osanna, who had been consecrated to religious life since her birth, is by March 1512 referred to as Suor Paola of Corpus Domini in Isabella’s correspondence. With the death of Julius II (20 February 1513), the political map once again realigned. Federico II Gonzaga returned home to Mantua, but by 1515 he was abroad again, this time as a strategic ‘guest’ of French King Louis XII, whose itinerant court hosted him until March 1517. At that time, Federico returned to Italy to meet the consort his parents had contracted for him, Maria Paleologa of the Francophile dynasty of Monferrato. Despite political demands on her attention, Isabella maintained her characteristic industriousness in this decade. She collected books, music, and antiquities through her well-articulated network of suppliers and advisors. Her plans to add paintings by Giorgione and Francesco Francia to her studiolo do not appear to have materialized, though Francia produced a portrait of her that is now lost and that served as the basis for the one painted by Titian much later, which now hangs in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. In 1511, she began to plant a garden at her country villa of Porto, for which she sought figs, pears, and other fruit trees. After Francesco’s release from prison, his health declined under the ravages of the syphilis he had contracted years earlier. He remained mostly in Mantua, where he pursued musical and architectural patronage until he finally succumbed to the disease.1 While her husband and his staff held down the court, Isabella embarked on a series of travels geared toward Gonzaga interests. In the first months of 1513 she was in Milan, ostensibly visiting her nephew, Duke Massimiliano Sforza, but in effect seeking protections against papal designs on Ferrara and Mantua by appealing to diplomats at Massimiliano’s court.2 The death of Julius II and the rise of Giovanni de’ Medici in March 1513 as Pope Leo X were greeted with quiet—and cautious—joy in Mantua. In March 1514 Isabella undertook a tour of Gonzaga towns, writing evocative letters home 1. Bourne, Franceso II Gonzaga, 97. 2. Banks Amendola, First Lady, 283–89.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 309 to Francesco describing the beauty of the countryside and the loyalty of their subjects. In the summer of that year she returned once more to Milan. In late 1514 she was in Rome and Naples, apparently intent on negotiating a political marriage for Massimiliano Sforza, but also focused on obtaining a papal benefice for the son of her cherished secretary, Benedetto Capilupi. On the return route, she stayed in Rome for Carnival and was lavishly entertained by the extravagant Leo X. Letters she wrote after completing these travels indicate that Isabella regretted Mantua’s provinciality after the social scenes of those two, grand cities. She poured her energies into administration, acquisition, entertaining, and governing. In 1517 Isabella traveled first to Casale to meet Federico’s intended bride, and then to Provence to visit the religious shrine of Mary Magdalene. When Francesco Gonzaga died 29 March 1519 in his Palazzo San Sebastiano, Isabella and other family members were at his side. His will stipulated that Isabella, together with Francesco’s brothers Sigismondo and Giovanni, would rule until Federico, his universal heir and designated successor, turned twenty-two.3 In June 1519, Lucrezia Borgia, too, died, in childbirth, at age thirty-nine. Alfonso I d’Este and his sister, Isabella, were thus both widowed. That same June, Charles V was elected Holy Roman Emperor. Though it is clear from Isabella’s correspondence that she rose to her new authority and dedicated herself to state administration, for the final months of 1519 and through August 1520, her copybooks are in a state of relative disarray, suggesting efforts to reorganize the chancery and the Mantuan court. Letters in her personal copybooks appear in cramped script, crowded sometimes four or five to a page, and are difficult to decipher.

3. Bourne, Franceso II Gonzaga, 45.

310 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 421: 1510 January 6 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino [Eleonora Gonzaga], asking her to serve as a diplomatic advocate for her imprisoned father.4 We took great pleasure in reading the letter Your Ladyship wrote in her own hand, precisely because it gave us more certain testimony of your safe arrival, in which we take great consolation. We heard from Giulio [Oldoino] about all that happened and about the great welcome [in Urbino] and the loving gestures the most illustrious lord, your consort, performed for you; and this makes us immeasurably happy. We understand that you will be going soon to Rome, where we have no doubt you will be welcomed with the great delight of His Holiness. Remember to take advantage of His Blessedness’s favor to help your father, because it is principally for this reason that we are pleased to see you go to that court. We are, however, quite certain that Your Ladyship has this in mind above all else. We would be grateful if you stressed this also to your husband. We kiss you tenderly. Commend us also to the most illustrious lady your mother, our sister. Letter 422: 1510 January 7 Mantua To Pope Julius II, regarding the innocence of Lucrezia [d’Este] Bentivoglio.5 I have been sought out by Madonna Lucrezia Bentivoglio to defend her and her family against imputations against them by Your Holiness. In all reverence and truth, I can assure you that she has explained to me and made every possible assurance that she neither knows nor ever heard or found that anyone in her family did or machinated to do, agreed to, or planned any of the recent events in the affairs of Bologna. And much less has there been any group or union of people here in Mantuan territory petitioning in favor of the Bentivoglio against Your Holiness’s state or toward any other new action. On this matter I can offer certain testimony, because any such union could not have been achieved within my dominion without my being aware of it, nor would I ever permit such a thing, given my supreme veneration for Your Beatitude. It seems to me that I am duty and honor bound to convey every possible assurance and exoneration of her and to beseech you deign accept this as the truth, for it is as I say. I ask your compassion for the aforesaid Madonna Lucrezia and that you not permit false calumnies to cause her to despair of Your Lordship’s grace, all the more because she assures me that her family desires nothing but tranquility and acceptance into your grace and clemency, with all due submission and display of reverence. Madonna Lucrezia 4. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 53v–54r. Now that Eleonora was moving into her position as the spouse of Urbino’s duke, Isabella began to use her title, and continued to use the same title (duchess of Urbino) for Elisabetta Gonzaga (who, in large measure, relinquished her official role at this time). Similarly, she refers at the end of this letter to Elisabetta as Eleonora’s mother, though she is, in fact, mother neither to Eleonora nor to the duke, who is her late husband’s nephew. 5. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 54v–55r.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 311 did not seem to me unworthy of my recommendation to Your Holiness. I commend her and myself together to your grace, adoring your holy feet. Letter 423: 1510 January 9 Mantua To Elisabetta Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, on the value of jewels in Eleonora Gonzaga’s trousseau.6 I saw what Your Ladyship has written me regarding the appraisal of the jewels, to which I reply that the jeweler Dionisio came alone, and he said that he met the most reverend monsignore legate on the road to Rome and that His Lordship said he did not have time to send anyone.7 Hence, since in the letter from the appellate judge, Your Ladyship specifies that [Dionisio] alone can do the appraisal from your side, our man and he will do it together. I truly regret that there is no one else with him, because to tell you the truth, he deserves much more criticism than our man here (as Your Ladyship says should be done). Whether due to his age or to some other factor, he seems to know very little. I understand that among other pieces, he valued a turquoise at six ducats that I am certain my most illustrious lord bought for fifty ducats. And His Lordship knows something about these things, aside from the fact that he did not acquire it without consulting experts. Nor must we say that it has been a thousand years since it was brought into the house, because the purchaser is still alive. But be things as they may. The jewels will be appraised; and once we have the official statement they will be consigned to the aforesaid Maestro Dionisio according to Your Ladyship’s wishes. Since Your Ladyship is occupied with preparations for the trip to Rome, I thought I would have the jewels mounted here, especially given that we have a good goldsmith. For this reason it will take perhaps three more days to send them, but Your Ladyship will at least be spared this task of having them mounted. The time we must wait to mount and estimate them is inevitable in any case, because before Maestro Dionisio arrived here I had already had them unmounted and begun to have them remounted, knowing very well that they would not be worn in the style and the settings that they were in. To Your Ladyship and the most illustrious lord duke I commend myself, and I kiss our daughter in common. P.S.: I had the turquoise looked into more carefully, and I find that it cost my lord forty-five ducats; this price was with the approval of appraisers who estimated its value as he bargained for it. 6. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 56v–57r. 7. Here the logic is that the pope may have wanted to oversee the valuation of the dowry items brought by his nephew’s bride by sending an appraiser from the papal court in addition to the jeweler sent from Urbino. Both families of the marrying couple had a stake in the actual or estimated value of costly items in the trousseau, which, together with a cash (or credit) dowry, constituted her material assets or worth.

312 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 424: 1510 January 13 Mantua To the count of Pianella, regarding a request for her daughter, a painting for the queen of France, and an order for books.8 Your two letters of the 28th and the last day of this past month were as pleasing to us as they were copious and full, and we commend your diligence. In reply to the important parts, we say that we are most grateful for the offices undertaken through the Lord Messer Visconti, Monsignor de Trémoille, and the Lord Alberto9 in commending our actions in such a timely way to His Most Christian Majesty and our faithfulness and obedience to him. We are thanking the aforesaid Lord Alberto in a letter; please thank the others, if they are there, on our behalf, for truly we are much obliged to such friends. No less do we praise your dexterity in having seized the occasion to perform the same office with the great king, speaking to him at length. You did the same with our queen and with the most reverend monsignore legate, for which we remain very pleased with you. To the part of your letter regarding the queen’s request for one of our daughters, we reply that we thank God and Her Majesty, for we already feel almost free of our concern for one of them, in placing her so highly. We will give her happily and have already begun to think of her as being in Her Majesty’s service. We are even more pleased to do this because we recognize that we owe her a gift of this magnitude, since the first one was intercepted by His Holiness our lord, to whom for many reasons it could not be denied.10 We already know that our most illustrious lord has deemed to give Ippolita to Her Majesty, for Livia has only just been weaned. But because these times would not permit a girl of such tender age to make the voyage, as well as because—as we think you are aware—she has a delicate and weak constitution, we think it best to wait several months before sending her there, so that when we do so she will be more able to perform some service to Her Majesty and to Madama her daughter, or if nothing else, at least to be able to appear at court. We think this will take less than a year, and in the meantime she will grow ever stronger and more fit for service to her great mistress. We do not claim this time on our own, however; rather we request it as a favor of Her aforesaid Majesty, to whom we ask you to pledge our daughter without doubt at this time, offering our excuses for not sending her now for the reasons already

8. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 59r–60v. 9. Alberto III Pio of Carpi was at this time a Gonzaga agent at the French court. 10. Isabella’s language is circuitous here, but the reference is to Eleonora Gonzaga, who had married the pope’s nephew and was thus not available to the French court. Though the Gonzagas were members of the elite nobility of Europe, they were always subject to higher powers. One way to maintain good relations in this network was to place their children in different courts, where they served both as courtiers or ladies-in-waiting and as Gonzaga ambassadors. Francesco Gonzaga’s sister, Chiara, had also resided in this type of role at the French court.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 313 stated. We believe Her Majesty will pardon the times and the age of the girl, who is not yet nine. We sent the blank contracts signed in our hand, not because we think the pension should be assigned to us, but so that the accounts might better be squared, since we are not able to get the signature of our lord [Francesco Gonzaga].11 In any case, though he is in enemy hands, His Lordship serves the king, and we don’t believe the condotta requires alteration. We are also informed that if indeed our firstborn son should become lord at his present age, and if he should be due a pension from the king, those forms would have to be signed in our hand as his guardian. Nonetheless, we will also send you forms signed by him, so that you may avail yourself of whichever is more appropriate. Since he has been feeling unwell, we will need to wait at least two days to have him write; we will therefore send them in another post. Our plan and our hope in His Holiness of our Lord [the pope] regarding the liberation of our lord lies largely in the duchess our daughter’s journey to Rome. Now that she is going, as we have written you in another letter, we will send you updates, and we will do the same with Folenghino’s report from Venice when it arrives. We were delighted to be offered the occasion to please our great queen with a gift of a picture of the Madonna. We will see to sending her one we cherish, by Costa’s hand, for none that we have is more beautiful; we wish our gift could equal our great affection, which would require the most beautiful image in the world. We shall have it touched up by Costa in a few places, and as soon as it is ready, if the lord [Galeazzo] Visconti is no longer in Milan, we think we will send it to the monsignor gran maestro [Charles d’Amboise] and ask him to send it. We can hardly wait to make this gift and to seize this timely opportunity.12 We thank the Monsignore Giovine di Barbon [Jean de Bourbon] for what he communicated to you; it brings us enormous consolation to see that the situation of our most illustrious lord is commiserated in the furthest corners of the world. You will have seen from our other letters that we authorize you to sign the accord for renewing [Francesco Gonzaga’s] pension as you think best; but show that whatever you choose is the choice made by us, and see that the terms are more cautious than those of Claudio, which have been badly observed. From here we have no news to communicate to you. Now, please convey our reverence to the great king, the queen, and the monsignor legate. 11. Francesco Gonzaga’s condotta (or contract of military service) is the topic of discussion here. Isabella is negotiating the continuation of his pension (or salary) while he is a prisoner and exploring the options both for proxy signatures and for a possible transfer of power to their son, Federico, if Francesco should not return. She is especially eager to please the queen, who may be helpful in obtaining Francesco’s release. 12. The painting was dispatched on 31 January 1510, as attested by two letters, AG 2995 libro 23 c. 74v.

314 ISABELLA D’ESTE Request in our name that Lord [Troiano] Cavaniglia please undertake the labor of procuring for us a Spanish book called El Tirante, and please send us a French dictionary, which we understand is printed and sold in France.13 We have just now received your letter of the 2nd of this month, which came by way of Bologna. We make no reply except to commend your diligence also in this case. We will write to the queen when we send the blank contracts, or as soon as we have the image of the Madonna. We thank the most reverend ambassador of His Holiness of our Lord. Be well. Letter 425: 1510 January 14 Mantua To Giovanni della Volta, sending him two puppies.14 We are sending you two little dogs that are the offspring of one of our small spaniels and that we would like to have you raise, taking care that they are not given meat to eat. We wish for the male to be called Metus and the female to be called Spes, so please accustom them to these names. Letter 426: 1510 January 15 Mantua To the Roman emperor, refusing his request for grain.15 I have seen that in a letter Your Majesty requests that we supply Rovereto with grain from our state. It pains me to the depth of my heart to receive from Your Majesty an impossible request, which will not allow me to demonstrate my faithful service to you. To remove grain now from this city and state would be to take sustenance from our people, who at present are suffering a grain famine. I have had the supplies and the demand checked, and since we must provide a subvention of grain to Asola and several other towns in our state that are suffering from famine, it was necessary for me to send for a great quantity from the Parma territories at 13. Tirant lo Blanch is a chivalric romance by Joanot Martorelli and Martí Joan de Galba that was published in Valencia in 1490. 14. AG 2997 libro 210 c.13v. I thank Sarah Cockram for pointing me to this letter, which features in her book-in-progress, tentatively entitled “Courtly Creatures: Animals and Image Construction at the Italian Renaissance Court, 1350–1550.” The names Isabella specifies for these dogs are taken from one of her mottos, Nec spe, nec metu (With neither hope nor fear). See letter 371, of 18 May 1506. 15. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 50v–61r. This letter highlights both Isabella’s difficult position in facing requests for grain and the cascading economic and political effects of warfare in the countryside. Four days after sending this letter, she sent the empress, perhaps as a gesture of compromise, a package of fruit, game meats, cheese, and pheasants, urging her assistance in the liberation of Francesco Gonzaga. These were luxury victuals sent as gestures of loyalty to heads of state whose help the Gonzagas desperately needed, but they could not address the problem of mass shortages of basic food for the population at large. On 20 January 1510, Isabella sent another reply to a subsequent request from the emperor, this time noting that the poor harvest was due to the “many cavalcades and the continuous presence of armies” that ruined the crops.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 315 great expense.16 Therefore, I humbly pray Your Majesty deign to pardon me in this great need. I commend myself devotedly to your grace. Letter 427: 1510 January 22 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino Elisabetta Gonzaga, regarding bridal jewels for Eleonora Gonzaga.17 As I wrote earlier to Your Ladyship, I thought it would be more convenient for you, as you are preparing to leave for Rome, to have those gems mounted here, since you might not have the time to do so. Thus I have retained Maestro Dionisio here. I think you will be pleased, even though you regret having to wait so long. Please excuse me, as the delay was only for your greater convenience. The aforesaid Maestro Dionisio was quite ready to depart; yet he, too, will excuse me as well as Your Ladyship. I am certain that you will also like the style of the setting, and I would be happy to know you are pleased with it. Nothing else occurs to me to write Your Ladyship. The affairs of Verona are as was written to you in another letter, and the Venetian camp is where it was before. Now that Your Ladyship will soon set out for Rome, I feel I should recall to you what I can never recall enough, even though I know how much you have it in your heart: and that is to obtain the immediate liberation of my most illustrious lord. For if the opportunity of this trip passes by, in which you know how much I have placed my hopes, I would not know when I could hope for an end to this misfortune of mine. I pray you write me often from there, about every moment, as I will be in a state of continuous expectation. I hope that the most illustrious lord duke [of Urbino] will perform every possible office and favor in our cause with His Holiness of Our Lord. May Your Ladyship therefore deign to urge His Lordship on. To Your Ladyship and to the aforesaid duke I commend myself, and I kiss our shared daughter. P.S.: So that the jeweler will not depart without the jewels, I have condescended to his wishes, though there was more than a little difference between him and my appraiser. And since Your Excellency knows this to be the truth, I assure you that the jewel with the ruby that was given to [the jeweler] at a value of six hundred 16. Francesco Gonzaga had received the titles to Asola, Lonato, and Peschiera del Garda from the French as part of his condotta in March 1509. See the entry for Francesco II Gonzaga at Condottieri di ventura. Asola, in Lombardy, should not be confused with Asolo in today’s province of Treviso, which was the setting for Pietro Bembo’s 1505 dialogue, Gli Asolani. 17. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 64v–65r. On the same day, Isabella wrote a similar letter to Eleonora, also urging her to plea her father’s case to the pope once she arrived in Rome. On 28 January 1510, she then wrote to Benedetto de’ Brugi requesting that he recover two of her jewels from pawnbrokers in Ferrara: a large diamond pawned for one hundred ducats and a ring requiring forty-five ducats in payment for its release, “including the usury.”

316 ISABELLA D’ESTE ducats was given to me by the lord my father at a value of one thousand ducats, as I illustrated to the judge and to Maestro Dionisio in the inventory. I did this willingly, to enact the natural generosity of my illustrious lord consort, and because in any case whatever the lord duke possesses I consider to be in our household. Since one hundred eight-eight ducats are still lacking from the sum of five thousand ducats in jewels, and since I do not have a piece of that precise value, I thought to supplement the difference with money. I therefore have had counted out the aforesaid one hundred eighty-eight ducats, approximately. Letter 428: 1510 February 12 Mantua To Jacopo Suardo, on famine in the countryside, the pope’s plan to absolve the Venetians, and possible implications for Francesco II Gonzaga.18 We very much wish for our poor town of Asola to be unburdened of all those French soldiers, as we know it is much afflicted and worn down. But since the monsignore gran maestro19 does not yet consent to this, we willingly accept his wishes. Even if we could do so, we would not want to oppose him in any way. We pray him, indeed, when things appear to him to be secure, please consider the welfare of that town, for love of us, as nothing could be dearer to our heart. We are pleased with the way you chose to send that painting to France. For this and for the diligence you have used in sending us news, we commend you highly. Now, you know that our hopes of redeeming the person of our illustrious lord and all our thoughts of his liberation were placed principally in two great powers: first in that of the Most Christian King [of France] and then in His Holiness of Our Lord [the pope]. But through notices we have received, the second seems almost to be falling away, because we are advised that an agreement has reached the advanced stages, and may in fact by now be concluded, by which the Venetians will be receiving apostolic absolution without having to capitulate or making any mention of the liberation of our aforesaid lord, even though our most reverend cardinal has vigorously called for it. How we take this news, you can imagine, as we see such an opportunity fail and we don’t know when we will see another like it. How much of this absolution was agreed upon with the consent of the Most Christian King we don’t know. It seems to us unlikely that he would have consented to it without the liberation of our lord. We say this to you not because we want you to complain of it openly, for though our lord may have been left out of this, His Beatitude’s grace must be preserved in all respects, especially because he says that if this opportunity passes he has firm hopes of liberating our aforesaid lord in another way soon. 18. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 83r–84r. A similar letter was penned on 13 February 1510 to Jacopo d’Atri at the French court. See cc. 84v–86r. 19. Charles D’Amboise, the French governor of Milan.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 317 I would be pleased if you would see that Monsignore Gran Maestro hears of all of this, but in such a way that he knows we do not want to be seen complaining of His Holiness of Our Lord. But all the more do we pray he take our things into his greater protection. And he must know that for the liberation of our lord, all our hope now depends on France, in which we also hoped before, but we had hopes elsewhere as well, which we will not be able to have in the future. We have been advised that our duchesses reached Rome at the time that the agreement for this absolution was being negotiated; we do not know whether Their Ladyships were able to obtain any results. We believe that in three days we will be able to send those pheasants you wrote us about. From Verona we hear that a commission arrived for the companies [of soldiers] in that city to remain for all of March. Our men are as discontented as could be over this, because they are undone from having to live in such famine there. All of them are begging urgently that we provide for them, for which reason we want you to pray Monsignore on our behalf be content to send them home as soon as possible. They cannot stay there much longer, unless they sell their weapons or their horses; and if indeed His Lordship wants the other companies to stay in Verona for the time he has determined, he could well treat our troops differently from those that don’t merit the considerations that they do, for they are worn down and undone by the situation at Asola.20 We would be as grateful to His Lordship for this as for any favor he could do us now. And if he gave this company some space and time, he would have it all the more ready for his orders later, and it could better return to horses and arms. These cavalcades that come and go so often to Verona have so ruined our land, especially at Médole and the surrounding towns, that if this festa should go on much longer our poor men are determining to leave and to abandon their things. We are terribly displeased at this, because we are not accustomed to hearing such complaints from our subjects. Therefore, we want you to request with all urgency that Monsignore see that soldiers who must pass through take a different road, in order to give some breathing room to our poor subjects. And if you cannot obtain this—but do all you can to succeed—work in such a way that the Gran Maestro commissions Lorenzo da Mozzanica or someone else in that position to advise us in good time when a company has to pass through, so that we can send our commissioners to assure that they lodge without such destruction. And commission also that they take longer days, because they usually come all of a sudden, without any letters or licenses, and they stop wherever they like for one day, or two, and they sometimes make very short rides when they could easily go further. Act on these important matters with your usual diligence, in which we are placing a great deal of hope. 20. Here the copybook reads, per il caso de lisola sono disfacti et consumati. My conjecture is that this is a slip of the pen, isola for Asola. The scribe does not always capitalize proper nouns.

318 ISABELLA D’ESTE As this letter is being written, we receive yours from the 10th, for which we commend greatly your diligence for all the news it contains. We are pleased that Lord Alberto21 is going to Rome, because his arrival could perhaps still be in time to produce some good result with the duchesses, if the absolution of the Venetians has not yet been finalized. Send the enclosed letter to France by post. Letter 429: 1510 February 17 Mantua To the count of Pianella, on a possible monetary settlement to free Francesco II Gonzaga, and on support from the king of England.22 In reply to your letter of the 5th of this month, for which we greatly praise your diligence, we say that your manner of consulting with Lord Visconti and his advice pleased us, and the conversation you had with His Majesty the king pleased us also, because we see the love there is for us there, and this brings us great consolation in our misfortune. Please know, however, that that run of our enemies did not go any further, on the contrary, it was only a little disturbance by peasants. You did well not to speak of the situation at Asola, because we wanted you first to hear what was done by Suardino [Jacopo Suardo], who obtained a letter from the gran maestro to the podestà of Brescia to accommodate us in that matter. If that count of Camerata travels through here on return to Sicily, he will be honored by us in every way. You did well to want to compare what the Florentine and Spanish ambassadors said with the words of the pope’s ambassador. Know, however, that here we have not heard a word of talk about a redemption of the person of our lord with money. And since you ask us to inform you of whatever we hear about plans and movements by the Venetians, know that we have always written you what we have heard about their actions and their soldiers. Scrutinizing their hearts would be not merely difficult, but impossible. We commend your diligence for all the information you give us, and most of all for the news that we can rely on the king of England [Henry VIII] for the reasons you discuss so well. For God’s sake, seek to get us the remainder of our pension from last year, as we are in extreme need. We commend ourself to the good grace of His Most Christian Majesty. Be well.

21. In January 1510, Alberto III Pio of Carpi was made ambassador of Emperor Maximilian I to the papal court. 22. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 89r–v.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 319 Letter 430: 1510 March 1 Mantua. To the doge of Venice, on behalf of her imprisoned consort.23 From the kind letter Your Serenity had written to me in reply to my own, I took hope that Battista Scalona, the secretary of my most illustrious lord consort, the presenter of this letter sent to you by me, might be well received and heard by you. He is most especially to refer to you my continuous desire to do everything possible in service to that most glorious State in order to merit and retain your grace, principally for the benefit of my aforesaid lord consort. Whence I pray you lend him your full faith, according him also the grace of allowing him to visit my lord on my behalf; that is, if such is your wish. If not, then I do not wish to have requested something that displeases you. I beseech you to send [Scalona] back to me with such report as from which I may take some comfort in the afflictions I suffer at the present time; for this I would remain perpetually obliged to you. And to your grace, with all my heart, I commend myself, praying you accept the special commendation of your good servant, the lord marchese, my lord.24 Letter 431: 1510 March 13 Mantua To Jacopo Suardo, on an intriguing piece of advice she has received.25 Your letter of the 10th of this month was tremendously welcome for the news you gave us, to which no reply is required except to commend and praise you most highly. Gemetto writes us from Milan that when he went to visit Monsignore President26 and began to speak of us, His Lordship said, “Write to Madama on my behalf that she must focus her mind on her Mantua and its state, and that she should be careful whom she trusts so that she will not let herself be deceived by pretty words, because otherwise she could wake up one morning and find herself a lady without a state, and I know whereof I speak.” These are the exact words that Gemetto wrote us the president said to him, nor did he clarify any further. And so we remain in great suspense, and we want you to use artfulness and dexterity to see whether you can have these words of his deciphered and clarified well for us, so that we understand whom we must guard against and we will know better how to behave.

23. AG 2995 libro 23 cc. 97v–98r. The current doge of Venice was Leonardo Loredan. In a letter to Giovanni Gonzaga of 15 February, Isabella had worried that false news could be causing Francesco distress. This letter appears to be aimed at correcting the Venetian impression of her actions. 24. Isabella signs this letter, “your obedient daughter, Isabella Marchesana of Mantua.’ 25. AG 2995 libro 24 cc. 11v–12r. The same letter was altered slightly and sent to the count of Pianella. 26. Charles d’Amboise, French governor of Milan under King Louis XII.

320 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 432: 1510 March 16 Mantua To Ludovico Brognolo in Rome, on the emperor’s request for her son, Federico.27 We did not quite know what we could hope for from Alemania,28 but neither did we fear such harm as thence comes to us now, all of a sudden. For through letters just arrived from Messer Donato de Preti, the emperor is insistently demanding our firstborn son, Federico, saying that for certain reasons he wants him in his court. The aforesaid Messer Donato, who is there and sees his behavior, can only interpret this as the result of a fall into jealousy over the fact that His Holiness of Our Lord is going to employ the person of our most illustrious lord [Francesco Gonzaga] in some plan that will not favor His Majesty and that will be agreed upon with the Venetians, who have His Lordship in custody, while His Holiness has our daughter.29 It seems that [His Majesty] is little pleased with the absolution the Venetians have received without the consent of the League [of Cambrai]. We can easily share [de Preti’s] opinion, because we do not know how we have offended His Imperial Majesty or how he came to be so diffident of us, if not because we have placed so much more hope in another authority—or another power—than in him: in short, that we have become so ecclesiastical. We do not repent this firm conviction of ours, but it pains us to reap such bitter fruit from it. This new request has left us stunned and half-dead, as anyone can imagine. We have no other comfort in the misery we suffer since the capture of our lord than the sight of this son, nor do we trust in the faithful obedience of our subjects without his presence.30 This was the second killing blow against us, no less devastating than would be the loss of our own life and our state all at once. We are in 27. AG 2995 libro 24 cc. 12v–13v. On 2 February 1510, Pope Julius II granted absolution to the Venetians, thus welcoming them officially back into the Church. Julius did not make the liberation of Francesco Gonzaga a condition for their absolution (as Isabella had hoped), but that very evening he implied to Eleonora Gonzaga and her consort that he hoped to liberate Francesco soon. The pope’s strategy, as soon became clear, was to propose the marchese of Mantua as new head of the Venetian army, a move that was bound to make both the French and the emperor suspicious of Mantua’s continued loyalty to their alliance. As this letter and the one below, of 7 May 1510, document, Louis XII and Maximilian I each sought security from possible new aggressions by proposing to take Federico II Gonzaga as hostage. Each, of course, presented this suggestion as an opportunity for the young heir to experience the culture of a grand European court. Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 258–59. 28. Isabella uses the term Alemania, a variant of the word Germania that Julius Caesar had adapted from Gallic to designate a specific geographic area east of the Rhine. Beginning in the tenth century, Germania was a component territory of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. 29. Eleonora Gonzaga was at this time still visiting the papal court, together with her husband, the duke of Urbino (nephew of the pope), and her mother-in-law, Elisabetta Gonzaga. One of this group’s aims was to urge the liberation of Francesco Gonzaga from Venetian imprisonment. 30. Isabella’s claim here points to the importance of the heir to the marquisate. Federico’s availability to assume his father’s title if Francesco Gonzaga should not survive imprisonment was critical to

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 321 such mental confusion that indeed we do not know whether we are still alive. We have nonetheless determined not to give him our son, for with him would go our life. First, we will make our excuses and add to them such humble and submissive prayers as we can so that His Majesty might remain calm and placated. But since we do not at all know how much we can dissuade him from this cruel proposition—especially because the request came almost under threat of charges of lèse majesté31 if it is not fulfilled—we are little consoled by hope. Still, in the meantime we will ponder whether there is some other solution. Since we usually refer all our cares and misfortunes to His Holiness of Our Lord, as one we think of as our merciful father and our God, we thought it best to write to you also of this new distress, so that you will seize the occasion to communicate it to His Beatitude along with the decision we have made not to deprive ourself of our son’s presence. Use whatever manner you think best for moving him to compassion for us and pray him offer us some loving counsel so that we can securely persist in our determination to keep our son at home. But be sure to caution His Holiness to keep to himself this matter you will communicate to him and never to show that we told him of it; because if it is true that His Imperial Majesty has become diffident of us for keeping such confidence with His Holiness and for the reasons we describe above, as cannot be otherwise, he would only be more convinced of it if word should reach him that we informed His Beatitude of this. And this could perhaps be our ruin, especially since His Imperial Majesty is on such good terms with the Most Christian [king], as we hold to be indubitable. Be well. P.S.: You may communicate this news to the most illustrious lord duke and the lady duchesses, whom we want to know all that befalls us, but in such a way that they know the matter must be kept secret. Letter 433: 1510 March 23 Mantua To Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, denying a request for clemency.32 I would happily have contented Your Lordship by granting a pardon to that Zoan Domenico the counterfeiter, for you are someone I always try to please in all things. But considering the enormity of his crimes, I know that it would be most irresponsible not to let justice take its course. This is not the first time he has the continuation of this state and of Gonzaga rule. The boy’s visible presence to all was therefore a reminder that their state would endure, and that Isabella continued to embody authority during this crisis. 31. Literally, “injured majesty,” this term designates insults to the dignity or authority of the sovereign, an offense against the state. 32. AG 2995 libro 24 cc. 24v–25r.

322 ISABELLA D’ESTE deserved to die or be sentenced to decapitation, for which reason it would be impious to show him mercy. So that Your aforesaid Lordship may more easily accept this reason for not pardoning him at your request, I am sending you here enclosed a list of this counterfeiter’s crimes, drawn from the trials already conducted against him. Your Lordship may well be certain, on evidence, that his crimes were most grave and why in this case I have not been able to satisfy you, whom I would never deny anything unless compelled to the contrary by most powerful reasons. To your good grace I commend myself. Letter 434: 1510 March 28 Mantua To Jacopo Suardo, analyzing the present political landscape.33 Your letter of the 22nd of this month left us much consoled, for it contains nothing but good news. We are very pleased with you and we commend you highly; we would like for you to write us often with such good news. Regarding the gran maestro’s desire for us not to let anyone from the duchy of Milan who is headed for Venetian territory pass through our dominion, even if they have written permission signed by His Lordship, we want you to assure and promise in our name that we will let no one pass through if we do not first receive letters from him, just as you write he said we should do. We will honor no license from those who want to pass into Venice. You replied very well and discreetly in this, and we will observe it despite any loss of our tax income.34 We are very pleased that accord and confederation have been reached between the Most Christian King and the king of England, because it seems to us that this accrues to our particular benefit, knowing that it will dispel all hope of rescue or aid to the Venetians and will make them go to our great king with a halter around their neck. It will also be cause for the swiftest liberation of the lord our consort, for we have placed all our hopes in the great power of the Most Christian King. We are not especially concerned if those three Swiss cantons have struck an accord with the pope, as you say, because His Holiness will need more than this if he does not have good intelligence with the Most Christian [king]. As to what you write of the confidence that the monsignore gran maestro has in us, you replied prudently, and the truth is His Lordship will never find us anything but most devoted, obedient, and faithful to His Most Christian Majesty and to His Lordship [d’Amboise] in every action. Certainly, promise him that we will never be otherwise, because we have always known the lord our consort to be a good Frenchman and most inclined toward our Most Christian King, and we know that now in his secret heart he is more thus inclined than ever, prisoner that he is; and we, here, 33. AG 2995 libro 24 cc. 33r–34v. 34. Passage through different territories often required payment of tolls and taxes. By agreeing not to let travelers pass through Mantuan territory, Isabella sacrifices that income.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 323 promise to remain most faithful. And so you must again assure His Lordship with all requisite promises of our faith and good will toward the Most Christian King and Monsignore [d’Amboise], to whom we commend ourself greatly. We have no further news except that a man in the service of a merchant who came here from Venice to repatriate reported that the Venetians were going to let my lord consort have his servant Giulio, though we have no confirmation of this from other sources. When Scalona, whom we sent to Venice some days ago to visit the lord, returns, we will hear the truth and inform you of it. For this courtesy we owe no debt to the Venetians, because they never wanted to let him have any of his servants, despite all the pleas we made. Now it seems that without our insistence or knowledge, they have allowed him Giulio. We can hardly imagine why, unless it is because we are certain that since the lord has been alone with those Venetians who are in his chamber with him, he has never accepted service from them. Perhaps moved by shame at seeing him serve himself they paid him this courtesy of giving him [Giulio]. Now we want you to say some good words on our behalf to Captain Ricardo about the good opinion he has of us, a very gentlemanly thing, and tell him that for now we wish to remain heartily grateful and that we thank him very much, and we wish to remain obliged to him. From Rome we have news that the Spanish ambassador asked our lord [the pope] in his king’s name for permission to send four hundred men at arms from the Kingdom [of Naples] into Lombardy to aid the cause of the king of the Romans [Maximilian Habsburg] and that he granted this. But he immediately suspended the license he had given to lord Rianzo da Ceri and several others to go settle with the Venetians. Letter 435: 1510 April 24 Mantua To Ludovico Brognolo, on the impending French assault on Venice.35 To your letter of the 16th of this month no reply is required except that we send you due commendation for your diligent reports to us. We wish you to continue in your usual diligence, because we are most satisfied, and all the more must you act boldly on our affairs, because our duchesses have departed from our lord’s [the pope’s] presence. Though you hear all the news of here before you receive it from us, we nonetheless report that the French are persevering in their plan to launch an action against the Venetians, with the enormous approval of His Imperial Majesty. The road they will take is not yet known, though it seems they are signaling they

35. AG 2995 libro 24 cc. 63v–64v.

324 ISABELLA D’ESTE will go by way of Polesine di Rovigo in order to take the Venetians in the middle.36 Monsignore Gran Maestro has had an edict published in all the king’s territories and has asked that we do the same here but in the name of the Most Christian King, in which impunity and pardon are granted to all His Majesty’s subjects who have been banished for being in service to the Venetians if they repatriate by the 15th of May. In recent days, acting on the advice of the lady duchess our sister-in-law [Elisabetta Gonzaga] and you, in good fashion we persuaded the lord Pandolfo Malatesta to depart from Mantua, in order better to preserve the good grace of our lord, without naming anyone to him.37 We made as if it was all our own idea. He complained to the imperial governors of Verona that as an imperial subject he could not remain safely in Mantua, whereupon they wrote us a letter saying they marvel that Messer Pandolfo cannot safely be in this city as an imperial subject and captain sent here by His Imperial Majesty prior to our lord’s capture. They pray and exhort us for the reverence in which we hold His aforesaid Majesty to allow him to return without their having to complain about us to His Majesty. We know we have many fences to mend on that side, most especially for not sending Federico, which, as you know, we refused to do, in addition to a quarrel over grain that was sought from us and that we did not allow to be sent to Verona in the quantities they wanted.38 And you know we have denied them some other things, so we did not think we should give them this new cause for exasperation with us. Thus we have allowed the aforesaid Pandolfo to return here. We told him he did badly to complain of us, because we did not dismiss him from here or say he would not be safe here, nor did we have a commission to do this from the pope. Rather we told him that we would more happily look upon him if he had the favor of our lord. We conceded this more readily to him given all the reasons why we had to do it. Since we did not have a commission to dismiss him from His Holiness of Our Lord, we made our excuses to the governors of Verona via letters and with Lord Pandolfo in person. We write this so that you will know why Lord Pandolfo is here if he was said to be there. In these recent days we have sent Aurelio to Venice. He has not returned yet; you will be advised of his report. 36. per tuore gli marcheschi in meggio. The area of Polesine (a Venetian term meaning swamp or wetland) now corresponds with the province of Rovigo. In 1484, following the war of Ferrara, the Venetians had taken it from the Ferrarese, naming the northern part “Polesine di Rovigo” and the southern part “Polesine di Ferrara.” During the present war of the League of Cambrai, the Este had retaken this land for Ferrara. 37. A series of letters in copybook 24 documents this episode. Like all condottieri, Pandolfo had fought on different sides of the Italian wars. He served the Venetians up to their defeat by the French at the Battle of Agnadello in May 1509, after which he switched his allegiance to Emperor Maximilian. Isabella denied to the governors that she dismissed Malatesta, asserting instead that she merely advised him lovingly to be on his guard, since he had been accused in absentia by the pope and had fallen into the pontiff ’s disgrace. 38. See Letter 426, of 15 January 1510.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 325 Letter 436: 1510 May 7 Mantua To Ludovico Brognolo, on further requests for Federico II Gonzaga.39 The words that His Holiness of Our Lord [the pope] spoke to Lord Alberto [Pio da Carpi] about the situation of our most illustrious lord, as you write to us in your letter of the first of this month, lead us to think there can be no other reason why His Most Christian Majesty sent a request here for Federico, our firstborn son, through the Lord Messer [Galeazzo] Visconti, who arrived here for this purpose almost at the moment we received your letter. We gave the answers and excuses to His Majesty that we gave to His Imperial Majesty at the same request, replying both to the aforesaid Lord Visconti and through Suardino, whom we sent to the Most Christian King for this purpose. We could not be in greater distress than we are now. We write you this for no other reason than so you will understand everything, and so that you might in some good way inform our lord [the pope] of the request the French have made and of our reply and our decision to suffer any injury rather than let ourself be deprived of Federico, whose mere presence gives us comfort and life.40 Do not, however, make even a minimal gesture to His Beatitude that we are of the opinion that this threat derives from his words to Lord Alberto. The armies will pass through too, as we have written you; and Monsignor Gran Maestro will be here on Friday next to visit us in transit. Imagine it, just when we have no shortage of worries, tasks, and troubles. But since we cannot do otherwise, we must keep our spirit in good patience, hoping that some day we will have some rest. Such, in any case, is what we await mostly from His Holiness of Our Lord, because he will have to be the judge among these great powers and the author of peace in this unrest. Kiss his holy feet in our name. Letter 437: 1510 May 14 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga in prison, refusing to send their son Federico to Venice in order to secure Francesco’s release.41 I have seen what Your Lordship wrote, and Aurelio42 for his part also informed me that I should send our son Federico immediately in order to free Your Lordship. 39. AG 2995 libro 24 cc. 77r–v. 40. In a letter of the same day to Giovanni Gonzaga, Isabella reaffirmed her commitment to keep Federico, “who is now both husband and son to us.” 41. Francesco Gonzaga had been negotiating his release by the Venetians in a deal that would have required him to turn Federico over to them as hostage to secure his faithful service as their military captain. Sanudo reported in his Diaries that Francesco on these occasions spoke ill of his wife, calling her a Francophile (and thus an enemy of Venice). Luzio reports that this letter was written in Isabella’s own hand, but that Sanudo copied the original in Venice. Luzio, “Federico Gonzaga ostaggio,” 55–57. I translate from Luzio’s transcription, which he derived from Sanudo and augmented with consultations of the minuta (draft) in AG. 42. Gonzaga secretary, Niccolò Aurelio.

326 ISABELLA D’ESTE Your Lordship must be certain that I want nothing in the world more than [to free you], but it pains and torments me to say I cannot do it, since I see clearly herein the danger—in fact the certainty—of ruin for our state, our children, and your own person, for I recognize that even if Federico were to go to Venice, we would still not be sure of your freedom. On the contrary, there would be motive to keep you longer in prison, as they would have both you and your son there, which would be a double worry for you and for me. And should the emperor learn that the Venetians want Federico as a security against you so as to have you serve them, and if the news goes out as they have perhaps planned, and if Your Lordship comes out as their man, against the emperor, our contract for the feudal estate would be broken,43 and this would result in the danger of our losing it; and the same would be immediately true for our state itself, since there are French troops scattered around the Mantuan territory with a large army, perhaps larger than Your Lordship realizes, and Verona is supplied with good people. I assure you that it was due to the rumor spreading that [the Venetians] would make you their captain general that the emperor became very diffident about our state; this was the reason why Federico was requested first by His Majesty and then by the Most Christian King, in observance of the promise, he says, that Your Lordship made to him and which he showed me in a letter written in your hand. The most reverend monsignore cardinal and I, by way of many good words and much persuasion have, up to this point, assuaged him to a point where, I think, he will be content to let [Federico] stay here, and I hope that the same will be true for the king. Yet if we were to give them new occasion for suspicion, they would have reason to be indignant and to reopen this healing wound, especially because their armies passed through here without disturbing or offending anyone, neither impacting our subjects nor causing any of the other harms usually brought by cavalcades, and the captains took all possible measures to cause as little damage to our state as possible. And Monsignore Gran Maestro, who lodged in Mantua one night with three hundred horses, showed great humanity and love for this state and for the person of Your Excellency in all his dealings here, at which all of us and the populace were greatly consoled. If the most illustrious signory of Venice wants what is best for Your Excellency, as they say, then they should give you your liberty without our giving them Federico and allow you to come home, where you can manage your state and your children in your own way and do what you know is best for you. Though Your Excellency for this reason may disdain me and deny me your love and your grace, I will be more content to abide with you in this state of disobedience while preserving your state for you than I would be to reside in your grace and see you, together with your children, be deprived of it. I hope that in time, given your

43. veneria a cascare de la ragion dil pheudo.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 327 prudence and goodness, you will see that I have been more loving toward you than you have been toward yourself. You must, therefore, have a little patience and hold for certain that the cardinal [Sigismondo Gonzaga] and I have your liberation uppermost in our minds, and that when the time will be right, we will not fail, just as we have not failed up to now. Our witnesses are the pope, the emperor, the king of France and all Christian lords and potentates, as well as some of the infidels.44 In conclusion, my lord, I will not deprive myself of Federico and Your Lordship both, though if I knew that this would be your liberation, I would send not only Federico but all the other children along with him, and I would do everything that one could imagine possible, which I hope one day to be able to prove to you. For the rest, as I govern in consultation with the cardinal and in accordance with the actions of the League45 that protects your person and your state out of both duty and reason, I shall incur neither harm nor shame. Since I have responded sufficiently to Your Lordship with this letter, Aurelio shall not return [to you]. I pray you excuse me if this letter is badly penned and still more ill composed, for I know not whether I am alive or dead. I commend myself to Your Lordship’s grace.46 Letter 438: 1510 June 8 Mantua To Louis XII, king of France, thanking him for allowing her to keep her son.47 Sire, I commend myself greatly and as humbly as possible to your good grace. Sire, I have learned from my ambassador, the count of Pianella, and from Suardino that it has pleased you to do me the great honor of respecting my request that you be content to have my son Federico remain at present with me, and that I nourish him for you. For this, Sire, I thank you as humbly as possible, and I shall take pains henceforth to raise him in a manner that will permit him to serve you in some way. I pray God that I make him worthy, and that to his father and me he bring great consolation, for no greater happiness may befall one. Sire, I pray Our Lord God grant you good and long life.

44. Sultan Beyazid II (r. 1481–1512) had also advocated for Francesco Gonzaga’s release. 45. The League of Cambrai. 46. Luzio cites a report in the Diaries of Sanudo (never an impartial observer in his home state of Venice) that upon reading this letter, Francesco Gonzaga exclaimed, “That whore, my wife, is to blame!” See Luzio, “La reggenza,” 57. 47. AG 2995 libro 25 cc. 21r–v. A letter of the same day to the queen of France thanks her for allowing Ippolita Gonzaga to remain in Mantua until she is twelve or thirteen, before going to serve Her Majesty at court. See Letter 424, to Jacopo d’Atri, of 13 January 1510.

328 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 439: 1510 June 17 Mantua To Battista Scalona and, in similar form, to the count of Pianella, defending her actions on behalf of the Gonzaga state.48 We think that our most illustrious lord, unable to see that his affairs here have taken the direction that he was seeking with the support of the pope, may be in a state of suspense and doubt, like someone who does not well understand the shape of things in Italy, or even that the Venetians are painting the picture for him in their fashion. Otherwise, His Excellency would not be thinking in the way that he is, even if his desire to get out of prison makes him consider all things. We thought it our duty to do all we can to clarify things for His Lordship and calm his spirits, for we take no decision whatsoever that is not aimed primarily at preserving this state and our children and keeping intact the grace of His Imperial Majesty and His Most Christian Majesty, without which any thought of liberating His Lordship would be premature and untimely. And it was toward this end that the most reverend cardinal [Sigismondo Gonzaga] and we, and all of our gentlemen refused to give our son to His Holiness of Our Lord. For this reason the aforesaid most reverend monsignore and we have decided to send Marchese Guglielmo Malaspina to Venice, for we think His Lordship will trust him, as one he has raised up in the way he has.49 And because we do not want to dissimulate with His Lordship or hide anything from him, you must inform the monsignore gran maestro of this, so that he knows we are not sending Marchese Malaspina to Venice for any other reason than what we have written and to visit the lord in our name. Nor would we ever take any decision without the knowledge and consent of the aforesaid monsignore gran maestro. We are writing the same thing to the count of Pianella so that the king too may understand all of this.

48. AG 2996 libro 25 cc. 28r–29r. 49. In early June, Isabella had sent Malaspina to Rome, to detail for Pope Julius her reasons for rejecting his proposed expedient to send Federico II Gonzaga to Urbino, where he could remain hostage without being handed directly to the Venetians. She reported that just as she was preparing to send Federico off, the Venetians, “with their indiscreet ways,” had ruined everything by sending two loud messengers to Mantua carrying letters written by Francesco Gonzaga. The letters, she explained, were not addressed to her but to several of his servants, whom he commanded to send him arms, horses, and clothing: instructions which they broadcast throughout Mantua before Isabella heard anything about it. Perceiving new dangers to her state’s security, Isabella refused to release Federico at this time, even on request by the pope. For a transcription of the notes of instruction to Malaspina, see Luzio, “La reggenza,” 61–63.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 329 Letter 440: 1510 June 28 Mantua To Battista Scalona, reporting the visit of Guglielmo Malaspina to Francesco II Gonzaga in prison.50 The Marchese Malaspina returned here yesterday from Venice, where we had sent him for the reason we wrote you. He says he had a very difficult time getting to speak with our most illustrious lord; indeed he had to wait two days in uncertainty and at one point was turned away and told to go back without having spoken with him. Finally, after much persuasion and insistence, having first spoken with His Lordship [the doge?], he was led to our lord and presented with our message and that of the most reverend cardinal in the presence of the secretary Niccolò Aurelio, among others. His Lordship, though he still longs terribly to be released and thinks of nothing else, was much calmed by the explanations we conveyed regarding our resolve with His Holiness of Our Lord, and he is not displeased with the priority we have given to the preservation of this state. This is all the more true now that the visit of the aforesaid marchese has clarified in part some of the many false impressions he was under. When he asked where the Swiss are now positioned and where the French camp is, [Malaspina] understood from the way he asked that he believed the Swiss had already passed through here powerfully and that the camp was still around Legnago. To this the marchese [Malaspina] replied in a low voice, speaking almost through closed teeth, in such a way that His Excellency could understand that the truth had been kept from him. Perhaps from these two instances he can estimate how much he should believe the rest [of what the Venetians say], even though he desires mightily to be freed from prison, and rightly so. We think of nothing else; he reminds us to leave no solution untried to liberate him. We wanted to inform you of this so that you may have it in mind at every opportunity and possible occasion. We conveyed all of this to the Lord Monsignore Visconti, and we believe His Lordship may have written there, but we thought it appropriate that you too know how to speak of this. For the rest, the aforesaid lord marchese tells us that our lord is well in his person but in terrible spirits. It could not be otherwise, for every reason, but especially because he is so confined. He is not allowed out of the Torricella where he has been all this time, and none of his servants may go to him without great difficulty and this only rarely. He has in his company and service only Giorgino, who has been sick. He was supposed to be restored to him the day that Marchese Guglielmo left there.

50. AG 2995 libro 25 cc. 34v–35r.

330 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 441: 1510 July 18 Mantua To Federico Cattaneo, commending his service and thanking the messenger who reported Francesco II Gonzaga’s release to her.51 We received the greatest pleasure possible from your letter, which informs us that you have seen our most illustrious lord healthy and in good spirits. We are pleased that His Lordship was glad to see you and showed you affection out of love for us. We are fully consoled by your news that His Excellency is well pleased with our actions, for we want nothing more than to have our behavior commended by him, as we do everything with this in mind. We are more than a little pleased to hear that His Lordship is happy with his and our mutual servants.52 We commend your diligence for all of the news you give us; continue to to so in the service of His Lordship; we do not want you to abandon His Lordship while he may still have need of you and as long as he is pleased to have you with him. Kiss His Excellency’s hand on our behalf for the bracelet he sent us and for the loving letter he sent to console us.53 We make no further response now, in order to expedite the rider and because we expect to receive more news from you; then we will reply in our own hand. Please make our excuses for us, commending us to his good grace. We are sending two hundred gold ducats, which you shall give in our name to that servant of the lord duke of Urbino who reported the liberation of our lord to us, that is to Messer Girolamo Salamaco, His Excellency’s steward. Tell him we know well that his good announcement merited greater reward but that he must excuse our present needs. As you can well report to him, in these hard times we have had to pay many and almost unendurable expenses. But we surely hope that we will have other occasions to reward him, and for now may he accept this gift that is so inferior to his real worth, so much less than our gratitude. For love of

51. AG 2995 libro 25 cc. 46r–v. Francesco Gonzaga was released on 14 July 1510. He headed directly to Rimini to thank the pope, who was there at that time, but was redirected by the pontiff to Bologna, where he was to meet with his son, Federico. Federico was traveling to Rome where he would remain as a friendly hostage to assure Francesco Gonzaga’s compliance with his new condotta in the service of Venice, now a papal ally. In his instructions to Isabella, Francesco directed her to secure all the forts of Mantua against possible retaliations by the French. See Luzio, “La reggenza,” 77; Mazzoldi, 216. 52. Indeed, a vast group of Gonzaga agents and staff members had worked tirelessly to secure his release, under Isabella and Sigismondo’s able direction. 53. When Francesco Gonzaga arrived in Rimini, he heard in detail about Isabella’s many actions to preserve their state during his imprisonment. In recognition and gratitude, he sent her a bracelet signifying that he was giving her the town of Asola, with all of its income. Luzio cites from Federico Cattaneo’s letter of 16 July 1510 to Isabella, “He wants Your Ladyship now and forever to govern [it?] in all things.” Luzio, “La reggenza,” 77.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 331 us, he should have a chain [necklace] made.54 We commend ourself to the lord duke of Urbino and the most reverend monsignor legate. Greetings in our name to the servants of our lord, and to you: be well. See to sending the enclosed letter to Rome. Give it to Cesare da Gonzaga or to whomever you think will diligently take it there. Letter 442: 1510 October 3 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga in Bologna, congratulating him on his reception by the pope and his appointment as gonfaloniere of the Church.55 I received Your Excellency’s letter of the first of this month today, and learned from it that our lord His Holiness has honored you with the post of gonfaloniere of the Holy Mother Church, and that he made a great display of love and favor toward you amid the universal approval and satisfaction of the most reverend cardinals. At this news I took the pleasure and satisfaction that befits a good wife such as I have always been, am now, and will be as long as I live. I congratulate you as heartily as is possible, because I share in all your pleasures and honors. I pray Our Lord God that you may enjoy this supreme honor long and prosperously, and I thank you for telling me about it. Regarding Your Excellency’s reminder to me to keep my eyes open for the preservation of our borderlands, I will not fail for all I see and all I can do. But you know better than I how great the need is. The French all passed through the length of this state on their own authority, and many companies took lodging in different places without sending any country folk ahead to notify. They came through Marcaria, Caneto, and wherever they wanted, to the great hardship of 54. The instruction is for Salamaco to have made for himself a piece of jewelry that will provoke comment, thus providing him occasion to brag about its provenance. 55. AG 2996 libro 28 cc. 56v–57v. Luzio and others date this 3 September 1510 rather than the October date that appears in the copybook. See Alessandro Luzio, “Isabella d’Este di fronte a Giulio II negli ultimi tre anni del suo pontificato,” Archivio storico lombardo series 4, 17 (1912), 249. Francesco Gonzaga’s release marked a realignment of the major powers in the Italian Wars. Pope Julius II now joined with his former enemy, Venice, against the French. Because the Ferrarese remained French allies, Alfonso I d’Este was excommunicated from the Church, while the duke of Urbino was serving as captain of the papal troops. Francesco Gonzaga, still a vassal of the emperor and now in service to both Venice and Rome, inherited Alfonso I d’Este’s position as gonfaloniere of the Church. His new commanders required Francesco’s secret agreement not to serve the French, and they invited him to lead their assault on Ferrara, which had captured Venetian territory (the Polesine) in the war of the League of Cambrai. He avoided doing so. Both Isabella and Francesco played a double game in this dangerous situation. While rumors circulated that Isabella in particular was aiding the French defense of her natal city, her son was in the custody of the pope precisely to assure Gonzaga cooperation. Francesco Gonzaga had good reason to negotiate for peace between the pope and France, as Isabella congratulates him for doing at the end of this letter. See Cockram, Isabella d’Este, 170–80.

332 ISABELLA D’ESTE our subjects, since they paid for nothing, as usual. The gran maestro [d’Amboise], Francesco, and Monsignore our nephew [Massimiliano Sforza], were at Marcaria. They departed, as you will already have heard, for they were unable to oppose this passage, since [the French] had written and sent word saying that they would perforce take lodging here and pass through, as they did. I tried to have them pass the Oglio fortifications early so that they would not be tempted to stop and do any damage in Your Highness’s absence. By the grace of God, aside from the damages suffered by our subjects, nothing else happened. From what we understand, the gran maestro is supposed to go to Parma and from there toward Bologna. From what he was saying this will be with the whole army and without stopping for long. It is said here that they have taken Carpi, but I don’t have the news from an authentic source. Your Excellency must know better than I. I pray you take good care of yourself on your return journey if the news of Carpi is true; I long immensely for your return. The commissioner of Cavriana writes that in Monzambano there is a Pisan who trains soldiers for the French, and they say he has trained seven hundred. I have no more to report, except to commend myself to the good graces of Your Highness and to send a kiss to Federico if he has arrived. The other children are well. P.S.: I am most pleased that Your Excellency is in peace negotiations. For should they succeed through your activity and your skills, you would earn the highest praise and reputation, over and above the preservation of your state, and some rest for poor Italy. Again I commend myself to your grace. Letter 443: 1510 October 4 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga reporting on French encroachments, their taking of ports and ships, and their recruitment of mercenaries in Gonzaga territories.56 I have just received a letter from Viadana indicating that yesterday evening the captain of the French artillery arrived there with a great number of wagons and 56. AG 2996 libro 28 cc. 57v–58v. On 3 October 1510, Francesco was in Bologna; on 5 October, he wrote to Isabella from San Giovanni. As the first postscript reveals, this letter was a fiction devised to support another counterfeit letter Francesco had received from the podestà of Viadana, a town within Mantuan territory. Isabella had written several days earlier to the podestà, among other Gonzaga functionaries, instructing him not to respond in writing to a French request for Mantuan boats to carry their troops toward Parma but rather to wait until the troops arrived, when it would be too late to refuse them passage. She also sent him a draft of the letter he should write to Francesco Gonzaga explaining that he could not resist the French aggression. In fact, Mantuan lieutenants had fulfilled the French request. See Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, 29–47; Luzio, “Isabella d’Este di fronte a Giulio II,” especially 252–53; Luzio, “I preliminari della Lega di Cambray concordati a Milano e a Mantova,” Archivio storico lombardo series 4, 15 (1911), 245–310; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 275–76; Shemek, “Mendacious Missives,” 78–80.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 333 that he has taken our ports and ships. It was impossible to put up resistance, because the French were so many. They began to move the wagons (which I’m told are three hundred in number) across the Po to Brescello, where at the same time the artilleries were supposed to be assembling. They are coming by boat from the upper regions of Lombardy to head immediately to Reggio. I wanted to report this to Your Lordship. Next I want to tell you that from what Pischera writes, yesterday a man came to Redoldesco on behalf of that Pisan, and advised Your Excellency to send infantry to Monzambano. Hearing that there was money for anyone who would go to serve His Most Christian Majesty, some of our subjects wanted to take the offer; but the French wouldn’t give them the money within Your Lordship’s dominion and said that if the men went to Monzambano they would be accepted and paid. When I heard this, I immediately commissioned Pischera to see that no one goes there. I have no more to report to Your Excellency, save that we are all, by the grace of God, well. To your good graces I commend myself. P.S.: I had this letter written in a form you could let others see. Be aware, however, that the ships have been requested and the lieutenants at Viadana have let them be taken according to orders that Your Excellency has heard. Pischera has been told in a letter that he should try as if on his own initiative to hold back those men of ours who want to take the French money, until Your Lordship writes his own instructions. I did things this way so as to give no sign to the French that Your Lordship’s loyalty is moving away from them before you return home and give other orders.57 Then the commissioner of Cavriana wrote that that prisoner he has there has taken ill and is in bad shape. Not knowing who this is, I didn’t know how to respond. Your Excellency should write him your opinion. Again I commend myself to your good graces. PP.S.: I’ve now received a letter from the podestà of Ostilia, who alerts me that a ( ) has happened by there who says he was present at Your Lordship’s capture. And since (the podestà) has information from Count Carlo da San Bonifacio that [this man] has in his hands property and horses belonging to Your Lordship, he detained him. He’s keeping him in close custody until he hears otherwise from you. He also writes that this man is said to have been in the employ of Messer Carlo Marino and to know a lot about all these goings-on. I wanted to let Your Lordship know all of this.

57. Francesco Gonzaga’s impending condotta with the Venetians was not yet public knowledge, and he was aiming especially to keep secret the clause in it that forbade him to aid the French. Isabella’s implication here is that he was still hedging his bets on all sides.

334 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 444: 1510 October 9 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, recounting that she was prevented from exiting the city by subjects who feared she might be deserting them.58 Since news may have come your way of a certain thing that happened to me yesterday and that these gentlemen of ours interpreted in a manner I did not intend, I thought I should tell Your Lordship about it so that you won’t be wondering, or fearing something worse. I would have sent Your Excellency my manservant, but since the roads are wrecked I did not want to place him in danger. I wanted to speak with monsignor the most reverend and most illustrious lord cardinal, our brother [Ippolito d’Este], about some matters important to me, and I had decided and publicly prepared to go yesterday to Viadana, so that the next day I could be at Brescello to speak with His Most Reverend Lordship and then return here. Despite the fact that I have had no letters from my most illustrious lord, a rumor had spread that he had become captain general of Venice, and that he was coming here to meet up with his army, but that before then, some Venetians were supposed to arrive. These gentlemen of mine, together with the officers and even Lord Giovanni [Gonzaga], began to suspect that I was leaving in order not to return, and that if I did so, since the lord and our firstborn son are away and in the power of others, disorder could come to this state. They begged me on the spot not to go. I, who knew I intended to return, and who believed that there was no cause for scandal if I went away for three days, was offended that they didn’t believe me and that they thought me so frivolous as to want to abandon husband, children, and state—and also that they thought I would not know how to leave secretly if I wanted to. So I was going to go anyway. I could not reasonably persuade myself that these were not pointless fears, since I had already said my plan was to return in three days. They insisted that I not go, saying that if they and other prudent people believed this, the plebes and the ignorant would have also done so and would waver. So I stayed. I’m not displeased at their violent response, since I know it came from the great love and affection they feel for me and from their loyalty and devotion to the lord and his state. If I even thought I were displeasing His Excellency or putting his state at risk, I would not budge. The most important explanation I can make to Your Excellency is that without his knowledge or his advice I would not do it. I wanted to let you know about the situation so that you will know the truth and can justify my actions if someone wants 58. AG 2996 libro 28 cc. 60r–61r. In this effort to control rumor and hearsay we see that Francesco’s condotta with the Venetians was still confidential, and that Isabella’s enemies had sown the suspicion that if he accepted such a position she would desert Mantua for Ferrara and the French. A full transcription appears in Luzio, “Isabella d’Este di fronte a Giulio II,” 256–57. On the malicious interference of Vigo di Camposampiero to increase suspicions of Isabella over this episode, see also Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 276–77; and a partial transcription and discussion in Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, 173.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 335 to blame me for them. I have made the same explanation to my most illustrious lord through a postal carrier. I commend myself to Your Lordship’s good graces. Letter 445: 1510 October 21 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, providing census figures on Mantua’s inhabitants.59 Since Mario told me on Your Lordship’s behalf that I should make an account of the hearths in Mantua, I immediately gave this task to the massaro, who informed me that there are two thousand two hundred and twenty-nine hearths, which is to say houses. But because some houses have three and four families in them, I commissioned him to give me the number of families, which I think is what interests Your Lordship and which will be greater than the number of hearths. As soon as we have this information, I will notify you. I am sending attached here a letter from the lieutenant of Viadana so that you may be aware of what he reports and can write him, if you wish, regarding assurances to those merchants from Bergamo and Como. The commissioner of Cavriana informs me that Tarlatino is having cut a great quantity of wood at Ponte Pozzolengo, Monzambano, and Peschiera to make a big bastion on that side of the Mincio river at Peschiera. The vicar of Reggiolo writes that Lord Alberto [Pio of Carpi] went to Bologna at the request of His Holiness of Our Lord. May it be God’s desire that what people think is true: that he goes to negotiate a peace treaty of some sort, for the universal calm of all Italy. I commend myself to Your Lordship’s good graces. Letter 446: 1510 October 25 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, recounting precautions she has taken in Mantua against the plague.60 At our first suspicion that plague was damaging Verona, we did as Your Excellency ordered and sent word to our gates that no one coming from there be allowed to enter. And I have continued to repeat this, both in the interest of protecting the city and in order to obey Your Lordship’s command. It’s true that entry was not blocked for His Most Illustrious Lordship Giovanni’s men, since we believed that from His Lordship there came only persons who were above suspicion.61 Now, having heard Your Lordship’s wishes regarding the aggravated situation in Verona, I have ordered that citizens be deputized to guard the gates of Porto and 59. AG 2996 libro 28 cc.68r–v. This letter shows an important early modern form of statistical information gathering. 60. AG 2995 libro 26 cc.94r–v. 61. The copybook reads with the opposite sense (credendo che da sua signoria non venessero persone fori di sospetto), but in context I take this to be a slip of the pen.

336 ISABELLA D’ESTE San Giorgio and that they allow no person whomsoever to enter, not even the personal servants of Lord Giovanni who arrive on express commissions. We also wrote to all the officers who are away, especially those in towns bordering on Veronese territory, that insofar as they value Your Excellency’s good graces, they must permit neither interaction with nor the lodging of anyone from the county or dominion of Mantua arriving from Verona or other suspect locales. Your Lordship may live secure in the knowledge that we will spare no effort or provision to protect your city and state, though fears have also sprung up here, because at Volta three people in a single household died in a short span of time after they handled certain clothes belonging to some Veronese who were suspected of being contagious. The damage spread no further, and as a precaution, we have forbidden commerce with people in Volta. Since some friars of San Francesco also died at almost the same time, there was some suspicion of contagion there, but upon my commission of an investigation regarding the sort of illness they had, I can report that, according to information from the very doctor who took care of them, their illness was not contagious, nor was it any variety of plague. It was rather a malady that affected their flanks, and another friar is mortally ill with this same sickness. The doctor is Master Giovan Antonio da Grecia, who is a wise man. I assure you that if this land may be preserved through good vigilance, then by the grace of God it will remain unharmed and free [of plague], due to the good order imposed upon it. To Your Excellency’s good graces I commend myself. Letter 447: 1510 October 25 Mantua To Taddeo Albano, regarding a painting by Giorgione.62 We understand that among the belongings and the estate of the painter Giorgio da Castelfranco, there is a picture of Night that is beautiful and unique. If this is so, we would like to have it. We therefore ask that you please go with Lorenzo da Pavia and some other people of good judgment, and look to see if it is excellent. And if you find that it is, please use as an intermediary the Magnificent Messer Carlo Valier our dear friend, along with whomever else you like, to keep an eye on it for us while you find out the price and send us the information. And if you think you should close the deal because it is a good item and you fear it will be snatched up by someone else, do as you think best, for we are sure you will conduct yourself to our advantage, faithfully and on good advice. We offer ourself to your pleasure.

62. AG 2996 libro 28 c.70r. Here we see one of the important methods for acquiring art works. Isabella noted when artists or collectors died and aimed to access their assets at the time of liquidation or availability. She was, however, unsuccessful in acquiring this or any painting by Giorgione, who died of plague on an uncertain day of October 1510. See Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:389–91.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 337 Letter 448: 1510 October 31 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing the violence of French incursion into Mantuan territories.63 After I wrote Your Lordship about the French incursion into our lands, I sent out different people to try to understand everything well. I am thus informed through several channels that (Perlazo?), who was formerly Your Lordship’s standard bearer in the French company, was the author and leader of the one that came this morning to Marengo where, after burning many haystacks and houses, they took a great deal of livestock as booty and captured many prisoners, cruelly wounding even the women. And having done this, they went to Roverbella, where they did the same thing, then to Castiglion Mantovano, doing the same there. Then with equal cruelty they damaged the castles, returning to Verona with a great deal of booty and bringing with them many prisoners, among whom was also Martellone. But since he is old and infirm, they let him go after stripping him. It’s not possible to know how many they are, but people say there were no fewer than a thousand horses. I don’t know now whether they will return. This time ought well to suffice. Your Lordship will be informed of whatever follows. I commend myself to your grace. Letter 449: 1510 November 10 Mantua To Alessandro Gabbioneta, on Federico II Gonzaga’s lost portrait.64 From many quarters besides the letters we get from our agents in Bologna and from Federico our dear son, we have heard what a good job you have done continuously and are now doing for us, in every place and with every person who presents you with this opportunity. We very much appreciated hearing so, though we already had this view of Your Lordship, who deserves better thanks than a letter. For now may it suffice for you to know that we are in your debt, and that if there is anything you need that we can provide, you will find us at the ready. Since Your Lordship shows himself to be so loving and diligent in things we have not asked for, we are certain that you will be most diligent, as we do ask you to be, regarding our present petition. 63. AG 2995 libro 27 c.2r. 64. AG 2996 libro 28 cc.76r–v. This portrait of Federico II Gonzaga now resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Oddly, given her apparent attachment to it, Isabella soon gave this portrait away, along with the one Francia made of the marchesa herself, to a Ferrarese collector, Gian Francesco Zaninello. See Letters 471 and 475 of, respectively, 11 September and 25 November 1511 for Francia’s portrait of Isabella, which was modeled on one by Lorenzo Costa and, as Sally Hickson notes, informed by verbal descriptions. See Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:378–88; Sally Hickson, “ ‘To See Ourselves as Others See Us’: Giovanni Francesco Zaninello of Ferrara and the Portrait of Isabella d’Este by Francesco Francia,” Renaissance Studies 23, no. 3 (2009): 288–310.

338 ISABELLA D’ESTE We had Federico’s portrait done by Francia in order to keep an image of him close to us, since we cannot enjoy his presence in the flesh; and we sent the portrait back to Bologna to have the hair retouched. It seems that the portrait was taken to our lord [the pope] while our most illustrious lord [Francesco Gonzaga] was in Bologna, and that a courtier named Messer Giovanpietro da Cremona picked it up and, turning to the lord marchese said, “With your permission I will send this to Rome.” To this His Excellency did not dissent at the time, but later he had word sent that the portrait had to be given back, because it belongs to us. And despite the fact that by many of our people he was begged and urged to return it, he never would. He said he had sent it to Rome, which we don’t believe, because that would be—and is—poor courtiership toward the marchese and a great displeasure for us. And so, we pray you go to him and see that the portrait is returned, whether it is in Rome or not. If necessary, use our friend the most reverend monsignor legate65 as a conduit; and if you must go further, tell our lord about it, because we are sure that His Holiness would not permit that we be deprived of the image of our son, though we are surely deprived of his person. And if Messer Giovanpietro wants a portrait, let him have one painted, since the master and the sketches are in Bologna, rather than deny us this pleasure. We await the portrait with the greatest expectation in the world, so please see that we get it. Now you must thank our most reverend compatre for the good service we know—both through your accounts and those of many others—he has always done us and continues to do. Tell him that we have nothing to offer him but gratitude and an eternal reverence and obligation to him, and that we are ready to obey His Most Reverend Lordship in whatever he commands. We commend ourself to Your Lordship’s good graces, and we remain ever most ready at your service. Letter 450: 1510 November 26 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, with an adapted copy to Benedetto di Bruggia, seeking salt for Mantua.66 My most illustrious lord had sent his officials to fetch a certain quantity of salt that he had in Cervia, part of which he had won in the race of his horses and another part of which was paid months ago. I understand that these officials have been held there by Your Lordship’s own officials, who did not want to let them pass and said that we must get our salt supply from Your Excellency and not elsewhere. 65. The papal legate to Bologna at this time was Francesco Alidosi, who would be murdered by Isabella’s son-in-law (and nephew to the pope), Francesco Maria della Rovere, on 24 May 1511: see Jennifer Mara DeSilva, “Official and Unofficial Diplomacy between Rome and Bologna: the de’ Grassi Family under Pope Julius II, 1503–1513,” Journal of Early Modern History 14 (2010), 541–42. 66. AG 2996 libro 28 c.81v.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 339 Since the need for salt in this city is now both great and immediate, I thought to send my Mario [Equicola] directly to you. He will ask you in my name to please permit these officials to go to Cervia and have them released immediately. You will be doing me an enormous pleasure. If we had wanted to fetch salt for our needs by paying money for it, we would have sent for Your Lordship’s. But the aim is to get salt that is already paid for or earned, as you will also hear directly from the mouth of the above-mentioned Mario. I commend myself to Your Lordship. Letter 451: 1510 November 29 Mantua To Girolamo Casio, on the long-awaited recovery of Federico’s portrait and whether Francesco Francia will produce a painting for her camerino.67 We did not like the models you sent us; we think we will get them from somewhere else. We got Federico’s portrait, which is much improved and pleases us greatly. We are sending you thirty gold ducats to give to Francia. Please try to learn whether he is willing to paint a picture for our camerino, because if he is, we will send him the measurements once the holidays are over.68 But we want you to get a very clear idea of whether he would do it quickly, because if he is thinking of drawing out the process, we would rather he not begin and would go another route, since we want to finish the camerino. Hence please advise us of whatever decision he makes. Be well. Letter 452: 1510 December 6 Mantua To the lieutentant vicar of Cremona, on behalf of a woman who wants to enter the convent.69 Since Dorotea Schivenoglia, the daughter of the late Alessandro, has dedicated herself [to the religious life] and has been elected for entry by the mothers of Santa Maria del Paradiso in Mantua, she would like to fulfill her wish to enter into this monastery. Her only obstacle is that she is unable to obtain twenty-five ducats that her brother, Don Bernardino, is required to pay her in observance of a bequest made her by their late father and as promised by Don Bernardino, as is clear from a public document. Now, since it seems to us just and honorable that said Bernardino should make good on such a pious and just thing, it will please us if as soon as you ascertain credit you assure that the said Dorotea is satisfied by 67. AG 2996 libro 28 c.83v. 68. As early as 1505, Francesco Francia began to figure into Isabella’s plans for the studiolo. From correspondence subsequent to the above letter, it appears that he planned to produce the painting discussed here, but the documentation falls off after 1511, and the painting seems not to have been executed. See Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 285, and docs. 121–25. 69. AG 2996 libro 28 c.85r.

340 ISABELLA D’ESTE this brother of hers, administering a summary, brief, and expedited sentence, so that she will have no further occasion to trouble us with such a situation. Letter 453: 1510 December 27 Mantua To Caterina Feruffini, comforting her as a soldier’s wife.70 We received a letter from your husband along with another addressed to you, which we are sending attached here. And since we think that by now you must suffer at being so long without him, as is most virtuous, we thought to encourage you to keep your spirits up and prudently bear his absence, since it is due to his honor and reputation. If he were not held in high esteem, he would not be placed in such an important office. This war will surely finish one day, and perhaps sooner than is believed. You will then have him at home, honored and favored in appropriate measure to his loyalty and virtue, and you will enjoy each other mutually in gladness. In the meantime, if we can do you any service or pleasure, come to us confidently, for you will find us always most disposed. Letter 454: 1510 December 29 Mantua To Count Alessandro Feruffini, comforting a soldier.71 Your letter was as welcome as could be, since it showed me your good and brave spirit and those of the French lords. We sent the letter to your wife, along with one from us that consoles her and encourages her to be cheerful and in good spirits, for soon these wars will end and she will be able to see and enjoy you at leisure. We certainly feel compassion for you, who are deprived of your consort in this cold weather. But if you could get back that other thing you’ve lost as easily as you can get her back, things would go well for both of you.72 We sent your greetings to our most llustrious lord, who was most grateful for them. We greet you and offer ourself to your pleasure. Letter 455: 1511 January 14 Mantua To Monsignor Rigaldo, sending him a wedding present.73 We hear that you have taken a wife. Since we know you as someone of good judgment, we believe you must have chosen well, for which reason we share your happiness and are pleased at your contentment. May God permit you to enjoy it. We know we are in Your Lordship’s debt for the good service we hear you always 70. AG 2996 libro 28 c.92v. 71. AG 2996 libro 28 c.93r. 72. I have been unable to trace this obscure and intriguing reference. 73. AG 2996 libro 29 c.2r.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 341 perform regarding our affairs, and we always keep good thoughts of you. As a sign of this, we thought we would in the meantime send you a gold cap,74 which you may keep as a reminder of us and, if it seems worthy, you may wear it out of love for your consort. Perhaps she will not be displeased if you appear younger to her, but not to other women. We do not know her, but we are obliged to agree with her and also to love her out of love for you. We offer ourself ever ready to serve Your Lordship. Letter 456: 1511 February 20 Mantua To the podestà of Canneto, regarding Nicolina di Arrigoni’s domestic cares.75 Nicolina di Arrigoni, wife of the late Zorzo, who was killed in our jurisdiction, has made known to me that she finds herself burdened with children and little means, and that she is being harassed by some of her stepchildren who would like to take away from her certain lands designated for her by her late husband as compensation for her dowry.76 She will prove to you what she is saying. And since this is a worthy case, we want you to administer a summary, brief, and expedited judgment against these stepchildren, and to make whatever appropriate provision you think she deserves in this situation. Letter 457: 1511 March 10 Mantua To Taddeo Albano, with a shopping list.77 Since you were unable to get us the lynx fur sooner, don’t make any effort to send it now because, as you wisely observed, the season is far enough along that we don’t really need it anymore. Similarly, you can refrain from sending the musk, because we got some from another source. If you see some amber that in your opinion is perfect, we would be pleased if you would get up to two ounces for us. The Malvasia wine that you write you sent through Cimarosto the boatmen has not yet appeared. As soon as it does, we will send you the money to pay for it. Please inform us clearly of the amount of money we need to send you for the 74. un scuffiotto d’oro. The cuffia (of which this word so often used by Isabella is a variant) was a cap that in some periods could be worn under a helmet or as a nightcap, often with ties under the chin. Carole Frick asserts that by the late Quattrocento, these caps were mostly seen on women, and that the gold in this instance almost certainly refers to gold thread: Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 307. 75. AG 2996 libro 29 c.8v. 76. The suggestion here is that the dowry funds were spent, and Zorzo had sought to provide for his wife by willing her some real estate to which his children by a previous marriage felt entitled. On the perils of early modern widowhood, see Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “The ‘Cruel Mother’: Maternity, Widowhood, and Dowry in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, 117–31. 77. AG 2996 libro 29 c.13r.

342 ISABELLA D’ESTE scarlet wool,78 the gold thread, and the silk we received from you, because the next person who leaves here for there will bring you what you are owed. To your pleasure we offer ourself at the ready. Letter 458: 1511 March 26 Mantua To Eleonora Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, congratulating her on the birth of a boy, her first child.79 From Your Ladyship’s letter and the report of your nuncio, Cattaneo, we heard to our incredible delight that you have successfully given birth to a beautiful baby boy. We congratulate you most highly, thanking His Majesty God with our whole heart for considering us worthy of such contentedness and gratitude. In order to make our happiness complete, we now await word that Your Ladyship is up and around in fully restored convalescence. We will not go on to inform you how your most illustrious father, we, and your brothers and sisters are doing and will rely instead on Cattaneo’s report and on that of Tebaldo Ippolito, who has just returned from a successful visit with Federico. Your Ladyship must commend us well to the most illustrious lady, our honored sister the duchess [Elisabetta Gonzaga]. We send her a thousand greetings. Letter 459: 1511 April 27 Mantua To Guglielmo IX Paleologo, marchese of Monferrato, recommending a young man for a job at court.80 The Magnificent Madonna Eleonora, wife of the late Lord Giberto Pio da Carpi, wishes to place in Your Lordship’s service her young son named Marco, who is of good character and manners. And since we love his mother very much for being a most gracious lady and as good and virtuous as any woman we know, our desire to see her son in the service of Your Excellency is no less than her own, knowing as we do that he could find no greater patron. Thus we heartily ask Your Lordship to be pleased, for love of us, to accept him, for you would please us no less than if you accepted one of our closest relatives, which is how we consider him, since we have such a close relation with his mother. Your Lordship will have in your service a young man who is apt to do you honor for the education he will acquire from you, for which we will remain in your debt, as you will also hear from Messer Andrea Cossa. We offer and commend ourself to Your Lordship, and we ask you to commend us to the most illustrious madonna, your consort.

78. scarlatto: luxury wool tinted bright red (Treccani). 79. AG 2996 libro 29 c.14v. 80. AG 2996 libro 29 c.19v.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 343 Letter 460: 1511 April 27 Mantua To Andrea Cossa, on her recommendation of a young man to the marchese of Monferrato.81 We wrote to the most illustrious lord marchese to recommend a son of the Magnificent Madonna Eleonora Pia, who would like to place her son with His Excellency. We could not love her any more than we do, for many reasons, nor could we wish any more than we do to see her wishes granted. Knowing how helpful you could be to him in this matter, we wanted to put the negotiation in your hands and to ask you to please manage it in such a way as to see that His Excellency satisfies us. Use our full authority with your usual dexterity. We give you wide latitude. To conclude, the lord marchese could at present do nothing that would please us more or give us greater satisfaction. Commend me a thousand times to the lady marchesa. Remember to write me sometimes, and to seek me out for something that will please you or help you. Letter 461: 1511 May 22 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga in Rome, explaining the virtues of a bracelet she gave him and why he must not give it away.82 That bracelet with the Gospel of St. John on it was most precious to us, and an object of special devotion, because many religious persons tell us it has enormous powers. We would never have wanted to be without it except to give it to you, because you had to travel such a long distance while you were still such a young boy, and with this object you traveled more securely. We would not want you to think so lightly of it as to let go of it in any way, nor would we want you to think that if it were not in your possession we would want to have it anywhere else but in our own hands. We praise you for having lent it to your sister at the time of her childbirth, but she also did well to send it back to you. See now that you keep it always with you, because that is the purpose for which we gave it to you. You did well not to decide to give it up without our consent. We will always do any possible favor in Monsignor di Ivrea’s83 situation whenever we are asked to do so, both out of love for you and for the love we bear His Lordship for infinite merits he has shown with us, but most of all for the gentle company he provides you. This is in reply to your letters of the 27th of last month and the 6th of this one. Be well and happy. Greet the monsignor of Ivrea in our name.

81. AG 2996 libro 29 c.20r. 82. AG 2996 libro 29 c.25r. 83. Bonifacio Ferrero was bishop of Ivrea 1505–1510 and 1511–1518 (CHRC), but from 1510 to September 1511 the office was held by Gerolamo de’ Capitani d’Arsago.

344 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 462: 1511 June 4 Mantua. To Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona, sending him the dogs he requested.84 I am certain that Your Most Reverend and Illustrious Lordship has great hopes of receiving some good dogs from me, given that your messenger’s return is much delayed; but I fear that you will find yourself deceived in this hope, once he reaches you. This is not certainly due to my fault or negligence, but rather to the scarcity and the difficulty of finding good ones. This is both because bloodhounds are little used here, and because since these wars began, the pleasures of the hunt have ceased and gentlemen have dispensed with their dogs. In order not to have your messenger return empty-handed, I gave him four bloodhounds and three greyhounds, so that you might sooner complain of them than of me if they are not good, though they are praised by the person who supplied them to me, and especially the young ones are said to be from a perfect breed. I send them willingly and would want them to be the best in the world. For the bishopric Your Lordship received in Spain from our lord [the pope], I congratulate you doubly, that is, for both your and my sakes.85 You will have the income, which I know you need; and I will gain gloves, for in that place they make the best ones in that region, as Your Lordship assures me. As for my wellbeing and the news from here, I defer to your servant, reminding you that I wish to serve Your Most Illustrious Lordship as much as I wish to live in this world. To your good grace I commend myself. Letter 463: 1511 June 9 Mantua To Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino, on his having killed Cardinal Francesco Alidosi in Ravenna.86 Even before we got a letters from the lady duchess, our sister-in-law and most honored sister, we had heard of what happened to Your Lordship, and we thought that you could not have been moved to do it without great provocation. Nonetheless, having thought of the great dismay it was to have to hear what His Holiness said and the trouble in which Your Lordship has gotten himself, we were terribly disturbed and worried, and we will not rest at ease until we hear that you have regained our lord’s good graces, to which task you must apply yourself with all possible humility, reverence, and industry. If we were able to help you in any way, we would heartily do so, but Your Lordship knows that we have little credit 84. AG 2996 libro 29 c. 27r. 85. Luigi d’Aragona was appointed bishop of León on 6 June 1511: see Gaspare De Caro, “Aragona, Luigi d’,” DBI 3 (1961). 86. AG 2996 libro 29 cc.28v–29r. On 24 May 1511, Francesco Maria had stabbed his nemesis within the papal troops, Cardinal Francesco Alidosi. The inability of these two commanders to collaborate had cost the papal army considerably, including the Bolognese capitulation to the French on 21 May.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 345 in [that] court, and elsewhere there is little that would suit your needs. Still, if you know of any way we could help you, see that we are notified of it, for we are ready to do for you as much as we would for our son Federico. For aside from the fact that you are our daughter’s husband, we love Your Lordship instinctively from the heart, no less than we love our brothers and sisters. You must use your prudence in this situation and attempt every possible avenue. In this effort as we have said, we will not fail you if we can help. We commend ourself to you and send greetings to the duchess. Letter 464: 1511 June 13 Mantua To Elisabetta Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, on the death of Eleonora’s baby. Sent in similar form to Eleonora herself.87 The general pleasure and consolation we took in the childbirth of our daughter was very brief, so soon did it please Our Lord God to take him away from us. At this sad news I felt an unhappiness surpassing almost any I could possibly know. And yet, considering that this misfortune is irreparable and that it was God’s will, we must have patience, which I encourage Your Ladyship to do. We must take comfort in the youth of His Most Illustrious Lordship the duke and that of his consort, who are quite capable of producing another child soon. May Our Lord God soon grant us this mutual comfort and consolation. I commend myself to Your Ladyship with all my heart. Letter 465: 1511 June 16 Mantua To Giovanni de Gonzaga, sending him a candle intended to aid a pregnant noblewoman during childbirth.88 We thank Your Lordship for having directed to the ducal ambassador to His Imperial Majesty the two letters the lord cardinal, our brother, wrote him. We now ask, since you and we have become postmasters, that you please send him Called before his uncle, Pope Julius II, for reprimand in Ravenna, Francesco Maria exited the scene of his excoriation and stabbed Alidosi, then fled for Urbino. On this subject Isabella wrote to a number of people, including her daughter, Francesco Maria’s wife Eleonora. To Eleonora she noted the contrast between the happy news of her recent maternity and the shocking new development of the duke’s violent deed. She encouraged Eleonora to urge her husband to get himself back into the pope’s good graces and noted wistfully that this crime could not be undone. Isabella continued her campaign to exculpate her son-in-law with others as well, over the next weeks. At his trial in Rome (which began on 14 July), Francesco Maria was acquitted on the grounds of provocation and the evil character of his victim. See Gino Benzoni, “Francesco Maria I Della Rovere, duca di Urbino,” DBI 50 (1998). 87. AG 2996 libro 29 c.30v. See Letter 458, of 26 March 1511. 88. F.II.9.2996 libro 29 c.33r. The candle was likely placed before a devotional image of the Madonna: see Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth, 45.

346 ISABELLA D’ESTE this other packet included here. We are sending Your Lordship a candle of San Giacomo, which you requested for that gentle lady who is pregnant. It works in this way: Have her light it when the labor pains start—not the first ones, but the strong ones that really begin the childbirth—and keep it lit in good devotion. If we can satisfy Your Lordship in anything else, we are always ready to do so willingly. We commend ourself to you. Letter 466: 1511 July 5 Mantua To Francesco Grossino, asking for more detailed news of Federico and the papal court.89 We see that you are silent with us and have abandoned your natural and thorough diligence, perhaps in the belief that we will be pleased if you do not annoy us with letters, since you know that others are writing to us. So we thought we would disabuse you of this error by explaining that the more letters we receive that speak of our son and of events at court, and the longer the letters are, the happier we are to read them. So prepare to be diligent. Give Federico and Maddalena [Tagliapietra] our greetings. Letter 467: 1511 June 9 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga in Rome, enlisting his help in rehabilitating the duke of Urbino after his recent violent crime.90 Because we think you must have been amazed not to get any letters from us through the rider that came, please know that we were unaware that he was leaving until he had gone. We would not have let him go without letters from us, since you are the dearest person we have in this world, whom we wish we could see and embrace, though we are also content for you to be in Rome where you have the opportunity to become well mannered, virtuous, and full of the necessary experiences for someone of your rank. So live happily, and apply yourself as much as you can to learning literature, which is far more fitting to a lord than to private persons. When you see the lady prefectress [Elisabetta Gonzaga], commend us to her Ladyship and tell her that hearing about the situation of the lord duke, our mutual son, brought us as much dismay as anything we have heard in our life, and that we are ready to do whatever we can, provided that we can, in his favor, because we would do the same for him as we would for you yourself. And you 89. AG 2996 libro 29 c. 38v. As this and several letters translated below attest, Isabella found it a challenge to parent Federico from afar, especially at a time when the Gonzaga heir needed both to make a good impression and to learn about how to govern himself at court. On the marchesa’s solicitations of frequent correspondence, see Shemek, “In Continuous Expectation.” On Federico’s’ time in Rome, see Luzio, “Federico Gonzaga ostaggio.” 90. AG 2996 libro 29 c. 30r.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 347 must not fail in this situation to do good office for your brother with His Holiness, and with the lord cardinals and with all other people. The lady prefectress and the lord cardinal will remind you of this. I commend myself to you a thousand times. Letter 468: 1511 July 22 Mantua To Matteo Ippolito, Federico’s guardian in Rome, scolding him for insubordination.91 We learned from your letter all about how Federico is doing and about the orders given regarding what we wrote to you and Stazio, all of which was most pleasing to us. In our previous letter you will have seen a comment we made to you on the disorder that we understand there is in that household of yours. As you know, we are not credulous by nature; but since many people have come from Rome who all speak in conformity about the bad management there and the scant respect that is shown Federico, we wished to speak with you more clearly, so that mistakes will not multiply at our most illustrious lord consort’s expense, to Federico’s shame, and as a bad example to his servants. The aforesaid lord sent two house servants to Federico. You dismissed them with no regard for His Excellency or for Federico, nor did you send any specific report on them, as you should have done before dismissing them. We understand that the bursar or perhaps the apparechiatore is returning and that you threaten whomever you want with expulsion. We are amazed that you would take the liberty of firing any servant who has been assigned by the lord or by us to Federico. If they are behaving badly, a discreet warning from you should suffice. And if it should not, then a word to the lord would be in order, but you should not simply have dismissed them. You should ask him about it and fire no one without His Excellency’s sharing in the decision, unless Federico for some just cause wishes to dismiss them, though except for truly scandalous cases, he must defer to the lord his father. We also hear that you keep Federico in such servitude that he has lost his spirit, that he is not allowed to invite anyone to eat with him unless you give him permission, that you scold him in public, that sometimes you strike him or threaten with your hand that you will do so,92 that you make him eat according to your appetite and you subject him to many other forms of servitude that are inappropriate for the firstborn son of a lord and your patron. We are not at all pleased about this, nor will the lord be pleased when he hears of it, as he will. Too many people know about it, and this will require that for his honor we take measures you will not like. Hence we order you to show more respect for Federico and his servants, and we remind you that you are not 91. AG 2996 libro 29 cc.44r–v. 92. lo scopazi o fai signo di la mano.

348 ISABELLA D’ESTE his superior; you are employed in his service. And since he has been raised to exercise authority, you should accustom him and deftly correct him in private regarding things he does not know; and under no circumstances whatsoever are you to communicate to him through your actions or your effects that we do not want him to have this authority. It is furthermore not appropriate that he be made so timid as to become a moltono.93 You must correct the servants as a father or a brother would, according to their age. To be useful and bring honor to your patron, you should communicate well among yourselves and not become the talk of the court. You are in a position to bring yourself great honor and profit, if you will control your temper and use the prudence that is appropriate to the task you have undertaken. We know you love Federico and that you dislike it when things are done badly, and that this causes your outbursts, but it will not do to behave imperiously, to the embarrassment of your patron and his servants. We have always lauded your well-mannered nature, and we laud it still, as long as you undergird it with modesty. You must be careful not to break off relations with Monsignor di Ivrea or with other of our lord’s [the pope’s] courtiers; rather defer to them in whatever brings no harm or shame to Federico. Try to keep them gracious and loving with him and also with you, for the benefit of your patron. Letter 469: 1511 July 25 Mantua To Matteo Ippolito, about a courtier who asked Federico to give him his hat.94 When we inquired with the rider who delivered the cap of woven gold we sent to Federico whether he had liked it, he said yes, but that since it had come a little unraveled in the box it was judged inappropriate for him, and that for this reason he saw it the next day on the head of Federico de Preti, on whom Tebaldeo had bestowed it after asking our son for it. We are amazed than one of you would be so presumptuous as to ask so quickly for him to give you something sent to him by the lord or me, because if it couldn’t be mended, as was possible, then it would have been more appropriate for Federico to give it to someone outside the household. I don’t mean to anyone of rank, but to some middling courtier, letting himself be seen taking the cap from his own head to give it away. This is the sort of generosity we surely want Federico to have. But we do not like it that the servants criticize a thing in order to ask their patron for it, especially when the patron is just a boy. We wanted to tell you this one more time. If he had even kept it for a few days without wearing it and then for his own reasons given it to Federico or another person in his service, it would have been more laudable and we would not have taken such offense. 93. Word not found. 94. AG 2996 libro 29 c.45r.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 349 Letter 470: 1511 July 27 Mantua To the count of Pianella, explaining that her daughter, Ippolita, whom she had promised to send to the French queen, now wishes to be a nun.95 From your letters we understand the love and the memory Her Majesty the queen, in her natural humanity, continues to preserve for us. We also know how much she wishes to have one of our daughters in her service, as our most illustrious lord and we have promised her many times we would give her. Our first was married to the duke of Urbino to gratify our sister and sister-in-law, the most illustrious lady duchess of Urbino and also to please His Holiness, who has always been most attached to this most illustrious house, as his deeds have shown. Our second daughter requested permission this Holy Week to go stay in the monastery of San Vincenzo, and while she remained there on those holy days, she demonstrated with great insistence that she wishes to become a nun, even though the lord and we cajoled her and threatened her many times if she did not come out. We ask that you explain this to Her Majesty, so that it will not appear that we have little appreciation for the grace she has shown in freely offering to take our daughter in. But one cannot oppose divine will. The girl is still so little that she is not yet eligible to take vows, and she could easily change her childish mind. If she does so, she will be sent to serve Her Majesty, where she was previously intended to go. If she perseveres in the monastery, then since we understand Her Majesty to be pregnant and we hope she will have a boy, I have no doubt that my lord will send one of our sons into his service. In this way, we will fulfill our mutual wish. Her Majesty’s understanding is appreciated regarding the fact that we speak not of our third daughter who is still so small. Commend us to her good graces and kiss her hand. Letter 471: 1511 September 11 Mantua To Lucrezia Bentivoglio, regarding a portrait of Isabella by Francesco Francia.96 In reply to Your Ladyship’s letter of the 7th of this month, we thank you for the efforts to persuade Francia to come to Mantua in order better to do our portrait. But Your Ladyship need not press him further, because we do not care for him to come for this purpose, since the last time we had our portrait done, we found it so irksome to have to sit patiently still and immobile that we would never do that again. Your Ladyship has our image so clearly impressed in her memory that we are sure you will know how to correct whatever the painter misses. Also, just 95. AG 2996 libro 29 c.46r. On this unexpected development, see Luzio, “Isabella d’Este di fronte a Giulio II,” 331–34. On Ippolita and San Vincenzo, where she became prioress, see Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage, 85–98. Hickson does not note the correspondence attesting to Ippolita’s determination to join the monastic community and instead presents the girl’s entry into the convent as a decision taken by Isabella, for personal and political reasons of her own. 96. AG 2996 libro 29 c.55r.

350 ISABELLA D’ESTE think that we wouldn’t know how to receive Francia so reservedly as not to offend Costa, and that would make it difficult to maintain his friendship.97 We thank Your Ladyship for the plump little birds you sent; they had a delicate flavor. We shared a good part of them with Madonna Laura and gave some to others too. That fiery vapor that appeared there, as Your Ladyship wrote, was also seen here at the same time. Your daughter, Madonna Eleonora, is feeling much better and is now on the mend. Your Ladyship must keep her spirits up, because we deny her nothing, nor will we ever do so any more than we would deny our own daughters, because we love her no less. We wish Your Ladyship every pleasure and comfort, and we ask that you please greet the lord your consort and all the in-laws and children in our name. Letter 472: 1511 October 3 Mantua To Lucrezia Bentivoglio, informing her that Francesco decided suddenly to let Ippolita take holy vows.98 As our most illustrious lord consort has decided suddenly that he is content for our daughter Ippolita to take the veil of the Dominican order in the San Vincenzo monastery if she will do so tomorrow, which is the feast of Saint Francis, today we went to make the arrangements. And Your Ladyship’s daughters began to cry and plead so much that they could not be calmed, especially one of them, who did not want her to change her mind. This was such that we were forced to promise them that they too could take the veil. We were compelled to consent, since there is too little time to receive a reply from Your Ladyship, and since we believe you will be happy that we took such liberty, having placed [your daughters] in the monastery with this aim in mind.99 This came more from divine will than from our own, just as our lord’s decision exceeded all our prior hopes. And so tomorrow, in God’s name we will make them all brides, hoping that Lord Annibale and Your Ladyship approve of this marriage.100 We wanted to inform you before it happens, not in order to have a reply, which could not arrive in time as we said, but so that you 97. Isabella implies here that she would not want to offend the painter, Lorenzo Costa, who had been working in Mantua since 1506. In effect, Francia’s portrait (now lost) was based on one by Costa and became the basis of the portrait by Titian, which in turn became the inspiration for the posthumous portrait of Isabella by Rubens. See Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 1:381–88; Hickson, “’To See Ourselves as Others See Us’ ”; Luzio, “Arte retrospettiva: I ritratti d’Isabella d’Este,” Emporium 11, no. 56 (1900): 344–59. 98. AG 2996 libro 29 c.60r. 99. Girls were often educated in convents, whether they were intended to marry in the secular world or not. The implication here is that Lucrezia was hoping her daughters would take to the monastic community and choose it for life. 100. A common rhetoric presented women’s entry into convent life as a marriage to Jesus Christ. Isabella’s correspondence includes many letters regarding violent or cruel husbands.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 351 will hear of our reasoning before you learn of its being carried out, about which you will be notified on another day. To Your Ladyship and the lord, your consort, we offer and commend ourself. Letter 473: 1511 October 5 Mantua To Lucrezia Bentivoglio, recounting the scene of entry into holy vows by Ippolita Gonzaga and Lucrezia’s two daughters.101 Through another letter from us, Your Ladyship will have heard about our decision to have your daughters take the veil. I now inform you that yesterday we and our most illustrious consort were present in the monastery of San Vincenzo and, through God’s giving, your daughters and ours took the veil with such fervor that it truly seemed a divine thing. Isabella was given the name Sister Ginevra and Eleonora the name Sister Maura, since the nuns said that the Most Illustrious Madonna Laura [Bentivoglio] had reported this to be Your Ladyship’s wish. Our daughter, Ippolita, kept her own name. She and Eleonora had a slight bit of fever and were trembling, but to whoever asked them about it out of the suspicion that they might not want to take the veil, they said there was nothing wrong. Let us hope that since divine inspiration had that effect upon them, it will also serve them with perseverance, to our mutual satisfaction. We may be certain that with this husband we will never have quarrels and never hear bad reports of Him. Along with them, Candida and her niece, a servant in our household, and a daughter of Master Ludovico Zaita also took the veil. We would like to hear Your Ladyship’s feelings about this liberty we took. To your pleasures and those of your consort we offer and commend ourself. P.S.: Madonna Laura was not present, because it was her quartan fever day.102 Letter 474: 1511 November 3 Mantua To Timoteo Bendidio, instructing him about jewelry polishing and purchase.103 Be content to renew the shine on this horn chain of ours. We pray you then have another one of the same length made, but in a style similar to this lead one that we are sending you as an illustration. Send us the one and the other when they have reached perfection. We will consider this a great favor from you, and we remain ever ready in service to your every convenience.

101. AG 2996 libro 29 c.60v. 102. Quartan fever is a clinical variety of malaria, with fevers occurring every four days. 103. AG 2996 libro 29 c.68v.

352 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 475: 1511 November 25 Mantua To Francesco Francia, approving the portrait he has made of her.104 We received the portrait you sent us, and everyone who has seen it can well judge that it comes from your hand, because it is of the highest excellence, and we recognize that we are much in your debt since you have so pleased us. And since, through your art, you have made us much more beautiful than nature did, we thank you as much as is possible. As soon as we have the convenience of a trusted messenger, we will repay you as contracted, aside from the indebtedness we shall always feel toward you. We offer ourself ever ready to see to your pleasure. Letter 476: 1511 December 11 Mantua To D. Socio, ordering plants for her garden.105 We could not make the garden that we have started beautiful without your help, hence we must ask you to please find for us at least twenty fig plants of lovely sorts. We recall having sometimes eaten there in Ferrara some that were as good as those from Rivera. Among the others, see that you get some of those that are in the late Messer Bonifacio Bevilaqua’s garden, a certain kind of green fig that is very good. And once you have found them, you can consign them to Bernardino Prosperi, who will send them to us. We offer ourself ever most ready to serve at your pleasure. Letter 477: 1511 December 11 Mantua To Lucrezia Bentivoglio, thanking her for olives and requesting plants for her new garden.106 We received along with Your Ladyship’s letter the present of olives and caravella pears that you wrote you were sending.107 We accepted them very willingly, along with your good feelings for us. They were very much appreciated since they came at a most suitable and convenient moment. Thus we will enjoy them out of love for you, in exchange for which, having nothing more to offer Your Ladyship, we inform you that our and your daughters are very well. Since we have started a house and garden in Ongaria outside the gate of Porto, where we want to grow different fruits, we ask Your Ladyship to please 104. AG 2996 libro 29 cc.72r–v. 105. AG 2996 libro 29 c.75v. Here and in letters following, we see Isabella’s engagement with the planting of a garden at her Palazzo di Porto, which was located across the Lago di Mezzo from the Ducal Palace. 106. AG 2996 libro 29 c.76r. 107. Caravella [garavella, carovella] pears are medium-to-long, yellow or greenish yellow fruits covered almost entirely with reddish brown dots (Treccani).

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 353 send one or two loads of a good kind of fig to plant.108 And if you would like to send some other fruit bearing trees, we will be pleased. Send them by water to get them into the hands of Bernardino Prosperi in Ferrara, and then he will take care of sending them here. Commending ourself to you and to Lord Annibale, we offer ourself ever disposed to Your Ladyship’s pleasures. Letter 478: 1511 December 18 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi, on how to thank Giovanni Francesco Gianninello for a book of rhymes by one of her favorite poets, the late Antonio Cammelli.109 Francesco Gianninello sent us as a gift a book of sonnets by Pistoia that is better bound and is a new creation, with adornments like none we have ever seen. It is dedicated to us and we are immensely grateful for it. We know from this kind gesture that he is a fine person who deserves our gratitude. But because we don’t know well the nature of his status, we would not want to err with too much or too little, nor would we want in any way to offend his spirit. So we ask you to advise us about how you think we should handle giving him some gift, and what sort of gift it should be in order to bring honor to us and satisfaction to him. And if you don’t know how to resolve this on your own, you can confer with the most illustrious lord, Don Sigismondo our brother, and with Pignatta,110 both of whom we understand associate with him closely. Notify us immediately of their opinion and yours, and commend me to my aforementioned brother. We wrote some days ago to the Magnificent Messer Aloise, the queen’s doctor, asking him to ask Her Majesty to please lend me for a few days a book that contains rhymes by different ancient poets, that is, poets before Petrarch and Dante. We never received a reply. Please remind him of it and work to see that we are served, for we would like to have it by Her Majesty’s grace, to whom we ask that you have us commended. 108. The reference to Ongaria regards the convent of San Pietro d’Ongaria (of Hungary), which was located nearby. I thank Molly Bourne for informing me about Ongaria, its location, and its relation to the Porto palace. 109. AG 2996 libro 29 cc.80v–81r. Gianninello was an illuminator and a pupil of Cammelli. Cammelli himself, a Tuscan burlesque poet also known as “il Pistoia,” was close to Isabella’s court until his death in 1502. Noting that the new book was a favorite of Isabella’s and that she lent it out to many friends, Luzio and Renier indicate that this illustrated luxury copy is now lost but that Cammelli’s autograph manuscript of the collection resides in the Ambrosiana library in Milan: La coltura, 208–11; see also Richardson, “Isabella d’Este and the Social Uses of Books,” 313. For a modern edition of the collection see Antonio Cammelli, I sonetti feceti secondo l’autografo ambrosiano, ed. Erasmo Pèrcopo (Naples: Jovene, 1908). 110. Giovanni Battista Stabellino, known as “il Pignatta,” was an actor and courtier in the service of Isabella’s friend, Margherita Cantelma, until Margherita departed for Flanders. At this point, Stabellino became guardian of Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 231 n103.

354 ISABELLA D’ESTE Your letters of the 7th, 10th, and 12th of this month, so full of the news we want to hear, were most appreciated. Above all, your assurances about the health of the most illustrious lord duke, which we desire no less than we do our own. We send you our thanks and pray you continue. The attached letter to His Excellency is a recommendation of Maestro Cesare da le Vieze,111 to which we add no reply, but please give him condolences in our name for his troubles, and urge him also to begin our breviary as soon as he can. Be well. Please tell Maestro Vincenzo to send us some succiamele.112 Letter 479: 1512 January 3 Mantua To Queen Isabella, thanking her for lending a precious book of poems in Italian.113 I kiss your hand. I heard from Benedetto Capilupi, my secretary, how kindly you received him and asked after my health, for which I render you infinite thanks. Next, with the greatest pleasure, I heard of the well being of Your Majesty and your son there, and of the trip made by the most illustrious lord infante to Reggio, which cannot but prompt hope for a good outcome. I wish for it with all my might. The book of the first vernacular poets that Your Majesty was so good as to lend me I will hold in all due respect and reverence, and it will not fall into the hands of anyone else. As soon as I have finished with it, I will send it back to Your Majesty, whom I thank for her great humanity toward me. I beg you command me, for you will always find me disposed to your service. And to your good grace, kissing your hand, I commend myself.

111. On this copyist and illuminator, see Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 20–22. Da le Vieze had written on 11 December apologizing for not having finished the breviary Isabella had commissioned, due to illness. 112. Maestro Vincenzo Morello, the Neapolitan confectioner, operated in Ferrara. Succiamele is a variant of susamielli, a Neapolitan pastry made from honey, almonds, and aromatic spices. 113. AG 2996 libro 29 c.83r. Luzio and Renier identify the addressee as Isabella d’Aragona, Isabella d’Aragona, queen of Naples died in 1504 (La coltura, 10). The addressee is likely Isabella del Balzo, queen of Naples and also an Aragon spouse. They conjecture, based on the reverent tone of Isabella’s correspondence regarding this book, that it may have been the famed Raccolta aragonese, the earliest known anthology of lyric poems in Italian, compiled and sent by Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1466 to Isabella del Balzo’s future husband, Federico d’Aragona (d. 1504). Isabella del Balzo was no longer queen at this point and had taken up residence in Ferrara, but Isabella d’Este sometimes refers to her addressees by their former (or future) titles. See Salvatore Fodale, “Isabella Del Balzo, regina di Napoli,” DBI 62 (2004).

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 355 Letter 480: 1512 January 25 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia regarding various goods she has ordered from him.114 We received the quill and the rest of the fish tooth.115 We are well served. We also now have a model of the little scissors we had made, and we are sending it to you with the present boatman. We’re sending as well a piece of iron from which you should have made some nail files, and have both these and the scissors worked in damascene style. From our other letters you will have learned of our receipt of the clock and other things sent through the prior of the Carthusian monastery, and that regarding the model for the drinking glasses we defer to you, since, as we said, now we know you have good judgment, and you will know how to order more charming ones than we would. For your past and future expenses we will send you money at another time. Be well. Letter 481: 1512 February 2 Mantua To Isabella d’Aragona, duchess of Milan, on the death of her son.116 The long distance and these bad times that have been making the roads dangerous have caused a long silence between us. I was awaiting some good development amid this turbulence, and some sort of happy news that I thought would break the silence to our mutual delight. But Fortune, who fancies evil more than good, did not afford me the time to await that which my heart desired. I had heard through various channels of the death of the most illustrious duke, Your Excellency’s son, and did not want to believe news I so disliked. But the worst event that could have presented itself forces me to do what I was putting off for a completely different kind of occasion. I won’t urge you to have patience, as one does for most family and friends, because the pain I imagine you feel, the respect I feel for you, and the prudence and greatness of spirit which Your Excellency has demonstrated in other adversities do not allow me to do anything but cry and mourn with you over such a hard and bitter event. I wish I could cure it with my own blood. If you know of anything at all that I could offer as help to lessen your pain, or help you, or make you more comfortable, know that you may command me. I commend myself to Your Ladyship and ask that you commend me to the lady Domina Bona [Sforza].

114. AG 2996 libro 29 c.90r. For a transcription of this letter and discussion of such items, see Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 126, 213–22, 234–39, 242–43. 115. Lorenzo is supplying Isabella with pen points made from the tooth of a fish. See Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 234–35. 116. AG 2996 libro 29 cc.93r–v. Francesco Sforza, who was residing in exile as an abbot in France, died suddenly when he fell from a horse. The Bona mentioned at the end of this letter was his sister, who would become queen of Poland (circa 1517) when she married Sigismund Jagiello.

356 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 482: 1512 February 3 Mantua To Taddeo Albano in Venice, on buying an ancient sculpture.117 Niccolò Bellini118 has given us to understand that there is for sale there in Venice an antique head of Plato with the tip of the nose done in wax, and that it can be bought for fifteen ducats. We would be pleased if you would be content to look at it along with Lorenzo da Pavia and some other experts on ancient things. If it seems to you to be something right for us, please pay for it and send it to us, for we will repay you the money. You can look up the aforesaid Niccolò Bellini for this purpose and present him with your letter, attached. We offer ourself at your pleasure and convenience. Letter 483: 1512 February 16 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga in Rome, thanking him for the verses composed by Filippo Beroaldo at the death of one of her dogs.119 We received in different moments four of your letters, from the 10th, 19th, and 25th of last month and the 2nd of this month. They were all the more welcome since we were awaiting them in great expectation, in continuous desire to have news of your convalescence. Since your letters and those of your servants assure us of that, we are greatly contented, and we are especially pleased because you also inform us that you are in the good graces of His Holiness. You do very well to keep yourself so, and we are also glad to hear that you attend to your virtues. We were also happy to hear of the racehorse you received as a gift from the most illustrious 117. AG 2996 libro 30 c.1r. For transcriptions of this and other letters regarding the Plato head, see Brown, “ ‘Una testa de Platone.’ ” As Brown notes, the head (now lost) was judged to be authentically antique by Albano and Lorenzo da Pavia, but they also concluded it was not a portrait of Plato. 118. Luzio and Renier express uncertainty regarding whether this “maestro” was related to the family of Jacopo, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini: La coltura, 168. Brown identifies Niccolò as Giovanni’s brother and indicates that the former owner of this piece was fictitious, as the Bellinis had inherited the sculpture from their brother, Gentile, when he died: “ ‘Una testa de Platone,’ ” 327. 119. AG 2996 libro 30 cc.2r–v. Isabella’s favorite bitch, Aura, died in August 1511, to her great sorrow. The little spaniel’s death, which apparently occurred when she fell from a terrace while playing with another dog, occasioned a solemn funeral and Aura’s burial in a tomb on which Isabella herself lay the first stone at an hour precisely calculated by her astrologer. In gentle mockery of the dog’s high status in the household, a number of poets friendly to Isabella wrote facetious tributes both in Italian and in Latin to Aura’s virtue, since she had clearly died protecting her virginity. Many (but not all) of these poems are preserved in a small notebook in the Mantuan State Archive. Modelled generally on Catullus’s poem on the death of Lesbia’s sparrow, the verses on Aura constitute a particularly rich example of the sort of recreational poetic exercise sixteenth-century poets enjoyed. On Aura and Beroaldo, respectively, and for a partial transcription of this letter, see Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 30–31, 192. On Aura’s cause of death, see Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge, UK:, Boydell Press, 2013), 34–35, 127.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 357 lady, the duchess Isabella.120 This is a clear sign of the love she bears you and the reputation you have disseminated through your good works. We praise you for remembering to include us in the drawing of lottery tickets in our lord’s presence.121 The one we got was just what we needed, but of all these things we were most pleased to receive the erudite and elegant verses of Messer Filippo Beroaldo composed on the death of our little dog, as they were most highly praised by these learned men of ours. We could not be more pleased with his invention or with the affection he shows us through these verses, about which we have also heard through the testimony of many other people. We want you to convey to him our infinite thanks and to offer him our labors and our authority any time he should need them. Regarding your need for money, we have reminded the most illustrious lord your father of it, and he has made provisions that you will hear through letters from him. He remains in his usual condition, not in good health.122 Your brothers and sisters are in excellent form, as are we, and we wish for you to remain so as well, living happy and virtuously. Greet monsignor de Nizza and Maddalena for us.123 Letter 484: 1512 March 1 Mantua To Taddeo Albano, with further considerations on the head of Plato sculpture.124 We saw your response regarding that marble head, and we thank you. But because Niccolò Bellini gives us to understand that the man who has it is not willing to send it on approval, since it seems that the Venetian judges should decide on it, we would like for you to go see it with three or four men who are expert in antique things, without excluding the opinion of Giovanni and Niccolò Bellini. And if the thing seems to be excellent in its beauty and to be worth its price, we would like you to get it and send it to us. If it is moderately beautiful, we are not interested, 120. Isabella d’Aragona was at this time residing in Bari. Among her other activities, she was raising prize horses. 121. The reference is likely to a parlor game in which aphorisms or witty sayings were extracted from a container and paired with the names of persons present (or absent), producing amusing or seemingly insightful combinations. See Gino Corti, “Una lista di personaggi del tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico, caratterizzati da un motto o da un riflessione morale,” Rinascimento 3 (1952), 153–57. I thank Carolyn James for this elucidation. 122. The reference is to Francesco II Gonzaga’s increasing debilitation by syphilis. 123. Monsignor de Nizza likely refers to Gerolamo d’Arsago, bishop of Nice (1511–1542) and of Ivrea (1510–September 1511), friend of the Gonzagas and a favorite at the papal court of Julius II. Maddalena Tagliapietra was Federico’s governess. 124. AG 2996 libro 30 c. 4v.

358 ISABELLA D’ESTE because we are looking for rare and excellent things, and we already have plenty of mediocre ones.125 We offer our services to your pleasure and comfort. Letter 485: 1512 March 6 Mantua To Sister Violante Serafina, thanking her for gifts given to the two young Gonzaga nuns.126 We received your letter along with those things you sent to our daughters who are brides of Jesus Christ. They were most grateful and made great merriment over them. We thank you on their behalf. And in order to satisfy your wish, we inform you that the elder girl has the name Ippolita, just as she did in secular life, and is in the Sisters of San Vincenzo of the observant Dominican order. The younger formerly had the name Livia Osanna and now has the name Paola, and she is in the Sisters of the Body of Christ, of the observant order of Saint Clare. Madonna Lucrezia [d’Este Bentivoglio’s] daughters are both in San Vincenzo. The elder has the name sister Ginevra and the other sister Laura. All four are there more willingly than one could imagine; hence we are quite content. So as not to abandon good custom, we are sending you through Messer Bernardino Prosperi a half-peso of almonds and six pounds of dried grapes. We had no figs this year from Urbino or anywhere else; hence we hope you will accept our apologies and enjoy the other things for our love. I commend myself to Your Reverence’s prayers. Letter 486: 1512 May 24 Mantua To Matteo Ippolito, asking him to have another portrait of Federico painted.127 Because we were obliged to give away as a gift the portrait of our son Federico that was done in Bologna, we wish to have another, especially because we hear that he is now even more beautiful and has more grazia.128 We want you to see whether the painter Raffaello of Giovanni Sanzio of Urbino is now in Rome and to ask him to please paint [Federico] from the chest up, in armor. If Raffaello should not be there, then find the best painter after him, since we do not want to have this painted by a common painter; we want to have it from the hand of a master. Note 125. On 16 March 1512, Isabella wrote to Lorenzo da Pavia indicating that she would be keeping the head of Plato, as it had been judged both good and ancient. See AG 2996 libro 30 c. 6v, not included here. 126. AG 2996 libro 30 c. 5r. 127. AG 2996 libro 30 c. 18r. 128. This much-discussed adjective has meanings encompassing grace, charm, poise, and beauty. For one important contribution, see Eduardo Saccone, “Grazia, sprezzatura, affettazione in the Courtier,” in Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, ed. Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1983), 45–67.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 359 that we will treat him with the courtesy and honor you know to be our custom, and advise him to make it life size and as quickly as possible, for you could do nothing that would please us more.129 Greetings to Federico, and you make an effort to get well. Letter 487: 1512 August 10 Mantua To Galeazzo Pallavicino, thanking him for lending silver plates and other items for entertaining distinguished guests.130 The fifteen silver plates and fifteen silver trays Your Lordship sent us will suffice in quality and number for our needs. We will keep them until we have used them, since we do not yet know when we will make our meal for Monsignor Gurgen and the viceroy, who has not yet arrived.131 We hope you will pardon us if this causes you any inconvenience. As for Your Lordship’s offer of other pieces and especially the one in gold, we thank you and congratulate you on being so richly furnished in exile. If you desire to see us, we cannot believe your desire is greater than ours to see you, to whose pleasure we offer ourself. We ask you to please ask Lord Giovan Francesco to send the attached letters to Castelnovo.

129. Raphael accepted this commission but, due to his heavy workload, did not begin Federico’s portrait until January 1513. Federico had by that time modeled for the portrait sketch, but Raphael never completed this work, due to his distress over the illness, and then death, of his patron, Julius II, after which Federico, no longer hostage, returned to Mantua. Luzio reports that the portrait was finished by one of Raphael’s pupils (perhaps Giulio Romano) and eventually sold with other Gonzaga gallery items to Charles I of England. Federico was, however also portrayed in Raphael’s monumental fresco in the Vatican, the School of Athens, behind the philosopher Averroes. See Luzio, “Federico Gonzaga ostaggio,” 547–49; “Isabella d’Este di fronte a Giulio II,” 418; also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:53, 72–74. 130. AG 2996 libro 30 c. 31v. In a letter of 8 August 1512 (c. 30r), Isabella had requested as much silver tableware as Pallavicino could spare, explaining that hers was all on loan to the duke of Ferrara. These letters provide a backstage glimpse of the material organization of lavish banquets among the nobility. 131. Matthaüs Lang, bishop of Gurk, and Ramón Folch de Cardona, viceroy of Naples, were among the dignitaries present for the Imperial Diet held in Mantua for members of the Holy League in 1512. This League, uniting Rome, Spain, the Holy Empire, and Venice against France included also Henry VIII’s England. Major questions to be resolved at the Diet were the fates of Milan, Florence, and Ferrara: all states in which the Gonzagas had serious interests. Bourne notes that the festivities, held at Francesco Gonzaga’s Poggio Reale lakeside villa, were hosted by Isabella: Francesco II Gonzaga, 179. Francesco, being indisposed, made a brief appearance at the party, which was so bustling as to appear to Mantua’s castellan as “another Rome.” In this decisive context, Isabella acted not only as hostess but also as a barely deferential political player. See also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:65–67; Luzio, “Isabella d’Este di fronte a Giulio II,” 111–19; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 315–19.

360 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 488: 1512 August 31 Mantua To the vicar of Governolo, requesting a book in Hebrew for translating into Latin.132 Because we very much wish to have a book on the significance of the Hebrew psalms, called Simmusé tehillim (Book on the Virtues of the Psalms) so that we may have it translated into Latin, and we are certain that the Jew who is there in our castle has it, we want you immediately to urge and pray him in our name to please lend it to us for several days until we can have it translated. Promise him on our faith that he will get it back absolutely without fail. And once you have it, send it to us right away, if possible with this very rider. Letter 489: 1512 November 24 Mantua To Girolamo Zilioli, seeking a volume by Apuleius translated into Italian.133 In times past, the lord our father [gave] to the lord our father-in-law, both of them now dearly departed, a volume of Apuleius in Italian, translated by Count Matteo Maria Boiardo. Since we lately wanted to see it, we have had it looked for with all due diligence and urgency. As we have not found it anyplace here, in order to carry out our intent we thought to ask you, through this letter, to see that the lord duke our brother contents us with his copy for a few days until we can derive a copy of it. Then we will send it back to His Excellency, to whom we will be most grateful in this matter. And to you, who through your efforts will be doing us a great pleasure, we offer ourself.

132. AG 2996 libro 30 c.40v. This Jew’s identity is unknown to me, but Luzio and Renier report that Isabella’s request went ungranted: La coltura 18–19. On 2 September 1512, she turned to Bernardino Prosperi in hopes that he would procure the book in Ferrara from a Jew named Manoch (c. 41v), and finally at the end of the same month she sought it through Giovanni Boiardo from a Jew in Scandiano named Simone. Late in her life as well, Isabella was interested in Jewish culture. In 1536 she ordered a copy of Josephus’s De bello judaico. Also noteworthy in the above letter is the fact that Isabella intends to have the book translated into Latin and not Italian. On 5 November 1512, she received a letter from Paolo Semenza claiming that she was the most famous woman in Italy for her knowledge of Latin. Though such a letter was clearly conceived to flatter, it does suggest that Isabella had not left entirely behind her youthful proficiency in Latin. See also Luzio, I Precettori. 133. AG 2996 libro 30 c.58r. Luzio and Renier note that while a first edition in Latin was printed in Rome in 1469, Boiardo’s translation of The Golden Ass would not appear in print until 1518 (Venice): La coltura, 12, 273. Observing also that this work was a “in great demand,” they underscore Isabella’s keen interest in reading the classics and suggest that the manuscript made following this request could be the volume numbered 16 in her posthumous inventory of books, as published in Appendix 1 of their study.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 361 Letter 490: 1513 January 7 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga, explaining that when she gives him a gift he need not wear it all the time.134 We were glad to hear from your letter of the second-to-last day of last month that you are in good health; may God keep you so for a long time. In response to the post you sent us the other day about the little necklace, we say that when we give you a gift, you are not obliged to wear it all the time, only when you like and when you feel like it, because there is no thing so lovely as not to be tiresome sometimes, and if not tiresome, then at least to reach a point when it ought to be set aside. Since the necklace we gave you has by now become short on you, we would be content if you put it away and do as you wish. If it is something you like, you could also have it lengthened and remade, since if we were not about to go to Milan, as we are, we would have had another one made for you. For this same reason, pardon us if we do not send you anything to give to your godmother, because since we have nothing appropriate at hand, we had no time to have anything made. Perhaps the lord [your father] will see to this, since you wrote to him, and if he does not you can repeat to them the reason for our going, which is because the most illustrious duke of Milan invited us through letters in triplicate to the lord and to us, that we should go to honor the acquisition of his state and stay there for Carnival to celebrate.135 So, with the permission and the contentedness of our most illustrious lord, we will depart tomorrow. Explain this to the most reverend and most illustrious lord cardinal your uncle and commend us to His Most Reverend Lordship, though we too are writing to him. Letter 491: 1513 March 12 Piacenza To Francesco II Gonzaga, defending her behavior at the court of Milan.136 I am aggrieved, though not surprised, that Your Lordship is not happy with my letter. I would be still more aggrieved if your dismay were due to me. But considering that if I did not obey Your Lordship immediately, it was for no other reason than—with Your Lordship’s approval—to be of service to my brother and to please my nephew the duke of Milan, it seems to me that Your Lordship has little cause to complain of me. I therefore lament my misfortune, which moves Your Lordship to complain of my every action, no matter how good it is. I don’t believe that on 134. AG 2996 libro 30 cc. 68r–v. 135. At the Imperial Diet of August 1512, hosted in Mantua, Isabella had successfully advocated for the installation of her nephew, Massimiliano Sforza, as duke of Milan. See Ady, A History of Milan under the Sforza, 196–221; Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:66–67; Cockram, Isabella d’Este, 178–88. 136. AG 2120 Fasc. II cc. 114r–115r. (Autograph). This stinging reply to Francesco’s letter of 11 March offers a rare glimpse of Isabella’s self-regard as wife and diplomat, and an uncommonly direct revelation of tensions between her and her husband. On 9 March 1513, she had written Francesco an account of her activities in Milan and asked his indulgence for her long absence, but tensions rose

362 ISABELLA D’ESTE this trip to Milan I have misbehaved or done anything to incite people’s gossip. I know well that I have gained a thousand friends for Your Lordship and myself, by doing what I must do and what it is my custom to do because, thanks to God and to myself, I have never required supervision or advice on how to govern my person. Though indeed I may be of no account in other matters, God has given me this gift, for which Your Lordship is as obliged to me as any husband ever was to a wife. And do not think that even if you loved me as much as any person has ever loved another you could ever repay my loyalty. This is why Your Highness sometimes says that I am haughty, because knowing how much you owe me for this, and seeing that I am badly repaid, I sometimes change complexion and seem to be in effect what I am not. Yet even in the certainty that I will only receive pain at Your Lordship’s hands, I shall not cease to do good; and however you may show that you love me little, all the more will I love you with affection. For I can say that I was born to this, having been given to you at such an age that I cannot remember ever being without your love. It seems to me that by now this ought to mean that I could freely delay my return for fifteen or twenty days for the reasons stated above, without incurring Your Lordship’s scorn. And don’t believe that I have no wish to see you, as I wrote I do in my letter, for if I could see you as often as I want, I would find you more often in Mantua than I do. I commend myself to Your Lordship, and I beg you pardon me this very long letter.137

through a series of misunderstandings, and on 11 March Francesco—perhaps urged on by Isabella’s enemy at court, Tolomeo Spagnoli—replied aloofly, suggesting that his wife was not eager to return to him and declaring that he had not bothered to read her entire letter. On the same day, he also wrote to Lodovico Guerriero, “We are sorry and, by now, ashamed that fate has dealt us the type of wife who always wants to do things her own way and according to her own mind.” For transcriptions and context see Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e la corte sforzesca,” 160–66; “Isabella d’Este di fronte a Giulio II,” 418–22; Isabella d’Este nei primordi del papato di Leone X ei il suo viaggio a Roma nel 1514–1515 (Milan: Cogliati, 1906), 13; also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:85–86; Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, 185–88, 220–21; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 328–33;. These sources also discuss the somewhat scandalous competition in Milan between the viceroy and Cardinal Matthaüs for the affections of Isabella’s lady-in-waiting, Eleonora Brognina, on which see Castagna, Un vicerè per Eleonora Brognina. 137. A letter to Isabella from Benedetto Capilupi (2 February 1513) points to one reason why she may in fact have been less than eager to return home. Referring to Francesco’s syphilis, Capilupi wrote, “As he showed me his healed sores and the vigor he is regaining every day, I understood that he would happily consummate marriage with Your Ladyship, considering that in effect it must be true that you are still like a young girl and very fresh stuff!” Luzio, Isabella d’Este nei primordi, 143.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 363 Letter 492: 1513 March 28 Mantua To Bernardo Bibbiena, rejoicing in the rise of Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici to the pontificate after the death of Pope Julius II della Rovere.138 Before we got Your Lordship’s letter, you must have heard from Mario Equicola, who was sent to kiss His Holiness’s foot and to convey our congratulations on his assumption, how glad and jubilant we felt at the first sign of this most happy news. Even now we feel that truly since the day we were born we have received no happier news than this, which followed in an instant after the death of Pope Julius. We praise and thank Our Lord God for all of it, hoping that through His supreme bounty and prudence, we will see the ordering of the the lord duke our brother’s state [Ferrara], the stabilization of that of the lord duke of Milan our nephew, the honor and exaltation of the lord marchese our consort and, finally, tranquility in all of Italy. In our particular case, we hope for firm protection and the perpetual grace of His Holiness, both through his bond as godfather and because of the love and recognition we showed him when he was Cardinal de’ Medici and the familiarity we have with his brother the Magnificent Giuliano, but no less through the favor and support we hope Your Lordship will lend us with His Holiness, since we do not suspect that you could ever change your nature and habits, no matter what honor or rank you achieve. Rather, we think you will always be loving and benevolent with us. Though we caused you to lose the five hundred ducats, we rejoice with you in the rise of the lord your patron to the pontificate and in the dignity and the position he has deservedly given you.139 We pray you kiss His Holiness’s foot often in our name, until such time as God grants us the grace to do so personally, as we supremely desire. We offer and commend ourself to you. Letter 493: 1513 April 24 Mantua To Guido Postumo, thanking him for dedicating a literary work to her and praising his writing.140 If we already had good reason to feel affection for you because of your virtues, we now confess we are obliged to you, since you have dedicated works to us. For their 138. AG 2996 libro 30 cc. 69v–70r. The death of Julius II was, to say the least, a game changer for the Gonzagas. While he had been an ally through their shared familial ties to the duke of Urbino and his instrumental role in the liberation of Francesco from Venetian prison, Julius had also made mighty efforts to capture Ferrara for the Papal State, not to mention that he had been holding Federico II Gonzaga hostage in Rome. Giovanni de’ Medici, who would reign as Leo X, represented hope for a thaw in papal relations with Ferrara as well as excellent prospects for Isabella and Francesco, one of whose sons (Ferrante) was Giovanni’s godson. 139. The reference seems to be to a wager about who would rise to the papacy. The jovial Bibbiena was a longtime friend of Isabella’s. 140. AG 2996 libro 30 c. 78r. On this addressee, see William Roscoe, The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth, 3rd ed. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1876), 2:215–19.

364 ISABELLA D’ESTE elegance and their learning, they will doubtless be highly appreciated by readers in future centuries, who will all praise them, more than by our contemporaries.141 And since, thanks to you, we share in that honor and that eternity, we could not fail to thank you supremely and to remain in your debt. We intend to count your name and your person among our friends of the first rank, and we offer ourself at your constant service. Be well. P.S.: We liked the beautiful elegy, as we do all your other things. Letter 494: 1513 May 9 Mantua To Vincenzo da Napoli, ordering confectionary products.142 We think that you have already been rushing the confection of our citrons, so we would be grateful if you sent them to us soon. Next we would like you to make us a nice, large jar of rose-infused sugar. And because the doctors would like us to consume preserves, but instead of the kind made with roses they should be made with maidenhair, which our pharmacists don’t know how to make, please be content to make us a good jar of that.143 Then send it to us along with the rose sugar and notification of the cost of each thing. Be well. Letter 495: 1513 May 24 Mantua To the duchess of Ferrara, regarding young women who insist on entering the monastic life.144 Today something happened that was as sudden and amazing as anything that has happened here in a long time. I thought I should inform Your Ladyship as a comparison with the case you wrote me about that took place in your court in 141. Isabella’s syntax in formulating these praises is contorted, so that it is not clear whether she thinks contemporaries (perhaps herself included) appreciate Postumo’s works. Her message, however, is also tinged with Renaissance humanist thinking, which recognized the power of literature to immortalize its subjects. 142. AG 2996 libro 30 c. 81v. 143. Capelvenere [Adiantum capillus Veneris] or maidenhair is an ornamental, aromatic fern, the leaves of which can be used to make a syrup good for coughs and bronchial conditions. Other uses included the fortification and growth of hair, as a sudorific, and as a diuretic. Galassi and Sarzi, Alla Syrena, 128. 144. AG 2996 libro 30 cc. 85r–v. There appears to have been a rash of sudden decisions to take the veil by women in Italy and France. In a letter to Lucrezia Borgia on 6 April 1513, Isabella refers to troublesome events surrounding three of Lucrezia’s ladies-in-waiting, who had suddenly decided to enter monastic life: “On the matter of Your Ladyship’s three damsels who were to become nuns yesterday, I would not have known what more to do than you did, since it seems to me that you used the circumspection and prudence that were called for, and since you found them to be so fervently persistent. May Our Lord God give them eternal peace. I thank Your Ladyship for the regard you showed me in this case, which has not been out of character with your goodness and humanity or the love I bear you.”

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 365 recent days, and which was similar to this. Eleonora, the daughter of Bernardino Prosperi, and my lady-in-waiting Eleonora Brognina had my permission to go confess themselves in honor of the solemnity of Corpus Christi.145 Once they had done this, they asked an old woman I had sent to accompany them to take them to the sisters of Carmine to see some work that I am having done by those reverend mothers.146 She granted them this, and once they had entered the monastery, without the prioress’s knowing anything about it, they went into the sacristy, where they put on some tunics they found; and they would have cut their hair if they had found any scissors! When I heard this, I was stunned and amazed, and since I could not hold back my tears and hadn’t the heart to talk to them without crying, I sent my secretary Benedetto Capilupi and the majordomo to try to persuade them to come out and stay with me until we could see whether they were well aware of what they were doing. And at the same time, my most illustrious lord consort sent our son Federico, and they made every possible effort, but all in vain, because the girls are determined not to come out in any way whatsoever. In that sense this case is different from the one Your Ladyship wrote me about, because you were able to get your ladies to come out of the monastery. Prosperi’s daughter claims that this has been her intention for many months now, and that she wanted to take the veil in Ferrara, where her sisters are and was waiting for this reason until I went there, but that she had heard I was arranging a marriage for her and, not wanting to argue against me, she wanted to prevent it. La Brognina has not yet said how long she has had this intention.147 One sees in the one and the other a great constancy and fervor, so it seems that in every way they are moved by a great and powerful inspiration. May Our Lord God bless them, and we must be at peace with His will. I commend myself as much as I can to Your Ladyship. P.S.: My Most Illustrious lord went in person to talk with them and to induce them to come out, using both flattery and threats, but there was no helping it. We have yet to see what their fathers can do. I have the sisters’ agreement that they will wait to take the veil solemnly in their presence. 145. Corpus Christi (or Corpus Domini) is celebrated on the Thursday (or Sunday) after Trinity Sunday and marks the belief in the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Latin Rite Eucharist. 146. The Carmelite nuns in this monastery were expert embroiderers who created intricate decorations for Isabella’s clothing: Castagna, Un vicerè per Eleonora Brognina, 58. 147. Castagna cautions against assuming Isabella’s good faith in this affair, suggesting that Brognina’s decision to take the veil was part of an elaborate charade devised or abetted by Isabella, which was played out to win long-term financial security for the fifteen-year-old girl from her lover, the (married) Viceroy Ramón Folch de Cardona, who had become smitten with Isabella’s most lovely donzella. Cardona was so desperate to get the girl out of monastic hiding that in the end he set her up financially for the long term. Castagna, Un vicerè per Eleonora Brognina.

366 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 496: 1513 June 2 Mantua To Count Lorenzo Strozzi, responding to a request for a fan like the ones women carry in Mantua.148 We understand from your letter that the most illustrious duchess [Lucrezia Borgia], our sister-in-law and honored sister, wishes to have a little fan of the sort that are starting to be used here. And finding that we happen to have one that we had made for us in the fashion that we saw in Milan and that we liked very much because it can be worn attached to the belt, we are sending it to you, so that you can give it to Her Excellency in our name. Tell her that we will be pleased if she likes it. If she does not, then let her advise us of the style and the size she would like, and we will have it made at once. Your Most Illustrious Lordship shall commend me warmly to her. We offer ourself ever at your service. Greetings to your wife on our behalf. Letter 497: 1513 June 8 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi, explaining how his daughter changed from donzella to nun.149 In addition to our other letter of today, which we wrote in reply to yours regarding the case of Eleonora, we say that in order to dispel any fear you may have that she became a nun out of dissatisfaction or discontent with the court, we find no motive for this, since we were always happy to have her and loved her more than any other donzella, as you could see when you were here that time when we worked on the marriage contract. We would not have wanted for anything that it should not be fulfilled. This is the first thing. And second, on which Capilupi wrote to you, because perhaps you suspected that she was drawn in out of desperation, we don’t know why she did this and we cannot conjecture, except insofar as she says it is due to her own emotion and to divine inspiration. But if you come here, you will be able to clear things up better, because you will be free to speak to her in your own fashion, as your son Alfonso did. It would not be advisable to defer this 148. AG 2996 libro 30 c. 90v. Isabella was ever the trendsetter and delighted in new fashion ideas. This letter illustrates also her practice of adopting dress and accessories she discovered in her travels, and how fashions spread from court to court and city to city, much as they do today, through emulation, imitation, and exchange. 149. AG 2996 libro 30 c. 93v. Correspondence with Prosperi, as well as with the viceroy of Naples (see selected letters below), continues on this same subject. On 10 June 1513, Isabella wrote to Prosperi that she too was dismayed about his daughter’s decision, but that she could not oppose what seemed to be dictated by God. She continued, “Not knowing what more we can do in this situation, we have resolved to oppose her no longer so as not to drive her to some desperate act that could bring her unhappiness and disuade her from her good and tranquil decision, and so as not to bring upon our soul interminable pangs of conscience. For though we were once mistress of her person, we nonetheless cannot deny her free will or the will of God” (cc. 95v–96r).

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 367 too long, because [the girls] are anxious to take solemn vows, though they have already put on the robes themselves and then tonsured themselves. La Brognina’s mother has given her consent and blessing, as you will have heard from her. We await your response. Be well. Letter 498: 1513 June 9 Mantua To the viceroy of Naples, explaining again how Eleonora Brognina withdrew to a convent.150 Having understood from Your Lordship’s reply to me regarding la Brognina’s entry into the monastery that you share the suspicion I too had, that she has taken this action lightly and out of some resentment, I thought it appropriate for me to clear Your Lordship’s mind, as I needed to clear my own. I made every possible effort, by way of threats, persuasion, and other means, to dissuade her from this leap, or at least to understand the cause that induced her to it, and I was unable to get anything more out of her than that she had become a nun upon consideration and through divine inspiration. As a last resort, I had her mother151 come here, thinking that [Eleonora] would have to confide more to her than she had to others the truth that lies in her heart. But even though [her mother] spoke with her multiple times, completely alone in her room, and ordered her to come out and at least to say whether some resentment or discontent had figured into this fantasy, she was unable to extract anything other than that for several months now [Eleonora] had been thinking about this, and that based upon careful consideration and divine inspiration she had confirmed [her desire] and never wishes to change her mind. At this, the mother was so edified and pleased that she gave her consent and blessing. Because up to this moment she had not wanted to allow either Eleonora or the Prospera girl to be solemnly vested by the brothers, even though they had made this choice 150. AG 2996 libro 30 cc. 90v–98r. Read as a performance, this letter is a rhetorical tour de force. Castagna supplies persuasive evidence that Eleonora’s withdrawal into convent life was an artful and audacious ruse concocted by her mistress, designed to frustrate the smitten viceroy into providing handsomely for Brognina’s future. The degree of manipulation, collaboration, and solidarity between Isabella and her female attendant suggested by such a plot is noteworthy, to say the least. The story involves not only letters from the marchesa, some of which I translate here, which drove Cardona nearly mad with desire and desperation; but also his gift to Eleonora of two thousand ducats; the birth of her twins by Cardona; her attempted kidnapping for the enjoyment of the king of France, which was thwarted by a chance encounter between her captors and some of Cardona’s men; and her eventual marriage to a husband in the viceroy’s court, hand-selected by him. See also Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 351–54, 359–60, 378. Cartwright, following Luzio, views Isabella as a shocked witness to the affair: Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:86–87; Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e la corte sforzesca,” 160–62. On contrived letters as a form of epistolary mastery, see Cockram, “Epistolary Masks”; Shemek, “Mendacious Missives.” 151. Beatrice Brogna de’ Lardis.

368 ISABELLA D’ESTE on their own and cut their own hair, and they have not yet been accepted because la Prospera’s father is awaited so that he can have the same conversation, even though her brother found her to be determined. Neither la Brognina nor la Prospera would consent to change religious orders to please their families, who wanted to bring them to Ferrara.152 Thus Your Excellency may rest assured that they entered [religious life] out of no anger or coercion, for they were both loved and treated with every sweetness by me, cherished and honored by the whole court as truly the most beautiful and courteous [of my ladies]. I still feel enormous displeasure at being deprived of them, for this reason. But since I cannot oppose divine will, I must patiently accept it; I encourage Your Lordship to do the same, all the more insofar as the convent where they reside could not be more acceptable or more tolerable than it is. They wear fur in the winter; in very hot weather they sleep in bedsheets; and they wear linen blouses. They undress every night; they eat meat three days a week; the monastery is full of noble and decent women and could not be better. And I myself shall never fail in seeing to their every comfort and need, due to their good service to me, especially la Brognina, out of regard for Your Lordship, to whom I did not reply earlier in order to see the results of her mother’s visit. I commend myself to Your Lordship. P.S.: As I wrote this, I received news from uncertain sources that the French have been routed. We did not trust this news fully, given our great wish that it be so. But having now been assured by letters from Suardino, I thought it fitting that I congratulate Your Lordship, knowing that your pleasure is no less than mine, for the love I know you bear the most illustrious lord duke. It now remains for his victory to be favored and supported by you, as I have no doubt you have already done and will do.153 Again, I commend myself to you from the heart. Letter 499: 1513 June 18 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, on the capture of Legnago by the Venetians.154 I regret that I must always announce bad news to Your Excellency. I know you must have heard that the Venetians took the town of Legnago, first by surprise because it was poorly guarded, and then taking the fortress by force, cutting to pieces 152. The families hoped to have their daughters nearby, in monasteries run by different religious orders than those in Mantua. 153. On 6 June 1513, at the Battle of Novara, Swiss troops fighting for the Holy League routed the French, reversing their hold on Milan, which commander Louis de la Trémoille had seized in mid-May from the recently installed Duke Massimiliano Sforza, Isabella’s nephew. Cardona was commander of the papal forces in the Holy League. 154. AG 2996 libro 30a c. 3v.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 369 everyone who was inside. Just the day before yesterday they presented themselves in Verona. The bishop of Trento called all the citizens together and asked them if they wanted to take up arms, and they replied no, because they did not want to give the Venetians a reason to sack them if they were going to invade perforce. As a result, the bishop departed the following night. Yesterday, the Veronese held a council and decided to give themselves up to the Venetians, in a pact to which everyone consented. This news comes from an agent of the Veronese canon, who is here. It is estimated that yesterday [the Venetians] entered Verona. Unless I write Your Excellency news to the contrary, assume that they have done so. To your good graces and those of the most illustrious monsignor cardinal [Ippolito d’Este], I commend myself, and also to the most illustrious lady duchess.

Letter 500: 1513 June 21 Mantua To the viceroy of Naples, again regarding Eleonora Brognina.155 I wish more than anything that the words I spoke to la Brognina to dissuade her from her obstinate plan had been of sufficient force to persuade and convince her, for not only would I have delivered a dear and gentle donzella of mine (you could say) from death, but I would also consider myself to have done an enormous favor for Your Lordship, whom I wish to please more than any other person in the world. And truly, out of love for you I took every possible action, pleading and begging someone whom for many years I commanded. But neither commands, nor exortations, nor pleas had any effect. For myself, I would pardon her and put my spirit to rest, since it is not a new thing for me to lose my donzelle in this way. But the fact that she will not consider Your Lordship’s position and answer the prayers spoken to her in your name cannot prevent me from thinking her the cruelest, most impious, and most inhumane woman in the world. It’s true that she owes you more regard than she does her father and mother, and if she is not a fool, she must recognize that. Indeed, she admits this; and it may be that she did not ask Your Lordship’s permission, as she did of them, not because she respects you less, but because if you had begged her, she would have been in more difficulty and anxiety than if her father and mother had denied her wishes. For even against their wishes, she went into the convent no less valiantly, just as she paid little heed to mine. Your Lordship speaks the truth in saying that the monasteries ought to enclose only the ugly girls, and the beautiful ones should stay where they may be seen. But it nearly seems that the opposite is true; in my experience, it is almost always the loveliest flower among my ladies who takes that path. Your Lordship shall prepare to suffer this misfortune with strength of heart and arm yourself with the patience you would need if la Brognina had died, and console yourself 155. AG 2996 libro 30a cc. 6r–v.

370 ISABELLA D’ESTE with the certainty of having frequent news of her. I hold it to be a great gift that Your Lordship looks so lovingly after the most illustrious lord duke [of Milan] and his affairs, protecting and caring for them out of love for me. I commend myself to your good grace. Letter 501: 1513 July 1 Mantua To Francesco II Gonzaga, regarding her plans to see the Spanish army as it passes.156 In order to act on the special permission Your Excellency gave me to go see the Spanish army as it passes, I wrote to Suardino that he should advise me of the location and every time that I might go, when they will be marching in unity, with both the cavalry and the infantry in formation. Otherwise, to see them pass in no particular order, I would not travel. Suardino replies that tomorrow the lord viceroy will pass in formation and that for this reason he expects to see Lord Prospero with his cavalry and also the marchese of Pescara with his infantry, and that this evening I must be at Castiglione in order to be at Villafranca early tomorrow morning, where Suardino will be to take me to where the army will pass, which will be near there. Remembering what Your Lordship said to me, that I may never again have a similar chance to see an army, I thought that due to the siege of Peschiera and the march of the Spanish, and countryside being more secure from the Venetians, I would go this evening to Castiglione, along with Madonna Laura157 and the countess of Caiazzo [Bianca Sforza], if Your Excellency has no objections. Tomorrow morning we will breakfast at Villa Franca, where I think there will be no shortage of Spanish women, though I think that if la Brognina were with us, we would be more welcome.158 To Your Excellency’s good grace I commend myself.

156. AG 2996 libro 30a cc.11r–v. This letter underscores both the mighty and impressive sight that an army could create as it marched in formation, and the fact that Isabella, as a woman, had never seen such a thing, despite her proximity to the corridors of power. Notably, she cares for the spectacular effect of this experience: if they are not marching in formation, she is not interested in traveling to see them. 157. Either Laura Bentivoglio, Isabella’s natural niece, or her lady-in-waiting Laura Boiarda. 158. The reference is to the viceroy, whose beloved Eleonora Brognina, Isabella’s lady-in-waiting, had secluded herself in a monastery.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 371 Letter 502: 1513 August 31 Mantua To Alfonso Ariosto, regarding an abducted girl.159 Our secretary, Benedetto Capilupi, told us that on his return from Sermide he was in Ostiglia to speak with Giovan Franco Fidele about the matter of that little girl. Not finding him there, because he lives in Sustinente, he had him come to Sacchetta, and on our behalf he ordered him to give back the girl. In his defense, [Fidele] replied that he was given custody of her by a relative, as she is four years old and is sickly. He said he had spent a good sum on her, and if he was to give her back he would want to be repaid his expenses, and he would want to give her over to the person who gave her to him. Under these conditions, he said he would willingly obey our command, even though he had made some plans for her, with the permission of that relative who consigned her to him. He said, besides, that those people who are demanding her have little or no connection to the little girl, and that they must want her in order to manage her things in their own way. He added that he did not think we should have less regard for him, a servant of the most reverend and illustrious Cardinal [Sigismondo] Gonzaga, our brother-inlaw, than for others. We wanted you to hear of his response, which seems to us quite reasonable, meaning that the little girl should be restored to those who gave her to him, with reimbursement for his expenses. If you will be satisfied with this, we will see that she is returned; but if he should be urged to give her to someone else, he says we must act very carefully, since he is the son of an old servant of the aforesaid cardinal [Gonzaga]. In this matter, the most reverend and illustrious cardinal our brother [Ippolito d’Este] will excuse us, since he himself does not allow others to mix themselves in with his servants’ affairs. If you need anything else, you will always find us disposed to please you. Letter 503: 1513 October 3 Mantua To Giovanni Boiardo, regarding trees she wishes to plant.160 We wish to make a grove in a garden of ours, with some beautiful and rare trees. We are told that Your Lordship has a grove of beautiful junipers and that from yours we could derive many plants to transplant. For this reason we are sending Pietro Filippo, our household staff member and the present exhibitor of this letter, to see the aforesaid grove. We pray Your Lordship show it to him and inform him 159. AG 2996 libro 30a c. 24r. Ariosto had written on 22 July 1513 on behalf of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, asking Isabella’s assistance in restoring to her father an abducted little girl believed to be in Mantua. She replied on 25 July asking for more details and stating that the only kidnapped girl she was aware of was one who had recently been snatched from her family in Parma. Together these two cases, like others running through Isabella’s correspondence, underscore the precarious safety of girls in the countryside and the towns. 160. AG 2996 libro 30a c.29v.

372 ISABELLA D’ESTE of the way to plant and raise them, and how long they take to grow, and if in their planting season we could have some, and how many. You shall also inform him where we can obtain some pure161 Trebbiano vines and some other good types. We will be most grateful to you for this. We offer ourself ever ready to do your pleasure. Letter 504: 1513 November 19 Mantua To the viceroy of Naples, on behalf of Beatrice de Contrari.162 At the time I married, Lady Beatrice de Contrari, who was companion to my dearly departed mother, was given to me as senior lady-in-waiting. She remained in that position for many years, though having grown old, she later returned to Ferrara. For this reason I have always loved her as a mother, and I have lent her any help and favor I could, whatever her needs might be. Thus now, having heard that Your Excellency is about to position your troops on the alluvial plain of Rovigo for the winter, and knowing that the aforesaid Lady Beatrice has some holdings and assets in a place called Fiesso, I take the expedient of commending her to Your Lordship and asking you to please order that her things be treated with care and respect and that no harm whatsoever come to them, for love of me. I will consider this a special grace from Your Excellency, as though you had taken this care of my own personal property and as though the benefit had been granted to me myself. On this account I commend myself to you. Letter 505: 1514 February 21 Mantua To Emilia Pia da Montefeltro, thanking her for bear fat.163 Along with a letter written in your own hand, we received the two gourds filled with bear fat, which were most welcome. We will use them in love and memory of you, and they will last for many months. We thank Your Ladyship no less than for the gift, for your diligence and desire to please us. If anything occurs to you that could please you from here, seek us out, and you will be satisfied. We commend ourself to Your Ladyship and ask that you commend us to the lady duchess, our sister-in-law and sister, and greet our daughter the duchess. We commend ourself also to the duke. 161. vite presize de Tribiani. 162. AG 2996 libro 30a c. 48r. Given that Ramón Folch de Cardona very much hoped Isabella would help him persuade Eleonora Brognina to emerge from her monastic seclusion, this request must have carried particular weight. On this and other defenses of women’s property, see Shemek, “Isabella d’Este and the Properties of Persuasion.” 163. AG 2996 libro 30a c.81v. The most common use for bear fat (or grease) was as a hair dressing. Isabella and her friends regularly exchanged cosmetic products.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 373 Letter 506: 1514 March 15 Goito To Francesco II Gonzaga, reporting on travels in the marquisate.164 To begin keeping Your Excellency informed of my journey, I report that I arrived here at Goito around the twenty-third hour [one hour before sunset]. The commissioner and his wife met me at the gate, with the welcoming faces that Your Lordship can imagine. They invited me to see their baby boy, and I accepted their invitation for tomorrow at my departure. I also went to the fortress where I was no less welcome. By way of the Via del Soccorso I went to stroll in the meadow behind the Mincio River, restoring myself completely in that fresh air. Tomorrow I shall go to Lonato. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace. Letter 507: 1514 March 17 Lonato To Francesco II Gonzaga, on travel through Gonzaga towns.165 I arrived here in Lonato yesterday evening around the twenty-third hour [one hour before sunset]. Since the carriage from Cavriana had bounced around so much on the rocks, I felt jumbled to pieces. But having slept well last night I restored myself, and now I feel wonderful. I was met by some of the locals on horseback at Solferino. About three miles from the town, I encountered around a hundred of the town’s infantrymen and some from the citadel. A little later came a good number of children carrying banners depicting our coats-of-arms and olive branches, who kept shouting Your Excellency’s name and mine. The gate of the town was adorned with greenery and coats-of-arms. At the count’s house where I am staying, I met many women who all greeted me cheerfully, welcomed, and honored me. The most prominent men from here paid me their respects with a visit, putting themselves at my disposal and asking pardon if, given the season and the weather, I was not being honored as they would have liked. In doing so they showed both in word and in deed that they are good Gonzaga subjects, for nothing was lacking in their extravagant expense for me, and one could see right into their hearts. I wanted to inform Your Excellency of this to confirm your good opinion of them, and I commend them to you. This morning I visited the church of the Annunciation, a devout and beautiful place housing observant Minorite friars. After lunch, I went to see the fortress, which I won’t describe because I know you have seen it, but I will declare that I never saw a more beautiful setting than that one. I amused and refreshed my spirits enormously by asking the names of all the infinite lands that one can see from there. If Your Excellency has decided to have some lodgings built there, you

164. AG 2996 libro 30a c. 90r. On 15 March 1514, Isabella commenced a tour of Gonzaga subject regions aimed at reinforcing loyalties to the ruling dynasty: see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este 2:95–109. 165. AG 2996 libro 30a cc.90r–91r.

374 ISABELLA D’ESTE are quite right, for they will be the most delightful in the world.166 In the opinion of all in my entourage, the air here is most perfect, and Capilupi in particular says his head, eyes, and ears—which have been causing him heaviness—all feel lighter than they have in some time. Coming out of the fortress, I went by the gates of the citadel toward the church of San Zeno. Turning at the ravine of Molini, I saw that beautiful water, those lovely vineyards, and those gorgeous fields which all appear to be gardens, so well are they maintained. I returned to the town greatly satisfied. I am sure, My Lord, that if Your Excellency could come to stay a few days in this fresh air you would feel marvelously improved. Tomorrow I will dine at Sirmione, and once I have decided what will follow after that, I will advise Your Excellency of my next movements. Having written up to this point, I received your letter responding to those I sent you from Goito. I am pleased that you are satisfied with my writing, but even more at hearing that you think you are benefiting from the pills you took. I pray you keep me informed of your progress, and that the Lord God make you flourish, as is by now both timely and necessary for us. I thank Your Excellency with all my heart for the good news you report on the safety of the affairs of the illustrious lord duke our brother, because I was worried at the silence of the illustrious lord viceroy. So as not to close this letter without a miracle, I will tell you one most true. Yesterday during the entry into the town, a shotgun went off with a lead pellet that passed through the sleeve of the shirt, tunic, and coat of Zanino, Maestro Domenico the stablemaster’s son, without touching him or hurting him in any way—not his arm or any other part of his body. I think that such must be the nature of miracles at Goito, a happy portent of the security of this land, which we must hold most dear. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good graces. Letter 508: 1514 March 21 Sirmione To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing her travels, with notes on Gonzaga property confiscated, on the king of France, and on the emperor.167 Continuing to keep Your Excellency informed of my days, I report that yesterday I went to the mountain to see the ruins, going inside the grottoes in order to get a good look.168 They are truly marvelous, especially to me, since I have not seen the ones in Rome. I don’t wonder that the Romans appreciated and delighted in this 166. To my knowledge, Francesco Gonzaga never built lodgings here for pleasure. On his architectural and artistic projects, see Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga. I further thank Bourne for informing me that in March 1514 Francesco was quite ill and bedridden, hence Isabella’s concern here for his health. 167. AG 2996 libro 30a cc. 92r–v. For Cartwright’s translation, see Isabella d’Este, 2:99–100. 168. Isabella is likely referring to the Grotte di Catullo in Sirmione, which still exist and date back to Roman antiquity. These structures on the south side of Lake Garda offer splendid vistas; they are not caves but rather the remains of a Roman villa which has collapsed creating cavities into which one can step. Images may be seen at .

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 375 site, because it is beautiful and merits wondrous buildings. If God grants health to Your Excellency and allows us to enjoy these places, we must build a lodge here, not for show, since our state has no need of that, but for pleasure and comfort. I spent the whole day on foot and horseback, contemplating the ruins and the lay of the land. Today I went to Peschiera, stopping off first at the church of the Madonna of Frassino, who they say performs many miracles.169 And indeed there are many tokens of vows to her, and the beginnings of a lovely church. I prayed to her wholeheartedly for Your Excellency’s health. Then I went to the town. As I entered, I found the castellan, a Spanish captain who escorted me to the fortress with many kind words and gestures. When I saw that inside there were no more than twelve or fifteen slender looking infantrymen, I got the urge to capture the castellan and the soldiers and make myself mistress of that place, along with my ladies and my servants! The names of the king of France and the emperor—who hold this territory with no right to it—were never mentioned without muttered curses. Lonato’s setting is lovely; that of Sirmione is even more beautiful, but most beautiful of all is that of Peschiera, so we must do all we can to get it back. I confess to Your Excellency that during my return to Sirmione I was most disquiet, and the feeling remains with me still. When I think of the great wrong that is done us for something of little importance to those who have taken it, but that for us would be very useful and pleasing… Well, enough of this, I don’t want to talk about it any more. Tomorrow I’m going to see the island where the Minorite Friars are, and then I will lodge at Salò. I sent to ask if I could be housed there, and that governor—he too a Spaniard—replied that I would find comfortable lodgings. He extended me many courtesies and favors, inviting and encouraging me to go there. From Salò I will travel to see the coast once more, as long as the weather is good, though I hear that at present it is only the air that one can enjoy. I would have sent Your Excellency some fish, but I know you don’t eat it, nor is any food I might send right for you now. In truth, there is very little fish being caught; I have not seen so much as a sardine since arriving. They say the air is too clear and that the winds are blowing in the wrong direction. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace.

169. The Madonna of the Ash Tree (frassino) was said to have appeared by miracle in Peschiera del Garda, in 1510 and to have provided relief from the sufferings of war and plague. According to the sanctuary’s official Website, a preliminary chapel was erected in September 1510. .

376 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 509: 1514 March 23 Salò To Francesco II Gonzaga, on welcome and feasting in Salò.170 Yesterday, as I wrote to Your Lordship I wanted to do, I left Sirmione and went to the island of the Minorite Friars. I found the site and the place lovely but poorly adorned, considering the fruit trees and delicacies it could have. The monastery is very comfortable and pretty, the church is dainty but devout. The friars were glad to see me. Also there was the most illustrious captain of Salò, Guglielmo Castiglio (a chamberlain and creature of the viceroy), along with many people and numerous boats. He showed me the greatest courtesies in the world. When I re-embarked, I took him and another Spaniard into my boat. His own boat and more than twenty-five others filled with people carrying drums and trumpets followed, and I was accompanied to Salò by endless, tireless cries of the names Turco, Gonzaga, and Isabella!171 I turned the whole boat around before disembarking, in order to take in that beautiful vista. I got off at the municipal house where the captain resides. There were so many people that I was stupefied. The townsmen received me with glad faces. Under a loggia that borders on the lake shore and over which is the salon of this house were tables loaded with baskets full of bread, Brasadella cake, apples, pears, grapes, boxes of candies, pine nut cakes, marzipans, cera,172 sugar, and plates of assorted fish in great quantity which these men presented to me with long tributes and beautiful words, showing great fondness for Your Excellency. I too then showed them great affection, thanks, and favor in Your Excellency, toward whom they made so many good gestures. Perhaps in the future you will return there, having made so many friends. When I then returned to my room and the captain had left, he too sent me a beautiful gift of fish, apples, and grapes. I had not been previously aware of this, but he says he has been to Mantua, both with the viceroy and in his absence with Galindo for the dealings regarding la Brognina.173 He is so courteous and well mannered. Today I will remain here in order to see the territory and the monasteries of the friars and the nuns. Tomorrow I will go by land to dine at Grignano so that I can see Toscolano Maderno174 and the other gardens, and I’ll return by boat if the weather is fine. Since Saturday is the feast of the Annunciation, I will attend holy offices with these sisters.175 Sunday I will cross the lake and lodge at 170. AG 2996 libro 30a cc. 93r–v. See Cartwright, Isabella d’Este 2:100–102 for her translation. 171. See notes to Letter 266 of 7 February 1502. 172. Normally this work means “wax” or “candle,” and Cartwright translates it as “wax”: Isabella d’Este 2:101. I leave it untranslated, as context suggests a possible reference to something edible. 173. See the letters above regarding la Brognina. Cartwright reads “Celindo” for “Galindo” and identifies this person as the viceroy’s chamberlain: Isabella d’Este 2:101. 174. Toscolano-Maderno lies on the west shore of Lake Garda. 175. This Christian feast, depicted in countless sacred images, is usually celebrated on 25 March. It commemorates the Angel Gabriel’s appearance to the Virgin Mary to announce that she was chosen

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 377 Lazise so as to see the other shore.176 Monday I’ll go to Peschiera and then return to Mantua. I have nothing more to write to Your Excellency, save that every time I see a delightful place I wish for you to see it, and that I continuously desire to hear of your improved health. I commend myself to your good graces. Letter 510: 1514 March 25 Salò To Gian Giorgio Trissino, thanking him for compositions in her honor.177 Your letter, verses and literary work could not have come to us in a setting more fitting to your profession, since these shores of Garda where we now find ourself are especially conducive to poetry and reflection. We received them and read them most gladly, given that they were works of yours. To our thinking they are most elegant and clever, though they far exceed the realm of truth in their praise of us. Since the popular saying goes, “I know you lie, and yet I like to hear it,” we will hold them dear as the compositions of such a noble and learned person as you are. In accordance with your wishes, we will show them to no one; but this suits us well, since we wish to have you remove certain parts that pertain to our person and which we will tell you about when we can speak with you. We confess that your wish to bring the book in person and pay us a visit would have been even more pleasing to us too, because we wished very much to see you and enjoy your company for a few days before you go to Rome. But the arrival of the Spanish in Mantua for this Carnival and our departure for the lake prevented us from seeking you out, and your preparations for going to Rome kept you from going to Mantua. What pleases you pleases us, and we wish you a good journey to Rome. If there is anything we can do on your behalf, do not hesitate to seek our help; we would do as much for you as for any friend we have. We don’t want to thank you in words and letters for such a beautiful gift as this book, since we know they are insufficient if you don’t assist us by considering what our heart wants to to be the mother of God. 176. Lazise lies on the east shore of Lake Garda. 177. AG 2996 libro 30a cc. 94r–v. See Cartwright’s translation and discussion in Cartwright, Isabella d’Este 2:102–5; and Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 363–65. Trissino is best known as the author of the first classical tragedy written in Italian (and one of the first in Europe), Sofonisba (1514– 1515). The work Isabella had just received was likely an excerpt from Trissino’s Ritratti (Portraits), a dialogue containing literary portraits of renowned Italian women (published 1524). It is not clear what changes Isabella wanted to make to this flattering, indeed sycophantic, text. During the Italian Wars, Trissino suffered exile from his native Vicenza. At this point, he was on his way to Rome, hoping to obtain employment at the court of Pope Leo X, a venture in which Isabella d’Este assisted him with vigorous letters of recommendation. See also Marina Beer, “Idea del ritratto femminile e retorica del classicismo: I ‘ritratti’ di Isabella d’Este di Gian Giorgio Trissino,” in Schifanoia 10: Art, Patronage and Ideology at Fifteenth-Century Italian Courts, ed. Joanna Woods-Marsden, Schifanoia (1990), 161–73; Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 178–81. On Sofonisba, see Phillips-Court, The Perfect Genre, 57–100.

378 ISABELLA D’ESTE say but our tongue does not know how to express. Perhaps another time we will be able to do this better in speaking to you. In the meantime, please accept as thanks the desire we feel to please you, as you will hear at greater length from Lady Margherita Cantelma. We have not heard how your affairs proceed in Vicenza; if you leave orders with your men, we will not fail to show you all possible favor. Letter 511: 1514 April 7 Mantua To the marchese of Bitonto, thanking him for a book by Jacopo Sannazaro.178 Your Lordship’s letters brought us no less pleasure and refreshment than you say ours brought to you, both because we learned of your well-being, which we very much desire, and for the fact that you remembered to obtain some things from Messer Jacopo Sannazaro, which we received and for which we are most grateful, for he is a very fine writer.179 We thank Your Lordship greatly, and we pray you, if you can get other things of his or of other worthy men, to please share them with us; that would be most welcome. At present we have nothing more to write to Your Lordship, except that we are well, and to reaffirm our wish always to hear the same of you and to be able to please you. We commend ourself to Your Lordship and to your most illustrious consort. Letter 512: 1514 May 19 Mantua To Protonotary Galeazzo Bentivoglio, on her reputation for concocting the finest perfumes.180 Through a letter from Your Lordship from the 5th of this month, we heard of the debate you had with the perfumers of Rome and all those Spanish and Italian ladies because you maintained that we make the most excellent concoction to be found, and that you were compelled to enter into a comparison test. And so that you might defend our title as a good and accomplished perfumer, we are sending 178. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 3v. Luzio and Renier identify this addressee as Francesco Acquaviva, though that family had by this time lost its title to the marquisate. Francesco, who had served as a condottiere under Pope Julius II, was married to Dorotea Gonzaga, daughter of Gianfrancesco and of Antonia del Balzo: La coltura, 255–56. 179. The Neapolitan Sannazaro authored, among other works, one of early modern Europe’s most influential literary texts, the pastoral romance Arcadia (completed around 1489, published 1505). Isabella much admired him and had been in contact with Sannazaro at least since 1503, when he was residing in France along with his exiled patron, Federico d’Aragona, king of Naples. Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 251–60. 180. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 12r. The playful tone of Isabella’s language in this letter vies with her genuine competitive investment in her reputation as a formulator of cosmetics. Pizzagalli provides a partial transcription: La signora del Rinascimento, 366. On Isabella’s beauty secrets see Luzio and Renier, “Il lusso di Isabella d’Este,” 666–88.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 379 Your Lordship a little flacon through your nuncio. We beg your pardon us if we only send a little, for since we have been sought out by different persons who have heard of our concoction’s excellence—and once again by the Lord Magnifico and some other lords of Naples—we have almost run out. Your Lordship shall accept this for now, along with our good intentions, which are always ready to please you, and to which we offer ourself. Letter 513: 1514 June 12 Cremona To Federico II Gonzaga, on parties he is too young to attend.181 We make no reply to your letter of yesterday except to tell you that we are pleased to hear you are well and that the pain has subsided in your leg. You do well to apply baths and salves until the danger that other fluids will descend has passed. The lord duke [of Milan] arrived here yesterday evening and we began to dance and make merry. We would indeed have wished you could be here, and we do wish it for the future, if these parties should take place in the daytime. But because they are nighttime parties, we think it unfitting to wish them on you, knowing that at night you like sleeping much better than dancing! We have nothing more to report to you except that we are well and we urge you to keep yourself healthy. P.S.: See that you write us very often, even if you have nothing to write about, because for us it will suffice if you report that you are well. Letter 514: 1514 June 17 Cremona To Francesco II Gonzaga, on attending the Corpus Christi celebrations in disguise.182 Your letters of the 5th and 11th of this month require no reply except to say that I was very pleased to hear that your condition improved after my departure and that I hope each day will follow better than the day before. May God grace Your Lordship and me with this, for by now it is time. I reported all your news to the most illustrious lord duke and thanked him on your behalf, as you wrote I should do. What pleasure this good news gave His Excellency I won’t write, leaving it instead for you to imagine. He commends himself to you again. To continue keeping Your Excellency informed of all my activities, I will tell you that on the day of Corpus Christi, since our sister-in-law Madonna Laura and I had decided not to give up our good tradition of participating in the procession, 181. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 21r. Isabella was at this point making her way to Milan, where the newly installed Duke Massimiliano Sforza had insistently invited her to visit. On her travels to Milan and Rome and her complex motivations for undertaking them at this time, see Luzio, Isabella d’Este nei primordi. On her leaving Francesco terribly ill as she made this trip, see Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 366–67. 182. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 21v–22r.

380 ISABELLA D’ESTE we thought we would attend secretly, in poor garb so as not to have a lot of people following us and not to raise a lot of dust.183 When the duke heard about it, he sent Count Lorenzo Strozzi to us right away to tell us not to leave without him, because he wanted to come too. So His Excellency and the above-mentioned Count Lorenzo both dressed as women, and we all went in one company to the procession. When that was over, we went to dine at the illustrious Madonna Laura’s house. We stayed there for a while, and around noon, everyone went home to sleep. That evening, we danced as usual until eleven. Just think, Your Lordship: these evenings are as trying as one can say, because before one gets to bed it is always midnight! We have no news here of the wider world. I received the attached from Benedetto Capilupi and am sending it to Your Excellency to share with you all I have that is worthy of your attention. I commend myself heartily to your good grace, and I thank you for the word you sent me of Federico’s and our other children’s health. Letter 515: 1514 July 12 Milan To Alvise [Ercole] and Ferdinando [Ferrante] Gonzaga, with treats.184 To show you that we think of you always, we thought we would send you this letter telling you that we are well and that we are pleased that you are similarly so. We are sending you through this rider of ours a few chestnuts, which in this season are a rare treat. Federico will have them presented to you, because we directed them to him. Please enjoy them for love of us. See that you stay healthy and study well, so that when we arrive we will recognize that you have borne some fruit. Letter 516: 1514 July 12 Milan To Sister Ippolita Gonzaga, with greetings.185 The other day we learned through letters from some of those most reverend mothers that you were a little ill, but that they hoped it would come to nothing. We were quite sorry to hear of this, but we believe you must already be cured, and may God 183. A “moveable feast,” Corpus Christi commemorates the body (or humanity) of Christ. In Western Christianity, it is traditionally celebrated the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, which is the Sunday after Pentecost. 184. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 29v. Isabella calls her two sons by alternate versions of their names. Ercole (born 1505) was named by Isabella after her own father, but his baptismal name was Luigi, here appearing in its regional, Veneto version, Alvise. Given her close familial and political ties to Spanish Naples, she often hispanizes names as she does here with that of Ferrante Gonzaga (born 1507). Names in this period were quite unstable, both orthographically and presumably, given the different regional dialects and pronunciations, in spoken practice. 185. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 29v. Isabella wrote three letters to her children this day: one to Federico sending him some peaches for himself and the chestnuts for his brothers; one to Ercole and Ferrante

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 381 will that it be so. If you should need anything at all, send home for it, and don’t allow yourself to go without anything. Greet the most reverend mother for us and commend us to her prayers. Do the same for Sister Lucida and Sister Costanza. Letter 517: 1514 August 24 Milan To Giovanni Battista Cattaneo, regarding her dissatisfaction with a cap.186 Contrary to what you wrote us, the cap that you sent us along with your letter of the 21st was not at all satisfactory. Its flaw is that the bands are too close to one another, which makes the gathers too tight. Hence, we are sending it back to you so that you can return it to Sara and she can immediately make another with wider gathers and also more gold, because this one has much less gold than the first one did, which is the opposite of what we wrote you we wanted. Have it made as quickly as possible, and send it to us wherever we are. We say this because on Monday we leave here and will head toward Mantua via Bergamo and Brescia.187 Letter 518: 1514 October 30 Rome To Francesco II Gonzaga, recounting an audience with Pope Leo X and reporting on a victory by the Turks.188 Friday evening His Holiness of Our Lord arrived here in Rome. Just the other day, which was Saturday, the monsignor archdeacon189 had been to see His Beatitude on my behalf to ask when I should go to kiss his foot. He sent to tell me that (above) sending her affections and informing them of the chestnuts; and this rare letter to her cloistered daughter, Sister Ippolita. 186. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 36v. The cap maker invoked in this letter is a woman referred to in other correspondence as Sara Judea (Jewish Sara), a craftswoman who regularly sold work to Isabella. On 2 September 1514, Isabella would write that the cap produced in response to this letter was also unacceptable. 187. Isabella would in fact not return home for nearly seven months. She traveled to Genoa and then headed south for Rome, a city she had longed to see for some time. From 18 to 25 October 1514 she stayed in Rome, cultivating relations with the new pope. She then proceeded to Naples, aiming to reconnect with the mother and daughter Giovanna, widow of King Ferrante of Naples, and Giovanna, the widow of Ferrandino, and to initiate negotiations for a marriage between the latter Giovanna and her nephew Massimiliano Sforza of Milan. From Naples, she returned to Rome for the holidays, arriving 23 December. She re-entered Mantua on 18 March 1515. See Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:110–17; Marek, The Bed and the Throne, 186–94; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 367–82. 188. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 48v–49v. For details on this trip to Rome, see Luzio, Isabella d’Este nei primordi; “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” Archivio storico lombardo series 4, 10 (1908), 361–425. In the latter, he observes that the 1514 sojourn was partially motivated by Isabella’s dismay over Francesco Gonzaga’s court favorite, Tolomeo Spagnoli. On that conflict, see Cockram, Isabella d’Este, 108–10, 189–90. 189. Alessandro Gabbioneta.

382 ISABELLA D’ESTE the time would be Sunday at the twentieth hour [four hours before sunset]. So yesterday, at the indicated time, I was in the palace, where I waited quite a while in one of His Holiness’s chambers, because I had arrived too early.190 Then His Holiness came in, and he sat down. Once he was seated, I went to kiss his foot. After I had kissed it, he received me with all the affection in the world, saying that I was welcome. And he took me by the hand and would not hear of my remaining on my knees and insisted that I sit next to him instead. He said that he was happy to see me for many reasons, the greatest being the infinite debt he owes to Your Excellency, “for which I thank you as much as I can, and also because he has always shown me extraordinary affection, and for the love I bear his dear son.”191 He asked me very lovingly after Your Excellency and Federico. I made good report to him of the dedication Your Lordship, Federico, and I have always shown and continue to show to His Holiness. Then I took leave of him and returned home. Today, I went to visit the most reverend cardinal of San Giorgio,192 who met me on the stairs and welcomed, favored, and honored me as much as I can say. I spoke with His Most Reverend Lordship for a while, and Your Lordship may be certain that he feels great affection for you. He showed me his lovely palace, which will be a beautiful lodging when it is finished. Once I left there I went to the house of the most reverend cardinal of Volterra,193 by whom I was also very well received and welcomed. I will continue to go visiting these most reverend cardinals from day to day, but only the ones from our territories, because I would have too much to do if I tried to visit them all. Letters have come again from Ragusa to His Holiness of Our Lord saying that the Turk [Sultan Selim I] gave an anourmous routing to the Sophì [the Persian ruler].194 Here this is thought to be a terrible thing for Christendom. And so 190. Both Isabella’s eagerness and perhaps her slight provinciality are revealed in this detail of her early arrival for an audience with the pope. 191. While Isabella likely sought to soothe the ruffled feathers of a husband impatient for her return and oppressed by a terrible illness, it is not unlikely that the pope would praise one of Italy’s most famous military captains. 192. Raffaele Sansone Riario: CH. 193. Francesco Soderini, cardinal legate of Bologna: CHRC. 194. Turkish invasions in this period were a major concern for Leo X. The decisive battle of Chaldiran in which the Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated the Safavid Empire in northwest Iran, took place on 23 August 1514. The continuation of this campaign significantly increased the territories of the Ottoman Empire and set the stage for later conflicts between the Ottomans under Selim’s son, Süleyman, and Catholic powers united under emperor Charles V of Habsburg. Here, Isabella reports news of Selim’s victory over the Persians in early November 1514. See Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 99–101; Marin Sanudo, Venice, Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo, ed. Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguineti White, trans. Linda L. Carroll (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 177–79, 189.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 383 this morning a consistory was held and His Holiness of Our Lord said to all the ambassadors of these powerful kingdoms and lords who are here that they should write to say provisions should be made throughout Christendom. Then a copy arrived of a very short letter written by the Turk to Ragusa. If it is possible, I will see to having a copy made and will send it to Your Excellency with the first departing rider. Having nothing else to write, to your good graces, I commend myself. Letter 519: 1514 November 10 Rome To Benedetto Capilupi, on activities and sumptuous receptions in Rome.195 We got your three letters, one by way of Ferrara, the other from Tezoli who arrived here safely on Tuesday, and the other also by way of Ferrara and sent from Sermide on the second of this month. We would like to reply to this by our own hand if we had time, but since we are constantly with these Most Reverend Cardinals and Magnificent lords, we cannot do so. Let it suffice for you to know that we received them and they were very welcome. We have not written you because our life has been one of going every day to look at these antiquities, which seem more marvelous each day. Tuesday the most reverend cardinal our brother196 gave a wonderful dinner at Terme. Then we dined very festively with the Most Reverend Monsignors of Aragon,197 Santa Maria in Portico, Cornaro,198 and Cibo,199 the two Magnificents Giuliano and Lorenzo [de’ Medici], Lord Franceschetto,200 and many other lords and gentlemen, singing and playing music of various kinds. Then in the evening there was a race of seven deer that was a wondrous pleasure. Thus we entertained ourselves that whole day in great jubilance. Yesterday the most reverend monsignor cardinal of San Giorgio gave a banquet that truly would have been fit for any great queen. We stayed at table for four huge hours, continuously feasting and chatting with these Most Reverend lords. Yesterday we arranged with monsignor the archdeacon to speak about your matter.201 As soon as we hear that the ice has been broken with His Holiness of Our Lord, we will do everything possible. And if we cannot get the whole amount, we will see to having a part of it. So keep after us, for we will not fail to take every 195. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 50r–v. 196. Ippolito d’Este. 197. Luigi d’Aragona. 198. Marco Cornaro of the patrician Venetian family. 199. Cardinal Innocenzo Cibo. 200. Francesco Cibo, brother-in-law of Leo X. 201. Isabella was seeking a benefice for Capilupi’s son, Lelio, about which see subsequent letters to Capilupi. On these rocky, if ultimately successful, negotiations, see Luzio, Isabella d’Este nei primordi, 172–75.

384 ISABELLA D’ESTE available opportunity. Commend us to our Most Illustrious lord consort and greet Federico and our other children in our name. And you be well. Letter 520: 1514 December 5 Naples To Benedetto Capilupi, on festivities and sights of Naples.202 As we said we had decided in our letter of the 23rd of last month, we left Rome on the 25th and lodged that night at Velletri, at the house of the most reverend monsignor of San Giorgio,203 accompanied by the most reverend monsignors of Aragona,204 Este,205 Siena,206 and Cibo207 and the Magnificent Lord Lorenzo.208 On Sunday, which was the 26th, we went with the same company to Sermoneta, where we were welcomed and much honored by Lord Guglielmo [Caetani]. From there, with just our own company (since the most reverend cardinals had returned to Rome), we traveled six days by way of Priverno, Fondi, Mola, Sessa Aurunca, and Capua here to Naples, where we were met first at Mola by two gentlemen of the most serene queen and invited on Her Majesty’s behalf to procede to lodgings at her palace. Then we were met at Capua by the lord Marchese of Bitonto [Giovan Francesco Acquaviva] and the son of Lord Fabrizio Colonna and several other lords. Saturday, the 2nd of this month, at about eight p.m. we entered Naples, but before we arrived, we were met outside the city by three, four thousand, more and more crowds of lords and gentlemen. As we entered the city, the streets and windows were crowded full of both women and men. We dismounted at the queen’s palace, and once we had climbed the stairs we went to the apartments of Her Majesty, who met us in the salon. There we paid her reverence and kissed her hand and did the same for the young queen.209 Once we had entered Her Maj202. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 54v–56v. 203. Raffaele Sansone Riario. 204. Luigi d’Aragona. 205. Isabella’s brother, Ippolito. 206. Alfonso Petrucci. Petrucci would die strangled in 1517 for trying to poison Pope Leo X. 207. Innocenzo Cibo. 208. Lorenzo II [Lorenzo di Piero] de’ Medici. 209. The two “queens” are Giovanna, widow of King Ferrante d’Aragona and sister of King Ferdinand the Catholic; and young Giovanna, widow of Ferrandino. Isabella’s use of this title is honorific: neither woman was any longer queen, since the Kingdom passed into Spanish hands in 1502. Pizzagalli observes that one of Isabella’s goals for her Neapolitan visit was to facilitate a marriage between the young Giovanna and her nephew, Massimiliano Sforza, duke of Milan. Though Cartwright reports that Isabella hoped to match Massimiliano with Bona Sforza, daughter of the widowed duchess of Milan Isabella d’Aragona, Pizzagalli documents that the match proposed for Bona (to lukewarm reception by Isabella) was with Federico II Gonzaga. Ady claims that three potential matches were proposed for Sforza (Bona Sforza, Margaret of Austria, and Giovanna Sforza d’Aragona), but that doubts

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 385 esty’s chamber, we embraced the lady marchesa of Bitonto [Dorotea Gonzaga], the Countess of Venafro [Caterina Acquaviva d’Aragona], the lady Madonna Giovanna, both of the vice Queens,210 and many other women. Having finished the necessary ceremonies and received the queen’s leave, we went to our rooms. We have four chambers that are so well furnished and decorated that one could not describe, or imagine, any better. Her Majesty is hosting us and our entire retinue most sumptuously. We never lack for the constant company of all these lords and ladies: our room is always full, from morning to night! Almost every day, we get into the carriage with the young queen, and we ride in a great group of lords, each day seeing now this and now that thing, about which we can tell you at our leisure one-by-one in Mantua. We will stay here until Tuesday, then Wednesday we will depart for the holidays in Rome. If the weather is fine, we may go by sea at least as far as Gaeta in order not to take the bad roads we took in coming here. You may tell all of this to our most illustrious lord consort. We don’t want to tell you everything, first because it would be difficult and almost impossible to tell, and even more so to write; and also in order to save some things to recount in person when we will be in Mantua. We won’t fail to tell you, though, about a most courteous gesture made to us on our first night by the most serene queens. This was that after we had been in our rooms for some time and had rested a bit, they came to us and stayed a while, as affectionately as if one of them were our mother and the other our sister. And just the other day, they came again. We always go each evening to kiss Their Majesties’ hands and stay with them briefly. But what more can we say: Just think that out of love and respect for the happy memory of the most illustrious lady, our mother,211 everyone adores us and comes to see us as if we were a miracle! I know you have seen us pampered and honored in Ferrara.212 Imagine seeing us even more so here, for truly the number of lords and ladies who court us, and the thoughtfulness they show, could not be any greater. about Massimiliano’s political fate mitigated Isabella’s interest in the negotiations. Ady, A History of Milan Under the Sforza, 216; Cartwright, Isabella d’Este 2:114; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 373–75. 210. One of these women must be the wife of Ramón Folch de Cardona, Isabel de Requesens. The other may be Laura Caetana d’Aragona, the wife of Folch’s immediate predecessor, count of Potenza and interim Viceroy Antonio de Guevara (1509). The wife of Viceroy Juan de Aragón (reigned 1507–1509) was by this time deceased. 211. Eleonora d’Aragona (1450–1493), Isabella’s mother, was a daughter of Ferdinando d’Aragona, king of Naples (1423–1494) and of Isabella di Chiaramonte (d. 1465). 212. In her enthusiasm, Isabella slips out of the formal register and refers to herself in the first person singular (me). She recovers her formality in the following sentence, where she once again uses the plural (us).

386 ISABELLA D’ESTE Today we received your two letters from the 19th and the 24th of last month. We are happy to hear everything, and especially that our most illustrious lord consort is in very good condition. Congratulate His Excellency on our behalf for this improvement, and report to us often on his progress. We are writing to La Brogna [Eleonora Brogna de’ Lardis] the attached letter in reply to hers, though we leave it to you to tell her our news. We applaud the decision to send Maria and our things, because we will not be able to get any mules. You may write to Lady Margherita Cantelma that as soon as we are in Rome, we will very happily do that task for her with Lord Magnifico, out of the love we bear her. We were very displeased to hear that Messer Bernardo wrote what he wrote about us to monsignor the most reverend our brother-in-law,213 especially because he has no grounds for complaining about us, since after the first two days we were in Rome, he never again appeared where we were present. Hence we could not have shown him a kind or an unkind face. When he says that he invited us to go to see the house of His Lordship, he is lying in his teeth, because he said neither a little nor a lot to us about it. At present nothing else occurs to us. Commend us to the most illustrious lord, our consort, and greet Federico and his siblings in our name. And you fare well. Letter 521: 1514 December 8 Naples To Benedetto Capilupi, on an enchanting meal served by a young count.214 Yesterday morning, invited to dine by the count of Chiaramonte, who is about twelve or thirteen years old and the son of the prince of Bisignana, we were picked up at our lodgings at the seventeenth hour [seven hours before sunset] and brought to his house and into a beautifully furnished hall. At the eighteenth hour began the meal, which was as grand and lovely as any that have been given since we left Mantua. It lasted from noon until the twenty-third hour [one hour before sunset], and after countless and varied dishes, at the end each person was presented with certain different things made of sugar that were beautiful to see. Before us was placed a galley, brimming with fine and delicate perfumes that was estimated to be worth seventy or eighty ducats. At table there was an infinite number of ladies and countesses. There were no men whatsoever, but after the dinner an infinite number came. This count served us at table with the greatest gallantry in the world, and in truth, if he had been a steward for ten years he could not have conducted more beautiful ceremonies.

213. Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga (1469–1525) was Isabella’s brother-in-law. The Bernardo mentioned here could be Bernardo Accolti who, after the year 1489, resided mostly in Rome. Lilla Mantovani, “Accolti, Bernardo, detto l’Unico Aretino,” DBI 1 (1960). 214. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 56v–57v.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 387 When we rose from the table, those ladies began to dance in pairs, according to their custom; then there was more dancing of women and men together. After the dancing, a little farce was performed in the Spanish style. It was most gallant and lasted about an hour-and-a-half. When that was over, we came home around the fourth hour in the evening we descended from our carriage and went directly to the chambers of the most serene queen to kiss her hand, as we usually do. We stayed with Her Majesty for a while, welcomed and treated with affection, as is her wont. Then we came to our own rooms and, after having something to eat, we went to sleep. Today we went to see the wharf, which is a beautiful thing. As soon as we started to come near, all of the ships and galleys made a joyful and marvelous racket, with countless artillery explosions, trumpets, fifes, and various other sounds. After seeing this, we went to see the castle, since it was nearby. It is certainly very beautiful. We spent all of today doing these things. This morning we got your letter of the 22nd. Since it contains some things that will be sooner answered in person than by letter, we will make no other reply here, except to the part you wrote on commission of our most illustrious consort. To that, you may respond that we have always sought to be most obedient to His Excellency and that we will not fail to be so in the future. Commend us greatly to His Lordship, and as to the part you write that His Excellency would like us to come home once the holidays are over, give him to understand that our heart and opinion are the same as his, because this is what we have already decided to do. To your postscript, since we have no time to respond in our own hand, let this suffice as a reply: that your suspicions seem to us to be those of Margherita Cantelma.215 Be well. Letter 522: 1514 December 8 Naples To Federico II Gonzaga, on courtesies to be emulated.216 Your letter of the 22nd of last month was most welcome. We saw the generosity of spirit you show in not allowing yourself to be outdone in courtesy, and how you follow in the footsteps of the most illustrious lord, your father for splendor and liberality. We praise you greatly for this, and we encourage you to persevere, for you could not please us more. Regarding our amusements here, we refer you to what we have written to Benedetto Capilupi, because we write to him at length about everything. Today we wrote about a meal that was served to us yesterday by the count of Chiaramonte, 215. Reference uncertain. 216. I rely here on the transcription found in D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 317. D’Arco and, following him, Cartwright, date this letter 8 November 1514 from Naples, but Isabella did not depart for Naples until 25 November, as she reports in her letter to Capilupi of 5 December. As the letter makes clear, it was written on the same day as the one to Capilupi that cross-references it.

388 ISABELLA D’ESTE son of the prince of Bisignano.217 We wish you could have been present to see what gallantry he showed in serving women and in the timely orchestration of every detail. Be well, and greet your siblings in our name.218 Letter 523: 1514 December 30 Rome To Francesco II Gonzaga, rejoicing in his complete recovery and addressing a request she made of the pope.219 Today at the twenty-third hour [one hour prior to sunset] I mounted on horseback and went to kiss the foot of His Holiness of Our Lord, as I had not been to see him since my return from Naples. His Beatitude saw and received me very cheerfully. Conversing with him in what seemed to me the most appropriate way, I informed him of Your Excellency’s liberation from long illness through the intervention of Fra Serafino, and I revealed to him the great desire that Your Excellency and I have to reward this friar.220 His Beatitude congratulated me with great pleasure on Your Excellency’s recovered health, and he very graciously promised that without fail in this world, the first bishopric that opens up, either in the Kingdom or wherever is desirable, and that is worth (as Your Excellency wrote) from one hundred to two hundred ducats, will go to repaying the father, to whom Your Excellency and I no less than he feel indebted. What a pleasure this news of your complete liberation was for me, only God can know, because it is inexpressible. I was as happy to ask His Holiness of Our Lord for this favor of the bishopric as I have been to do anything for many months and years. And since I found him so kind in this matter, I ventured also to ask him the favor of seeing that there is a commemoration in the church of Blessed Osanna.221 He signaled his good will, and I hope to achieve this. I had decided, after hearing of Your Excellency’s recovery, to depart from here in eight days. But today His Holiness of Our Lord said to me that up to now he has not been able to entertain me, and that he wants me to stay for fifteen or twenty days more because he wants to show me some hunts. I will try, with His 217. Bernardino Sanseverino. 218. For her translation see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:114–15. The Count of Chiaramonte, whom Pizzagalli identifies as the son of the Prince of Bisignana, was slightly younger than Federico: La signora del Rinascimento, 376. 219. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 63r–v. King Louis XII of France would die on 1 January 1515 to be succeeded by François I, who would immediately claim the title of duke of Milan. French forces marched on that city the following summer, defeating the Swiss and papal army at the Battle of Marignano on 14 September 1515. 220. Francesco attributed his successful recovery to the intercession of the Franciscan friar, Serafino da Ostuni: Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 377. 221. Osanna Andreasi. Another of Isabella and Francesco’s aims for her visit at the papal court was to propose the beatification of their spiritual advisor, the Dominican tertiary Osanna Andreasi. This mission would be successful.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 389 Beatitude’s good grace, to depart as soon as I can. To Your Excellency’s grace I commend myself. Letter 524: 1515 January 11 Rome To Federico II Gonzaga, responding to his claims that he is good at pampering women.222 We were very pleased to learn from your letter of the second-to-last day of last month that you enjoyed hearing our praises of the count of Chiaramonte and that you yourself practice the same manner of serving and pampering women, making merry and entertaining the ladies there, as you wrote to us. We encourage and urge you to continue thus, even though we cannot be there as both you and we would wish, because His Holiness of Our Lord will not hear of our leaving before Carnival is over. To enthuse you yet more in your gallant service to women, and to paint a better picture of the count of Chiaramonte’s virtues, we wouldn’t dream of omitting the great gallantry he showed when he took his leave of us to turn back toward Naples after having accompanied us for three days after our departure. This is what he did: He undressed down to his undershirt in front of us and, with another gentleman, played with all sorts of arms with the greatest of ease. Then, having played for a while, he took that gentleman he was playing against as his prisoner and immediately bestowed him upon our cousin, Madonna Diana [d’Este], having surmised that the man had been paying her court. So make yourself the mirror of this count: continue to serve women and grow into a man of valor, as we trust from your good beginnings you will be. Letter 525: 1515 January 11 Rome To Francesco II Gonzaga, telling them she won’t be home until after Carnival.223 This morning, having heard that His Holiness wanted to leave in two days to go to Magliana for recreation, I sent the archdeacon [Alessandro Gabbioneta] to His Blessedness to inform him that before his departure I wished to request his leave, to kiss his foot, and then set out for home. Your Excellency will hear His Holiness’s precise response at length from the archdeacon’s letters, but the sense of it is this: His Holiness does not wish to let me leave, because he is determined to show me some fun and wants to take me to see some hunts. I quite regret that His Holiness does not want to let me depart, because since you are in such good health, I wanted to spend this Carnival in pleasures with you. But since His Holiness is of 222. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 66r–v. This letter is part of an ongoing conversation in which Isabella writes to the young teen about gallantries performed for her by the high society of Rome, and Federico writes back with his own claims to such good manners. See also Letter 522 of 8 December 1514, above. 223. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 65r–v.

390 ISABELLA D’ESTE a mind for me to stay, I will do so happily, in the persuasion that Your Lordship too is content, since you are always ready to please His Holiness in every matter. I commend myself to you always from the heart. Letter 526: 1515 January 11 Rome To Benedetto Capilupi, telling him she won’t be home for Carnival, ordering a blanket, and asking for her viola.224 From letters written by the archdeacon to the lord as well as from ours, you will learn of the decision made by His Holiness of Our Lord, who wants us to stay here for this Carnival. We quite regret this in many respects, but most of all since it means we will miss that beautiful party Messer De Viano was preparing for us, about which you wrote us. But patience! We will go instead to Ostia for a few days and then proceed to nearby locales for His Lordship’s hunts. And thus we will chase away our sadness at missing such a lovely party. If His Lordship [Francesco Gonzaga] were healthy and in the shape to ride that he once was, we would have decided that the colts given to us in Naples be given to His Excellency. But considering that it will do no good and that if we gave them to him they would in part if not all be given to other people, we have decided they will be Federico’s if they turn out well. We want you to have made another down blanket similar to the other three you sent us, and send it to Bologna in the hands of Bugatto with orders to send it to us via some conveyance that is coming this way. We will have it paid for here. Then we want you to find out from Marchetto [Cara] what happened to that viola of ours that he had in his possession and that Roberto [d’Avanzini] was using, and have them give it to you.225 Then have made for it a good box that is strong, and send it too with Bugatto so he can send it in the same vehicle with the blanket, because we want to give it away. We got your letter of the second-to-last day of last month and it was most welcome to us. No other reply is needed now, except to commend you very highly for it. Be well. Letter 527: 1515 January 29 Rome To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing festivities for Carnival in Rome.226 Until I got Your Lordship’s letter of the 19th of this month, in which you inform me that you are content and satisfied for me to stay here in Rome for this Carnival, my heart could never be at peace, for it seems to me that without your consent I 224. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 65v–66r. 225. On Cara, see Prizer, Courtly Pastimes. The lutenist and vocalist D’Avanzini had been Cara’s accompanist since at least 1512: Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 522. 226. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 69r–v.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 391 could not live happily. Now that you have written that you are content for me to stay, I will be merry and good humored, for which I thank you with all my heart. I assure you that once Carnival is past I will undoubtedly depart, all the more since the monsignor archdeacon told me that His Holiness of Our Lord once again promised him and gave his word that he would allow me to leave. God knows how much I desire my return, for it seems a thousand years since I have seen Your Lordship in the good health you write me you now enjoy. Yesterday, to start the holidays and live this Carnival season merrily, I went to dinner with the Magnificent Lord Lorenzo [II de’ Medici], who had extended me an invitation two days earlier. I was picked up at home around the twentieth hour [four hours prior to sunset] and taken to his house, where they had a lovely bull hunt, and they killed four bulls.227 The hunt lasted about three hours. Afterwards, as evening was coming on, there was dancing until the fourth hour [after sunset]. At the party were the Most Reverend Cardinals d’Aragona, Este, of Siena, and Cibo in masks, and the Monsignors Santa Maria in Portico [Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena] and [Marco] Cornaro without masks, all of whom dined there. Also present were all the sisters and relatives of the pope. The meal was quite beautiful and sumptuous. It lasted about two hours. Afterwards, people went back to dancing and danced until the eighth hour. I came home at that time along with the above-mentioned most reverend cardinals and the Magnificent Lord Lorenzo. This morning, I am leaving for Decima, the Most Reverend Monsignore [Luigi] d’Aragona’s place ten miles from here, to see some hunts that His Most Reverend Lordship is having for me. I will stay there for four days of recreation. I thought I would share all of this with Your Lordship, because I know that you take pleasure in hearing sometimes about my activities. About that brief that Your Lordship wrote me in recent days that we should get for the venerable father who took care of you, monsignor the archdeacon [Gabbioneta] told me that we will have it.228 I commend myself always to you from the heart.

227. The caccia dei tori (bull hunt) was, as Robert C. Davis explains, an event of ritual bull-baiting in which men from the working classes displayed their physical prowess by keeping bulls under control while attack dogs bit and tormented the large animals. Then the bulls were paraded through the streets and, eventually, presented at the balconies of ladies who cheered this display of virile dominance. See 26–27 in Davis, “The Geography of Gender in the Renaissance” in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis (New York: Routledge, 1998), 19-38. 228. See Letter 523 of 30 December 1514. The breve [brief, or letter] exonerated Fra Serafino from the most rigid of his monastic vows and gave him permission to practice medicine. Serafino was thenceforth allowed to remain at court as principal chaplain; Luzio declares uncertainty about whether Serafino ever became a bishop: Isabella d’Este nei primordi, 175–76.

392 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 528: 1515 January 29 Rome To Benedetto Capilupi, assuring him that a benefice for his son, Lelio is nearly at hand.229 Just now, which is the fifteenth hour [nine hours prior to sunset], we are about to mount a horse to ride to Decima, a place ten miles from here belonging to the Most Reverend Monsignor d’Aragona, to see some hunts that he is having. We will be there for four days. No reply is required to your several letters, which we did receive. Please know that they were most appreciated. About your benefice, yesterday Monsignor d’Aragona told us that His Holiness of Our Lord said to him that he surely wants it to go to Lelio, and that we need have no further doubts. The archdeacon confirmed the same this morning. So keep after us, for we want you to have it. Be well. Letter 529: 1515 February 17 Rome To Benedetto Capilupi, assuring him that a benefice has come through and describing the Agoni and other entertainments.230 We got your letters of the 4th, 6th, 9th, and 12th of this month, which were brimming with numerous and varied reports. Since they were up to your usual standard, they were much appreciated. We applaud your diligence! No reply is required, except to tell you that regarding your benefice, it is not necessary to replicate the letter to the cardinal, nor to have the Most Reverend Cardinal d’Aragona or anyone else write to mitigate, because we have arranged with His Holiness of Our Lord through the above-mentioned Monsignor d’Aragona to have His Beatitude write a letter to the Most Reverend Alessandro Spagnolo and to Don Peregrino telling them to put the estate of the benefice in the name of His Holiness, and this was done.231 Monsignor [Gabbioneta] the archdeacon is sending it with this group of riders, from what we have been told. We will see to having the seals expedited before our departure, which will be the first Monday of Lent, without fail. And if we are not able to expedite them before we leave here, do not worry in the least, because we will leave things in such hands and on such terms that the matter surely will be taken care of. Regarding the grain sale, there is no need to dispense with it before we arrive, because since His Holiness of Our Lord gave us a thousand ducats yesterday, we hope that this money will suffice for the journey home. You need no longer 229. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 69v–70r. See Letter 519 of 10 November 1514. 230. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 72v–74r. 231. See Letter 527 of 29 January 1514. The problem that had emerged was that the pope had assigned to the young Capilupi a benefice already given to Isabella’s brother-in-law, Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga, who was not eager to relinquish it, despite his own wealth and the pope’s clear preference for him to resolve the matter generously. In the end, Isabella prevailed.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 393 write to the factor about allowing Messer Alessandro Spagnolo to water his garden. Just the other day we wrote to him, since Messer Archdeacon had made this request to us on his behalf. On our entertainments and pleasures, we know that the above-mentioned monsignore [Gabbioneta] must have written fully to the most illustrious lord, our consort. We will not write to His Excellency in addition, in order—as we wrote to him also—not to tire him with reading the same thing twice. We are content to tell you a little something, though, so as avoid the fatigue of telling you everything when we are in Mantua.232 On a certain day, which is Fat Thursday and which fell just the other day, you may have heard that here they have a beautiful holiday every year called the Agoni [Competitive Games]. One can really say this is a beautiful day, because it makes for quite a show. We left our house to see it at the home of the most reverend monsignor bishop della Valle.233 He met us so honorably and welcomed us as well as could be. After we had been there for a while looking out the window to see the triumphal carriages and the whole company pass by, the above-mentioned monsignor had a lovely lunch brought in that would compare very well to those of Naples, because there was no lack of candies of all sorts in great quantity. After lunch, we stayed awhile longer until the parade had passed; then we mounted our horse, and in order to see the carriages and all the parade together with the Agoni, we went to the house of Messer Angelo dal Bufalo, a Roman gentleman.234 He welcomed us with the greatest honor and courtesies that one can say or imagine. We saw from there all the carriages together and all of those people in armor, which was a most magnificent thing. After the festivities, since it was already the first half-hour at night [after sunset], the aforesaid Messer Angelo did not want us to leave, as he too wanted us to dine. Imagine that he is such a splendid and considerate person that he would not be outdone by monsignor the bishop della Valle, and he compares very well with him. After the lunch, we came home around the second hour [after sunset], and the dancing began. It lasted until the ninth hour. Yesterday, invited by His Holiness of Our Lord to Castel Sant’Angelo to see the boat races in a palio on the Tiber, we went there to see this race. Afterwards, there was a battle with oranges, which would have been wonderful to see if the great wind on the piazza had not obscured the game. After the festival we went to 232. Note Isabella’s management of her store of news over time. Here and in other letters she both dispenses and saves, so as to keep her readers engaged but also have a quantity of stories to tell upon returning home. 233. Perhaps Andrea Della Valle, bishop of Crotone and of Mileto, who would be named titular cardinal of Sant’Agnese in Agone in 1517: CHRC. 234. Dal Bufalo appears several times in the Novelle of Matteo Bandello. Most notably, he is the dedicatee of novella 2.52, and in the famous novella about the Roman courtesan, Imperia (3.42), he figures as Imperia’s lover and patron. Bandello, Tutte le opere; Pio Pecchiai, Donne del Rinascimento in Roma: Imperia, Lucrezia, figlia d’Imperia, la misteriosa Fiammetta (Padua: CEDAM, 1958), 26–29.

394 ISABELLA D’ESTE see His Holiness. He welcomed us very lovingly and had a most sumptuous lunch brought in. After that, we took leave of His Beatitude and came home. Tomorrow will be the festival of Testaccio, which we hear will be beautiful. We will remain here enjoying these few days in entertainments and pleasures during Carnival. Greetings to Federico on our behalf. Be well. Letter 530: 1515 March 18 Mantua To Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico, pining for Rome.235 I am in Mantua, wishing I were in Rome, save for the fact of having obeyed and pleased my most illustrious lord. Imagine how different this room and my life here are from that of Rome, and how strange this seems to me. My body is here, my spirit in Rome.236 In spirit, I see and speak continuously with you and the other most reverend lord cardinals, and it almost seems I can kiss the foot and adore His Holiness of Our Lord. In such fantasies, I try to fool myself and learn to pass the time less tediously, as I await the opportunity to be of service to Your Most Reverend Lordship in repayment or recognition of the infinite debts I know I owe you. Command me, then; for I desire nothing but to obey Your Most Reverend Lordship, just as I never cease to request things from you and put you to work. Your Most Reverend Lordship deigned, on your own, to ask Our Lord for the annual stipend of the benefice for the son of Benedetto Capilupi, my secretary; and once you obtained it, you assigned its commission the lord datary.237 The seal was sent to me expedited, but since the maestro of donations was not available, a guarantee was made to pay it if it is not signed and expedited within one month, 235. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 77r. This letter is partially reproduced in Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 215. Isabella’s use of informal pronouns (I, me) to refer to herself here is a clear sign of the close relationship she had formed with Bibbiena, especially in Rome. She addresses him at the mid-range formal level she also uses for her husband Francesco and her closest friends: not the very familiar “tu,” which she uses for her children and servants, and not the “voi” she generally adopts in much of her business or official correspondence, but the “Lei” and “Your Lordship” forms she employs for many people of rank whom she knows and respects. 236. The opening sentences provide an excellent example of Isabella’s strenuous employment of writing to bridge physical distances. Also apparent here is the immensity of Rome’s grandeur. Intense and lavish as her life was in Mantua by normal standards, it must have paled by comparison to the extravagance and celebrity of the Roman scene at Leo X’s court, an environment that perfectly suited the tastes of the glamour-loving, socially adept Isabella. This missive to Bibbiena resonates with the relative quiet of the small Lombard court and the absence of the frenetic rhythm of appointments and late nights that filled her reports from Rome. Here and in subsequent letters, moreover, we also see how much political networking and bridge building she succeeded in doing on this trip to Rome and Naples. 237. A cardinal and officer of the papal court charged with dating bulls, benefices, and other documents emanating from papal decisions. This office no longer exists.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 395 which will be up on the 9th of April. I pray Your Most Reverend Lordship, since you arranged for me to have the donation, please have the maestro sign it. I will esteem this favor a much greater one to me than the benefice is to my servant, since word has spread through all of Mantua that our lord [the pope] graciously granted it to me.238 I will consider this a singular favor from Your Most Reverend Lordship, to whose good grace I commend myself, begging you deign to kiss the foot of our lord in my name. Letter 531: 1515 March 28 Mantua To Cardinal Innocenzo Cibo, expressing nostalgia for Rome and all the cardinals.239 I received Your Most Reverend Lordship’s letter the other day. It showed me that you keep me in your memory, for you desired to know that my journey was favorable, and you specially commissioned one of your servants, whom you were sending to the Most Illustrious Lord Giuliano [de’ Medici] to visit me on his way and relay some messages on your behalf. The letter came to me from Bologna, since your servant took a long way on the shortest route. It was as welcome to me as if you had spoken to me, since I know Your Most Reverend Lordship’s loving spirit. You showed me still more kindness when you had your servant visit me again on his return trip and speak such lovely words to me. These continuous gestures in absentia increase the debt I already owed you for similar courtesies Your Most Reverend Lordship showed me in person. Words of thanks can match neither your merits nor my wishes. However, leaving this subject aside, I will say that my return has hardly been favorable, given that I find myself deprived of conversation with so many lords and especially with Your Most Reverend Lordship. Nor do I and the lady countess have any greater pastime than to speak of you and the other lord cardinals when we are together. I will not expand on this topic, for I know that you will be fully informed of it by your servant. I rely on him to reply on this subject as well as on all he told me on your behalf on his return trip. I only remind Your Most Reverend Lordship that you may call upon me as you would on your own sister; nor could I find any greater pleasure than to be of service to you. I commend myself to your good grace and pray you deign to kiss the foot of our lord [the pope] in my name; and commend me to your most illustrious mother and the illustrious lord, your father. 238. Bibbiena was instrumental in the success of the assignation of this particular benefice, perhaps because he felt genuine attachment to the marchesa of Mantua. Here Isabella marks the prestige that came to her for negotiating favors from the most powerful court in Italy, but we also see in this and related letters her intrepid attention to these projects. 239. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 79r–v.

396 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 532: 1515 April 11 Mantua To Giovanni Gonzaga, attempting to obtain antiquities of Galeazzo Sforza da Pesaro.240 Our dismay at hearing word of Lord Galeazzo of Pesaro’s worsening condition is far greater than our pleasure at the hope of acquiring his antiquities, for we loved—and love—him more than a little while he lives, and we would be happy for him to enjoy them for a long time to come. We do not, however, deny that we will hold it most dear to receive these things from the illustrious lord duke if it pleases Our Lord God to call Lord Galeazzo to him. They will be all the more immeasurably welcome for coming to us from the hand of His Excellency the aforesaid lord duke, whose visit will give us much greater pleasure and satisfaction than will the antiquities. Thus, though we will feel sadness at the memory of the person they belonged to, the duke’s presence will bring us not only cheer, but also satisfaction and full contentment. We therefore pray Your Lordship relay our infinite gratitude for the one and the other offer, which are not to be refused. Commend us to the good grace of His Most Illustrious Lordship. We commend ourself to yours as well and to that of the lady Maddalena, your consort. P.S.: Because our desire is great to have these antiquities when Lord Galeazzo does pass away, we name you as our attorney to look after them and see that they are conserved, so that they are not snatched and hidden, since the most illustrious lord duke was so liberal in gift-giving. And we also remind you that if the duke’s arrival should be delayed at length, as things often are there, to please arrange to have them sent, because to tell you the truth, our heart will be aflutter until we have them in the house. We commend ourself to Your Lordship.241

240. AG 2996 libro 31 cc. 85v–86r. Giovanni Gonzaga and his wife were currently residing in Milan at the Sforza court. The antiquities in question were willed to Duke Massimiliano Sforza, but upon the elder Sforza’s death he had indicated his desire to give them as a gift to his aunt Isabella. See Gino Benzoni, “Gonzaga, Giovanni,” DBI 57 (2001). As Brown notes, Isabella was especially keen to have these objects, since she had returned from Rome empty-handed. Having failed to buy any of the ancient objects she had so admired or even to procure a painting she had tried to commission from Rafaello Sanzio, she set her sights on this collection of antiquities in the estate of Galeazzo Sforza of Pesaro, valued at one thousand scudi: Brown, Lorenzoni, and Hickson, “Per dare qualche splendore,” 266–73; see also Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 384. 241. Given the shift in tone from the letter’s deferential gratitude to the postscript’s hunger and impatience, the latter must have been written on a separate sheet. The letter itself could be shown to the Sforzas, while the postscript would have been meant for Giovanni Gonzaga’s eyes only.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 397 Letter 533: 1515 May 4 Mantua To Lorenzo da Pavia, about repairing a broken viola and her failure to acquire antiquities in Rome.242 We agree with your opinion that it would be much better to remake the whole back of the viola than to repair it. Therefore, please be content to make it over again and fashion it in such a way that it is as perfect as it was before, as we know you will know how to do. If we cannot have the whole thing as we would wish, we will understand. We were very happy to hear that you want to come here after the feast of the Assumption, because we would love to see you. But if you are coming to see something beautiful that we brought from Rome, you will travel in vain, for we were so feeble that we returned to Mantua completely empty-handed. We offer ourself always to your pleasure and convenience. Letter 534: 1515 May 4 Mantua To Taddeo Albano, approving damask rose water and the ambergris he has sent, and speaking of her many financial debts incurred during Roman travel.243 We received together with your letter and the ambergris you sent us the six gourds filled with damask rose water.244 All of them satisfied us very much, and we are very pleased with you in their regard. We are sending the musk back to you, since it is not of the quality of what usually comes from there, though if it had been perfect, even if it cost more than usual, we would have kept it.245 For the expense of the ambergris and the gourds of damask rose water, and also for the other money you should receive, we ask you to please wait another few days, because this Roman trip of ours brought us many extra expenses and made us incur debts we must pay. But everything is falling into place. We will see that you make good on your credit. In this interim, excuse us. We offer ourself ever and always disposed to your pleasures and comforts.

242. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 92r. Isabella wrote to Lorenzo on 18 April, saying that on her return trip from Rome, a viola that she especially liked had broken. She sent him the instrument, asking him to repair it. For a transcription of these letters and Lorenzo’s reply of 27 April, see Brown and Lorenzoni, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 134–35. 243. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 92v. 244. Hollowed-out gourds were often used as vessels for liquids. Ambergris is a waxy substance secreted from the intestines of sperm whales, which may be found floating on the surface of tropical seas. For its pungent odor, it was—like the water distilled from damask roses—a key component of one of Isabella’s crafts, perfumery. 245. Though Isabella often makes such statements, it is possible that she was aiming to curb her expenses at this time and was relieved to find the musk not up to her standards. At the same time, she would have wanted to assure that her decision was motivated by quality rather than expense.

398 ISABELLA D’ESTE P.S.: We will send you the money you have spent on the ambergris and the damask rose water with the first reliable courier.246 Letter 535: 1515 May 7 Mantua To Gian Francesco Acquaviva, sending him songs by Marchetto Cara and requesting a poem by Jacopo Sannazaro.247 Remembering that Your Lordship told us when we were in Naples that you would be greatly pleased to have some songs by Marchetto because you had a great desire for them, we thought we would send you these, which are new and which we think will please Your Lordship. You have not yet remembered your promise to us, to send us a capitolo248 by Messer Jacopo Sannazaro. We pray you not fail in your promise, just as we have not failed from our side. We offer ourself always to Your Lordship’s pleasure, praying you commend us to the most illustrious lord duke our mutual father; to the lady your wife [Dorotea Gonzaga], and to Lady Caterina, your sister and ours. Letter 536: 1515 May 9 Mantua To Gian Stefano Rozone, sending him a spaniel he had requested.249 Having understood from your letters that the most illustrious lord viceroy wishes to have a little spaniel, and finding that we have none in the house, we sought one from people who have received dogs from our breed. We chose the most beautiful one, though it is not as beautiful as we would like. Such as it is, we are sending it to you with Bernardino the rider so that you may present it to His Excellency. Please convey our excuses, for truly this is the best one we found. Commend us to His Excellency. Be well. P.S.: The dog’s name is Piggy, and he has a red coat.250

246. Isabella’s anxiety over her debts is palpable in this letter, not only because she cared about paying honorably, but also because doing so was the surest way to facilitate future purchases. 247. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 94v. 248. A poetic composition in tercets on a moral, political, amorous, or burlesque subject. 249. AG 2996 libro 31 c. 94v. On Isabella’s relations with Viceroy Don Ramón Folch de Cardona, see Castagna, Un vicerè per Eleonora Brognina. 250. Isabella calls the dog Ghiottino, an endearing and diminutive form of the word ghiotto, which carries connotations ranging from glutton, to gourmand, to sweet tooth.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 399 Letter 537: 1515 June 4 Mantua To Felice Della Rovere, sending her a hat.251 When I was in Rome, Your Ladyship had a request made for one of my caps, but since I had been away from home for so long, I had none that hadn’t been worn already. And since I understood that you wanted it for one of your most illustrious lord consort’s daughters, I didn’t think I should give her one of mine, because unmarried girls here wear a different style. I’ve had two made of the kind maidens wear, and I’m sending them to Your Ladyship to do as you wish with them. If Your Ladyship would like to have one for herself, I pray you please let me know, because in this and in every other need of yours I will always be ready to gratify and serve you. Nor could you do me any greater pleasure than to treat me with the familiarity of a sister. I commend myself to Your Ladyship and to your illustrious consort [Gian Giordano Orsini]. Letter 538: 1515 June 14 Mantua To Mattia and Francesco, counts of Gazoldo, regarding party preparations in honor of Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona, at Porto.252 Because next Sunday we are having a party at our palazzo in Porto for the Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Cardinal d’Aragona, who wishes to see some dancing in the Lombard fashion, we would like you to please be there along with some other men who dance well; and Lord Loyso will also be there with these other gentlemen.253 Also invite all those women who dance well, and tell them to be in Porto in the morning. In addition, inform whomever you think appropriate that besides the expense for the dancers there will be an expense for the torchbearers. Take charge of finding some and send as many as you can, for you will be doing something we most appreciate. Be well. Letter 539: 1515 June 15 Mantua To Agostino Gonzaga, thanking him for news from Rome and for persuading Raphael to do a painting for her.254 You need not have made any excuses for your delay in writing to us after your departure from here, for your lengthy letter and the good execution of all you 251. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 6r. On this letter’s addressee, see Murphy, The Pope’s Daughter. 252. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 11r. In personal e-mail communications, Marina Nordera and the late Barbara Sparti suggested that the Lombard dancing in this letter may refer not to specific dances taught by the great treatise writers and dance masters, but a type of dance party, in which folk dances would have been danced. See also Nordera, “La donna in ballo.” 253. The Loyso [Aloyse] referred to here is likely Luigi Gonzaga, count of Sabbioneta: see Gino Benzoni, “Gonzaga, Luigi, detto Rodomonte,” DBI 57 (2001). 254. AG 2996 libro 32 cc.11r–v.

400 ISABELLA D’ESTE had to do for us in Rome demand that we excuse ourself yet more. And you made no error whatsoever, because since you had nothing to write to us you had to await some appropriate opportunity. It suffices now that you have made up for everything. We thank you greatly for having kissed the foot of our lord [the pope] in our name and for commending us to all those most reverend lord cardinals. We were very happy to hear this, all the more since we hear that the love we feel for them is unanimously returned. We value this as much as anything else in the world. When you have the opportunity, keep us in their good graces, for you could do nothing to give us greater pleasure. We had letters from Lord Guglielmo and Messer Agostino Ghisi.255 We are happy that both of them are pleased with us. And also that the Magnificent Lord Giuliano [de’ Medici] was content with the caps you presented to him in our name. You did well to speak with Raphael of Urbino about the little painting we would like by him. We are pleased that he is willing to serve us. Please thank him very much on our behalf, but be certain that we are no more grateful for his willingness than we are for your diligence and skill in inducing him so well with your good spirit. We will have the sketch made and send it to you. And since you so courteously offer to prod him, we will gladly welcome that from you.256 The reports you gave us in your letter were very much appreciated. We thank you more than a little, and we pray you, when something comes up, send us word all about it. Don’t fear that you will bore us with long letters, because the longer they are, the more gladly we read them, especially when they are from persons so dear to us as you are. To your comforts and pleasures we offer ourself always. Be well. Letter 540: 1515 June 29 Mantua To Alda Boiarda, thanking her for a hat design but declining to order it.257 We liked very much the sample of the cap that Your Ladyship sent us, for it is truly beautiful. But because we no longer wear hats in that style, as Your Ladyship will see if we come to Ferrara, you need not bother to have any made for us, and we are sending you back the sample here enclosed. We don’t know when we will come 255. Ghisi, more commonly called Chigi, was a wealthy banker of Sienese origin residing in Rome as one of its most prominent residents and patrons. He figures in several of Bandello’s novelle, one of which is dedicated to him. See Bandello, Tutte le opere, 1.34, 1.49. 256. Isabella also enlisted Baldassarre Castiglione in the effort to obtain this painting. It does not appear to have been executed: see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:162–65. A partial transcription of this letter appears in John K. G. Shearman, Raphael in Early Modern Sources, 1483–1602 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1:204. Shearman relies on Luzio, Isabella d’Este nei primordi, 163. 257. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 13v. Isabella took evident pride in being ahead of other women in matters of fashion. Boiarda clearly thought she had found something worthy of the marchesa’s high standards and tastes, but she is informed that what may be new in Ferrara is already passé in Mantua.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 401 to Ferrara, because we don’t feel very well. We offer ourself to Your Ladyship’s comfort and pleasures. Be well. Letter 541: 1515 August 4 Porto To Aloyse [Ercole] Gonzaga, with greetings.258 You did very well to let us know in a letter that you and your brother are well, and also that you prevailed with the most illustrious lord, your father, in obtaining permission to go to Lonato.259 We take great pleasure in this news, because we know you wished to see that place. You need not have feared that we would think you don’t know how to write well, because we liked your letter very much, and we thought it quite lovely and well-formed for a boy of your age.260 See that you persevere, and that you and Ferrante do not neglect your learning, or to enjoy good fun. Try to stay healthy, and greet Ferrante in our name. Letter 542: 1515 November 16 Mantua To the commissioner of Cavriana, ordering olives for oil.261 We would like you to seek out a young olive vendor,262 and have picked for us two baskets of good, ripe olives for making oil. Send them to us right away with notification of the cost including delivery. We will have it all paid for. See that this is done properly.

Letter 543: 1515 November 19 Mantua To Taddeo Albano, ordering sables and other luxuries.263 We got your two letters, from which we understand that you received the hundred ducats that we sent you through Messer Donato de Preti. We also got the list of our debts, which we will repay as soon as possible. Since the sum is greater than what we thought, we believe we will take that much longer to pay it off completely.

258. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 17v. 259. This small Lombard town near Lake Garda would pass from Gonzaga rule to Venetian domination in 1516. See Letter 507 of 17 March 1514 for her description of it. She was at this time preparing a celebrity party at Porto. 260. Ercole was born in 1505. On children’s composition of letters, see Shemek, “ ‘Ci Ci’ and ‘Pa Pa.’ ” 261. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 50v. 262. olivaro giovine. 263. AG 2996 libro 32 cc. 51v–52r.

402 ISABELLA D’ESTE We received the spicewood,264 which is to our liking. We ask you to please send three more pounds, for we will send you the money for what you have sent and what you will send, as soon as we have it all. About the sables, we ask you to make every effort to go with some friend of yours who is well informed about them, and try to choose a pair that are excellent for their beauty.265 If they don’t have heads, the head can be attached later, but see that we get them in any case on approval. And if [the sellers] are hesitant to give them on approval, promise them in our name that the sables will be returned absolutely spotless if we don’t like them. And that if they are returned damaged, we will pay for them even if we don’t like them. Just use whatever words and phrases you think will work to get them on approval. As for the market price, we think these are too expensive. We would like you to see that we don’t overpay for them. You could close the deal at twelve or fourteen ducats each at the most, if we like them and on condition that if we don’t like them we can return them completely spotless. We will also be willing to pay whatever price you agree upon with the seller, if you also include in the deal that he must attach the head, legs, and feet if they are missing. If you cannot get ones that are exceptionally beautiful for the above-named price, take a less beautiful pair, as long as they are valued at twelve or fourteen ducats. And since if we like them we won’t want to be sending them back and forth, send also the heads and legs and feet, attached or not, for we will have them attached here if they are not already so. We offer ourself ever disposed to all your pleasures and comforts.

Letter 544: 1515 December 3 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga, regarding perfumes she is sending him to give as gifts.266 So that you will not break your promises to those gentlewomen, and so that you can be good at playing the nymph and spruce yourself up, we are sending you a jar of [our] concoction. This is all we could find of it at present. You will be 264. Belzuino (Styrax benzoin) goes by the English names benzoin, spicebush, benjamin tree/bush, and spicewood. Isabella no doubt refers to the aromatic resin extracted from this plant, which was used in making medicines and perfumes. The extract was first used in the West by the Phoenicians as a drug and a perfume; and the Hebrews used it as a perfume and to clean wounds. It was later used to treat pulmonary ulcers and asthma and to remove facial spots. By the sixteenth century, spicewood had become quite rare, due to a legend that dangerous tigers made harvesting it prohibitive. See Galassi and Sarzi, Alla Syrena, 125. 265. The pelts of sables, ermines, and other small mammals were prized as fashion accessories and were often worn around the neck or as belt ornaments, with the feet and heads attached. 266. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 56r. Federico was at this time in Milan, where he had been sent to pay homage to King François I of France. He would soon embark on a formative period of residence at the

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 403 receiving some smaller bottles that we are also sending you, and you can divide this up to share with whomever you like. See to keeping yourself well, and to making love.267 Letter 545: 1515 December 3 Mantua To Stazio Gadio, regarding perfumes she is sending Federico to give as gifts.268 Since Federico never ceases to socialize with those gentlewomen, and so that he can better make love, we are sending him a bottle of concoction, which he can divide up and share with whomever he likes. If we had been able to find more, we would have sent it to him, but this is as much as we could find. Greetings to Federico on our behalf. Letter 546: 1515 December 12 Mantua To Girolamo Ziliolo, requesting a piece of gold work and a Greek book on painting which she lent out.269 It has been several years since we sent Maestro Ercole270 the goldsmith, a perfume locket to have him make a gold lid for it, which we have never received. We ask that you see to getting it however you can find it and send it to us.

French court, reflecting Gonzaga efforts to position Mantua securely on Italy’s new political terrain. On 3 October 1515, Pope Leo X and François I had reached an accord granting Parma and Piacenza to France in exchange for the security of Florence, the pope’s native city. On 4 October, Isabella’s nephew Massimiliano Sforza abdicated Milan to France and accepted a salaried exile in Amboise. As Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Spain, was in very ill health, François hoped to acquire soon also the Kingdom of Naples. In an effort to shore up his own security on Mantuan territory, he requested Federico II Gonzaga as a guest at his court, where indeed, the young Gonzaga heir would arrive in January 1516. On this period in Federico’s life, see Raffaele Tamalio, Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I di Francia: nel carteggio privato con Mantova, 1515–1517 (Paris: Champion, 1994), who reproduces transcriptions of all Federico’s letters to his parents as well as letters by Stazio Gadio on his behalf. See also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:120–25; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 385–93. On Isabella’s perfumery, see Luzio and Renier, “Il lusso di Isabella d’Este,” 666–88; Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 269–70. 267. Though it is likely that the fifteen-year-old Federico was at this time sexually active, it bears clarifying for modern readers that “making love” in this context carries the connotations not of sex, but of flirting and courting, often without serious intentions or anticipated consequences. Federico is becoming a ladies’ man. 268. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 56r. 269. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 62r. 270. The precise identity of this goldsmith is unknown to me. Antonino Bertolotti cites a goldsmith in Ferrara named Ercole with whom Francesco Gonzaga corresponded in 1495: Bertolotti, “Le arti minori,” 288. Isabella was fond of buttons, bracelets, and belt charms that featured perforated chambers filled with solid perfume.

404 ISABELLA D’ESTE Then, since it has been even more years since we lent the lord duke [Alfonso I] a certain little work by Philostratus that deals with painting, which we had translated from the Greek by Messer Demetrius [Moscus] who is a resident here,271 and we now need it in order to look at certain things that are written in it, we ask you please to see to finding it and sending it to us, with the permission of the aforesaid duke. Our Mario [Equicola] says he saw it in His Excellency’s study and in his very hands. Commend us to him, and we offer ourself always to your pleasures. Letter 547: 1516 January 8 Mantua To Alfonso Trotti, ordering a handwritten book of Petrarch’s poems.272 Many months ago, when Master Cesare the writer was here to repair a breviary he had written for us, we told him that we wanted him to write us a Petrarch.273 He promised us to write it as soon as we ordered it, but then many other things happened that were more pressing for us; and since he too was busy with several other works to write, we never took the trouble to have him begin it. Now, since we believe he is at a point where he can write it, we thought we would use the familiarity we have always had and still have with you, to send you the enclosed twelve quinternions of good paper, asking you to please give them to Master Cesare and request that he keep his promise to write us the Petrarch.274 We want him to begin with the sonnets, leaving out the letter that precedes them. We are sending you the enclosed Petrarch printed in Florence, which is very accurate.275 We want you to alert Master Cesare to write it word-for-word 271. The text is the Icones, which describes a lost or imaginary gallery of paintings. It was published in Latin by Aldus Manutius as Imagines in 1503; Moscus’s was the first translation of it into Italian. On this work and its important relation to Costa’s Comus painting in Isabella’s studiolo, see Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 208–11. On Moscus and for partial transcription of this letter, see Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 15–16. The work had still not been returned on 9 March 1516, when Isabella repeated her request. 272. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 68v–69r. 273. On Cesare de la Vieze and for transcription of this letter, see Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 20–21. Isabella notably refers to the illuminator’s work as writing and painting rather than copying. The letter provides evidence that even as high-quality editions were being printed, manuscript versions remained desirable as luxury items. Indeed, Isabella here reverses the historic relation of manuscript original to printed edition, adopting a printed edition as the model for a manuscript. On 9 February 1516, she further specified that Cesare should not leave room for capital initial letters (littere maiuscule, which would normally be added later, often by a specialist) except in the case of the first sonnet. It was the Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius (many of whose books Isabella owned), who first printed vernacular poems one to a page. 274. The quinternion is a set or ‘gathering’ of five sheets of paper. Each of these sheets would have been folded once to produce ten leaves and thus twenty pages of the finished book. 275. Isabella’s specifications in this letter reveal some of the ways in which Petrarch’s fourteenthcentury Canzoniere was circulating. It was common for educated women to read and know well these

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 405 and letter-for-letter just like this one, seeing that he paints rather than writes, because we know he does not write very correctly. Tell him to begin with the sonnets and then write the canzoni after them as is done in the volume we are sending you, omitting for now the capitoli, which we want him to write separately.276 Alert him also that he should pay attention to fitting one sonnet on each page; for this very purpose we have had them lined with fourteen lines each. We want the form of the letters to be like this sample we are enclosing, which he made when he was here. Be content to come to a price with him for each quinternion and let us know, because we will pay him quinternion-by-quinternion as they are written. And since we know that his habit is to be a little dawdling, we ask that you get him to start, and then keep urging him on, so that we may be served as soon as possible. We offer ourself to you always. Letter 548: 1516 February 28 Mantua To Jacopo Suardo, sending perfumed bracelets for Federico to give to the French queen [Claude de Bretagne].277 We are sending along with the enclosed packet of letters to our son Federico this little box containing some bracelets with perfume, which Messer Rozone requested of us these past days for presenting to the queen. We want you to use all diligence in sending them through a trusted messenger so that they arrive successfully at their destination. Since the kind of veils you requested in the name of Madonna Eleonora cannot be found, we have ordered one to be made. It will be sent to you as soon as it is ready. Be well.

lyric poems, many of which were set to music or served as models for musical lyrics. Though Petrarch labored until the very end of his life crafting the order of the poems in this monumental sequence, the sixteenth-century vogue for his work included the production of books that disregarded the author’s chosen order. Thus, the ‘story’ that emerges in Petrarch’s opus (wherein the poet meets his beloved Laura, torments himself over her unattainability, and strives—perhaps unsuccessfully—to reorient his passions toward his own spiritual salvation) was apparently of little interest to many of these readers. They preferred to approach Petrarch through individual poems and poetic genres, as Isabella does here, and to rearrange his book in ways that suited them. 276. Petrarch’s Canzoniere contains sonnets, ballads, canzoni, and madrigals. The reference to capitoli suggests that the source book included Petrarch’s Triumphs as well, with its six capitoli in terza rima. 277. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 87r. Rozone (who suggested that Isabella send this gift) reported that Federico’s elegant clothing was dazzling the French court, where his subtle perfumes were also much

406 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 549: 1516 March 5 Mantua To Francesco da Casale regarding rumors that the imperial troops may be arriving.278 As we hear rumors about the war and the arrival in Italy of the Thodeschi, the city of Milan must be—we won’t say in danger, given the good provisions being made and the power of the Most Christian King—but disrupted and in diminished peace of mind. Especially so must be the women, who are naturally timid, as is especially true of your wife. We thought we would remind you with this letter that it would be good to remove her and have her come here. Aside from the fact that this would be a safe and laudable thing, you would be doing us a singular pleasure. We firmly bid you do so, and the sooner you send her, the greater will be the pleasure you give us, as you will hear at greater length from our ambassador Suardino. We offer ourself disposed to all your comforts. Greet your wife on our behalf.

admired. On 23 March 1516, Federico made another request for “a good quantity of perfumes to give these mesdemoiselles, a large container of compositione to share with many, and more oil, [scented] waters, and powder”: Tamalio, Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I, 236–37. Isabella’s gesture was motivated by state concerns of the utmost importance to the Gonzagas, however. Fearing a papal ouster of the duke of Urbino, all his allies were lobbying the pope and the king of France to prevent a Medici takeover of the city. Though the bracelets were appreciated (the queen was reported to remove hers only while sleeping), these Mantuan fashion creations failed to achieve their political aim. When Urbino ally Cardinal Giuliano de’ Medici died in March 1516, his family’s loyalty to Urbino dissipated, and in May Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici invaded the city unopposed by the French. In September, Lorenzo was made duke of Urbino, and the two duchesses Elisabetta and Eleonora, and for a time Duke Francesco Maria, took refuge in Mantua. For many documents, see Alessandro Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e Leone X dal congresso di Bologna alla presa di Milano, 1515–1521: Parte prima,” Archivio storico italiano 40 (1907), 39–58; Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 226–38; see also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:125–30; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 397–405. 278. AG 2996 libro 32 c. 90r. Isabella refers to the mercenary troops of the imperial army as Germans (Thodeschi). The Gonzagas were vassals of the emperor, but their son was in custody of the French king; Mantua in this moment therefore had to tread lightly on all sides. As Mazzoldi observes at 231–33, the Gonzagas, “pressed at different times by the French or the Venetians, by the pontiff or the emperor, were obliged to bend like reeds in the wind in order not to be uprooted by the storms that periodically pounded their dominion.” Maximilian’s campaign against the French would result in imperial defeat by the French and the Venetians, and in May Francesco II Gonzaga would send congratulations to the winning side, professing his devotion to France.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 407 Letter 550: 1516 May 4 Mantua To the duchess of Ferrara, sending citrons, artichokes, and oranges.279 Through Pignatta I am sending Your Excellency twenty-five artichokes, thirteen large citrons, and fifty sweet oranges. Please deign to enjoy them as a sign of my love, which is the spirit in which I send them to you. I commend myself to you.280 Letter 551: 1516 May 18 Mantua To Gian Stefano Rozone, sending perfume for the queen of France and selected other women.281 We have seen what you wrote us in your letter of the 8th of this month, which pleased us greatly, since we are certain that thanks to you, Federico’s household will never lack for tranquility, and he will always know how to behave with all persons according to their rank.282 We hope that [Ippolito] Tebaldo will do the same, after the warning we gave him and his promise to do so. We are sending you a little box in which there are three jars: the crystal one with the gold lid is for the lady queen, and those of horn are for Madama the mother of the king [Louise de Savoie] and her sister, the duchess of Alençon [Marguerite Angoulême], as you suggested. Present them in our name, adding such words as you think appropriate. We are certain she will like this, because in our opinion we have never made any better.283 We will be pleased if you tell the queen that we consider ourself fortunate to be able to serve Her Majesty in something she enjoys and that we are both willing and able to do, for in formulating these scents we are second not even to the greatest perfumer in the world. Therefore, pray Her Majesty not to trade our shop for another, and to inform us in good time when we can be of service to her. Kiss her hand in our name, and commend us to her good grace. We are content to furnish the above-named queen and ladies with our concoction, but to tell you the truth, we do not want this task for the other women. The news you gave us in these and other letters about Federico’s good conduct was, as usual, most appreciated. We commend you for this. Be well. 279. AG 2997 libro 33 c. 7r. 280. In a near-duplicate letter sent the same day, Isabella also sent a basket of cherries and added the information that there were as yet no truffles to send because it was not yet their season. 281. AG 2997 libro 33 c. 14v–15r. Welch offers a partial translation of this letter: Shopping in the Renaissance, 270. 282. Federico was already a rather sophisticated and poised young man, having grown up in the Mantuan court and spent considerable time as well in Rome. Isabella’s concern for his manners no doubt regards the different customs of the French court. 283. Isabella appears to have made special efforts for this batch of her perfume. On 26 April 1516, she had ordered from a certain Donna Teodora Angelina “as many dried red roses as possible” and four to six baskets of fresh ones.

408 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 552: 1516 May 18 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga at the French court, on the size of his staff and sending him gloves and perfume.284 Having thought over all you wrote us and seen the list of your staff, it does not seem to us that there is anyone who can be reduced or eliminated, with the exception of one or two waiters. But since you love them all equally and don’t want to be the one to send them back, we don’t wish to compromise your affectionate side, for we would gain little through this reduction. If we mentioned Monsignor Luca in order to reduce by one the mouths to feed and the number of horses, it was because since he serves as your doctor, we thought and think that he could be contented with an appointment equal to that of the maggiordomo. The others appear to us so few that we could not limit them any more without tacitly dismissing them. So, in conclusion, it is up to you to retain, dismiss, or reduce as you think best. We will see to urging the disbursement of the four thousand scudi, though as you will hear through a letter from the secretary, this upsets His Excellency [Francesco II Gonzaga]. Let’s hope that you will be capable of calming him with the grace and the love that His Most Christian Majesty is showing you and with the reasons that you will have readily at hand. We are sending you a dozen pair of gloves for yourself and a jar of concoction wrapped in cotton in a separate talla incerata for perfuming your sweetheart.285 We wrote to Genoa and Rome for oil, water, and other perfumes to satisfy your request. See that you continue in your good manners and actions, which we hear from all quarters are praiseworthy; this makes the most illustrious lord your father and us live very happily. Kiss the hand of the lady queen and Madama in our name, and commend us to Madama of Bourbon and the lady duchess her daughter and to other ladies as you see fit. Be well. P.S.: For Rozone: Since the lady queen liked the bracelets so much, we thought we would send her some perfumed gold buttons, which will be better for wearing continuously on the arm, especially at night.286 But since today is Sunday and they 284. AG 2997 libro 33 cc. 15r-v. 285. Talla incirata could be tela incerata, or waxed/oiled cloth, but this was a later invention. In context, the reference seems to be to a box or other container treated with wax for protection from the elements. 286. Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, cites a letter to Isabella reporting that “the queen never takes [the bracelet] off except when she goes to bed, and she says that such a lovely scent remains on her blouse that she smells it even during the night, and she likes it immensely.” A letter from Gonzaga agent, Grossino sheds further light on why the perfumes and soaps from Italy were so prized in France. “Certainly the French ladies are fair of face, but they universally have this other charm: their hands are dirty and full of scabies” (399–400).

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 409 are at the goldsmith’s we cannot send them now. We will send them with the first rider who dispatches. Be well. Letter 553: 1516 July 14 Borgoforte To the captain of justice, consenting to the torture of a Milanese jeweler.287 Nicolao da Milano,288 our goldsmith and a member of our household, has informed us that he detained a Milanese jeweler on suspicion of having stolen or forged a diamond valued at fifty ducats, and that from various evidence (including that the man took a medal from him and confessed to that) one can easily see that he is the one. We also understand that he may be put to torture if he does not want to confess nicely. Since we want our goldsmith to recover his goods and for this truth to come out, we want you to proceed in the manner that seems to you most appropriate. Bring about a strict justice, once you have found sufficient evidence and exercised the authority of your office. Letter 554: 1516 July 16 Arco Borgoforte To the podestà of Sermide, about a debt owed to Giulia della Mirandola.289 The Magnificent Madonna Giulia della Mirandola has revealed to us that when she was owed some money by a man named Antonio Magiosso (who works for Grossino), Africano di Magni, who lives there in Sermide, gave her securities and promissory notes and that then, on behalf of his worker, Grossino gave this Africano the means to pay the security and the note, but that she was never compensated. For this reason she pled with us to assign you the task of compelling Africano to compensate her. Hence we want you to call him before you, and if you find either through his confession or through your probing that he owes Madonna Giulia, on the authority of his promise summarily require him to compensate Madonna Giulia with the speediest dispatch that justice can bring. Letter 555: 1516 July 16 Arco Borgoforte To Francesco Grande de Gonzaga, about a debt owed to Giulia della Mirandola.290 The Magnificent Giulia della Mirandola informs us that by the adjudication of the commissioner of Revere, she was awarded in the past a piece of land owned 287. AG 2997 libro 33 c. 38r. 288. Bertolotti notes a Niccolò da Milano who died in Mantua on 13 October 1541 at the age of 56, identifying him with the entry for ‘Niccolò di Possevini, aurefice milanese’ in the Necrologia Mantovana: Bertolotti, “Le arti minori,” 295. 289. AG 2997 libro 33 c. 38v. 290. AG 2997 libro 33 c. 38v.

410 ISABELLA D’ESTE by the late Rosso Castagna or his heirs who are in your region. She has requested the land’s investiture many times, in order to receive your recognition as its feudal patron, but up to now, you have not wanted to invest her. And so since we love Madonna Giulia greatly, we thought we would write you this letter to pray and exhort you to give her her investiture, recognizing that this will bring neither damage nor disadvantage to you. And if you have plans for this land for yourself or for other friends of yours, she has offered to grant it to you, so long as she receives the money owed to her by the above named Castagnas. You may be certain that you will be doing us a great and singular pleasure. We offer ourself still disposed to gratify you whenever you need to come here. We await your reply through the present rider, whom we have sent specially for this purpose. Letter 556: 1516 July 19 Arco Borgoforte To Sigismondo Trotti, inquiring about a figure by Antonio Lombardo.291 In your letter of the 14th of this month we saw what you wrote us about that figure from the hand of the late Master Antonio Lombardo. We thank you immensely for remembering us in this situation, and we assure you that you have done us a singular pleasure. In reply, we tell you that Messer Alfonso Trotti is very well informed of our mind on this. He will speak with you, and from him you will hear our thoughts. If we can do anything for you on any account, you will please us very much if you seek us out, for we offer ourself always to your pleasures and comforts.

Letter 557: 1516 July 19 Arco Borgoforte To Alfonso Brandolisi Trotti, requesting that he appraise a work by the late sculptor, Antonio Lombardo.292 You will see from the enclosed letter what Messer Sigismondo Trotti has written us regarding that figure from the hand of the late Master Antonio Lombardo. And because we would not know how to find here a person in whom we have greater confidence and who we think could better serve us than you, we thought we would ask you through this letter to please see and examine this work very carefully, and then inform us of your opinion and of the size and the price of the work. We will remain obliged to you more than a little. We offer ourself etc.

291. AG 2997 libro 33 c. 40r. 292. AG 2997 libro 33 cc. 40r–v.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 411 Letter 558: 1516 August 11 Porto To Monsignor Gran Scudiero, asking him to help free a Spanish clown.293 A certain Gianicco Spagnolo, a clown by profession and a truly virtuous and courteous man who is most delightful among his kind, having been here with me for several days decided to depart for Spain. Since he is a man of entertainment and pleasure and not of war, he got safe-conduct papers for himself and his belongings from Monsignore Lautrec [Odet de Foix], so that he could pass safely into Verona, and he left Mantua. Ill luck had it that he was captured by Venetian capelletti294 and his belongings and money in considerable sum were taken from him with no respect or observance whatsoever of the safe-conduct. Since it seems to me truly awful that this poor man, on faith of a safeconduct from Monsignor Lautrec, was duped in this way, my love for him moves me to write this letter to Your Lordship, bidding you with all my heart and for my love please intervene with all possible assistance and favor in this matter, so that the above-named Gianicco will be freed with full restitution of the money and property that was taken from him. I am certain that through your favor and those good and judicious ways Your Lordship will know how to use, he will be freed; and I will regard this as a most singular favor from you. I am sending the present rider especially so that Your Lordship may inform me of your success, including that after his liberation and the restitution of his money and goods this Gianicco can enter Verona freely according to the safe-conduct of Monsignor Lautrec, which it seems to me must be honored. I commend myself from the heart to Your Lordship, offering myself as most disposed to your pleasures and comforts. Letter 559: 1516 August 13 Porto To Alfonso Brandolisi Trotti, opting not to buy the sculpture by Antonio Lombardo.295 We note your diligence in writing to us about what we asked you in our letter. We are as pleased with your action as we could possibly be. We say in reply that considering the fact that the lord duke [Alfonso d’Este] kept that figure in his room for several days, we think it will not suit our needs. Since His Excellency was not pleased with it, we judge his reason to be one of two. Either it was not as perfect 293. AG 2997 libro 33 cc. 46r–v. The gran scudiero (grand squire or master of the horse) was a court dignitary in charge of the stables serving a noble household. I have been unable to identify this addressee or ascertain why Isabella adopts a more familiar io/Lei register with him rather than the noi/ voi. 294. These light cavalry police who served the Venetian Republic on the terraferma gained their name (“little hats”) from the caps they wore (Treccani). 295. AG 2997 libro 33 c. 48v.

412 ISABELLA D’ESTE as it might be, or he thought it was too expensive. And for these two reasons, we would buy it no more than His Excellency would. You may explain to Sigismondo that since we find ourselves ill prepared to spend so lavishly on such a thing, we do not want to buy the satyr, and that we thank him for informing us as he did. We offer ourself etc. Letter 560: 1516 October 14 Mantua To Girolamo da Sestola, specifying fish they will send each other.296 In reply to yours of the 10th of this month, we say that we don’t care about spider crabs, because we don’t like them very much. We have a great wish indeed to eat mussels. If you could get some, you would do us a great pleasure in sending them. At this point, you can leave off sending us salt-water fish, because they are now available in the piazza here. As soon as we have lake carp, we will send some, and likewise some watercress.297 We offer ourself to your comforts. Letter 561: 1516 November 14 Mantua To Elisabetta Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, sending her supplies to ease her travel.298 Since I am very aware of the nature and number of discomforts and inconveniences one suffers when traveling, and as I wish Your Excellency to protect herself from those, I am sending you through the present rider a down blanket and a cotton canopy that will be useful in this weather. Your Excellency shall please enjoy them as a sign of my love, using them at least at night. For in addition to finding that they serve you very well, you will be doing me the greatest favor. I commend myself to you always. Letter 562: 1516 December 13 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, expressing joy at his impending visit.299 My most illustrious lord and I took immense pleasure at the news of Your Excellency’s decision to come here for a few days for a change of air. Come whenever you like, but the sooner you come, the more welcome your visit will be, because we await you with longing. My most illustrious lord says that, though he will have no other entertainments this Christmas season due to his indisposition, he 296. AG 2997 libro 33 c. 70r. 297. De li cressoni: On cappe as cozze and cressone as crescione, see Malacarne, Mensa del principe, 296–97. 298. AG 2997 libro 33 c. 82r. 299. AG 2997 libro 33 cc. 95r–v.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 413 will enjoy seeing and talking with Your Lordship. Of me, I say nothing, because I think you can imagine that I will hardly be able to bear waiting until you arrive. About that other opinion of yours, I haven’t spoken, nor will I speak, with anyone.300 Your Excellency will please send word when you will be leaving Ferrara and where you will take your lodgings in Mantuan territory. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace. Letter 563: 1516 December 13 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga in France, sending him money and advising him to budget it.301 We make no further reply to your letter of the 2nd of this month, which we received yesterday, since it was a reply to ours. We tell you only that we persuaded the most illustrious lord, your father, that the five hundred ducats which in these past days [Girolamo] Peveraro302 paid you out of the income from Fossa Caprara should not count against your allowance of four thousand ducats but, as we wrote Messer Rozone we were hoping, they will be a supplement. Also, we will see that the entire one thousand ducats of the first term, which goes up to the middle of next March, is sent to you now. We remind you indeed that these thousand ducats must last you until the end of March, since the term goes until the middle of that month. You may be certain that the month will be over before you have more money in hand, and there is no way to draw other money besides this which has been designated for you by the allowance. So you must dispense this thousand ducats in such a way that they last you until the end of March. Keep yourself healthy. Greet Messer Sigismondo303 and Messer Rozone in our name.

300. Alfonso’s letter of 10 December 1516 (AG 1196) announced to Isabella that he expected to arrive in Mantua by boat, without horses, accompanied by about forty servants. He says he is coming to Mantua on his doctors’ advice to seek a change of air following a bout of fever and his inability to eat or drink. He expected to stay in Mantua six or eight days and then to go to Milan, for even better air, and asked Isabella to keep to herself his opinion about going to Milan. 301. AG 2997 libro 33 cc. 95v–96r. Federico wrote to Isabella from Amboise on 2 December 1516 requesting more money to pay his debts, finance his participation in jousts, and buy appropriate Christmas gifts for people at the French court: Tamalio, Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I, 361. 302. Tamalio identifies Peveraro as a member of a merchant family of Mantua who sometimes served the Gonzagas in financial transactions: Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I, 307. 303. Federico’s cousin, Sigismondo, son of Giovanni Gonzaga, accompanied Federico in his French residency: Tamalio, Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I, 217.

414 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 564: 1516 December 29 Mantua To Paulo, steward to Federico II Gonzaga, about a girl Isabella has married off.304 It is true that in the past few months, as we negotiated to marry the daughter, or rather the ward, of Sguagna to one of our liveried servants, we heard that there were some men who said the girl had pledged to them, and this was principally so in your case. For that reason, before we concluded this bond, we wanted to clear up with Sguagna and with the girl herself whether she had made a promise to anyone. She freely responded that she had not. It is quite true that Sguagna told us he had been spoken to on behalf of Federico our firstborn son, but that he had promised neither to give her away nor not to, and that there were no other promises between you and the girl. Having heard this, we took the liberty of giving her to our liveried servant, since it seemed to us, as in fact is the case, that between our servants and those of Federico there are no distinctions, and that since you are absent at this time, the girl could not be kept from marrying, since she was requested by so many. And also, through Federico’s and our help, you cannot fail to obtain a wife and goods by another avenue. And so, you must not despair of receiving benefits for your service. On the contrary, we exhort you to attend to your duties with diligence, love, and loyalty, for Federico and we are not about to fail you whenever we shall have the opportunity to reward you.

Letter 565: 1516 December 30 Mantua To Elisabetta Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, hoping to hear from her while she is in Genoa.305 The words I said to Messer Baldassarre [Castiglione], marveling at not having heard anything about Your Excellency’s arrival in Genoa, were not spoken because I thought you had cast me into oblivion, but out of my great longing to hear that you are well. And learning this from the letter I received from Orazio was most welcome, as was this last letter from the 17th of this month, since I heard 304. AG 2997 libro 34 cc. 2v–3r. The letter illustrates one personal side of the contradictory pains and privileges of working for the ruling family. Had the steward not accompanied Federico to France, he might have married the bride of his choice, who was instead dispatched to a competitor in his absence. Tamalio records a list of Federico’s servants, among whom appears the name of Paulo sottocredentiere (assistant sideboard keeper or steward): Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I, 243. For a brief discussion of household staff in the period, see Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 343–47. 305. AG 2997 libro 34 c. 3v. Castiglione returned to Mantua in September, having made peace with his estranged lord, Francesco II Gonzaga, who had resented Castiglione’s acceptance of employment by the duke of Urbino. See Cartwright, Baldassarre Castiglione, I.44–46, 153–54, 395, II.1–7. Elisabetta was a guest of the doge of Genoa in this period. See Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 406–8.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 415 that you are well and how much you like your room. In this I take joy with you, since it seems to me that every good for you is shared between us. I certainly won’t deny that Your Ladyship’s absence seems most strange to me, or that I would be content to be with you and to enjoy the delights of that city with you. My most illustrious lord consort is in his usual condition. I and the children are very well. And we all commend ourselves to Your Ladyship with all our hearts. Letter 566: 1517 January 21 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga, on French regrets for damages in Mantuan territory.306 Thought we have no letters of yours to which to reply, and there is nothing we need write to you at present, still to show you that our memory of you has not faded, we think we will not allow this cavalcade that is just now setting out toward you to depart without informing you that, thanks be to God, we and your brothers are in good condition and healthy. The most illustrious lord, your father, is as usual. Nonetheless, His Excellency and all of us hope he will reinvigorate now that these troubles with the French have ended, all the more since the most illustrious monsignor of Lautrec [Odet de Foix] was here. His Excellency found him to be a person of good and gentle countenance and very cordial. [Lautrec] offered great apologies, saying the damages that were done in Mantuan lands could not be avoided, so that His Excellency was much consoled. So too was this whole city, since the aforesaid most illustrious monsignore promised to see that His Most Christian Majesty knows that the lord marchese and this entire populace are very fond of him; and he will have some restorations made. Thus, this morning he departed amid unanimous contentment. You, see that you persist in keeping yourself healthy and in the good graces of the king, the queen, and the queen mother. We assure you that here, nothing was lacking by any measure in entertainments and honors for the aforesaid most illustrious monsignore of Lautrec. A party was given for him yesterday, where we were present with many gentlewomen, and there was dancing until the eighth hour [after sunset]. As far as we know, he and all his gentlemen departed quite content and pleased with the attentions and the glad faces shown them by this populace, especially the ladies. Greet Messer Sigismondo in our name, and also Messer Rozone.

306. AG 2997 libro 34 c. 7v.

416 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 567: 1517 February 17 Mantua To Diana d’Este, Sigismondo d’Este, Lucrezia d’Este Bentivoglio, and Lucrezia the marchesa di Massa (individually), announcing the betrothal of Federico II Gonzaga to the eldest daughter of the marchese of Monferrato.307 Several days ago, negotiations took place to give as wife to the Most Illustrious Federico, our son, the first-born daughter of the most illustrious marchese of Monferrato.308 Now, with the consent and happiness of the Most Christian King and Queen and of all the French court, and to the incredible delight of my lord and myself, this marriage agreement has been concluded. Owing to the blood relation between us, I wanted to let you know. I am certain that for the love you bear for this entire house you will be as pleased as the aforesaid lord and I are. We both commend ourselves to you. Letter 568: 1517 February 19 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga, thanking him for complying with the marriage agreement made for him.309 Through letters from you in your own hand, from Messer Rozone, and from Stazio [Gadio], we have seen how willingly and readily you have lent yourself in obedience to the most illustrious lord your father’s and our wishes in consenting to the marriage that was contracted on your behalf and on that of the firstborn daughter of the most illustrious lord marchese of Monferrato. Though this was not alien to our expectations, since you have always been a good and obedient son, it pleased us all the more since it all took place while you are in that court. You see what a great match you have made and the great honors and benefits you may expect. Thus we hope that when that day comes, you will be most content and consoled. Regarding the provision of money you requested, an order has been given to assemble it and send it to you as soon as possible. We will not fail, moreover, to see that you receive more than the allowance, so that you have greater means to have yourself celebrated. We are not sending it to you now, certainly, because as you know, this is not in our capacity, and we perceive great difficulties due to the many expenses that your most illustrious father has.

307. AG 2997 libro 34 c. 16r. This letter and others like it were sent to numerous recipients. 308. Maria Paleologa was at this time eight years old. Though Federico wedded her in 1515, their marriage was never consummated, and Maria died in 1530. Maria’s sister, Margherita, married Federico in 1531 and reigned as duchess of Mantua. 309. AG 2997 libro 34 c. 20r

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 417 Letter 569: 1517 February 19 Mantua To Stazio Gadio on Federico II Gonzaga’s betrothal.310 Having heard through letters of Federico by his own hand, from Messer Rozone, and from you how willingly His Most Christian Majesty gave his consent to our new marriage bond, and of the many signs of joy and shows of love made by the aforesaid king, the queen, the queen mother, and all the other lords and ladies of that court, you can be certain that we are much consoled. We thank Our Lord God that in this matter Federico lent himself to such ready obedience to the most illustrious lord his father and to us, as we have always seen him do in the past. Because along with the praise he deserves from us and from everyone, he must also be certain that [this marriage] can bring him nothing but honor and benefit in every place and time, and that we have done all of this for good aims. Nor must he give much weight to being married in his adolescence, thinking that perhaps he has too soon lost his freedom; because since the bride is of a tender age, he will have time to take his pleasure for several years before being subject to conjugal obligations, obligations we hope will always be pleasurable and a source of contentment, since from what we have ascertained, the bride is no less endowed with beauty than with gentility and virtue. So hearten him and greet him in our name. For your diligence in writing this letter to us, we commend you, as you deserve. Be well. Letter 570: 1517 March 12 Mantua To Eleonora Nasella Saracena, taking her daughter into Mantuan court service.311 You may be sure that we accepted very willingly into our services your daughter Diana, since the most illustrious lord duke [Alfonso I], our most honored brother, whom we would never be able to contradict on any matter, spoke to us very enthusiastically about her, and also since she is the daughter of the fondly remembered Magnificent Messer Gherardo, whom we loved for his many merits. Nor did the love we bear you, for the affection we know you feel for us, carry any less weight. And so, know that we will be happy to see her whenever you send her, and we will treat her well, in the hope that since she was born of the man and the woman who are her parents, she will not fall short of them, but will do honor to them and to us. We offer ourself ever disposed to all your comforts and pleasures.

310. AG 2997 libro 34 c. 21r. Gadio was, in this period, at the French court. 311. AG 2997 libro 34 c. 28v.

418 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 571: 1517 March 22 Mantua To Gian Stefano Rozone, on young Federico’s good conduct at the French court.312 It would be difficult to express with what contentment and satisfaction we read your letter of the 13th of this month and learned about the praiseworthy life Federico leads. Since it is as you describe in great detail, we could not possibly feel greater consolation; and to speak freely with you, we say that we are so pleased that we do not know how to judge which thing would make us happier: if he stayed in those parts for a while longer yet, or if he came here.313 Because we fear that here he will not be able to lead a similar life. So encourage him to form such habits in that virtuous life that he will not be corruptible by anyone, so that we may feel completely content about his return. In effect, we desire this out of maternal love, though given our wish for honor, we also think of what could happen if he did not make a firm commitment to maintaining that reputation which he has acquired. We will not fail to tell you there is one thing only that we do not praise in this life of his, and that is that he fasts every day. Because since he is still a boy, and he has warm blood that still boils, this could easily upset his stomach. We wrote to Federico the reason why we could not send the money earlier, so we will not elaborate further here with you, referring you instead to what we wrote him. Greet him in our name and also Messer Sigismondo [Gonzaga], and you be well.

312. AG 2997 libro 34 cc. 34r–v. 313. Federico remained at the French court in Paris until April 1517, stopping in Casale Monferrato on his journey back to Mantua to meet his bride, Maria Paleologa: Tamalio, Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I, 29; also 29, 418, for Federico’s letter announcing that he had married Maria with an exchange of rings. Though, as numerous letters indicate, his betrothal was desired and welcome, in fact, Federico overstepped his duties on this occasion, for he was not expected to enter into full marriage vows. His heedless decision to do so had embarrassing repercussions later, when he rose to greater prominence and sought to reverse this youthful indiscretion. On the long, complicated, and sordid machinations regarding Federico’s marriage options, see Deanna Shemek, “Marriage Woes and the Duke of Mantua: Aretino’s Marescalco,” Renaissance Studies 16, no. 3 (2002), 373–76. More generally, see Stefano Davari, “Federico Gonzaga e la famiglia Paleologa del Monferrato, 1515–1533,” Giornale ligustico di archeologia, storia, e belle arti 17, no. 11–12 (1890): 421–69; 18, no 1–2 (1891): 40.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 419 Letter 572: 1517 April 28 Casale To Francesco II Gonzaga, describing her stops between Canneto and Casale on a journey to meet their future in-laws.314 To inform you minutely of my every movement from Canneto to here, I report that last Thursday after leaving Canneto I went to lodge at Cremona in the house of the Magnificant Messer Giacomo Ponzano, former podestà of Mantua, by whom I was greatly welcomed. Cavalier di Meli and some other gentlemen came to visit me and keep me company for a long while, as did his consort and certain gentlewomen. Friday morning, after departing Cremona I went to Castelpusterlengo, where I lodged in the guesthouse. Saturday I arrived in Pavia. I lodged in the house of the Magnificent Madonna Eleonora Visconti, who entertained me with some other gentlewomen for the entire day, with no shortage of enormous gestures of love. After dinner, Monsignor della Motta, the governor of that place, came most lovingly to visit me and showed me many courtesies. On Sunday morning, when I left Pavia, His Lordship accompanied me for perhaps five miles outside the city and then took his leave. I thanked him as warmly as possible, and I traveled for some time to Scaldasole, where I had been invited by that marchesa.315 I was met by the lords her sons, along with some of her gentlemen [who rode with me] for at least three miles. Conversing with them, I arrived at Scaldasole, where, a stone’s throw from the castle, they lady marchesa came on foot to meet me as warmly as I can say. We went into the castle. Truly, Her Ladyship would not neglect me for a moment for, beyond the fact that she herself is very courteous and pleasant, she saw that I never lacked for any sort of entertainment, especially singing and the playing of horns316 and flutes. And in addition to the musicians who played, the children of the lady marchesa wanted to show me that they too knew some parts, and very charmingly they played some flute music from a book, truly with enormous gallantry. Yesterday morning, when I had mounted on horseback, the lady marchesa suddenly sent for one of her hackney horses and wanted at all costs to accompany me for a piece. And though I put up a great resistance she came with me, along with her children, for a good four miles. Then, taking her leave with a thousand compliments, she turned back. I came after a long while to a castle called Brem, which is seven miles from here. There I dined and rested until the twenty-first hour [three hours prior to sunset], when I mounted on horseback and, about five miles after passing the port 314. AG 2997 libro 34 cc. 45r–46v. Isabella’s stop in Casale was en route in her pilgrimage to visit the shrine of St. Mary Magdalene in Provence. 315. Cartwright identifies Ippolita Fioramonda of Pavia as the marchesa of Scaldasole: Isabella d’Este 2:270–72, 377. 316. trombone.

420 ISABELLA D’ESTE of the Po, I met the most illustrious lord marchese [Guglielmo IX Paleologo] of Monferrato, who was accompanied by a great number of gentlemen and perhaps two hundred horses. It would be difficult to recount to Your Excellency how lovingly he met and welcomed me. I tell you truly that his show of affection was such that I felt I was glimpsing his very heart. His Excellency and I were riding together side-by-side, as was also Messer Andrea Cossa.317 Your Excellency’s mule has always carried me as safely and as well as I can possibly say. But after I had ridden about three miles from the port right alongside the lord marchese and in the midst of this company, a small bit of earth shifted, and [the mule] took fright and darted, bumping me a little out of my saddle. Then she turned around suddenly in great fury, at which point I could no longer hold on, and I fell to the ground. I hit the earth with a great thump of my head. I marvel that I didn’t break it, but by the grace of Our Lord God, I had and have no injury. I remounted on horseback feeling a little shaken by the fall, but this passed in a moment. After riding about a half-mile, the most illustrious lady marchesa [Anne d’Alençon] appeared in a litter, with two carriages filled with damsels behind her. She had had led by hand a hackney on which she mounted after descending from the litter, and on this she welcomed me as lovingly as one can possibly not only say, but imagine. Riding all together, we reached the city, where bells, trumpets, fifes, and drums accompanied us to the castle. Artillery was not fired in order not to frighten the horses. All the people were in the streets, and one could see enormous happiness on every face. Dismounting in the castle, I met the lord first-born son [Boniface] of this illustrious lord and lady as well as the sweet little bride. How happy I was with her beauty and her most gentle grace would be impossible for me to express; so I shall save it to tell Your Excellency in person. The honors and warmth these lords show me are truly inestimable, nor do I know for what king one could show more affection than what is shown me and all my entourage here, not only by the lords but also by the entire court and city. I had planned to depart tomorrow, but urged by the illustrious marchese and marchesa who heartily prayed me stay until tomorrow, I deigned to comply with their wish. Thursday morning I will leave here to resume my journey, with the permission of Your Excellency, to whose good grace I commend myself always.

317. This Cossa may be the figure who appears briefly in The Book of the Courtier at 3.81, identified by Vittorio Cian as an ambassador in service to the marchesa of Monferrato from 1523 on: Il Cortegiano del Conte Baldesar Castiglione, ed. Vittorio Cian (Florence: Sansoni, 1894), 231–32.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 421 Letter 573: 1517 April 29 Casale To Francesco II Gonzaga, on a request made by Maria Paleologa.318 I wrote Your Excellency yesterday evening that, at the request of these most illustrious lords, I would be forced to stay here for all of today, and then I wanted to leave tomorrow. But since this morning at mealtime the Most Illustrious Monsignor Lautrec suddenly arrived here, and there was dancing all day, the pleadings of this most illustrious lady have compelled me to stay yet until tomorrow. Both in order to please the marchesa and also since it seems to me ungracious to leave Monsignor Lautrec, I am happy to do as they wish. Thus my departure will be delayed until Friday. Today, our little bride asked me with the utmost grace for a fan with a gold handle like mine. I willingly promised her one. But because as I continue my journey I will not have occasion to have one made, and if I waited until my return it would be quite late, I pray Your Excellency with all possible affection please have it made yourself by my goldsmith, who knows how mine is made. Once it is finished, you can send it either with me or to the bride, as you think best. I must tell Your Excellency, so that you will condescend to every request from this sweet little bride, that she deserves every good, both in her own respect, since she is gracious, sweet, and wise far beyond her tender years, and for the great humanity and liberality that is practiced in this court, which I must truly confess is the finest in Italy. I am ever more content with the marriage we have contracted in this court, and I hope it will please Your Excellency as well, for I can confirm that there is not in all of Italy a match more suitable for us than this one. I will give you ample account of this in person. I commend etc. Letter 574: 1517 May 10 Tallard, France To Eleonora Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, congratulating her on the birth of a baby girl.319 To our enormous pleasure we learned through Your Ladyship’s letter of the 2nd of this month that you have delivered yourself of a girl with no harm whatsoever to you or to the baby. We rejoice with you greatly over this, for though your birth was a girl, it occurred with very little discomfort for you. May Our Lord God give to Your Ladyship and to us that contentment with her that you, and we, desire.

318. AG 2997 libro 34 c. 47r. 319. AG 2997 libro 34 c. 50r.

422 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 575: 1517 May 10 Tallard, France To Benedetto Capilupi, wishing him recovery from illness.320 If we tried to deny that your letter of the 3rd of this month caused us displeasure, then we would be denying the very truth, because when we expected to hear of your complete recovery from illness, we learned instead that every remedy attempted up to now has only goaded it on. Still, if the doctor who has been summoned again will do good work, as (from what he have heard) we can hope, then everything will be fine. You need not have come to such self-diffidence as to commend your children, and especially Flavia and Cochino to us, because we will always hold them as commended, along with you. Nor do we want, for now, to think of having them commended without you, since we do not think this is necessary. Lay down all your worries, and see to regaining your health, for your children will never go wanting as long as we are on this earth. You did very well indeed to write to Monsignor d’Aragona what you wrote to us; we commend you highly and praise you for this. We are now here in Tallard. In two days we will arrive at St. Mary Magdalene, where we will not fail to have prayers said for you; and we, with our weak little prayers, will not fail to say prayers that you will be liberated from every infirmity.321 We will do the same in every holy place where we happen to pass. We are quite well. Attend to regaining your health. Let the sisters at San Vincenzo and San Giovanni know that we are very well, and that they should pray to Our Lord God for us. We commend ourself highly to your devout prayers. Letter 576: 1517 May 16 Marseille To Francesco II Gonzaga, on travel in Marseille and the feast of St. Mary Magdalene.322 I wrote Your Excellency a letter from Tallard on the 10th of this month and sent it via a rider of the most illustrious lord marchese of Monferrato. There I informed Your Excellency of the progress of my journey and everything else that occurred 320. AG 2997 libro 34 c. 51r 321. Isabella estimates that her own prayers are weak compared to the more potent ones of holy and devout persons. She will repeat this gesture of humility in her letter to Francesco of 16 May 1517. After her visit to Monferrato Isabella made her pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Mary Magdalene in Provence. She was accompanied on this trip by Tommaso Strozzi, Francesco Gonzaga (who later served as Gonzaga ambassador to Rome), and Mario Equicola as her secretary. Equicola wrote a Latin chronicle (Iter in Galliam Narbonensem) about their journey and the cities they saw, including Marseille, Nimes, Avignon, and Lyon. Cartwright, Isabella d’Este 2:133–35 recounts some highlights of this journey but exhibits some errors in the sequencing of events. See also James, “The Travels of Isabella d’Este,” and Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 412. 322. AG 2997 libro 34 cc. 52v–53r.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 423 to me. Now, finding myself here in Marseille and having the convenience of sending this letter by way of a ship that will depart tomorrow morning for Genoa, I feel it is my duty to cast it to Fortune, so that if it please God, it shall arrive safely. Be advised that from Tallard, in three days I arrived at St. Maximin, which was on the 13th. I stayed there the next day, seeing the head of St. Mary Magdalene, that of St. Maximin, and that of St. Cedonio, with all the other most devout relics and places there.323 I can tell Your Lordship more about these in person after my return. I did not fail to pray my feeble prayers—and to have prayers said—for your health, so that God may give you the health that you and I desire. Yesterday morning I left there and came to dine at St. Baume. Here is the place where St. Mary Magdalene did her penance and prayed, truly one of the most beautiful devotions that it is possible to imagine. I stayed there until the twentieth hour [four hours prior to sunset], unable to sate my hunger for contemplating it all. Then I mounted my horse and came to lodge at Auriol, a place five leagues from here. This morning, I arrived along with all my company in Marseilles, healthy, thanks be to Our Lord God. I shall remain here all of tomorrow to rest myself and my horses and to see this port and city. Then, with the good grace of Your Excellency, I will set out for the rest of my journey. I calculated again when I will be able to be back in Casale. Your Excellency can have the boats sent at the time you think best so that we find them at Casale on our return. I have the utmost desire to hear that your hopes of improved health, which Your Excellency wrote to me after my departure, have had a positive effect, because there is nothing I desire more. I commend myself to you with all my heart. Letter 577: 1517 June 22 Casale To Gian Stefano Rozone, consoling him on the death of his son.324 When we heard through letters of our most illustrious lord and Federico about the miserable case of your son Galeazzo, we felt extreme sorrow. In the compassion we feel for you and your consort, whom we have always loved, and because we know the boy was truly well mannered and courteous, we extend our deep condolences to you and your consort, who share this sorrow. We exhort you, however, since the situation is irremediable, to arm yourself with great patience and to accept the wishes of the One who rules over all. You may be certain that if there were something, no matter how great, that we could do to remedy this, we would show you that we take enormous displeasure in your heartache, just as we 323. St. Maximinus of Aix was held by legend to be one of the first seventy-two disciples of Jesus and the first bishop of Provence. Cedon was a blind man said to be healed by Christ. 324. AG 2997 libro 34 c. 61v.

424 ISABELLA D’ESTE share a part of all your pleasure. Greet and comfort your consort and yourself on our behalf. Letter 578: 1517 July 4 Porto To the marchesa of Monferrato [Anne d’Alençon], cultivating relations.325 Persuaded that Your Excellency might wish to hear of my safe arrival here, I thought that as a small way of fulfilling my obligation, I would inform you that I arrived here safe and sound on Thursday, though I felt a little ill on the boat, something that had not happened in all the rest of my journey. I found my most illustrious lord consort to be suffering less than usual from his condition. The children are all healthy and strong, especially Federico who now occupies himself continuously with honorable jousting exercises and attends to growing into a man and dedicating himself to virtues. I won’t hold back from Your Excellency that I found Federico rather irritated at not having been able to come to Casale to visit Your Excellency and the most illustrious lord, your consort, and to embrace his most darling little bride, our shared daughter. Nevertheless, he hopes to come there one day, and I for my part will not fail to see that he does so as soon as possible, so that he may satisfy his wish, and also because I know it will also greatly please Your Excellency, with whom I wish to remain always in touch as a demonstration of the immeasurable love I bear you. I am here relaxing in this place of mine at Porto, where the constant memory of Your Excellency never leaves me. Your absence causes me pain, since I see how far apart we are and, to speak freely with you, I love you more than anyone I know in this world, and I think of you as a most honored sister. I greatly wish for some occasion to arise for me to be of service to you. So, with all my heart I pray you, if you have need of anything, to turn to me with the confidence you would feel in a younger sister.326 I assure you that you will be doing me a great favor. I wish for the same to be said to the most illustrious lord, your consort, for I love him no less than I do my most illustrious brothers here. Your Excellency please deign to commend me to all our shared children and greet them in my name, especially the most beloved little bride. Kiss her for me. I commend myself to you with all my heart.

325. AG 2997 libro 34 cc. 65v–66r. 326. con quella securtà che l’usaria con una sua minor sorella. This appeal is rather odd, given that Anne d’Alençon was eighteen years Isabella’s junior, but Isabella appears to be striking a tone of deference.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 425 Letter 579: 1517 November 24 Mantua To the marchesa of Monferrato, regarding her request for a dependable woman worker.327 Having heard that Your Most Illustrious Ladyship desires a dependable woman worker, I have conducted a thorough search. I found no one who satisfies me more than a young woman who is the wife of one of the officers who dresses table in my servants’ dining room. This young woman labors superbly, and I am certain that in all those works and fashions Your Most Illustrious Ladyship will want, she will be quite satisfactory, as she has always been and continues to be for me, whether with the fashioning of caps, or collars, or all other manner of needlework and design. She is, moreover, quite well mannered and virtuous, and Your Ladyship may freely let her interact and keep company with your ladies-in-waiting. It is true that she will not leave here without her husband; but in order to obey and please me, he is willing to go along with his wife into Your Excellency’s service. He would like, however (as is right) to know what sort of provision you will be making, for the wife, that is; because you could assign him some small job in the house or in the city as you think best. You may inform me what you would like to do, for I will have them sent at Your Ladyship’s pleasure. They have two children, a four-year-old boy and a six-month-old girl. Your Ladyship may say that you marvel that I am willing to part with both wife and husband, if they are so functional. I do so because I have a number of women in the house who know how to sew well, especially some Neapolitan and Spanish women; and the job the husband does is of a sort that it is not important to me. Nor would I have the wherewithal to find an unmarried woman who works so well and would be willing to leave Mantua. Nonetheless, if this woman should not meet with Your Excellency’s satisfaction, I will work to find another one. I heard that the illustrious lord marchese has taken into his service a lute player named Giovan Angelo Testagrossa. I suggest to Your Ladyship that it would be good to have our shared little daughter study with him, because he has a light touch and an ideal way of teaching, myself having been one of his students. Though I was not a credit to him, this was no fault of his. I commend myself to Your Excellency, praying you commend me to the most illustrious lord marchese and greet our shared children, kissing the little bride’s hand in our name.

327. AG 2997 libro 35 cc. 1r–v. It becomes apparent in the course of this letter that the type of work that interests Anne d’Alençon is in this case that of the seamstress. Notably, Isabella speaks in the informal first-person (“I”), marking the familial intimacy that is under construction between her and the Paleologo lords of Monferrato. Following Isabella’s letter of 24 July 1517, she and Anne began to build an alliance based on exchanges of favors, particularly regarding household management needs. This letter affords a glimpse of the lives of some of the court employees and their prospects for career moves resulting from diplomatic relations among princes.

426 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 580: 1517 December 20 Mantua To Protonotary Antonio Galeazzo Bentivoglio, sending him perfume and apologizing for its poor quality.328 We are sending to Your Lordship through Matella your servant a jar of concoction that you requested of us. It pains us that it is not as excellent as what we have given you in past years, because it may cost us the reputation and credit that we have earned with you. All the same, we preferred to risk this damage rather than have Your Lordship think that we did not want to send it to you because our love and benevolence toward you was in any way diminished. This would have harmed us far more. Having offered our excuses on this matter, we are certain that we will retain our reputation with you. If the concoction is not of the quality that it has been in the past, blame not the mistress but the dearth of good musk in these parts, for that is the one thing that can make it good. We were truly unable to find anything but the lowest grade, and that with great effort. Your Lordship must enjoy this for what it is, and in our love, knowing for certain that there was none better available and that if there had been, we would have willingly sent it to you. If we may be of service in anything that will bring honor, usefulness, convenience, or pleasure to you, you will do something most welcome by seeking us out, with no less confidence than you would do with your own sister. And as such we commend ourself to Your Lordship. Letter 581: 1518 January 3 Mantua To Lord Visconti, regarding perfumes and soap he has ordered.329 We happily received Your Lordship’s letter sent from Asti, though you need not have reminded us of the credit you retain with us for scents, for we had already sent the hand soap with Madonna Isabella da Casale. We had not forgotten about the perfume, but since we could not get good musk this year, we were unable to supply the apothecary, who has run out. We are making every effort to obtain some. Once we have it and have made our concoction, we shall see that Your Lordship receives some. In the meantime, we are sending in the hands of Madama, your consort, a little flask of [scented] water, on orders that she should give it to Your Lordship. You must use it in memory of us until we can send you something better. We ask nothing more of you at present than that you kiss the hands of Her Majesty the queen [Claude of Brittany] and of Madama in our name, and we commend ourself to the lady duchess of Alençon [Marguerite of Angoulême] and to the other ladies you think appropriate. We offer and commend ourself to you.

328. AG 2997 libro 35 c. 11r. 329. AG 2997 libro 35 cc. 13v–14r.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 427 Letter 582: 1518 January 3 Mantua To the marchese of Bitonto [Gian Francesco Acquaviva], sending him some newly composed songs by Marchetto Cara.330 Since it could easily happen that, due to the distance between Your Lordship and us and the rarity of messengers coming from those parts to here, you might retain little memory of us, we thought that since we must send a courier that way, we would write you this letter and send you some songs newly composed by our Marchetto. This way, if Your Lordship has them sung or plays them yourself, you will remember us as we remember you. We pray you send us some news of your condition and that of the most illustrious lady [Dorotea Gonzaga], your consort, for you would be doing something much appreciated. We commend ourself to both of you. Letter 583: 1518 January 22 Mantua To Eleonora da Correggio, congratulating her on the birth of a son.331 We thank Your Ladyship infinitely for informing us of your happy delivery of a beautiful son. We felt such pleasure as we would for our own sister, because we have always held you in that regard. May Our Lord God grace him with the happiness that you and we wish for him. We offer ourself and commend ourself always to Your Ladyship. Letter 584: 1518 February 22 Mantua To the marchese of Monferrato, sending back a cook he had suggested for her.332 Having kept here for several days the cook that Your Excellency sent me, and having enjoyed his service to my supreme satisfaction, I’ve decided to send him back to you, because my need was not for such a person as he is, but for a young man who would train in this art under another, old cook of mine, whom I would under no circumstances remove from his position. Also, since this man has the responsibility of a family, with wife and children, he would not suit my purposes. I thank Your Excellency with all my heart for the care you took in this matter, which was no less than if I myself had undertaken it. You will therefore have your cook back, and you may use him as you did before. I will be as gratified by this as if I myself were served by him. 330. AG 2997 libro 35 c. 15r. 331. AG 2997 libro 35 c. 19r. On the possible fraudulent status of this birth, see V. Moscardi, “I Rusca, signori di Locarno, di Luino, di Val Intelvi ecc. (1439–1512)” Bollettino storico della Svizzera Italiana, Vol. 21, no. 1–3 ( 1899): 1–6. 332. AG 2997 libro 35 c. 32r

428 ISABELLA D’ESTE I learned from my steward that Your Excellency wished to have some muscat grapes and some currants. I’m sending along with your cook a bag of each in the variety that is found here. I pray you enjoy them for my love, and in the good heart with which I send them to you. If I can do anything else to please you, you will be doing me a thing most gracious in commanding me, for you will find me always disposed. I commend myself greatly to you and to the lady your consort, and I greet our shared children. And I kiss the most beloved little bride. Letter 585: 1518 April 15 Mantua To the vicar and friars of the Dominican order of preachers, defending the writer Matteo Bandello from accusations against his character.333 The virtues and excellent qualities we have always known in the venerable friar Matteo Bandello, and the modest and religious life we know he has always led here in our city since coming to live in the monastery of the Venerable Fathers of San Domenico, have been such that truly they cannot but be praised by us and by any decent person of good judgment. And so, having heard that you fathers had been informed otherwise—which we know is most false—we thought we would be remiss in our duty if we did not write this letter attesting to our complete confidence in the honorable behavior of the aforesaid friar Matteo. His behavior is truly such that from every decent and virtuous person it merits enormous commendation. We therefore pray you reverend Fathers desist in every evil opinion you may have held of him, if by chance you had such, which we do not believe. We pray you as forcefully as we can to consider him honored and dear, as his innumerable virtues merit. Beyond doing something worthy in itself, you will be doing us a pleasure for which we will feel obliged. We offer ourself again, ready to serve your every pleasure and convenience.

333. 2997 libro 35 c. 53r. This letter is transcribed in Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 93–94, and paraphrased in Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:150–51. Matteo Bandello was a favorite at the Gonzaga courts. Isabella figures several times in Bandello’s collection of Novelle, as dedicatee and as listener, and some of the tales are presented as being told at her country villa at Porto.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 429 Letter 586: 1518 April 26 Mantua To Mario the chamberlain of the marchesa of Monferrato, on the search for a seamstress.334 We were much dismayed that though we made every effort in the past few months to see that the most illustrious lady marchesa our sister obtained the services of a seamstress who knows how to work well, we found no one to suit the purposes Your Lordship described to us, as we wished to do. For now, may it suffice that Her Excellency knows our good will, which is ever disposed to do something to please her. At present, we do not know where to find a childless widow who knows how to work well, or a damsel who would go to stay there. Because if they are small, then they don’t know how to do the work, and if they are older, they won’t go without some of their family. Nonetheless, for our part we will not stop seeking someone appropriate for Her Excellency, and once we find someone, we will inform her. We offer ourself disposed to Your Lordship’s every pleasure and comfort. Please be content to commend us to the aforesaid lady marchesa, and may she fare well. Letter 587: 1518 May 26 Porto To the vicar of Sacchetta, on an unlawful woman.335 We understand that in that city of ours resides a certain Agnese Tesina, who leads a life of crime that is contrary to the Christian faith. Since we wish to have such persons punished, we want and we charge you to get your hands on her dexterously and secretly. Then, under able custody, send her to Mantua to the most reverend father inquisitor of San Domenico, for this is our wish. Letter 588: 1518 May 28 Porto To the duke of Ferrara, sharing some amusing letters.336 Given the pleasure it seems to us Your Excellency took that evening when that letter from my secretary Stazio [Gadio] was read at your table, I later thought about 334. AG 2997 libro 35 c. 59v. In Letter 579, of 24 November 1517, Isabella had sought to place in service to the Paleologo court a woman with a husband and two children. Similarly on 22 February 1518, she herself turned down the offer of a cook from Monferrato who would have brought a family with him to Mantua. In each case, these potential employees are turned away as too costly and yet, as Isabella acknowledges here, skilled and responsible workers were rarely without dependents. 335. AG 2997 libro 35 c. 71v. 336. AG 2997 libro 35 c. 72v. This letter reveals an instance in which particularly entertaining letters were not only shared with listeners other than the addressee, but also sent to another court to be enjoyed by a wider audience. Isabella anticipates here that, though he is perfectly literate, Alfonso I d’Este is likely to have these letters read to him by someone else as a form of entertainment. Also noteworthy is the fact that Isabella sent these letters out of Mantua without making copies.

430 ISABELLA D’ESTE sending you copies of the others.337 But I feared Your Excellency might consider me foolish for not believing you were already as well informed as my most illustrious lord. I delayed sending the letters until now when, from a postscript of Your Excellency’s, I understood your wishes. Here enclosed I am thus sending you all of Stazio’s letters on these jousts. I didn’t have them copied because, given how long they are, I could not have granted Your Excellency’s wish so soon. You may now have them all read to you at your leisure. Then, I pray you please send them back to me, since they are addressed to my most illustrious lord consort and no other copies exist. If I may in any other way be of service to Your Most Illustrious Lordship, I am ever ready to obey. I commend myself to your good grace. Letter 589: 1518 July 7 Porto To the duke of Ferrara, thanking him for vases and maccheroni.338 The three baskets of cooking pots and other beautiful earthenware vases that Your Excellency sent me are so much to my liking that I could not possibly thank you to the extent that you pleased me. In truth, I can’t imagine how anything of this sort could be more beautiful. To the degree that I can, I thank Your Excellency endlessly for such a lovely gift. And Mona gets his share [of my gratitude] too, for his diligence in selecting them and having them brought here safely. I have not tried the maccheroni, because it is too warm for such dishes, but I am certain they are good, because I have eaten them at other times and liked them very much. I thank Your Excellency for those as well, and I commend myself to you from the heart. Letter 590: 1518 July 15 Porto To Infante Don Cesare d’Aragona, lending him a very rare book.339 I did not send Your Most Illustrious Lordship the Greek Eustathius earlier, because Mario [Equicola] had not spoken to me about it. I think it was a matter of his forgetting. I am sending it now with the most serene queen’s man. I pray Your Lordship please have it kept carefully and see that it does not come into the hands of too many people, because since it is a rare thing it is to be held dear. Nor should you let many people see it, in order not to diminish its reputation. But 337. Tamalio notes that Stazio Gadio, whose major duties were in service to Federico II Gonzaga, had performed diplomatic service in Venice in May of 1518. Gadio was known as an engaging and often vivid reporter. See Raffaele Tamalio, “Gadio, Stazio,” DBI 51 (1998). 338. AG 2997 libro 35 cc. 80r. 339. AG 2997 libro 35 c. 82v. A work by the archbishop and scholar, Eustathius of Thessalonica (died c. 1195). Luzio and Renier, who also provide a transcription of this letter, report that the volume was in the library of Francesco II Gonzaga: La coltura, 17–18.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 431 Your Lordship, as patron of it and of everything else I have in this world, may look at is as much as you like. Then you may send it back to me. And if you would like to see another that I have, I will send you that too, most willingly, as I am disposed to serve you in much greater things. I commend myself to you always, praying you deign to kiss the hand of the most serene queen [Isabella del Balzo] in my name and commend me to the most illustrious lady infante and to Dona Giulia.

Letter 591: 1518 July 24 Porto To Antonia del Balzo dei Gonzaga, recounting Isabella’s fall from a platform.340 To satisfy Your Ladyship’s desire to hear about my dangerous incident on the day of St. Mary Magdalene, I will tell you briefly. On that day, I was invited by a friar who resides in a little church called the Magdalena, just a stone’s throw outside the Porta Pradella, to see several pageants341 they had set up, on the life of St. Mary Magdalene. I went there around the twenty-second hour [two hours prior to sunset] that afternoon. They had erected a structure next to the wall of the church, where they were going to have the pageants. On the other side of the street they had made a great wooden platform, which was partly on the ground and partly over the water of the lake. I dismounted from my carriage and stepped onto this platform with all the men and ladies of my court and many gentlemen of the city. As soon as I stepped down, the platform started to tip from one end and tumbled down, so that everyone fell, some people on land and some in the water. Fortune had it that the water was not very high, and only God could have made us drown in it; I fell head first and feet in the air. But thank God I wasn’t hurt at all. The fear and danger were tremendous. But the grace of God and St. Mary Magdalene was greater, and no one was killed. I myself was immersed up to the waist, and almost all the men and ladies got wet. This one lost a cape, that one lost a hat, others lost their slippers, caps, and fans, so that there was enormous confusion. Once the danger had passed, all this made for great fun in hearing each person tell his own. The biggest and most harmful consequences were that my Alessandro da Baese got a nail in his lower leg that made a very large wound; and Giacomo da Covo, the bursar of the Most Illustrious Federico my firstborn son, twisted his ankle. They will both mend soon. If I tried to tell Your Ladyship all the details, it would be chaos. But here one talks of nothing else, nor will we for many days. This is what I can briefly tell you. I commend myself always to you and to the illustrious Madonna Camilla, our honored sister.

340. AG 2997 libro 35 cc. 85v–86r. 341. Dimostrazioni.

432 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 592: 1518 September 23 Porto To Girolamo Ziliolo, praising his service.342 We did not reply earlier to your letter of the 2nd of this month, because we thought you were in Milan, where you wrote us you wanted to go. Now that we think you have returned, and that Negro, our wardrobe master343 is going there to Ferrara, we reply to you that as long as we have known you, which has been a good number of years, we have been as satisfied as we could possibly be with everything that you have been gracious enough to do for us. We know and recognize that you serve us with love, diligence, and loyalty, and you have done no less so in this last job of the candlesticks you had made for us, which was laudable and most gallant.344 Thus, if you look closely at what we wrote you about their manufacture, it was not that we were complaining about you. On the contrary (if we remember well) it was written to you that if that price was negotiated and agreed upon by you, then we would send you the money, but that if it was the asking price of the maestro, we wanted you to have it reduced, as is the custom here. Now that we understand everything, we are happy, and we are sending you the money with Negro. We pray you be of the opinion that we have as much faith in you as we have in any friend, and we are obliged to you for many things you have done for us. We offer ourself ready to render you grateful recompense whenever we shall have the opportunity. Letter 593: 1518 December 17 Mantua To the duchess of Ferrara, an example of covert communication.345 From Your Excellency’s letter of the 14th of this month, I saw what you wrote me about how the most illustrious lord duke is faring and what we can expect from others. I thank Your Excellency infinitely for this, and I assure you that when I informed the interested party about what you had written, I received the reply that they know nothing at all about this, but that all of it is a fiction and a fable. But he was very grateful to hear of these developments. And so, if Your Excellency hears anything more, I pray you share it with me, for you will be doing me an immense favor. I commend myself to you etc.

342. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 2r. 343. On the post of wardrobe master (guardaroba), see Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 345–46. 344. Isabella’s word here is candelieri, a general term that could designate candlesticks, candelabras, sconces, or chandeliers. The last two were rare in the sixteenth century and would usually have been therefore specified as hanging or made for wall attachment. On Renaissance lighting, see Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 276–82. The 1540–1542 inventory of Gonzaga goods lists many candelieri: see Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 356. 345. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 11r.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 433 Letter 594: 1518 December 21 Mantua To the marchesa of Monferrato, with reference to a letter in cipher.346 Through a letter written in cipher from Your Excellency of the 14th of this month, I learned what you wrote me. It was an immense pleasure for me to hear it all, especially the last part, in which I could see the contentment Your Excellency feels. I thank you with all my heart for these notices, and I pray you share more news with me when you have it, for you will be doing me an enormous favor. I commend myself to you always. I greet the illustrious lord marchese and our other shared children, kissing our sweet little bride.347 Letter 595: 1519 January 13 Mantua To Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona, sending him a song by Marchetto Cara.348 I was not able earlier to send Your Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Lordship the song you had requested me to have composed on that subject, because earlier it was not finished. Your Lordship can well understand that these excellent musicians take their time to compose, correct, and polish their compositions. And so, if I have delayed, you will pardon me if I send it to you now included here, since you know the reason. Our Marchetto says that if Your Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Lordship likes it, he will be enormously content. Yet if things are otherwise, he offers to write it again in another way. He and I wish to hear of your receipt of this song and also how you like it. I commend myself to Your Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Lordship, and I pray you deign to call upon my services, for you could do nothing that would please me more.

346. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 12r. Here, as in Letter 593 of 17 December 1518 to Lucrezia Borgia, Isabella is careful not to reveal the real contents of the conversation. 347. Isabella refers to the “other” children besides the marchese, because the new marchese of Monferrato was only five years old. Guglielmo di Monferrato died on 4 October 1518. Though his plan had been to will his feudal estate to his daughter Maria and his future son-in-law Federico II Gonzaga, he had not yet carried out this wish when he died. The heir to the Monferrato duchy was thus Guglielmo’s sickly son, Bonifacio. See Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 416–18. 348. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 17v. On Isabella’s relations with Cara, see Prizer, “Isabella d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia as Patrons of Music,” 15–17; “Marchetto Cara at Mantua.”

434 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 596: 1519 January 13 Mantua To Giovan Battista Stabellino, decling an invitation to hunt.349 In order to obey the pleas and commandments of the great god Apollo, which more than any others we wish to heed, we would have gladly joined in the hunt that took place these past days at the congregation of faith, if only we had known about it in time. Apollo must excuse us for now, since the meat from the pig hunt was eaten several days ago. The goat desired by our dear gentle girl has not yet been caught. We hope she will be here in time to eat if it is captured. You received word that Apollo was held to be a liar. We would not want you to attribute this to obfuscation or ignorance on the part of the writer. On the contrary: commanded by Diana, she obeyed. Now to dispel all your suspicions, know that Diana did not order that dictum in order to imply that our god Apollo lies; she referred to the pronouncements of the ancient, not the modern Apollo. Know that this modern one is reputed by Diana and her knights to be very truthful. You may inform him of this, so that he won’t be angry with them. We offer ourself to all your pleasures. Letter 597: 1519 February 10 Mantua To Giovan Antonio Stella regarding her proposal to mate their cats.350 Our desire to have your tomcat was to couple him with our female, who is presently in heat. But since he is, as you write, indisposed, we think he would not be up to the task. Hence, since he is not suitable, we don’t think we will send our she-cat to you. We thank you for your good will in serving us, and we commend ourself always to all your pleasures and comforts. Letter 598: 1519 February 12 Mantua To Giovan Paolo Parisi, denying Camillo Capilupi’s request to study in Naples.351 We understand that your pupil, Camillo Capilupi, desiring to continue his study of the humanities with you, has decided to go with you to Naples. We marvel that 349. AG 2997 libro 26 c. 18. The actor Battista Stabellino was one of Isabella’s most dedicated informers about activities in Ferrara. He often signed his letters to her with the nickname, “Apollo.” This letter, then, refers to Stabellino himself, and the “Diana” it discusses is likely Isabella. On Stabellino, see Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 231–33. 350. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 26r. Isabella’s matchmaking activities apparently extended also into the animal kingdom. 351. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 26v. Luzio and Renier transcribe this letter at La coltura, 262–64, and discuss the humanist Parisi. Camillo began his studies with Parisi when he was sent to Rome under the guardianship of Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona, who died early in 1519. Benedetto Capilupi, Camillo’s father and Isabella’s beloved secretary, died late in 1518 and, as she had promised him she would do, she was looking after the welfare of his sons.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 435 he dared to affirm this intention without our permission or the knowledge of any of his brothers. We have written to him complaining of his scant respect for us and also informing him that our plan and that of his brothers is that he will come here to Mantua and then go to study in Bologna with his brother, Messer Lelio. But since he is still a boy and ill equipped to govern himself in these matters, we thought we would also share our view with you and pray you exhort Camillo to obey us and come to Mantua in the company that will be provided him by our Mantuan monsignor archdeacon [Alessandro Gabbioneta]. And if he has already left with you for Naples, we pray you, for our love, please take care to send him back to Rome in the company of the aforesaid monsignor archdeacon, for you will be doing us a singular favor. Do not think that we are taking him from you out of any ill satisfaction with you; on the contrary, it pains us to the heart that we have been given this occasion. We only do this for the boy’s greater benefit, because since he has lost that patron in whom we had so much faith, he must be provided with qualities that will enable him to maintain the level at which his family has always lived and still lives. This does not mean, however, that we will not remember forever the diligence and love you have shown in making him into a good man, and we intend to show you our gratitude whenever we shall be given the occasion to see to your pleasure and comfort. We offer ourself to you, thus, continuously. Be well. Letter 599: 1519 February 26 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, sending him some artichokes and reminding him of a joke he played on her.352 Convinced that Your Excellency must be out of sorts due to your long journey and thus in need of something whimsical to stimulate your appetite, I thought I would send you some artichokes and a few blackberries, which you will receive in a small basket. I pray you enjoy them all and remember me, in the same good heartedness with which I send them to you. I would gladly labor to make you think they were born in my garden at Porto, if I thought you would believe it as readily as I believed what Your Excellency told me of that fennel in brine that came from Spain. But because I am certain that you are not so gullible as I am, I will save myself the trouble of trying to make you believe this. It will suffice for me to hear that you enjoy these, as I think you will. I commend myself to you.

352. AG 2997 libro 36 cc. 31v–32r. This letter not only reveals the humor and affection shared by Isabella and her brother Alfonso; it also offers a glimpse of Isabella’s garden at Porto and of a certain European traffic in specially prepared foods.

436 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 600: 1519 February 27 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, sending him a recipe.353 I sent Your Excellency on other occasions some seeds for growing Savoy cabbage [verza] to eat as salad. Now I am sending you some cabbages themselves, so that you can try them. The way to prepare them is this: You must cut out the hard core. Then put the rest to boil in water for a little while, until the cabbage has become quite tender. Then take it out of the water and dress it with oil and vinegar like a salad. Your Excellency can see whether you like this whimsical dish. I commend myself to you always. Letter 601: 1519 February 28 Mantua To Camillo Capilupi, applauding his decision to obey her and study in Bologna.354 With exceptional pleasure we read in your letter of the 17th of this month all you wrote in reply to ours about the decision to have you come to Bologna, and all you say about your inclination to continue humanistic studies, even as you defer to our wishes and our view. We laud and commend enormously all you say about your devotion to the humanities. And we tell you firmly that we intend and command that, without further objections, you adhere to all that will be imposed upon you by Monsignor the archdeacon and come to Bologna to stay with your brother Lelio. For we promise you freely that once you are there, you will not be asked to pursue any studies other than those to which you yourself are dedicated and inclined. If you want to take the humanities, you will take them, for in Bologna there are excellent humanists, and out of respect for us they will look after you well. You may be sure that our actions and decisions are motivated by nothing but our love for you and the fact that we can provide better for your needs if you are in Bologna than if you are in Naples. So dispose yourself totally to coming, and 353. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 32r. Here as in the previous letter, the word I have translated as “whimsical” is Isabella’s term, stranieze. The fact that she refers to these foods and preparations as pleasantly strange or bizarre suggests their recent arrival in Lombard cuisine (though she had been sending artichokes to friends and relatives for years). On food culture in Renaissance Mantua, see Malacarne, Mensa del principe. On salad, see Giannetti, “Italian Renaissance Food Fashioning.” 354. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 33r. See Letter 598 of 12 February 1519 to Giovan Paolo Parisi for an earlier moment in this correspondence. Camillo’s letter to Isabella is transcribed by Luzio and Renier: La coltura, 264. There, he argues to the marchesa that “men are naturally inclined to different things: some to arms, some to trade, some to letters of various kinds, some to medicine, some to law, and few to the humanities, of whom I am one… . For which reason I beg you to let me follow my natural instinct, for it will be a lesser evil to be an excellent humanist than to be a mediocre lawyer, as would happen if I were to be forced to study against my will.” The Rime of Ippolito, Lelio, and Camillo Capilupi were published in Mantua in 1585: see Emilio Faccioli, Mantova: Le lettere, vol. 2: L’Esperienza umanistica: L’Età isabelliana; Autunno del Rinascimento mantovano (Mantua: Istituto Carlo d’Arco per la Storia di Mantova, 1962), 427–28, 469, 488.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 437 come gladly, for nothing will be wanted of you in Bologna that you do not want for yourself. But we tell you truly that if you were to go to Naples, you would give us cause to show you that you had made a bad decision. Fare well. Letter 602: 1519 March 29 Mantua To all podestà, commissioners, vicars, and castellans and similarly those who guard the tower of Ostiglie, adapting as appropriate. On the grave condition of Francesco II Gonzaga.355 To all our dear ones. Due to the grave and dangerous infirmity in which our most illustrious lord and most observant consort finds himself, we command that you practice greater vigilance than usual and take such care of your office and the city that if Our Lord God should have further plans for His Excellency no scandal, commotion, or impropriety may arise. Letter 603: 1519 April 4 Mantua To multiple recipients, acknowledging the death of Francesco II Gonzaga.356 Through your writing we have learned what sorrow you felt at the death of the most illustrious lord, our consort, and that you share the pain we are suffering, which is unbearable. We write nothing more, both so as not to add pain upon pain, and because it would be impossible to express. We thank you beyond measure for your loving letter and for the help you offer us. We intend to accept when we shall have occasion. We pray you, as well, seek us out when we might do something to please you, for we offer ourself to you sincerely. Fare well. Letter 604: 1519 April 4 Mantua To the widow Eleonora Rusca da Correggio, in commiseration.357 In anguished sorrow over the death of the late illustrious lord, our consort, we were presented with Your Ladyship’s letter containing the painful news of your consort’s death. This was an arrival of pain upon pain that reopened our fresh 355. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 41v. Francesco Gonzaga died this same day, 29 March 1519. 356. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 45r. The first letters to appear in Isabella’s copybooks after her husband’s death were dated 1 April 1519 and were similar to the one translated above. This letter is followed by the notation that it was sent in similar form to these recipients: Alberto Bendidio; Beatrice de’ Contrari; Visconte Alfonso; Alda Boiardo; Matteo Bandello; Vincenzo della Tella; Bianca d’Este; Giulio Aldovino; Timoteo Bendidio; the prioress of Santa Caterina Martire in Ferrara; Sister Osanna, abbess of San Guglielmo in Ferrara; Sister Margherita, abbess of Corpus Christi in Ferrara; Taddea Bendidio; Angelo de Massimo; Alessandro de Popoli and brothers; Angelo Tovaglia; Prospero Colonna; Cardinal Fieschi; and Protonotary Bentivoglio. The template salutation was, “Our Magnificent and Dearest Friend.” 357. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 45v. This note to another widow is the frankest letter Isabella appears to have

438 ISABELLA D’ESTE wounds, for which reason we know how to comfort neither ourself nor Your Ladyship. In such unbearable situations, we can only say that we must want whatever Our Lord God gives us and bend ourselves to His will, seeking to resign ourselves and live as best we can. If we may assist Your Ladyship in any way, dispose of us as you would a loving sister, for we are always here to please you, and in this spirit we offer ourself. Letter 605: 1519 April 22 Mantua To Vincenzo and Alvise degli Albani, giving her opinion regarding some wine.358 In recent days, you sent us a quarta of tart Malvasia, which we did not taste until now. Though it is good, is does not suit our tastes, because we think it has too much unripe grape in it, and it is too young. We pray you send us another quarta that, though it may be tart, has a bit more sweetness. We offer ourself etc. P.S.: After this coming Easter holiday, we will reply to the letter that was brought by Messer Donato and tell you what must be done about the dressed leather.359 Letter 606: 1519 May 23 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, announcing Mario Equicola as her new secretary.360 Something I did not think of while Your Lordship was here came to me during the night, which is rightly called the mother of thoughts. My thought was that it was written about her husband’s death. A notation indicates that a similar letter was written on the same day to the marchesa di Massa (Ricciarda Malaspina). 358. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 51r. 359. According to Peter Thornton, both corame [here curami] and cuoio referred to dressed leather, which could feature a wide range of finishes. This material could be integrated into many household items, from clothing to box coverings and bookbindings. Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400–1600, 86. 360. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 63v. The position of secretary was one of compatibility, implicit trust, and high security within the court administration. The marchesa’s secretary would be in daily contact with her and would be responsible for conveying her thoughts on virtually all matters in her correspondence, both in Mantua and during her travels. On relations between Isabella and Mario Equicola, see Kolsky, Mario Equicola; and Villa, Istruire e rappresentare Isabella d’Este. In the period 2 July 1519 to August 1520 there are notable gaps in my selections. This includes virtually all of busta 2997 copybook 37, which runs from 25 May 1519 to 14 August 1522. Isabella’s copybooks in this period are in a more compressed and less articulated hand that often fits four or five letters on one page, making them very difficult to read. Francesco Gonzaga had died, and the chancery was evidently in a state of flux, even turmoil. Other copybooks, however, interlace letters from some of this time, hence the appearance of letters from that period in this volume.

1510–1519: Letters 421–608 439 necessary to choose a secretary who would be acceptable to the lord marchese.361 And so yesterday, when I found myself with these lords, I spoke of this and proposed several, among whom was also Mario. The lord marchese first of all and also the others liked Mario; and so I made him my secretary. I give Your Lordship notice of this so that you won’t be surprised that I did not discuss it with you and you will be informed of everything. I commend myself to Your Lordship.362 Letter 607: 1519 July 2 Porto To the podestà of Cologna, seeking a horse stolen from one of her subjects.363 Ghirardo di Bergami, a subject of ours who lives at the castles, informs us that in the past a mare of his was stolen, which is now in Cologna in the hands of a man named Caligaro. Since he is coming to Your Majesty with the aim of getting it back through the vehicles of justice, we wanted to equip him with this letter. We pray Your Majesty, if our subject leads you to conclude that the mare is his, please work to see that it is returned to him with as little delay as possible. And if Your Majesty thinks it inappropriate that the buyer should suffer damages, since he has not been compensated for the money he spent on the mare, by all means decide what would be reasonable. The aforesaid Ghirardo is ready to trust your most prudent judgment and to carry out whatever Your Majesty commands. In addition to doing something that is just and worthy of you, you will greatly please us. To your pleasures and comforts we offer ourself continuously at the ready. Letter 608: 1519 November 9 Mantua To the vicar of San Benedetto, instructing him to quell the unrest that is disturbing a monastery.364 Our marchese and we have decided in no uncertain terms that the monastery of San Benedetto in this land of ours must not be subjected to daily travail and noise, and accordingly we want the men there to calm down and attend to their business. Thus we order and command that you call them in and give them orders on our behalf that without further incident they obey the sentence given by our council. They must neither reject justice nor resist the wishes of the aforesaid marchese and us, but rather consent to the judgment. If crossbowmen are needed in order 361. The marchese of Mantua is now, of course, the young Federico II Gonzaga. 362. On 23 June 1519, Alfonso would become a widower again himself, when Lucrezia Borgia died in childbirth. On 28 June, Charles V would be elected Holy Roman Emperor. 363. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 70r. Cologna is a town and comune in the Italian province of Brescia and thus in Lombard territory, as is Mantua. 364. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 72r. The monastery in question is the ancient Benedictine abbey, San Benedetto in Polirone, at San Benedetto Po.

440 ISABELLA D’ESTE to carry out justice and our wishes, we will send them at the expense of those men, giving you and the captain of the crossbowmen the authority to apprehend and imprison the disobedient, whom we will punish with all the rigor of justice, both because we want to be obeyed, and in order to set an example for all our subjects. You should note who are the principal authors of such disorder. Be well.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 Routine governing demanded much of Isabella’s attention in 1520 and 1521, as attested here by letters settling marital disputes, enforcing the Gonzaga monopoly on fertilizer for crops, and protecting dowries and other rightful property for Mantuan subjects. Most striking in this period are her letters in the war effort. While Federico was absent for combat in the papal forces, his mother trafficked in weaponry, blocked army desertions, scoured for basic supplies like shoes for the troops, and protested the violence of unruly soldiers. The marchesa’s news network was as important as ever in this new phase of the wars. She tracked the movements of foreign and domestic forces and aimed to mitigate their damage to Gonzaga towns by weaving together reports from multiple sources among her most trusted correspondents. Somehow, toward the end of 1521, she found time to have artichokes planted in her garden and to send her brother Alfonso a recipe for fish. On 1 December 1521, Pope Leo X died, prompting yet another reshuffling of military alliances in Europe. One direct consequence of Leo’s death was that Isabella’s daughter, Eleonora, and son-in-law, Francesco Maria della Rovere, could return to Urbino as dukes, for this pope had occupied their territory and forced them into exile. Another was that Isabella’s vigilant negotiations in Rome (through trusted ambassador Baldassarre Castiglione) for a cardinalate for her son, Ercole, were newly stalled. While Federico II Gonzaga, no longer obliged to serve Leo X, reopened his options for military service, Isabella’s brother-in-law, Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga (who hoped to be a candidate for the papacy himself), and her son, Ercole, headed for Rome. The Dutch Adriaan Florenzoon Bueyens was elected pope as Adrian VI on 9 January 1522 and reigned until his death on 14 September 1523. The austere Adrian’s efforts at reforming a corrupt Church were met with ridicule and contempt. He was succeeded in November 1523 by Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici, who reigned as Clement VII. Charles V was elected emperor in 1519. By spring of 1522, Italian and imperial troops were pushing the French out of Italy, though while Federico II Gonzaga was fighting for the emperor, some of his kin remained allied with the French. Isabella followed her son’s victories and her in-laws’ defeats with mixed emotions. That summer, she returned to more routine pursuits and local concerns. In February of 1523, she tried to ascertain the veracity of (true) reports that the Turks had captured the Greek island of Rhodes, and she began to negotiate a career for her son, Ferrante, at the court of Emperor Charles V. Letters from August of that year attest to Ferrante’s arrival in Spain. A number of exchanges in the following years document his escalating need for financial support from home, to the exasperation of his cash-strapped mother. 441

442 ISABELLA D’ESTE Having moved her living quarters from the Castel San Giorgio to the Corte Vecchia wing of the Ducal Palace, Isabella turned to reconstituting and enlarging her studiolo at this time. She enlisted the Venetian sculptor, Tullio Lombardo, to design the floor and a doorframe for this space and sought cityscapes that could be used as models for paintings she wanted on certain walls. She also ordered a fountain for her apartments’ enclosed garden, and sent two ivory chests to be carved with decorations. Soon, Isabella herself departed for Rome, arriving there on 25 March 1525. On her way, she stopped at Pesaro, where she saw for the last time her beloved sister-in-law, the duchess of Urbino Elisabetta Gonzaga, who died the following year. Isabella intended to stay in Rome for some time. While she enjoyed being fêted among the prelates at the papal court of Clement VII, her ambition was to achieve a cardinalate for her son, Ercole. When Sigismondo Gonzaga died in October 1525, she seized the opportunity to approach Clement with a request that the younger Gonzaga be allowed effectively to replace his uncle, and this time she was successful. She marked the occasion with an autograph letter to Federico and Ercole informing them of the news. Still, she remained in Rome. Brushing off reports of plague in the city, she rebuffed Federico’s invitations for her to return to Mantua even nine months later, in July 1526. Whether or not, as was rumored, Isabella was snubbing her son out of resentment of his love affair with a local woman named Isabella Boschetti, which many feared was keeping him from consummating his marriage to Maria Paleologa, the decision to stay in Rome was one she very likely came to regret. On 6 May 1527, unpaid troops mutinied from the army of Charles V and invaded Rome, affronting the League of Cognac that bound France, Venice, Milan, Florence, and the Papal States. That horrific event and its chaotic aftermath were seen by contemporaries as markers of a devastating shift of power. Later historians have widely considered it the beginning of the end of the Italian Renaissance.1 Having been assured that Rome would be sacked at most for a day, as 1. The pope had fatally believed he could avoid the sack by making agreements and treaties; then he thought he could fight off the enemy. For extensive discussion, from which I draw here, see Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma.” Luzio evokes the tangled positions of Mantua, Ferrara, Urbino, and Rome, noting that Federico II Gonzaga benefited in this moment from having extracted from the papal chancery a document he had signed under Leo X saying he would not fight against the papacy even if called upon to do so by the emperor. Pietro Ardinghello had sold the document in question to Baldassarre Castiglione, who deftly negotiated the dangerous handover. The secret transaction was officially denied, but Federico played a game of avoidance at this point and was reputed to be a captain of the Church who could not be counted on to fight. In fact, during the Sack of Rome, he was in Mantua. For general context, see Ruggiero, The Renaissance in Italy, 503–509. For contemporary commentaries, see Kenneth Gouwens, Remembering the Renaissance: Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome. Leiden, Boston, and Tokyo: Brill, 1998; and Luigi Guicciardini, The Sack of Rome, trans. and ed. James H. McGregor (New York: Italica, 1993).

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 443 long as Charles III, duke of Bourbon stayed alive, Isabella refused to leave the city until it was too late. Charles died from a bullet to the groin on 6 May, and the sack raged on for a full month.2 Ferrante Gonzaga arranged with the imperial forces to save his mother, who remained trapped and starving in the Colonna palace along with thousands of people she had taken in. In the aftermath of this narrow escape, Isabella dealt for years with conflicting accounts of what went on in that nearly unique safe space inside a Rome under siege. Our own ability to draw conclusions about the matter is also compromised. Isabella’s copybooks from this intense period, along with many treasures she had acquired during her stay, perished when pirates captured the vessel that was carrying her belongings back to Mantua. The loss of the copybooks proves the enormous importance of those that remain, for what survives of her correspondence in that Roman period are only a few original letters directed to Federico, which were duly filed by the Gonzaga chancery (now found within AG buste 2129, 2130, 2131). Many of these address routine business and assure Federico of her well being while delegating to others more detailed reporting on her activities and the news of Rome. Federico’s surviving letters inform his mother, among other things, of political events in Italy and Spain (where Ferrante Gonzaga was residing) and of Spanish aggressions in Mantuan territory. Though a broad narrative has been pasted together by Alessandro Luzio from the dispatches of the Gonzaga ambassador to Rome, Francesco Gonzaga (who succeeded Castiglione when the latter was sent to Spain as papal nuncio in the summer of 1524), and from Gonzaga agents in Venice and elsewhere, the loss of information from Isabella’s perspective is inestimable.3 The decade closed with the initiation of a new project for Isabella. In 1529 she purchased a court in Romagna at Solarolo from her son Federico, whose uncle Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga, had willed it to him. For the remaining years of her life, Isabella served as Solarolo’s sovereign, governing it largely from afar, through an appointed commissioner. In 1529, en route to Bologna for the coronation by Pope Clement VII of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor, she made a ten-day visit to her new fiefdom. During her short stay, she set about to familiarizing herself with the community and began advocating for her new subjects.

2. Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 78–79. 3. Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma.” See especially section VI, in which he notes (with some partisanship) that many of the most interesting reports in Marin Sanudo’s famous Diaries are of Mantuan origin and that the relevant documents “constitute the richness and the singular value of the Archivio Gonzaga.”

444 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 609: 1520 February 6 Mantua To the vicar of Medole, protecting a woman’s dowry.4 Having been informed that a certain Lucia di Tonini who lives there, in our town of Medole, is being repeatedly harassed for her dowry by certain creditors of some of her children—a wicked and unjust thing, in our view—we wish and order you, from now on, not to allow her to be harassed in such a circumstance. For it seems to us that if the children incur debts, it is their duty also to pay them. And this is our understanding of debts just as it is of misdeeds they perpetrate, for which we do not believe her dowry is liable.

Letter 610: 1520 February 8 Mantua To the podestà of Sermide, defending a monopoly on the exportation of dove droppings.5 We have heard that many locals as well as foreigners are usurping the authority to buy dove droppings in our dominion and take them wherever they like. In doing so, they are damaging Bartolomeo Lazioso, our factor in Ostiglia, to whom the most illustrious lord, our dearly departed consort, granted exclusive liberty in this regard. We want you to tell your official to please be alerted not to allow anyone to pass through there with the above-stated type of merchandise, unless he presents Bartolomeo’s seal. And if they should appear without this seal, he should take the droppings away from them as a seized contraband good.

Letter 611: 1520 August 23 Porto To Gian Battista Marchetto, reprimanding him for not honoring Margherita Cantelma’s rights to some wood.6 The Most Illustrious Madonna Margherita Cantelma complained in past days that you took from her a certain amount of dry wood she had there in Felonica, and we thought this strange. We therefore had a letter written to you to which you replied, but we were not very pleased with your answer. And now, again, Her Ladyship has informed us that when she sent a ship to load up her wood and bring it to Mantua for her needs, you made it return empty. We are astonished at this, because if in 4. AG 2997 libro 36 c. 78r. Medole lies about thirty kilometers northwest of Mantua. Federico I Gonzaga, third marchese of Mantua, counted this territory among those he inherited from his father, Ludovico III in 1478. See Mazzoldi, 35–36. 5. AG 2997 libro 36 cc78v. Dove droppings were used as fertilizer and in the composition of topical medications. Much of Isabella’s attention in the first year after Francesco’s death appears to have been devoted to tasks of such practical import: marriages and food as usual for her, but also rights and taxes connected with fundamental operations in the dominion. 6. AG 2998 libro 38 cc. 6v–7r.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 445 the first act you showed little respect for the aforesaid Madonna Margherita— whom you should, however, respect—after our admonition you also showed little for us. Therefore we repeat again that you must no longer behave in this way, most especially against Madonna Margherita, because if you do otherwise we will see to this matter in a way that perhaps you will dislike. You would do well also to pay her for the wood that was taken, as you offered to do in your letter, and to restore things in short order, for you must know that you cannot legitimately take the law into your own hands. And if you think Her Ladyship owes you something, ask for it through legal channels, though we are certain that if she is indebted to you she will repay you without other mediation. See that you cease assuming the authority to do such violence and obstruction, and show the respect for her and her property that you would show to our own.

Letter 612: 1520 August 26 Mantua To Baldassarre Castiglione, on the death of his wife.7 We know well that it is a difficult, nearly an impossible, thing suddenly to halt the pain one feels from the loss of something dear, and this is most true for someone as dear as your wife was to you. You will have heard by now that a short while ago she passed from the present to the immortal life. We do not exhort you not to grieve at such a loss, for that would be in vain. Indeed we grieve heartily with you, since we too feel enormous displeasure in this event, given our love for you and the great love we justly bore for Madonna, your wife. But we encourage and pray you, once you have given vent to your first feelings, to try as soon as possible to return within the bounds of reason. And since neither cries nor tears can heal such a great loss, we pray you dispose yourself to patience. The sooner you do this, the better you will show the quality of your spirit. And you will please us greatly. Fare well.

7. AG 2998 libro 38 cc. 1r–v. Castiglione married Ippolita Torelli who, at fifteen, was twenty-three years his junior, in 1516. She died after giving birth to their third child, while Castiglione was on a mission for Federico II Gonzaga in Rome. By all accounts, the marriage was uncommonly harmonious and Castiglione grieved deeply at the unexpected loss of Ippolita. The news was revealed to him personally by trusted friend Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena. For discussion and transcription of this letter see Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 234–36, 243–47. See also Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:185–87; Cartwright, Baldassare Castiglione, 1:410–15, 2:77–84.

446 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 613: 1520 December 3 Mantua To Coglia [Girolamo da Sestola], ordering fruit trees.8 Trusting in your diligence, we have chosen you as the person to provide the graftings for our new garden. Consider whether you need to graft from buds.9 You shall therefore send the things listed here: Six graftings of Bergamot pear, six graftings of Good Christian pear, two graftings of Giacciole pear, two graftings of Rance pears. And if you find other sorts of good fruits that seem to you to suit our project, send us four graftings of those with the sixteen listed above. In all they should be twenty. In addition to this, you shall see whether the Most Illustrious Lord Sigismondo our brother has some sweet pomegranate plants or something else. See to getting some of those and send them. Fare well. Letter 614: 1521 August 17 Mantua To Guido Rangoni, complaining of the behavior of his soldiers.10 Niccolò Capilupi, our nobleman, citizen, and officer has complained to us that some of Your Lordship’s soldiers, at little benefit to themselves and great damage to him, cut down to the base a stand of trees in a place he owns near Santa Lucia. And in addition to that, they took a pair of oxen and some of his household goods from one of his workers. We think it is, doubtless, not a good idea for Your Lordship’s soldiers to treat our subjects as open enemies rather than as friends. Therefore, we pray you as forcefully as we can, please with all possible efficacy of the heart see that our subjects are generally respected and not abused in this fashion, and see that Niccolò Capilupi—who is not only our subject but also a long-time officer and servant of the most illustrious lord marchese our beloved son—gets back his oxen, since there is nothing to be done about the other damages he has suffered, the chopped-down trees, and the other things taken from him. Your Lordship may be certain that you will be doing us a singular favor in going beyond this provision of justice, so that it will not bring with it further disorders of this kind. Indeed, we hear that these soldiers are threatening also to burn down his house, which would indeed be the sign of a capital enmity. However, we are quite certain that Your Lordship in his prudence will not permit such disorders. We offer ourself to you heartily. 8. AG 2997 libro 37 c. 77r. 9. pensate se bisogna aprir li occhi: the reference regards a technique for grafting that is often used for roses and fruit trees. 10. AG 2998 libro 39 cc. 12v–13r. Following the 1519 election of Charles I of Spain as Emperor Charles V, conflicts arose once again among the major European powers. Pope Leo X, in response to the threat of Protestantism with the rise of Martin Luther, allied with the Catholic emperor and Henry VIII of England. Rangoni was a commander for François I of France, who sided with Venice against the others.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 447 P.S.: Just as we finished writing this letter, a man of Niccolò Capilupi’s arrived, who says that Your Lordship’s soldiers, not satisfied with the misdeeds of which you are already informed, tied up his worker and took the oxen away along with their cart. We don’t know whether this is the way our subjects are supposed to be treated. Truly, Your Lordship must make provision that others do not follow their example by commiting similar offenses with our poor men, and you must also see that his cart and oxen are restored to him. Letter 615: 1521 September 16 Mantua To the podestà of Ostiglia, regarding a marital dispute.11 The measures you took to bring order to the conflict between Francesco Fasolino and his brothers-in-law were well considered, and we laud them.12 But since no better results followed from them than what you wrote to us, we think it best, and we will it, that if the wife who is sequestered with you is willing to return to her husband, you give her back to him, because we have his promise to be a good husband and companion for her. Encourage her on our behalf not to fail in her duty to be obedient to him, and to live honorably so that he is not forced to complain to us about her. If that should happend, all the favor we are now willing to show her would change into equal disfavor, to her detriment and shame. Be well. Letter 616: 1521 September 22 Mantua To all podestà, commissioners, and vicars, in similar form. An order for all Mantuan soldiers to serve only in the marchese’s army.13 We want you to publish an edict in all the usual places of your jurisdiction, that any person who is a subject of the most illustrious lord marchese our son, or who has business of any sort in his territory, be he of whatsoever degree or condition, and who is currently on wages or salary from another potentate or person and in another location than the army where His Lordship serves, must return home within the period of eight days after the publication of this edict, on pain of confiscation of goods, rebellion, and any other major penalty His Excellency may give. Nor shall they any longer leave to take money from anyone except this army.

11. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 31r. 12. A letter dated just a week later and clearly regarding this same dispute refers to the husband twice as Fasolino rather than Pasolino, as the copybook shows here. 13. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 37r. In this letter and the following ones, we see Isabella’s role in governing wartime Mantua and addressing military needs. Following Francesco’s death in 1519, her actions in this sphere expanded, as her son Federico was on military campaign and she was the more experienced head of state.

448 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 617: 1521 September 23 Mantua To the podestà of Ostiglia, following up on a marital dispute.14 Since you clearly conclude insofar as you write in your letter of the 21st of this month, that if Fasolino’s wife, who is now sequestered with you, should be returned to her husband, not only would they not live in any greater peace than they did in the past, but only with difficulty could the young woman be sure of her life, it is our will that you consign her to these two brothers who are coming to conduct her here. It is more appropriate and honorable for her to stay with them and her mother than in any other place. If Fasolino believes he has any legal complaint against them and if he appears [to defend it], he will be heard. Nor will he be spared all good justice. Letter 618: 1521 September 26 Mantua To the commissioner of Borgoforte, ordering weaponry.15 We saw in your letter of yesterday Maestro Giusto’s request for two pesi [sixteen kilograms] of harquebus powder. This amazed us, for it is well known how many shots two pesi of powder would fire: it would be infinite. Therefore, we are sending only twelve pounds, which will be quite sufficient for the need. We cannot send any stonemasons, because they are all engaged here in Mantua. The cannon balls you sent are being returned to you. Be vigilant. Letter 619: 1521 September 28 Mantua To the podestà of Ostiglia, regarding more arms and gun supplies.16 To equip you better for executing your commission from the lord marchese our son and from us should the need arise, we are sending you a powder keg of sufficient capacity, two tins of fuse cord, and two pesi of lead. We decided not to send you falcons other than the two we are sending from Revere, for those two will meet your needs.17 We are ill supplied with springalds and harquebuses, because when the lord our son departed, he took so many with him.18 Try to make do with 14. AG 2998 libro 39 cc. 36v–37r. 15. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 40r. 16. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 41v. In this time of war, Isabella’s attention turned away from ordering luxury goods to overseeing the purchase and transit of weapons for defending Gonzaga territories. We note the same attention to detail and economy in the one as in the other area. A letter on this same day informs Federico II Gonzaga of the decision to send these arms supplies to Ostiglia and Revere rather than to Borgoforte, which she says she knows to be “well supplied.” 17. The falcon was a small cannon. Isabella uses a diminutive of this word, falconeti, suggesting a petite version. 18. In medieval warfare, the springald (or springalle) was a catapult machine for launching stones. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century warfare, however, the same name had come to designate a

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 449 those you have there, and if there is time to have the unusable ones repaired, have them repaired. If you send the powder you have there to our castellan here, he will have it refined and sent back to you, or he will send you an equal amount. If you wanted bullets and molds from here, you needed to send the measurements for the size. Therefore you must have them made there, with the lead we are sending you. See that thrift is exercised with these things, and after these disturbances are over, consign what is left to our agent there. We are sending from Revere two kegs of powder, two tins of fuse cord, and forty balls for the two falcons, which will arrive by land. Letter 620: 1521 September 28 Mantua To the vicar of Curtatone, on water rights and the operation of local grain mills.19 The manager of our mill at Montanara has complained in several ways about the grinding of those who live adjacent to the main torrent and other people who are cutting off the water and making bridges that impede its flow to the mill, to the extent that he is suffering great losses and is about to give up this mill, which would be very detrimental for us. And since the obstruction of these waters inflicts damages not only on its manager but also on our state, we want you to use all diligence in finding these people who continue to block the water, and punish them according to our edicts. And order all those who live adjacent to this principal torrent, on pain of whatever punishment you deem appropriate, to keep it clean as usual, because we want this water to flow rapid and free of all impediment. And if you do not do your duty in this regard, we will provide him with someone else who will see to this task. Letter 621: 1521 October 10 Mantua To the podestà of Sermide, on the need for more frequent and more detailed letters.20 We received your two letters of yesterday, which arrived at different times, and from which we learned of the routing of the army of the most illustrious duke, muzzle-loading cannon used for short-range firing: OED; Sabatini Coletti. Isabella’s variant spingardoni suggests a large size. 19. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 43v. Mills for grinding grain were powered by flowing water. Paolo Squatriti’s discussion of water use in medieval Italy provides a useful gloss on the situation Isabella confronts in the above letter, written five hundred years after the period Squatriti treats. Paolo Squatriti, Water and Society in early Medieval Italy: AD 400–1000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 20. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 54r. Isabella’s habitual prodding of others for more correspondence is here intensified by political urgency. On letters as Isabella’s most important conduit for news, see James, “An Insatiable Appetite”; Shemek, “In Continuous Expectation.”

450 ISABELLA D’ESTE our brother [Alfonso I d’Este]. If they had arrived earlier and had more clearly informed us (for they differed from what we heard up to yesterday evening through other channels) they would have been cause for us to be more content with you than we are. Because, to speak frankly with you, on a matter of such importance and which you must know is dear to our heart, we should have had ten letters from you by now, explaining clearly how this event happened. Therefore, be more diligent than you have been, and send messengers specially to give us an immediate report on the dead as well as those taken prisoner, and every other detail. Letter 622: 1521 October 11 Mantua To the podestà of Sermide, restoring him to her good graces.21 The incredible desire we felt to hear precisely how things had gone in the Bondeno event caused us, when your first letter was not quite clear in the way we like, to go to the pointless trouble22 of having a letter written to you in the spirit you saw yesterday. But then, when we received your two letters of the 10th which clearly report to us on everything, we laid down all perturbation with you, and we are now most satisfied with your correspondence, and we laud your diligence and vigilance. We have pardoned you in the knowledge that with such events one cannot understand everything immediately. Persevere in keeping messengers continuously out to hear about the exploits of the troops there, and do not fail to report to us immediately what you hear, as we are certain you will do. Letter 623: 1521 October 11 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi in Ferrara, expressing gratitude for his reporting.23 Truly, the event that unfolded at Bondeno was presented to us very differently from the way you reported. We felt much greater displeasure then than we do now, hearing that it was not so bad as it was painted to be. Our distress is much relieved and mitigated by your writing, for which we thank you infinitely. We assure you that you could have done us no greater favor in these times. Therefore, we pray you, if anything of moment should occur, advise us of the truth about it all.

21. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 55v. 22. pigliassimo alquanto di mosca. Treccani notes that pigliare mosche means to perform a useless task. 23. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 55v.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 451 Letter 624: 1521 October 14 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga, reporting to him on local violence in this time of war.24 Some of our merchants here who, on orders from Your Lordship, recently took a certain quantity of lead, irons, and tie rods to Viadana approached us for permission to bring them back to Mantua, claiming that from then until now, no one ever came to receive them.25 We replied that we wanted first to inform Your Lordship, who could then tell us your wishes about this permission. Today, one of Maestro Giovan Picenino the saddler’s sons was standing in the doorway of the police guard and was killed by a man they say works in the household of Soncino, our most reverend monsignore’s [Sigismondo Gonzaga’s] chamberlain. We have been most diligent in trying to get our hands on this wicked wretch, but he has not been found. If we can find him, he will be punished. Your Lordship will hear through letters written by the sindaco26 about another misdeed of a much worse sort committed at Gazzuolo, where a girl who is the daughter of Messer Federico Cattaneo’s factor was taken by force during the night. This is a villainy we think worthy of only the most despicable Turks. Since we are certain it must displease Your Lordship no less than it does us, we have taken no action of our own in its regard. We expect you will be pleased to command all due rigor in prosecuting these evildoers, and that they shall be punished with no leniency whatsoever. Letter 625: 1521 October 20 Mantua To the podestà, commissioners, and vicars of various Mantuan towns in similar and adapted form, on how to handle enemy soldiers.27 We want to you take diligent care if any soldier happens through that stretch of our territory, especially a Spaniard or a Landsknecht coming from the papal camp.28 If he does not have a permit from the most illustrious lord marchese, our 24. AG 2998 libro 39 cc. 61v–62r. Isabella now adopts the formal voi/noi pronouns in correspondence with Federico, in contrast to the tu/noi she used with him as a child. 25. My thanks to Virginia Jansen, Janina Darling, David Hanser, and Paolo Sanza for conferring with me about the term, chiavi da muro, rendered here as “tie rods.” The chiave da muro (literally,“wall key”) is a tensile iron rod or chain stretching across the chord of an arch from springing point to springing point to counteract the horizontal component of outward thrusts of the arch. The irons mentioned in the letter may be swords or chains and manacles. 26. The italicized term in modern Italian translates as “mayor,” but in early modernity could refer to an accountant, auditor, or magistrate. The last of these is likely here. 27. AG 2998 libro 39 [not 38] c. 69r. 28. The Landsknechts were land laborers as their name implies, but in sixteenth-century Europe the term (Italianized as lanzichenecchi) referred to mercenary German or Swiss soldiers who fought most famously in the army of Charles V. The emperor and the pope, both served by Federico II Gonzaga,

452 ISABELLA D’ESTE most beloved son, then you shall not only stop his passage, but also ransack and strip him and then send him back on his way. Do not fail in this task insofar as you welcome our grace, because this is the firm wish of the aforesaid lord our son, as well as ours. Letter 626: 1521 October 29 Mantua To Giovanni Gonzaga, reporting on efforts to send shoes and leather goods to the soldiers.29 We have indeed made all possible provisions to have shoes and leather goods brought there to supply the troops. This was by commission of the lord marchese our son, as Your Lordship must have heard. Nonetheless, given what you wrote us in your letter of yesterday, we issued new edicts and instructions to do whatever is possible. We will not fail, for we, no less than Your Lordship, wish to free our poor men from the great hardship and pain they are suffering. Though we cannot see them with our eyes, we hold them in our mind, and we have great compassion for them. If, however, leather goods and shoes from here are not sent in the quantity that is needed, this is because the cobblers don’t have any, because they sent so many in these days to the camp of our lord that now they are without. But we will do what we can. We commend and offer ourself to Your Lordship. Letter 627: 1521 November 1 Mantua To the vicar of Milan, regarding foreign troops in Italy.30 We commend you for sending us word that the Swiss have departed from there. We are pleased that they inflicted less damage on our men than we feared, knowing what such armies do in places where they stay as they did there. You did well to bury that dead man without further ceremony, so that other Swiss in the company would not notice and no disorder would follow as a result, especially because we have learned that this is what has usually been done in similar situations so as to avoid scandal. The man who went into the Swiss before they arrived was here, and we had a ducat given to him for his efforts.31

were at this time allied against the French and the Venetians, while Isabella’s brother Alfonso I d’Este of Ferrara remained allied with the French. Both sides employed these mercenaries. See Tamalio, Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I, at 32–34. 29. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 77r. 30. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 78v. 31. The reference seems to be to a soldier who infiltrated the Swiss troops to learn their plans.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 453 Letter 628: 1521 November 1 Mantua To Borso T. regarding the arrival of five thousand German soldiers.32 We understand what you wrote us about the five thousand Germans who are expected there tonight. We commend you, all the more since we have heard of such an arrival through no other source. We are certain that you will not fail to apply all your good effort to the provision of victuals as well as to all other necessities. We will be pleased if you advise us whether they are Germans or Swiss, where for certain they are headed, and who is leading them. Be well. Letter 629: 1521 November 3 Mantua To Count Ottaviano Strozzi, on how to accommodate Swiss troops.33 From your letter written at Borgoforte, we understand the provisions you have made to have sufficient ships for the transit of the Swiss to Bozzolo. We commend you for this. We are considering the great hardship that our poor city of Reggiolo will suffer if these Swiss arrive there tomorrow night to lodge (as you write to us is the plan), since it has already endured so many cavalcades while the army was camped at Parma. It could not be in worse condition. We would therefore be of a mind to have you do everything possible to set the lodgings for tomorrow night at Luzzara, which, because it is a bigger city and not so worn down as Reggiolo, will better bear this burden. And the next day, have them move on to some other city beyond Reggiolo. We would be most grateful for this. However, in case the given orders cannot be altered, do what you can to provide Reggiolo with what will be needed. We have written to our vicars near there that they should immediately send great quantities of bread, wine, and any other possible victuals, and that they will be paid. Letter 630: 1521 November 7 Mantua To Sigismondo d’Este, thanking him for artichoke plants for her garden.34 Your Lordship sent us such a great number of artichoke plants that I may well hope to rid not only myself, but others too, of the appetite for them! As soon as they came, I had them planted at once, in my presence here in my garden 32. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 78v. Though this letter is dated “first of October,” the month is clearly a slip of the pen, given this text’s collocation in the copybook. 33. AG 2998 libro 39 c. 81v. This letter is dated 3 October, but its content and its placement in the copy book indicate that the month is November. Strozzi had been appointed by Federico II Gonzaga to lead the Swiss troops across the Po. See Mazzoldi, 269–76. 34. AG 2998 libro 38 c. 43r. The letter gives evidence that life went on with a few pleasures, even amid the considerable stress of war. Both Isabella and her brother appear to have overseen gardening operations as well as the arrival of new plants. The artichoke was already present in ancient Rome; Isabella had favored it all her adult life, as illustrated by her sending and receipt of artichokes as friendly gifts.

454 ISABELLA D’ESTE in Mantua according to the instructions Your Lordship gave me in your letter. I thank Your Lordship and commend myself to you. Letter 631: 1521 November 10 To Girolamo Pandolfini, sending him mastic for making oil and requesting a recipe.35 Through the present exhibitor, Filippo, who is a member of our household staff, we are sending you two pounds of mastic.36 We pray you please make it into oil and send it to us through our servant. And since we would like to know how to make this oil so as not to burden you in the future and also for our own satisfaction, we ask that you please teach the above-named Filippo the method, step-bystep. In doing so you will be pleasing us beyond measure. We offer etc. Letter 632: 1521 November 16 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, on a new dish.37 In recent days, we got the urge to try preparing fresh lake carp and trout in vinegar, as it seemed to me they should be good that way. Having had them thus prepared and judging that they came out well, with a fine flavor, I thought I would send some to Your Excellency so that you too can taste this new dish. We are sending you, in a jar, ten lake carp and one trout in vinegar. I pray Your Excellency enjoy them in memory of me, and report to me how you like them, because if they are to your taste, I will send them to you sometimes. Your Lordship should know that I eat the carp without doing anything to them but removing them from the vinegar. It’s true that I have the trout sautéed in a skillet, as I think it is better that way. I am sending Your Excellency in addition twelve salt-cured carp.38 Enjoy them all for my love. I commend myself to your good grace.

35. AG 2998 libro 38 c. 43v. 36. An aromatic gum or resin which exudes from the bark of the lentisk or mastic tree, Pistacia lentiscus, used chiefly in making varnishes and, formerly, in medicine (also mastic gum). Galassi and Sarzi list numerous uses of this resin dating from the Egyptians and the Greek Hippocrates through the Middle Ages and beyond: for the treatment of wounds and dental cavities; as a laxative; as an aroma for wine; as a cure for ailments of the liver, intestines, tongue, spleen, and stomach; and in cosmetics. Mastic was also commonly used in making adhesives. See, Galassi and Sarzi, Alla Syrena, 155; OED. 37. AG 2998 libro 38 c. 47v. 38. Malacarne, Mensa del principe (301), translates the Mantuan term missalato as sotto sale or salt cured.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 455 Letter 633: 1521 November 21 Mantua To Baldassarre Castiglione regarding efforts to obtain a cardinalate for Ercole Gonzaga.39 We received your letter of the 17th of this month in reply to ours of the 12th and were very pleased indeed. We laud the discreet ways in which you have acted and that you say you wish to continue negotiating for the promotion of the Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Lord Ercole, our son, to the cardinalship. We had begun to hope for this, both because of the remark you made on behalf of Messer Pietro Ardinghello and because we know His Holiness of Our Lord is disposed to honor and benefit this house. We never thought that you had forgotten to press the matter, but we did indeed think that you did not consider this the time to attempt such a thing only to discover that our hope was in vain. We are certain that you will not fail to test your path and move the negotiation forward when you think the time is right. We still hope for this, if not for now then at least for another time, and soon, especially through your dexterous, discreet, and opportune ways. It was thanks to these that we saw the happy outcome of the Church captainship for the most illustrious lord marchese, our son [Federico II Gonzaga], which faced enormous difficulties and impediments. And since we have as much confidence in your prudence and experience as we have had in any person who ever negotiated for this house in our lifetime, we think we need not instruct you further on this matter. Rather we will leave it to you, and if you think there is something we should do on our part, send us word. In the meantime, the aforesaid lord marchese will attend to accumulating merits with our lord by serving His Holiness, and the aforesaid Ercole will become more worthy each day of the dignity that is desired for his role. We do hope that having an uncle who is a cardinal will not be an obstacle while the said monsignore his uncle [Sigismondo Gonzaga]—whose life we pray Our Lord God will be long and happy—still lives. But because we are sure that with your dexterity you will know how to address this matter as well, we think we need say no more to you about it. We put ourself entirely in your hands, and we await occasional news from you, as the negotiation unfolds or progresses. Next, because we know our above-named son is extremely inclined toward literature, and we know he has an enormous desire to go somewhere to stay comfortably for several months where he can study, we thought it would be nothing but good if he went to study in Bologna, for he is much inclined and we hope that his natural and spontaneous wish to study will yield good fruit. We did not want to act on this thought without first mentioning it through you to His Holiness of Our Lord. We consider it our duty to communicate such things to His Beatitude, since out of his kindness he has taken this house, and particularly our children, 39. AG 2997 libro 37 cc. 115r–116r. Castiglione was at this time in Rome as Mantuan ambassador to the papal court: Cartwright, Baldassare Castiglione, 2:115–30.

456 ISABELLA D’ESTE his most faithful servants, into his protection, benevolence, and grace. Tell His Holiness, then, of our thinking, and take the time you think you need. Learn his views, his will, and his inclination, because we are ready to do nothing but what we understand he will praise and like. We think it would be all the better to let our aforesaid son attend to literature for now, since it is not time yet to send him to Rome, and since he is in such a fervor to study; at his age this could only be most fruitful. Nonetheless, we await hearing from you of our lord’s intentions. The letters we received from you the other day and yesterday which are addressed to the lord marchese we thought we would send to His Lordship in the post that Messer Girolamo da Vicenza is dispatching this evening, because these letters too did not all travel securely, and we are often cross at how long we await letters from the lord marchese. Yesterday evening we got letters from His Lordship from the 18th, and because among those there were none addressed to you (unless they were included in the packet of the most reverend legate), we don’t know whether you received news from camp in yesterday’s mail or not. The aforesaid lord writes us that he sent letters on the 16th, which we have not received. The brief you sent containing the license to be sent to Turkey we decided not to send to the camp so that it would not be lost by some accident; we thought that by now Lord Gasti must know you sent it, as we had word sent to him. You will find here the copies of the news from Giovan Battista Maffei from Venice, from his letters of the 14th and 16th of this month. Letter 634: 1521 November 29 Mantua To Baldassarre Castiglione, sending an extra emissary to help negotiate the cardinalate of Ercole Gonzaga.40 The most illustrious lord marchese, our son, has come to hope he will be able to request of His Holiness of Our Lord that the Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Ercole, our son and his esteemed brother, be admitted to the dignity of a cardinalship, especially since the most reverend and most illustrious monsignor legate has promised him his help and influence, saying that His Lordship deserves much more than this from His Holiness. The lord marchese has thus elected the Most Reverend Agostino Gonzaga to go especially to Rome and to work with you there according to instructions he will be bringing with him. And His Lordship has written that if we approve this choice, we should prepare Messer Agostino’s dispatch and send him. We have done so, since we could not but praise the aforesaid lord’s decision, because it is not that we do not hold for certain that you are more than sufficient to the task and to much greater undertakings, which we already know from experience. It is only to show more explicitly our desire for this negotiation to succeed, by sending an additional honorable person. 40. AG 2997 libro 37 cc. 16r–v.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 457 Insofar as you and the aforesaid Messer Agostino will know how to conduct this negotiation—and we need not tell you how important it is to the aforesaid marchese and to us—we feel we can hope for a good report from Messer Agostino or happy notification from your letters that the matter is coming about at least in one of the three ways noted in the above-named instructions. Our hopes were also confirmed by your letter of the 24th of this month, which we got yesterday and which was written after the capture of Milan, for it seems to us that all things are coming together to facilitate our project.41 No other reply to your letter is required except that we commend you for what you wrote. We also received your other letter, which you wrote in response to what we wrote you about the friars of San Sebastiano here. We have no news to send you from here, and for events from the field you must already be informed there. Be well. Letter 635: 1521 December 1 Mantua To Vincenzo and Alvise Albani, an order for Malvasia wine.42 We pray you please send us two quarte of Malvasia from the smallest, most fragrant and sweetest grapes for drinking that can be found in Venice; and another quarta of the softest and smokiest there is. Let us know the price and we will see that you are compensated, and we will be enormously pleased with you. If you have no chance to send it sooner, speak with our ambassador there and have him send it when he sends our salicata.43 We offer ourself to your comforts. Letter 636: 1521 December 5 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, on news that Pope Leo X may have died.44 Beyond what Your Excellency kindly communicated in your letter of yesterday regarding the death of the pope, I also heard it from Giberto da Carpi, your servant. I thank Your Excellency for this. But since at this time, neither I nor our most reverend monsignore [Sigismondo Gonzaga] has had the news from another source, we are very uncertain whether we should hold it for true or for false. It seems impossible to the aforesaid most reverend monsignore that if this news were true we would not by now have ten notifications. In any case, may Our Lord God allow whatever must be to work to our benefit. 41. On 21 November 1521, Milan was occupied by imperial-papal troops and the French-Venetian forces were retreating to Cremona. 42. AG 2998 libro 38 c. 51r. 43. Term uncertain. As Salicata is a village in Mantuan territory, the reference may be to a product from there, perhaps a type of grape or vine. Castiglioni and Mariotti, Salicastrum: vite selvatica (Pliny). 44. AG 2998 libro 38 cc. 52v–53r. Giovanni de’ Medici died on 1 December 1521. The passage of the papacy would have tremendous repercussions for Isabella’s family and, by extension, for much of Italy.

458 ISABELLA D’ESTE The aforesaid most reverend monsignore has decided, if the above-mentioned death is confirmed, to go to Rome. And because in that case His Most Reverend Lordship would travel through Your Lordship’s dominion, he will be pleased if, for his and my gratification, you grant him safe-conduct for his person and for eight or ten servants who will be in His Most Reverend Lordship’s company, sending the papers here with the present rider of mine, who has been sent especially for this purpose, and if you expedite it in such manner as Monsignor His Most Reverend Lordship merits with Your Lordship. He will also be pleased if you include in the safe-conduct ten horses, both for land and water passage. I and His Most Reverend Lordship will be very pleased with Your Excellency. This morning when the gates opened, Ghiberto set out with the post. From the enclosed copy Your Excellency will see the reply made by our shared son, the lord marchese, about what has been done regarding the matter of the monsignor our archbishop [Ippolito II d’Este]. We are certain he will not fail to do whatever is required for Your Lordship’s benefit. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good grace. Letter 637: 1521 December 14 Mantua To Ercole Gonzaga, advising him how to behave in the papal court.45 Though there is nothing we need to write you following what we wrote in reply to the letter you wrote us from Bologna, nonetheless, since we are expediting this cavalcade we thought we would inform you of our well being and that of your most illustrious brother and your sisters. From what we hear in his letters, the most illustrious lord marchese is healthy, thanks be to God. May His Majesty keep him long thus, along with all of us. You too, try to stay healthy, and behave in that court of Rome as we hope you will, so that you bring honor to yourself and the entire house. Above all, you must show due reverence to the most reverend and most illustrious monsignore [Sigismondo Gonzaga], given the good uncle and father he is to you. As soon as you are able, commend us to His Most Reverend Lautrec’s French troops were in retreat from Milan but eyeing Parma. With Federico II Gonzaga far away, Mantua was newly vulnerable as well, and Isabella sought political counsel. Leo X had occupied Urbino, however, and now Isabella’s son-in-law and her daughter, Eleonora, could return there as rulers; indeed, Francesco Maria della Rovere reentered Urbino on 26 December and reclaimed his dominion. With the cardinalate of Isabella’s son Ercole as yet unachieved, the ultimate success of that venture was unknowable, while for his part, Sigismondo Gonzaga aspired to the papacy himself and was headed to Rome in hopes of favoring his own candidacy. Federico II Gonzaga, who had been constrained to served in the papal army, was now free to accept an appointment with one of the powers requesting his allegiance: these included the Venetians and the French, but also the emperor. Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 447–51; Mazzoldi, 274–75. 45. AG 2998 libro 38 c. 59v. Ercole was going to Rome in hopes of securing his cardinalate, and to witness the creation of a new pope.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 459 and Most Illustrious Lordship. And we would much appreciate if you sometimes wrote to us about things in that court. We are not writing you about events here, because you will hear of them from your most reverend and most illustrious uncle (if he is not yet in conclave), or from Messer Baldassarre Castiglione, for we have written copiously to him. Fare well. Letter 638: 1521 December 16 Mantua To Gian Giorgio Trissino, thanking him for a flattering poem.46 We read the most learned and most elegant song you sent us, with which you honor us and ascribe to us much more than befits our condition. But since we attribute this to the license of the poets, among whom you hold first place in our time for employing your talents to surpass the measure of the subject on which you write, we will not contradict the things you say of us. We thank you infinitely both for the song and for the loving promise that you will allow us to taste other poetic compositions of yours. In this case, we have good reason to wish your most learned Muses leisure, peace, and tranquility, and this we do indeed, from the heart. Letter 639: 1522 January 22 Mantua To Alfonso Facino, complaining of the lack of news from Rome.47 We are the most stunned person in the world that after the creation of the new pope, we have had letters from no one in Rome since the first news of the election. We are in great suspense and discontent, because we greatly desire to hear, among other things, of our dearest son, Ercole’s well being, and we have not heard for many days. We do, however, believe that you have the same famine there of news from here that we have of news from there, because the cause that is preventing the arrival of letters from there here—which we believe are being written—perhaps is also preventing ours from arriving there. Therefore, since we desire beyond measure to have news from there and especially of how the above-named Ercole is faring, please write to us often yourself, and make duplicates and triplicates of your letters, sending them by different routes and posts, so that some of them can arrive here. For we still do not know what decision the most reverend and most illustrious monsignor our brother-in-law and most honored father [Sigismondo 46. AG 2997 libro 37 c. 118r. 47. AG 2998 libro 38 cc. 66r–v. In this moment, we can assume that couriers were extremely busy carrying news all over Europe about the election of the new pope. Whether due to postal overload or to neglect of Mantua, the lack of information produced considerable stress for Isabella, as this and subsequent letters illustrate. On the importance of the epistolary network for Isabella’s personal operations, see Shemek, “In Continuous Expectation.”

460 ISABELLA D’ESTE Gonzaga] has made about staying there or coming here, and the same for Ercole. We would very happily learn this so as to be able to provide necessities for Ercole if he will be staying, and to provide for his return if he is coming here. We want you to speak in a dexterous and modest way to the aforesaid most reverend monsignor and try to find out His Most Reverend Lordship’s thinking about this. We commend ourself to you and send greetings to Ercole from us. You be well. Letter 640: 1522 January 23 Mantua To Ercole Gonzaga, on not receiving mail from Rome.48 Not without enormous displeasure, we marvel that after the first letter from the Magnificent Messer Baldassarre Castiglione about the creation of the new pontiff, we have never heard another thing. We are truly quite anxious about this, as we long to hear news of the situation there, and especially of your well being and that of the most reverend and most illustrious cardinal our brother-in-law. We cannot believe—indeed, we are certain that you all have not failed to write us more times than was necessary, just as we have continuously seen to informing you there of what was heard here daily. We hold for certain that the same cause that has not allowed your letters come into our hands must also have intercepted ours to you. Still, since we wanted to send this cavalcade, we thought we would let you know with this letter that we are well, as are the lady duchess your sister [Eleonora Gonzaga] and Ferrante, and also we hear via letters that the most illustrious marchese [Federico II Gonzaga] is in excellent health, thanks be to Our Lord God. We are certain that you will appreciate hearing so, just as we would from you. And so, we would appreciate your informing us so as to give us this contentment. Do not burden yourself with writing duplicate letters. Of the news we have here, you will learn from our letters to the most reverend and most illustrious monsignor, if chance allows that our letters find their destinations. Try to keep yourself healthy.

Letter 641: 1522 January 25 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, attempting to analyze the political scene.49 I thank Your Excellency for the reports you kindly gave me in your letter of the 21st. And so as not to leave you without some repayment, I am sending you, here enclosed, a copy of a letter containing reports from Zurich. Your Excellency must judge them as you see fit, for I claim neither that they are true nor that they are false. The lord marchese received reliable news from Milan that Giovanni da 48. AG 2998 libro 38 cc. 66v–67r. 49. AG 2998 libro 38 c. 67v. This letter illustrates how news about major events was pieced together out of bits of correspondence. Especially in times of war when resources and personnel could be thin on

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 461 Sassatello and some other troops entered Alessandria in siege, and they sacked it. And the French who were there have retreated to Saluzzo. Your Excellency’s letter to lord Prospero will be duly sent to His Lordship. I commend myself to Your Excellency’s good graces.

Letter 642: 1522 January 30 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi, on a rumor that the new pope may be dead.50 Your letter of the 25th was most appreciated, and we thank you greatly for the news you communicated in it, for we heard it all with great pleasure, especially that which regarded the well being and the happiness in which the most illustrious lord duke, our brother, lives. There are few things we could hear with greater delight. Regarding what you write about the circulating rumor that the new pope is dead, we heard the same through other channels; but there is not yet such certainty that we can fully trust it. We believe indeed that if it were true, we would be passing from one new state of disorder into a much greater one. I commend myself to all your pleasures. Letter 643: 1522 February 5 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, requesting the Jewish doctor, Abramo.51 The Most Illustrious Lord Pirro Gonzaga, my cousin, has given me to understand that his condition is much deteriorated from the shotgun hit he took, and that he wishes to have Maestro Abramo, Your Excellency’s Jewish doctor at his house, for he has great faith in his skills. For this reason, I wish to arrange for Your Excellency please to let Maestro Abramo go to the said house. I am sure that by now it must be irksome to Your Excellency that he is so often in demand. Nonetheless, because Lord Pirro is indeed a man who deserves to be contented, and because I desire his every good, I pray you—beyond the other reasons for which I am certain you will satisfy him—permit that Maestro Abramo go to treat the above-named Lord Pirro on account of my love, if you can do so without great inconvenience to yourself. Given the love I bear His Lordship, I will hold it a great favor from Your Excellency, to whom I commend myself from the heart. the ground, moreover, all news had to be considered questionable until it could be verified by multiple sources. In such circumstances, Isabella’s network of powerful allies and trusted employees became a crucially useful tool of state. 50. AG 2998 libro 38 c. 70r. 51. AG 2998 libro 38 cc. 70v–71r. The Gonzaga and Este courts, like so many others, employed Jewish doctors as family physicians. Fundamental, though focusing on the mid-sixteenth century and later, is David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

462 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 644: 1522 March 3 Mantua To Baldassarre Castiglione in Rome, on the kind of letters she most appreciates, and on Ercole Gonzaga’s literary studies.52 Your letter of the 22nd of last month arrived just the other day and was most welcome. We commend your diligence. As for your apology for not writing any news, we say we do indeed delight in hearing news, especially when it is true, current, fresh, and worthy of our notice. But since we know you have much to do regarding the lord marchese’s affairs, especially in this time when it is so difficult to raise money, and since we know that in important matters you never lack attention, diligence, vigilance, and all possible speed—as the results have demonstrated—we excuse you for not giving us news that does not regard us. About the Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Ercole, our son, we say we could not be more pleased or happy with him than we are in hearing that he is inclined to study literature. For our part, we will not neglect anything we know to be of use to him for following this laudable inclination. But because, since his arrival, we have not yet succeeded in getting him a teacher, given that he cannot have Messer Lazzaro Bassano, we will not tell you to do anything specific for now, except what the most reverend and most illustrious monsignor cardinal writes to you. We understand that he has left orders for arrangements to be made to have Messer Piero [Pietro Pomponazzi] for His Most Reverend Lordship, to teach the count of Novellara, who is in his house. We will inform you of what we decide, especially if we need for you to do anything. The first thing our above-mentioned son asked us after he arrived was for our consent for him to go to Bologna to study, and he would like to go there this Lent. But for now, as we say, we have not arranged anything. Nothing else occurs to write about the lord marchese’s news of his activities and the matters of Milan. We have given orders to share with you any news we get here, especially if it can be useful to you for anything. If false or frivolous things were written to you, we think it was due to exaggerated diligence on the part of those who wanted to send you copies of everything, but who knew that with your judgment you would know how to sort the good from the bad and the true from the false. We have, however, advised greater care in the future in writing you only important things. Be well. P.S.: In addition to the information you see in the summaries sent to you of the letters of Vincenzo de Preti, yesterday Messer Guidone da Gonzaga returned from Trent. He says that the lord duke told him undoubtedly that he wants to depart the day after tomorrow, which will be the first day of Lent, though he has not yet determined which road he will take. We thought we should inform you of this.

52. AG 2998 libro 38 cc. 75v–76r.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 463 Letter 645: 1522 May 4 Mantua To Elisabetta Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, on news of military conflicts in Italy.53 I wrote to Your Excellency in my letters of the 28th and 29th as much news as was available here, and I sent you copies of the letters received for the most illustrious lord marchese, our shared son, on the activities of the armies and especially on the routing of the French troops by ours, which was very well confirmed by notices received later from Grossino, who was there with His Excellency the most illustrious lord duke of Milan [Francesco Maria Sforza] when it happened, and by various other people.54 I did not bother to share any additional reports with Your Excellency, since they only confirmed the first ones. Afterwards, nothing was done worthy of your notice, for the reason that you will learn from the extracts of Grossino’s letters from the last day of last month and the first and second of this month, which I am sending enclosed to Your Most Illustrious Ladyship, together with other extracts from letters received from Piacenza. These all confirm what we have heard, especially about the departure of the Swiss, which would very much favor us and the peace and preservation of all of Italy. If we hear more noteworthy news, we shall not fail to share it with you, knowing Your Most Illustrious Ladyship will take great pleasure in this as will the most illustrious duke and duchess [Francesco Maria della Rovere and Eleonora Gonzaga], our mutual children, to whom Your Ladyship shall please convey what we write, and commend us to their lordships and also to Madonna Emilia [Pia].

53. AG 2998 libro 38 c. 93v. Though Isabella’s daughter, Eleonora, now held the title of duchess of Urbino, her mother-in-law Elisabetta retained it as well. On 27 April 1522, papal and Spanish (imperial) troops won a decisive victory over French and Venetian armies, the latter including many Swiss mercenaries aided by Giovanni de’ Medici (delle Bande Nere) and by Federico Gonzaga da Bozzolo. Fought on the grounds of the Arcimboldi Villa Bicocca just north of Milan, the Battle of Bicocca resulted in the transfer of Milan from French to imperial control, and in Federico II Gonzaga’s receipt of land investitures formerly held by Gonzaga da Bozzolo. See Mazzoldi, 276–78. 54. The expression, il nostro comune figliolo (our shared son), is a recognition of the affection Federico II Gonzaga’s aunt, who has no biological son of her own, feels for him. Massimiliano Sforza reigned only 1512–1515. Imprisoned by the French after the 1515 Battle of Marignano, he sold his right to the city and lived thenceforth in France. Francesco II, also a son of Ludovico Sforza, was appointed duke of Milan in 1521 by Emperor Charles V and reigned until 1535: Ady, A History of Milan Under the Sforza, 222–50. On the expulsion of the French see Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 140–45.

464 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 646: 1522 May 7 Mantua To Elisabetta Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, reporting on the war.55 This past Monday a man coming from Bozzolo brought news to this city that on the preceding day two hundred French lances56 in Lodi were routed, killed, and plundered by Spanish infantry and lord Prospero’s57 light horsemen, and that Lord Federico da Bozzolo, who was inside, escaped on a hack via the road to Cremona.58 Unaccompanied by other news, this information was difficult to believe, and we awaited confirmation from another source. Then throughout today, which is Wednesday, the news has been confirmed from different directions, and by different people. No less, tonight through a trustworthy person coming from Bozzolo who says he spoke with the lady consort of the above-mentioned Lord Federico and with his treasurer who was personally present at this routing, this has all been confirmed as true. He tells the story in the following way.59 The French, having decided to keep Lodi and Cremona, had sent six bands of armed men to Lodi, among whom was the Lord Federico [Gonzaga da Bozzolo], who entered there Friday evening and began immediately to build shelters and fortify the city. The following night, His Lordship was advised by a spy that Lord Prospero [Colonna] was planning to send a band of light horsemen and Spanish infantry on that mission. Immediately Saturday morning the construction of shelters vigorously resumed, and Lord Federico wrote to Monsignor Lautrec [Odet de Foix] the news he had received, urging him to send assistance and especially infantry, because inside the city there were no more than three hundred infantrymen and the men at arms were insufficient for a resistance. He received a response from Lautrec that he would send Lord Giovanni [delle Bande Nere] de’ Medici to him the following morning with infantry for this purpose, but they did not arrive in time. Because on Sunday after lunch, when lord Federico was patrolling on foot to observe the work on the bastion of one of the gates, through 55. AG 2998 libro 38 cc. 95v–96r. This letter importantly illustrates the rhythm of news arrivals and the function of letters as a news medium that had to be verified and double-checked. 56. Isabella’s language is often metonymic. Here, the lance stands for the soldier who wields it. 57. Prospero Colonna was the military commander of papal forces. 58. Federico Gonzaga of Bozzolo was a member of a cadet branch of the Gonzaga family. Unlike the Gonzagas of Mantua and of Sabbioneta who, after the death of Julius II and the realignment of political forces, began to pass from the French to the imperial side, Federico da Bozzolo maintained French allegiance. As the Italian and imperial troops pushed the French out of Italy, Federico II Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua, requested that the emperor give him the territories of Francophile Gonzagas. On 22 May 1522, Charles V complied. 59. French commander Lautrec had marched his retreating troops as far as Cremona and left them there to defend possession of the city while he journeyed to Lyon to report his losses to King François I. Lodi and Cremona are both cities in Lombardy, lying southeast of Milan. Because this phase of the Italian Wars was pitting Gonzaga against Gonzaga, Isabella’s narration is oddly bipartisan, or at least ambivalent.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 465 another gate Lord Luigi Gonzaga and Lord Constantino entered with companies of light horsemen, and there were suddenly about three thousand five hundred Spanish infantry in their midst, who killed and stripped all the people who were there. Lord Federico labored mightily and escaped on a hack with a few, very few of his men, and got as far as Crema. From there he then went to Cremona with some horsemen. Lord Luigi Gonzaga won Lord Federico’s banner with his own hands. Many died having been stripped and captured; few escaped. Lord Federico’s treasurer, who is in Bozzolo, says he escaped on a Turkish horse and that as he was exiting he found Monsignor [Giovanni] di Bonavalle, who was as if lost; and in response to his pleas he took him onto his horse and saved him. In the end the outcome is that between the dead and the plundered there are more than two hundred men at arms. On this we have no certainty here, nor any letters. Nonetheless, since it seemed to me we got this from a person in whom we can have faith, I thought I would inform Your Most Illustrious Ladyship of it, so that you share in what I hear, together with the most illustrious lords duke and duchess, to whom Your Excellency will please commend me as well as to Madonna Emilia [Pia], not forgetting also yourself. Lord Guidobaldo is healthy, thanks be to Our Lord God. I myself am not otherwise, along with the most illustrious lord marchese [Federico II Gonzaga] and our other mutual children. Letter 647: 1522 May 9 Mantua To Capino Capini, reporting on Federico II Gonzaga’s military victory at Pavia.60 We took great pleasure in your most copious letter of the 27th of last month, which we received on the 6th of this one, for it was full of news. We could want for nothing in it, just as we want for nothing regarding your diligence and solicitude. It therefore appears superfluous for us to exhort you to persevere, since we are certain you will never fail to perform your customary office and your duty. Equally welcome was your brief of the 28th of last month, in which you give us news of the English king’s wishes regarding His Imperial Majesty [Charles V], and how much he is against the Most Christian King [François I]. It was not necessary to send my most illustrious marchese his letters, because he was and is here, returned from the glorious victory of having held and defended Pavia against the enormous efforts of enemies. The reason for his return to Mantua were the moves that were attempted in Bologna, for which reason as a captain of the Church he was forced to leave the liberated city and conduct himself to Parma. Then, due to 60. AG 2998 libro 38 cc. 96v–98r. The addressee is the Mantuan soldier, knight, and envoy Giovan Francesco Capi who, for all of 1522 shuttled between Mantua and the itinerant court of Emperor Charles V. See Tiziano Ascari, “Capi, Giovan Francesco,” DBI 18 (1975).

466 ISABELLA D’ESTE lack of money, he put his soldiers in the quarters given to him by the Church, as you will hear fully from the letters of others. As for us, we need only have you understand that when some say we exhorted the most illustrious above-named marchese to leave Pavia, they lie and speak a bald untruth, because we have never given a thought to anything but what would be honorable and worthy of praise for him. Neither maternal affection nor personal passion nor natural love had—or ever will have—such force in us that we will persuade the aforesaid marchese to do anything other than serve well and keep faith, which he himself maintains as a precious treasure. We, as befits our role, exhort him not to fail, as he does not, in all he is obliged to do to preserve the ecclesiastical state. We remind him to provide with every possible devotion for the service and honor of His Catholic Majesty’s Imperial Highness, because, loving him as our own life and soul, we could not and would not know how to do otherwise for several reasons. Aside from infinite other reasons, he is induced to this because he is a captain of the Church and a feudatary of the above-mentioned highness. Thus you may without reservation explain this truth to whoever holds a contrary opinion; it is even truer in effect than we can write. We hope that the most faithful services performed by my said marchese in this mission, as [those he performs] everywhere, have given birth to honor for him; thus his labors and expenses will bear fruit with the pontiff and the emperor. We praise and commend and remain much satisfied with your dexterity and competence in negotiating the affairs of my brother, the most illustrious lord duke of Ferrara. We have informed His Lordship of all of it. You will be informed of the matter’s progress. We are writing, as you advise, to the Most Illustrious Lady Madonna Margherita. We are sending you a copy of this letter so that you may make use of it as you see fit. You shall not cease to pray His Excellency to look after the interests of that lord, which besides defending and aiding justice will be a service to someone who will be grateful to him. On the other negotiations the aforesaid lord marchese will reply in detail, hence we say nothing more here. Letter 648: 1522 August 19 Mantua To Giovanni di Casale, explaining why she has dismissed his son.61 We saw [what you wrote in] your letter of the 14th of this month. We respond and speak freely with you as someone for whom we have affection and whom we hold in good account as a friend. Know that since our son Ferrante must go to the imperial court, and since it is necessary to send him with a minimal entourage, we recognize the necessity that those who go with him be people of a sort who have proven that he will be well served and satisfied in all his needs. This is something we are most certain would not be the case if we had chosen to send Scipione your 61. AG 2998 libro 41 cc. 2v–3r. Note that copybooks 41 and 41 overlap in dating.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 467 son, because to speak with you frankly, he is the most ignorant and negligent person possible, someone who busies himself with everything but serving his lord, and who keeps company and uses language completely alien to the place where he is. We assure you that our respect for you made us tolerate him up to now, in the belief that surely he would come to his senses, but he went from bad to worse, to the extent that since Ferrante has departed, we have dismissed him completely and forever. And we would do this again if we hadn’t already done it. So you must excuse us, and believe that what we are telling you is merely the truth. Be advised that in our view, if you want to punish your son, you must put him in the service of a lord who will once in awhile punish him appropriately for his insolence. If we can be of service to you in anything else, we will do so readily. Be well. Letter 649: 1522 August 21 Mantua To Camilla Bentivoglio de Gonzaga, seeking better treatment of Eleonora, a lady-in-waiting.62 Duca, our bailiff, has given us to understand that his daughter Eleonora, who is in Your Ladyship’s service, is being very badly treated by her father-in-law—a certain Ludovico de Triumfi who resides at Commessaggio—and by Don Federico his son, who both use illicit and disrespectful words with her for not having turned over her entire dowry to her husband. Given our love for her father and the good report we hear of the young woman herself, we very much regret that the poor thing is being so badly persecuted. It hardly seems honorable for her to be kept in such malicious company, especially because she is not herself in any way at fault. Therefore, we have taken the expedient of writing Your Ladyship this letter, exhorting you, for the service this young woman has always given you, to please use some dexterous and gentle way we know you will find to see that this Ludovico behaves more appropriately with his daughter-in-law. For although she has not given him all of her dowry, we are certain that Your Ladyship will not want—whatever she may have promised him or whatever amount may be appropriate—for her to suffer or be badly treated by him in such dishonorable ways. Your Ladyship will be doing something useful for your young servant; and her poor father, who feels more than a little dismay at this, will be obliged to you for it. And we too will be very grateful. We offer ourself to you.

62. AG 2998 libro 40 cc. 11r–v.

468 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 650: 1522 August 25 Mantua To the podestà of Ostiglia, advocating for Elena Aldegatti.63 Elena, the wife of the late Giovanni Battista di Aldegatti, returned to complain that she is not being done justice there, saying that favor toward her adversaries is more powerful than her being in the right. And though we could take up this case here in Mantua on the suspicion that can be raised about the vicar and the notary for being relatives of the opposing side, we are reluctant to remove conflicts from your regular jurisdiction, and we are confident in your justice. In addition to what we wrote you the other day about this, we wanted to repeat it with this letter, exhorting you and requiring you to make such provision in this case that this poor woman will have no further legitimate cause for complaint. And since we hear that her adversaries are threatening to throw her out of her house, we want you to maintain it for her until you have determined what justice requires. Letter 651: 1522 September 30 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi, on the pope’s warm reception of Ercole II d’Este.64 Though we were informed by letters from the most illustrious lord duke, our brother, about the welcome audience His Holiness gave to the Most Illustrious Lord Don Ercole, we were nonetheless delighted also to have your letter on the same subject, copious as it was with all the details of his actions, moment by moment, in presenting himself and speaking with His Beatitude. Truly our heart rejoiced, reading your letter not once but several times, as we thought of the honorable bearing, witty Latin ripostes, and good grace observed by Don Ercole at his tender age in the presence of a pontiff. We are truly certain that these things were great cause for finding him likeable, gentle, and well disposed toward the concerns of the most illustrious lord, his father [Alfonso I d’Este]. We hope also that effects will follow to match these good hopes, and we pray Our Lord God grant us this. In truth, we could have no greater consolation, because being tied to the most illustrious lord duke by the bond that we have, it seems to us that we ourselves feel the pleasures and displeasures in which we see His Excellency, whom we have congratulated on what he told us. To you too, whom we know to be that faithful and loving servant of the Este house we have always known, we cannot fail to send congratulations with all our heart. We offer ourself etc. 63. AG 2998 libro 40 c. 14r. 64. AG 2998 libro 40 cc. 38r–v. This son of Alfonso I d’Este, duke of Ferrara, and Lucrezia Borgia was known for his classical learning and his oratorical skills. Ercole was sent by his father to pay homage on behalf of his family to the new pope, Adrian VI, in hopes that the Estes would regain the territories of Modena and Reggio claimed by the Church in the recent wars. Ercole would be sent on a similar mission the following year (December 1523) directed at still another pope, Clement VII (Giulio di Giuliano de Medici).

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 469 Letter 652: 1522 December 8 Mantua To Pietro Pomponazzi, enlisting him in Ercole Gonzaga’s studies in Bologna.65 The Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Lord Ercole, our most beloved son, is coming to Bologna to dedicate himself to study. And though we know that Your Excellency, as a caring man, will never deny him your good direction or your every faithful counsel so that he may attain that perfection to which His Lordship demonstrates he aspires and which we greatly wish for him, nonetheless in performing the office of a good mother, we did not want to neglect to commend him to Your Excellency with this letter. We will be most obliged to you for every good office and assistance you use toward our son, Lord Ercole, as will be explained to you in greater detail by the most reverend archdeacon [Alessandro Gabbioneta] on our behalf. Please lend him your ample trust. To Your Excellency’s every pleasure we offer ourself continuously. Letter 653: 1522 December 23 Mantua To Ercole Gonzaga in Bologna, a letter of maternal support.66 We are sending you ninety ducats with the present rider so that you will have spending money, and we would have sent more if it had been available. We will see to finding more from time to time and, depending on what we can get, send it to you. This evening, poor Urbano, your factor, departed this present life, for which reason we felt and still feel great dismay, since we think you are left deprived of such a decent and useful servant that it will be difficult to find his equal. Because we know it will be necessary to provide a successor for him, our view is that if you have someone in your household whom you judge sufficient to the role, you should give the position to that person, for it is only right that your own should have benefit of this opportunity rather than outsiders.67 If there is no one, we will, according to your instructions, find three or four of the most capable men and send you their names; then you may choose the one you like best.

65. AG 2998 libro 41 cc. 34r–v. The Mantuan Pomponazzi was a leading figure in the new Aristotelianism, renowned for his treatise, On the Immortality of the Soul. See John Herman Randall Jr., “Pietro Pomponazzi, Introduction,” in The Renaissance Philosophies of Man: Selections in Translation, ed. Ernst Cassirer Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 257–79. 66. AG 2998 libro 41 cc. 47r–v. This and the following letter show Isabella’s shifting attention from Federico, who is by now the reigning prince of Mantua, to her son Ercole, who hopes one day to obtain appointment as a cardinal. 67. Isabella was always keenly aware of how much jobs at court could mean to those who held them, and she often exhibited this awareness by recognizing seniority and rewarding loyalty and good service.

470 ISABELLA D’ESTE In the meantime, it would not be out of order if you sent Evangelista here, if you have no need of him, since he is the one who has the most experience in managing the farm and serving according to need. Just now the monsignor our archdeacon [Alessandro Gabbioneta] appeared before us and made such a good report of you and your virtuous behavior that, overcome with tenderness, we could not hold back our tears. In another letter we will reply on each topic the monsignor took up with us on your behalf. May the Lord God restore you to us healthy and give you that grace which we always desire. Letter 654: 1522 December 25 Mantua To Ercole Gonzaga in Bologna, complying with his wishes.68 Monsignor the archdeacon has discussed various things with us, to all of which we responded with incredible contentedness; finally he revealed to us that it would be your wish and your happiness to have Forno with you. Whereas we have decided not to leave you any cause for discontent, we are very happy to comply, and we give you what liberty lies in our maternal authority to carry out your wish. May God grant that we not regret this later, and that we see appear those good and sweet fruits we foresee in your good and innocent nature and in the virtue and most noble condition that the monsignor has amply attested he finds in Forno, far from any sinister opinion we have of him. Upon receipt of this letter you will already have the ninety ducats we sent you yesterday by special courier. We believe they will seem little to you, as they do to us. We have ordered that efforts be made as soon as possible to find more and to send them to you. We are well. May the same be true of Your Lordship. Fare well. Letter 655: 1522 December 30 Mantua To Diana d’Este, a thank–you note, and gifts.69 We are sending two veils, two caps, and two ruffs for the most illustrious daughters [Giulia and Isabella d’Aragona] of the most serene queen [Isabella del Balzo]. Please see that they get them. Messer Alberto Capriano presented to me in your name eight bedposts that are so beautiful that we could not wish for anything better.70 We thank Your Ladyship, who has displeased us in only one respect: Since your generosity is far too great, we will be forced to curb our appetites a bit; for 68. AG 2998 libro 41 c. 48r. 69. AG 2998 libro 41 cc. 50v–51r. 70. The colonelle da lettiera were common features of luxury beds. From these posts could be suspended the canopies, headboards, and curtains that covered and surrounded period beds, decorating them but also isolating them for privacy and warmth. On Renaissance bed furnishings, see Ferrari, “Arredi tessili,” 101–2; Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 111–67.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 471 since you are so ready to do anything for us that you hear we have set our heart on, sparing neither expense nor any effort it may cost you, from now on if we should happen to wish for something, we shall keep our thoughts to ourself so that Your Ladyship does not hear of it, or we will appear terribly indiscreet! We are sending you some velvet fringe71 with several other things for making a blanket, a cushion, and other necessary furnishings for the lovely coach sent to us as a gift from the most illustrious lord duke, our brother. We ask Your Ladyship, for our love, to take on the task of having one of the duke’s outfitted coaches brought to you, so that our furnishings may be matched to those of His Excellency. We put you to this trouble willingly, because we are confident that you will just as willingly accept it. We offer ourself to you and commend ourself from the heart. Letter 656: 1523 January 20 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, sending back his female civets.72 Since I have tried in vain all possible means to have your female civets take a liking to my male, I have agreed to have the friar return to Ferrara with the females. God knows how sorry I am that Your Excellency will not be better contented. I commend myself to you always. Letter 657: 1523 February 13 Mantua To Bernardino Prosperi on the rumored loss of Rhodes to the Turks.73 Word is traveling through various channels, especially in Venice insofar as we have been advised, that it is not true that Rhodes has been lost, because the accord that was being made between the Turk and the Rhodians was disrupted by the arrival of three relief ships carrying aid in the form of men and provisions. We, however, think [the loss] is all too true, if for no other reason than because such upheaval must be the consequence of our sins, and Our Lord God must wish this to be the beginning of our punishment. Truly, we have great need of his mercy. Though we had also heard it from other sources, the detailed news you gave us in your letter of the 9th was most welcome. Most of all, we were glad to hear that the 71. trippa di veluto. Levi-Pisetzky includes an illustration captioned with a quote from the fifteenthcentury preacher Bernardino da Siena referring to women who wear “il capo a trippa.” It is not clear to me, however, to which elements in the pictured woman’s elaborate hair decoration the phrase refers. Rosita Levi-Pisetzky, ed., Storia del costume in Italia, 2 (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Italiano, 1966), 264. Levi-Pisetzky’s third volume (of five) covers the Cinquecento, but I find no trippa therein. 72. AG 2998 libro 40 c. 74r. A series of letters preceding this one details Isabella’s efforts to get her male civet to mate with the females of Alfonso. Civets were prized in perfumery for their musk, and presumably Alfonso was interested in breeding them for this purpose as well. 73. AG 2998 libro 41 c. 78r. Situated in the eastern Aegean between Greece and Turkey, the Greek island of Rhodes fell to the Ottoman Süleyman the Magnificent in December 1522.

472 ISABELLA D’ESTE most illustrious lord duke, our brother [Alfonso I d’Este], is improved. Therefore, we thank you greatly and offer ourself to all your pleasures. Letter 658: 1523 March 4 Mantua To Charles de Lannoy, viceroy of Naples, professing friendship and inquiring about Ferrante Gonzaga’s chances in the imperial court.74 Since this riding messenger of the most illustrious lord marchese, my son, is about to depart for your territory, sent by His Lordship for purposes of his own, I wanted to visit Your Lordship with this letter of mine, because otherwise I would feel quite remiss in my obligations to you, whom I love and honor as I would an older brother. I assure you that you may dispose of me as you would your dearest and truest friends in Italy, and however often you might like to seek my favor, Your Lordship will always find me ready to gratify you. I am quite confident that Your Lordship desires and awaits no less than I to hear His Imperial Majesty’s reply regarding sending the Lord Don Ferrrante, my son, to that court. Nonetheless, since at present there is nothing I desire more, I will not cease to pray Your Lordship please send me word of it at the earliest possibility as soon as you have the reply, so that I may know how to govern my actions in this matter. And if the response corresponds to my plans and my wishes, I will send him immediately on his way, since for my part I have made all the necessary preparations. Nor could I at this time receive any greater pleasure from Your Lordship, to whom I commend myself. Letter 659: 1523 March 10 Mantua To Giovanni Battista Malatesta, regarding a door for her studiolo.75 We received in recent days your letters of the 4th, from which we learned the price you struck for us with Maestro Tullio for our door. Since it seems best to us that we be served by him rather than by Maestro Lorenzo, we are pleased with all of this. We also have three and three-quarters ounces of rhubarb that you sent with your letters; we have kept it because we find it good and suited to our purposes,

74. AG 2998 libro 41 c. 92v. The previous viceroy, Don Ramón Folc de Cardona, who owed Isabella an important personal favor, died in 1522 before Ferrante could be placed at the imperial court. See the letters regarding Eleonora Brognina in this edition. On Lannoy, see James Donald Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 20–49. On Ferrante’s time in the court of Charles V, see Raffaele Tamalio, Ferrante Gonzaga alla corte spagnola di Carlo V nel carteggio privato con Mantova, 1523–1527: la formazione da cortegiano di un generale dell’Impero (Mantua: Arcari, 1991). 75. AG 2998 libro 41 cc. 98r–v. Between 1519 and 1523, after Francesco Gonzaga’s death and Federico’s ascent as marchese, Isabella supervised the construction of her new apartments, moving from the

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 473 so we commend you.76 Later, your letter of the 7th arrived, in which you present another new design for the door shape made by Maestro Tullio, and having seen them both, we are sending you the enclosed as the one we like best. Since you write us that Maestro Tullio would like us to send him a stone as long and as wide as the two strings you sent us, to put it in the frieze of the door, and there are no appropriate stones to be found here, you may tell him that he may get it there, and we will pay for it. But alert him that it must be porphyry or serpentine, for otherwise we will consider ourselves ill-served by him. And if he has the will and the way to work hard, you may give him our eight ducats and the eighteen of the lord marchese, our son which he received from the bulletini beneficiati alla ventura, for we will repay the lord marchese here. This rule of wood is the measure Maestro Tullio requested of us with the strings. The height must be five times the length of the rule and as long as the cut runs that you will see in it, that is, the longest part. The width must instead be two times the length of the rule. Now, see to urging him on so that we will be promptly and well served by him, as we have faith in his skills. Be well. P.S.: For Maestro Tullio’s greater clarity, we are sending also the same measure with the string. Letter 660: 1523 March 13 Mantua To Giovanni Roveto, informing him that she has married his niece to Federico II Gonzaga’s stablemaster.77 For many months now, Messer Giovan Francesco Colla, the stablemaster of the most illustrious lord marchese our son, enamored of the virtues and honorable manners of your niece and our most cherished ward, Faustina, has continuously wished to have her as his wife. Nor has he ever stopped urging the lord marchese to persuade us to assent to this desire. Since we know this most advantageous match will greatly please Your Lordship, Messer Giovan Francesco being a good young man, and a rich gentleman, as we believe Your Lordship is well aware from having known him since his tender years up to now, we did not think we could Castel San Giorgio to a wing of the palace known as the Corte Vecchia. These more spacious quarters, designed by Mantuan painter Lorenzo Leonbruno, included a new studiolo and grotta; an enclosed, “secret garden” with a fountain; and a view of citrus orchards from several of the rooms. The renowned Venetian sculptor, Tullio Lombardo, installed a marble intarsio floor and carved a doorframe for this space: see Brown, “ ‘Fruste et strache nel fabricare’ ”; Brown, “Tullio Lombardo and Mantua”; Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros; and for Lombardo, Matteo Ceriana, “Lombardo, Tullio,” DBI 65 (2005). 76. Rhubarb extract had been recognized for its medicinal properties since at least 2700 BCE. In Isabella’s day, it was used to aid gastric distress and lack of appetite: Galassi and Sarzi, Alla Syrena, 178–79. 77. 2998 libro 40 c. 85r.

474 ISABELLA D’ESTE reasonably oppose him. Therefore today, in God’s honor, we have made her his wife. We thought we would inform Your Lordship, who shall be content as well to let her father and mother know. We are convinced and hold for certain that this news will be most welcome to them. They may be sure that, given the love we bear the young lady and our regard for you and her family, we would not have come to this deed if we had held anything against it. We offer ourself to your pleasures. Letter 661: 1523 March 18 Mantua To Alda Boiarda, upon receipt of several plants.78 We received the muscatel grapes and the tarragon with the porcini apples you sent us.79 We thank Your Majesty, for we most appreciated them. Since we do not have memorized the recipe for removing spots with porcini apples, we pray you please send it to us; you will be doing something we very much appreciate.80 To your pleasures we offer ourself ever ready. Letter 662: 1523 March 26 Mantua To Ferrante Gonzaga, informing him that the emperor has agreed to take him into service.81 When it pleased God, we received the viceroy’s reply in which, as you will see from the enclosed letter, His Imperial Majesty happily consents to accept you into his services and promises to give you excellent conditions. Since this reply was anticipated by us as well as you, we think that now all necessary provisions should be made for you to set out on your journey as soon as possible. Therefore we urge you not to delay your return to Mantua too much. And because we hear even here among us that in those areas of Romagna and Tuscany the plague is growing from bad to worse with each passing hour, and at Ferrara after the case that occurred in Emanuele’s bank there were discovered four or five infected places, we would laud you for keeping quite to yourself on your way, avoiding as much as you can any lodgings at inns and the Ferrara road, which cannot but be dangerous. Commend us to the most illustrious duchess your aunt [Elisabetta Gonzaga] and greet the lady duchess your sister [Eleonora] on our behalf. And you fare well.

78. 2998 libro 42 c. 9v. 79. For serpentaria as tarragon, see Malacarne, Mensa del principe, 304. Battaglia speaks of the pera porcina but not of pomi (apples). 80. Fruit was often used as a facial treatment; here Isabella seems to intend the apples for use in preparing a skin bleach. 81. 2998 libro 42 c. 16v. Isabella’s campaign to place her son has succeeded.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 475 Letter 663: 1523 April 15 Mantua To Vincenzo Preti, requesting mushrooms.82 In these days there usually appear in that piazza in Bologna some small and compact mushrooms which are popularly called brugnoli.83 We would prize your efforts to get some and send them with the first rider you have available, because we like them very much and they satisfy our taste. Letter 664: 1523 April 20 Mantua To Isabella Casale, regarding receipt of some cloth, and her possible visit to Mantua.84 We received the bolt of veils that you sent us, and though they don’t seem to us to be as fine as the ones we have previously had from that city, we liked them anyway. If the others that you have to send will be of that sort, we will be satisfied with them. We are glad that you feel so well that you will venture to come and see us. You may be certain that if your arrival here has always been welcome, now that we can say we are alone, it will be most welcome indeed and cause for great merriment. But we think we discern that you love that daughter-in-law of yours so much that you will cast all the rest of us into oblivion, and you will care little for coming to Mantua any more! We are healthy, by God’s grace, and continuously disposed to please you. We offer ourself therefore to all your pleasures. Please greet your bride in our name. Letter 665: 1523 April 26 Mantua To Ercole Gonzaga, seeking a doctor known for his successful treatment of breast cancer.85 Our gentle lady, Madonna Nicolosa Pavese, was struck many months ago with a cancer in one breast, and she is doing everything possible to free herself of it. She has heard that in Bologna there is a certain Spaniard alchemist who has achieved marvelous results in curing similar illnesses and who is very much connected with a doctor of yours. At the request of this gentle lady of ours, we are writing you this letter asking you to do everything possible to see that the said Spaniard is induced to come here to care for her. Your Lordship may assure him that his 82. 2998 libro 42 c. 32r. 83. The brugnolo (bot. Calocybe gambosa) is known in English as St. George’s mushroom, a name deriving from the day (April 23) on which it typically emerges in England. The brugnolo has many names in Italian dialects and remains today a delicacy worthy of its own celebratory sagre (festivals) in Italian towns. 84. AG 2998 libro 42 c. 43r. 85. AG 2998 libro 42 c. 37v.

476 ISABELLA D’ESTE coming here will be of no little use to him. And if he does good and healing work for this gentle lady, he will be compensated in such measure that he will know concretely that he has served someone who is deeply grateful. Be well. Letter 666: 1523 April 27 Mantua To Maestro Tullio [Lombardo], regarding the doorframe for Isabella’s studiolo.86 We understand from your letter how our door is coming along and that you give us hope that it will be most beautiful and that you might give it to us finished by the middle of next month; all of this brings us tremendous pleasure. Regarding the need to make the frieze for the door and your seeking our opinion whether those two pieces of ours might suffice with the addition of some tondos or squares of serpentine, and whether they should be placed in the middle as you think would be best, we will be content if you can use those without seeking any from another source. If you should be of contrary opinion and think it necessary to acquire one of the pieces, you may do so without writing to us; we will trust in your free choice. Once you notify us of the costs, we will send you the money. As for the money you request on your account, we have ordered that it be sent to you with the first available rider. Be well. Letter 667: 1523 May 2 Mantua To Fernando Alvarez di Toledo duke of Alva, and in similar form to the lords grand constable, count of Nassau [Enrique de Nassau], and duke of Bessez, recommending Ferrante Gonzaga at the Spanish court.87 Though I have no other acquaintance with Your Lordship, I have heard the public opinion that you are no less great for your generous ways than you are in your authority; I thus believe I may hope to receive from you every favor and courteous act. Therefore, as it happens that I am sending to that court the Most Illustrious Don Ferrante my son, whom I have dedicated to the service of His Imperial Majesty, I not only commend him to Your Lordship, I also offer him and give him to you as a son. I pray you not fail to perform for him all those good and helpful offices that you must know will be fruitful in earning him the favor of His Majesty, to whom he will always be no less a faithful servant than 86. AG 2998 libro 42 c. 49r. See Letter 659 above (10 March 1523) and relevant notes. 87. 2998 libro 42 cc. 54r–v. Leaving no stone unturned, Isabella wrote a number of these letters aiming to ease Ferrante’s way into the international atmosphere of the imperial court, signing each one slightly differently according to the relative rank of its recipient. As this letter also reveals, she sent her trusted ambassador Jacopo Suardo to convey her message personally. Notably, though she is asking virtual strangers for their assistance, Isabella speaks in the first person singular, effectively projecting herself as their peer in an elite class. I have been unable to clarify the reference to Bessez/Besser.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 477 was the most illustrious late lord his father, or his progenitors. For such merit on your part, I will remain eternally obliged, as will be more fully relayed to you on my behalf by the Magnificent Messer Suardino my orator, to whom Your Lordship shall please lend doubtless faith. I continuously offer and commend myself to you. Letter 668: 1523 May 4 Mantua To Ferdinando [Ferrante] Gonzaga, about a murder committed by his steward.88 Yesterday, when the murder of that poor old man Zoan dalla Serra by that great villain, your steward Francesco, was announced, we grew so indignant and livid that if we had had him in our presence just then, all the men in the world would not have stopped us from having him hanged by the neck. And since we were convinced that, arrogant and reckless as he is, he must have fled to Canneto, we had word written to Giacomo da Covo that insofar as he valued our grace, he should without delay get his hands on him and send him back here under tight custody.89 But once we heard through Jacopo’s letters that he was not to be found there but had gone into Cremonese territory, we felt dismayed at not being able to do with him as we wished in order to teach others of his kind not to commit similar errors under our trust and yours, as this wretch did. We were most pleased—and you could not have given us greater satisfaction—when we heard through letters of Pandolfo [Pico della Mirandola] that you have decided you no longer want him in your service and that you had his horse, saddle and keys to the closets taken from him, because with this illustration the other servants will have a point of reference for better behavior, and you will make known to everyone that we dislike villains. We are sending in his place the present man, who was proposed by Giovan Tommaso Tucca. He is praised as a capable and faithful person, as [Tucca] has experienced for more than twenty years. Since Giovan Tommaso is the good man that he is, we think that one can lend complete faith to his words. Commend us to the Most Illustrious Lord Luigi.90 And you be well.

88. 2998 libro 42 cc. 60v–61r. Now that he resides at the imperial court, Isabella has begun to call Ferrante by the Spanish version of his name. 89. Canneto sull’Oglio lies approximately thirty-five kilometers west of Mantua. 90. Luigi (Aloyso) “Rodomonte” Gonzaga went to Spain along with Ferrante Gonzaga: Tamalio, Ferrante Gonzaga alla corte spagnola di Carlo V, 78.

478 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 669: 1523 May 8 Mantua To Girolamo Ziliolo, regarding some galline d’India, which are not surviving.91 Two of the India hens we got from the illustrious lord duke our brother have been found dead in the fields, and we fear we will lose the others as well. The problem is that they take off from where we keep them. They go wandering hither and yon, and they come to harm. And since their wings have been clipped, they can’t fly away, so they are injured and killed. Hence it would be a great pleasure for us if you would see to persuading the lord duke to agree to satisfy our request for four or six eggs from these hens, so that we can set them to hatching here. We think chickens born here will be easier to keep in the place where they were hatched than those born elsewhere. In anticipation of your sending them, we stand ever ready to be of service to you. Letter 670: 1523 May 17 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, regarding a murderer she wants to catch.92 I am assured that there in Pesaro is Benedetto, son of the Mantuan citizen Gardone. He fled from here after committing a most atrocious murder in recent days, in which he most cruelly killed a maternal relative by inflicting twenty-three wounds to her in her own house in the middle of the day, in hopes of finding money there. He has gone to Pesaro, to the house of a certain Messer Carolo dal Pane. Because the most illustrious lord marchese and I would greatly wish to have him in our hands in order to give him the punishment his evil deeds deserve, we pray Your Ladyship please allow justice to take place and not permit such an enormous crime to go unpunished. Give orders to your official there in Pesaro, whom we expect will do everything possible to get his hands on him, to detain him until we may be advised by Your Ladyship, and we will send for him to be apprehended. In this action, aside from doing what is worthy of you by showing in what abomination you hold such wicked persons, you will be doing the lord marchese and me a most singular favor. We offer ourself etc.

91. AG 2998 libro 42 cc. 62v–63r. Treccani equates the gallina d’India with the guinea hen and notes that “India” popularly referred to Abyssinia. Pizzagalli notes that galline d’India could be turkeys, which arrived near the end of the fifteenth century from the West Indies, or they could be pheasants from Egypt, which are mentioned in the Gonzaga archive prior to the discovery of the Americas: La signora del Rinascimento, 463. See also Sarah Cockram, “Interspecies Understanding: Exotic Animals and their Handlers at the Italian Renaissance Court,” Renaissance Studies 31:1 (2017), forthcoming. For a brief discussion of Alfonso I d’Este’s collection of exotic birds and reference to his turkeys, see Anthony Colantuono, “Tears of Amber: Titian’s Andrians, the River Po and the Iconology of Difference,” in Looney and Shemek, Phaethon’s Children, 235–36. 92. AG 2998 libro 42 c. 71r. Since both Elisabetta Gonzaga and her daughter-in-law Eleonora Gonzaga (Isabella’s daughter) bore this title, it is not clear to which of them this letter is addressed.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 479 Letter 671: 1523 July 24 Mantua To Giovan Battista Malatesta, regarding the painting of the loggia in the Corte Vecchia apartments.93 Because we wish to complete the painting of our loggia here in Corte, where we are having depicted the cities that we think are the most famous, please have a look at the drawings of notable cities that are available in print in that city. You will do us a great pleasure in buying those that are available and sending them to us as soon as possible, and the money for their purchase will be sent to you immediately. Be well.

Letter 672: 1523 August 4 Mantua To D.M. Caraciolo, congratulating him on peace negotiations and the League he has achieved.94 Our Lord God, who sees into all human hearts, is witness to the great desire we have had ever since this blessed negotiation began, that peace would be achieved between His Imperial Majesty and that illustrious dominion, for we know full well that depending on this were the universal peace of Italy and the consolidation of the most illustrious duke of Milan, our nephew and son. And when we heard that Your Lordship was sent there to His Majesty to negotiate the agreement, we felt certain of that which just now Your Lordship has told us in your letter of the 29th, which is that this peace and league which was concluded and signed, for we thought we could expect nothing else from you, given your prudence, dexterity, and other virtues, all of which are needed and must be sought out in similar undertakings. Therefore, it seems to us fitting that we congratulate Your Lordship for having brought us honor, and thank you for being willing to confirm for us with your letter what we had already heard through other channels. This gave us as great a pleasure and satisfied our spirits as much as any other news we could have received in these times, however happy it might be. We offer ourself to all your pleasures, with the readiness and disposition to please you that we have always had.

93. AG 2998 libro 42 c. 92v. G. B. Malatesta was the Gonzaga ambassador to Venice. A transcription of this letter appears in Brown, “ ‘Fruste et strache nel fabricare,’ ” 327–28. On Francesco Gonzaga’s and Isabella d’Este’s map collecting, see Bourne, “Francesco II Gonzaga and Maps as Palace Decorations.” 94. 2998 libro 42 cc. 97v–98r. The addressee is likely Marino Ascanio Caracciolo, who was papal nuncio to the imperial court from 1520 to 1523: CHRC. The league in question pitted the papacy (Clement VII), Charles V, Henry VIII of England, Venice, Florence and Genoa against France.

480 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 673: 1523 August 12 Mantua To the prioress of Santa Caterina monastery in Ferrara, on the death of a nun.95 We cannot deny that we felt incredible dismay at the death of Sister Prudenzia, both because we raised her and loved her uniquely and because she deserved a longer life, as an example of good living and a consolation to those who loved her and interacted closely with her. Nonetheless, considering the end she met, as described by Your Reverence, which leaves us certain that she has gone to enjoy the goodness of paradise, our pain is somewhat diminished, and we hope that her blessed soul will intercede for us with the Lord God and that her intercessions will be fruitful. We thank Your Ladyship for this news, which was most appreciated, and we are obliged to you for the satisfaction we felt at hearing how this sister rendered her spirit to God; truly we have always had this opinion of her. As for the donation Your Reverence seeks from us, it pains us to the heart that we cannot satisfy your wish, because we have so much to do in supporting the poor monasteries of this city that it would be impossible for us to give to external ones, especially yours there, since they have better means than we do. We commend ourself to your prayers and the prayers of those mothers.

Letter 674: 1523 August 13 Mantua To Giovan Maria Becco, regarding a pawned jewel she may at last reclaim.96 We learned to our great pleasure that you have been commissioned and given means by the Most Reverend Bishop Rosso to repay the Magnificent Madonna Laura di San Vitale the balance of our debt to her for the reclamation of our jewel, for we have a great longing to have it in our possession at last.97 Therefore, we pray you, once Madonna Laura has been repaid, please order the Magnificent Messer Giacomo Baiardo, who has this jewel in his possession, to consign it to Messer Raffaelo Gusberto or to his son, Ludovico, the exhibitor of the present letter, for it will be in good hands. And once it is in the hands of one of these two, we will consider ourself fully restored of the four jewels we lent to the Lord Count Filippo Rosso back in 1503, for which reason we will be very well served by you. We offer ourself etc.

95. 2998 libro 42 c. 100v. This nun was former lady-in-waiting Giovanna Boschetta, who entered monastic life under protest after her father Albertino’s involvement in the attempted coup against Alfonso d’Este rendered her ineligible for placement as a bride. See Letters 382 and 384 of 20 and 30 August 1506, respectively. 96. AG 2999 libro 45 cc. 9v–10r. 97. The reference may be to the wealthy widow, Laura Pallavicino San Vitale.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 481 Letter 675: 1523 August 19 Mantua To Pandolfo della Mirandola regarding Ferrante Gonzaga’s safe arrival in Spain.98 Though we were informed through various and diverse avenues of the happy and prosperous passage of our illustrious son into Spain, nonetheless we awaited and longed for the news to be confirmed by letters from him or from you. And in this state of expectation, we received your letter of the 14th of last month from Valladolid, the first to come into our hands since you left Genoa. Learning from that letter that our son and the rest of you are all well, together with the details it included, we felt singularly pleased. We therefore commend you. In reply regarding the provision of money you request, we had already ordered our factor to make every possible effort to gather the funds. This factor attends to nothing else, because we well understood your need and anticipated the many expenses incurred on the journey and those that would arise once you arrived at court. As soon as the means presents itself, we will send the money to Genoa so that it can come to you by that route. Regarding the robe linings to be sent from here, we have decided that it will be much more appropriate to send you the money to buy them in your own way there, where we think they are abundant and beautiful, rather than to send them from here, because since the journey is long, they would easily risk being damaged; and we also think the task should be performed more expediently. Regarding the limits you propose on expenses, we will give this serious thought. Then through another avenue we will let you know our opinion. Greet the lord, our son, on our behalf and also our illustrious lord, Luigi. Fare you well.

Letter 676: 1523 August 19 Mantua To Ferdinando [Ferrante] Gonzaga in Spain, reporting political and local news and expressing desire for continuous correspondence.99 After the news we got through Pandolfo’s letters from the 14th of last month about your prosperous journey into Spain, which confirmed what we had heard also through another source, we got additional certification of your arrival in court, where you have been received and regarded by His Imperial Majesty and all those lords and gentlemen in the best possible fashion. We felt incredible contentment at this, since maternal tenderness would not permit us to abandon all concern, considering all the adverse events that could have threatened your person. May the Lord God be much thanked by us. Now we will dwell in continuous expectation of hearing better news each day about you and your virtuous conduct, in 98. AG 2998 libro 43 cc. 4r–v. Isabella placed Ferrante in Pandolfo’s care during his early time in Spain. For his letter of 14 July 1523, see Tamalio, Ferrante Gonzaga alla corte spagnola di Carlo V, 80–86. 99. AG 2998 libro 43 cc. 4v–5v.

482 ISABELLA D’ESTE the desire that these will befit the place to which you are destined, your noble condition, and the great hope that we, above all people, have invested in you. As we wrote in other letters to Pandolfo, we have ordered your factor to gather funds and that they be sent to you as quickly as possible, so that you will not lack the means to spend according to your needs and to do yourself honor. You must have heard by now of the duel between Lord Fabrizio Maramaldo and the count of Carretto who was favored by the opinion of most, in which the poor count was left dead, to our incredible regret and that of your most illustrious brother and of everyone who knew him. And his enemy, who suffered a wound to the back, deplored him. There have been bonfires and enormous signs of joy in all these territories for the peace and the league negotiated by the Venetian lords with His Imperial Majesty. And last Saturday, the Feast of Our Lady in Venice, there were to be great triumphs and celebrations for this peace, since it seems to everyone that this poor Italy may finally calm down for several years and be safe from the threats of the French, who will now have to see to their own defense. All of use here are healthy except for the Most Illustrious Lord Giovanni, your uncle, who is in his usual state due to his illness. The monsignor-elect your brother, whose quartan fever has returned, is also better, according to news recently arrived from His Lordship. The things about the plague that in our other letters we wrote had been discovered are going better than was thought, and it is hoped that it will not recur. May this fire soon be extinguished, if God should will it so. We send you a thousand greetings.

Letter 677: 1523 August 19 Mantua To Ercole II d’Este, a letter of recommendation for Dataro the Jew, an actor.100 The Jew Dataro, present exhibitor of this letter, has performed in several comedies; and he has conducted himself so well that in recognition of his talent we wish to please him. As he now returns to his old homeland of Ferrara, he has given us to understand that he has a certain conflict with an addlebrained man, and he has sought us out to write a recommendation to Your Lordship. We pray you, please show him all honorable favor in this matter and in every other need that could arise for him and his brothers who live in Ferrara. We will receive all of this from Your Lordship as a most welcome thing. To your comforts we commend ourself.

100. AG 2999 libro 45 cc. 10v–11r. Ercole, who was pursuing a career in the Church, was named administrator of the Mantuan diocese in 1520. At the time of this letter he was studying in Bologna.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 483 Letter 678: 1523 August 20 Mantua To Paolo Sommi, with some gifts.101 In this little basket you will see a little bottle of perfumed water, a small jar of concoction, and a jar of soap, which you are to give to Lord Alessandro Bentivoglio on our behalf. The rest is for you, as a sign of the good friendship we have formed together. We are sending you as a gift these two rings, which you will please wear for our love.

Letter 679: 1523 Aug 27 Mantua To Sigismondo d’Este, regarding Alfonso I d’Este’s recent gesture of clemency toward their imprisoned brothers.102 I thank Your Lordship for your letter, in which you gave me two excellent pieces of news: one of your well being, as befits your fortune; the other of the new comforts that the most illustrious lord duke, our most honored brother, was pleased to grant to the Lord Don Ferrante and to Don Giulio. Truly, I was as gladdened by this as by any other most happy and much desired news I could have heard in these times. I hope that since the aforesaid duke has made this good start in exercising his clemency toward those poor brothers of ours, His Excellency will be better disposed toward them each day and will want his clemency and goodness to outweigh their demerits. May God give us this grace. I commend myself always to Your Lordship.

Letter 680: 1523 August 27 Mantua To the lord factor of Ferrara, regarding the recent concession of more comfortable space to Ferrante and Giulio d’Este.103 Through letters of the Most Illustrious Don Sigismondo [d’Este] our brother, we are advised that by commission of the most illustrious lord duke, Don Ferrante and Don Giulio have been given a large room that is very comfortable for them and of no small refreshment, and that he is treating them in other ways that suggest we may hope for greater signs of clemency toward those poor fellows with each passing day. This brings our heart satisfaction and contentment as Your Majesty must well understand. And since we recognize that in this case the generosity of the aforesaid duke is due in large part to Your Majesty’s good offices, we could not neglect to thank you for our part, nor fail to be singularly obliged to you. We pray you persist in this most laudable undertaking of yours, for which you may 101. AG 2998 libro 43 c. 6r. 102. 2998 libro 43 cc. 7r–v. On this sensational case of treachery and disfigurement, see the letters of 1505 and 1506. 103. 2998 libro 43 c. 8r.

484 ISABELLA D’ESTE be certain to earn benevolence and praise throughout the world, and reward from Our Lord God, a just and infallible repayer of all good and pious deeds. We shall remain forever obliged to you, and we offer ourself always most ready to see to your every pleasure.

Letter 681: 1523 December 10 Mantua To the podestà of Ostiglia and the commissioner of Revere, on behalf of a Jewish woman’s debts.104 The wife of the late Leone the Jew [Leone Ebreo],105 who died in these last few days in the territory of Revere, has turned to us, being unable to repay certain debts she is left with in the jurisdiction of Ostiglia. Out of compassion for her, we want and we command that you administer complete and expedited justice on her behalf against any of these debt holders. We further want you to lend her all possible assistance and favor in all of her other needs whenever she seeks you out.

Letter 682: 1524 February 11 Ferrara To Ferdinando [Ferrante] Gonzaga regarding his financial troubles, Isabella’s maternal attachment to him, and her dealings for his marriage.106 To your two letters of the 10th and 14th of December you will now have received the reply sent to you through the lord nuncio of His Holiness who will also have given you another thousand ducats which were disbursed to His Lordship when he left Genoa. We have since then received another one from you dated 16 November, which contains nothing but moans and complaints about your unmet needs.107 We elaborate no further reply, referring you instead to what you will have learned from our earlier letter. We do want to say that it hurts us no less than it does you whenever you suffer a misfortune, because—tender mother that we are—we feel as our own every one of your troubles and discontents. If we had not had such difficulty in sending you money, since we were able to use neither the route through Florence and the Most Reverend Cardinal Cesarini nor the one through Genoa despite having tried for two months already, we assure you that you would not have been left so poor as you write us you are. But be of good 104. AG2999 libro 45 cc. 46r–v. 105. Famed physician and philosopher Judah Abrabanel [“Leone Ebreo”] is reported by some reference works to have died in Naples in the year 1523. Since the name Leone was common among Jews and Abrabanel’s time and place of death remain uncertain, there is no reason to suggest that this reference is to him. 106. AG libro 44 cc. 39v–41r. 107. As was quite common due to the uneven delivery systems, Ferrante’s letters arrived out of order. Isabella thus replied to the two later ones before receiving the earlier one.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 485 cheer: from now on ways will be found to give you reason to be merry and very content, and you will be able to appear honorably among the other lords who are your peers. Indeed, as we wrote to you recently, our aim in sending you to that court was to increase your reputation and honor, not to bring shame upon you. We have begun negotiations to give you a young Pallavicina girl for wife.108 She is rich, with an income of more than five thousand ducats a year. If we succeed as we hope, you may consider yourself a fine lord in Italy, with a dominion of four or five large and beautiful castles. In six or eight days we will be back in Mantua, where we will not fail to see that you have the two horses you want and that you are provided with the other things you have requested. The most illustrious lord your brother is quite well after that illness of his, but not so well as to be allowed to return to the field as would certainly be his greatest wish.109 Our most reverend monsignore is very well indeed, from what we hear, as are the rest of us. We are still healthy, and we wish always to hear the same of you. We do not write you news of the field and of the great provisions being made for defeating our enemies, since we know that you will hear all about this from Messer Suardino, to whom the lord marchese [Federico II Gonzaga] wrote in detail. Be well and happy. Letter 683: 1524 February 26 Mantua To Unico Aretino [Bernardo Accolti], requesting his assistance in obtaining a benefice.110 Since the most illustrious and most excellent lord marchese our most beloved son wishes for the estimable Jacopo da San Secondo to achieve his aims and satisfy his every need, he has always helped and favored him whenever he has had the opportunity.111 Now too, His Excellency has written in the proper way to the Most Reverend Cardinals Cibo and Rangoni and to the Magnificant Count Baldassarre Castiglione our ambassador in Rome, asking that they intercede with His Holiness regarding a reserve of two hundred ducats for one of Jacopo’s sons, which we think must be obtained from His Beatitude. And because we would be most pleased to have the lord marchese succeed in this desire, given both our love for His Excellency and the virtues of Jacopo, which are such that they make us 108. This marriage was not to be. 109. Pizzagalli cites a letter to Castiglione revealing that Federico was feigning his illness, having sent the pope a false urine sample to demonstrate his unfitness for battle: La signora del Rinascimento, 469. 110. 2999 libro 45 cc. 61r–v. The comic poet Bernardo Accolti had longstanding ties at the papal court, but it is not clear why Isabella thought him able to facilitate a benefice. His nephew, Benedetto, was appointed bishop of Cremona on 16 March 1523: CHRC. 111. Jacopo da (or di) San Secondo was a renowned musician who, according to Iain Fenlon, served the Mantuan court as early as 1501 and was granted a pension in 1523: Fenlon, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua, 51. He is also mentioned in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, 2.45.

486 ISABELLA D’ESTE desire all that is useful and honorable to him, we thought to write to you confidently asking Your Lordship too, out of love for us, to favor and assist in this thing through your brother the most reverend monsignor cardinal, whose consent will be needed for this reserve, since he is the bishop of Cremona. And so, in the strongest way we can, we pray Your Lordship be willing to obtain this from the monsignore. We assure you that in addition to giving us and the lord marchese a most singular pleasure and leaving us ever in your debt, this benefice will truly place a person whose virtues merit much more than this. Your Lordship too may be sure that this matter is very close to our heart, and that if you apply yourself as we hope you will, you will be providing us such a satisfaction that we will be ever obliged to you. Letter 684: 1524 March 5 Mantua To Baldassarre Castiglione, regarding negotiations for the marriage of Ferrante Gonzaga.112 We understood from your letter of the 23rd of last month all that you wrote us about your conversations with the Magnificent Messer Giacomo Salviati and again with His Holiness of Our Lord regarding the marriage for the Most Illustrious Don Ferrante our son. We were very pleased that His Holiness remains favorable toward the girl. We will now be awaiting word of what will be negotiated for them. You may be sure that we will not be at all opposed to your wise and loving advice not to consent in any way to closing the deal if the young lady does not possess her assets free and clear; because as we said also to Lord Lorenzo, when we are in Ferrara in the coming days, we will not give our son a wife only to find ourselves later with expenses and the bother of litigation, nor will we count on things we do not know we can bring about. Hence, do not fail to have a word with Messer Jacopo [Giacomo] whenever the occasion presents itself to find out what they have decided.

Letter 685: 1524 March 9 Mantua To the vicar of San Martino, defending a harassed Jew.113 Iseppo da Rivarol, a Jew living there in San Martino, complained to us that the preacher there set some of our men against him, as if the preacher had more authority than Pope Leo had, who—as is clear from his bull—permitted this Iseppo what that friar would now deny him. Since it does not seem unfitting to us that he be allowed in the future to do that which he has been permitted to do up until now, we want you to see that he is allowed to stay there and do what he has 112. AG 2999 libro 44 c. 64r. 113. AG 2999 libro 45 cc. 64r–v.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 487 done in the past in accordance with his license. And speak to the men; and do or have them do whatever you think necessary to achieve this. Give the preacher to understand that he should perform his duties as a preacher, a confessor and other necessary things and see to the well being of souls, but that he should let the Jew be. And that he should not give sermons that are more scandalous than useful to souls.

Letter 686: 1524 April 9 Mantua To Ludovico Gonzaga, advocating for a man who is being punished for his son’s crimes.114 Ludovico de Orologio, a citizen of ours, has told us that because of the crime his son Giovan Ludovico committed in recent days, he is being harassed by Your Lordship’s agents in an attempt to deprive him of property by devolving from his assets [camera fiscale] the amount that his son would realize as legitimate heir, and that if this were to happen it would mean his complete and utter ruin. Since he sought us out to ask that we commend him to Your Lordship, we have gladly taken up this task, because to us his case appears most worthy of compassion. We know him as a good man, who is poor and very burdened with children, especially two unmarried daughters. We pray you therefore, out of pity and out of love for us, order that these disturbances desist, and let him live in peace what little time remains to him. For without him, Your Lordship can still do whatever you think appropriate with the assets of the son and use what clemency or severity you wish. Your Lordship will deserve much praise in this act, which we will also greatly appreciate. We offer ourself most ready to do your pleasure.

Letter 687: 1524 May 28 Mantua To the governor of Parma, regarding the setting up of a lending bank.115 In recent days we were content, upon request of your men, to allow Simon the Jew of (Benvenuti) da Bologna to set up a bank for lending money at interest. We did this happily, knowing it would be very useful for those men. Now we have heard, to our great surprise, that Your Lordship has sent word to our podestà in that city that he should command the aforesaid Simon to depart. It seems truly strange 114. AG 2999 libro 45 cc. 69r–v. 115. 2999 libro 45 cc. 74r–v. The addressee is greeted as “Most Reverend Monsignor.” This letter, like others in the present edition, documents the difficult position Jews occupied in Italian society. Exempt from the Catholic Church’s prohibition on charging interest on loans, they provided a crucial financial service within early modern economies throughout Europe. In this sense they were welcome and necessary for investment and consumption, but as representatives of a marginal faith in Italy, they were also stigmatized, harassed, and even persecuted.

488 ISABELLA D’ESTE to us, and quite incredible, that Your Lordship would take the liberty of giving orders in someone else’s territory, all the more insofar as in other Parman cities like Brescello, Castelnovo, Colorno, Torricelle, and Fontanella there are Jews who similarly do business at interest. We thought therefore that we would send word to Your Lordship that if this is so—which we don’t want to believe—you should cease this behavior; because we do not know of anyone else who can command in that city besides the Most Illustrious Don Ferrante our son, and we who are his mother. To all your comforts and pleasures we offer ourself ever ready.

Letter 688: 1524 June 9 Mantua To Giovanni Battista Malatesta, ordering work by a craftsman in Venice.116 We are sending you via the present boatman two ivory chests, which we want you to have carved by that master who was contacted when we were in Venice, who is in the market district under the sign of an angel.117 As soon as they are ready, send them back with word of the maestro’s charge, and we will immediately repay the money. Be well. P.S.: We want you to have made fifty bowls118 like the ones you see in the drawing we are sending you, and send them together with the little jugs we wrote you about.

Letter 689: 1524 July 8 Mantua To Alda Boiarda, on efforts to recuperate Alda’s money.119 Though many days have passed without your hearing from us what we have done with these fathers of San Benedetto about recuperating your two thousand ducats, we want you know that we have not failed for a moment to do the good office that befits your wishes and your needs and the love we bear you. After many, many contentious negotiations, we have finally, with no small difficulty, induced and compelled these fathers, who have agreed to give you fifty ducats a year for life. After consultation with experts, we did not think it wise to reject this deal, knowing well what it means to struggle with powerful friars and having further 116. AG 2999 libro 45 c. 78r. Isabella’s travels, especially to Venice, contributed significantly to her discriminating taste for luxury goods. Here she follows up on an initial contact with a skilled craftsman whose work she admired. 117. This craftsman evidently kept a sign depicting an angel to mark his shop’s location in the busy market streets (merceria) of Venice. 118. The word boze here (Italian bocce) could also mean flacons, decanters, or basins. The drawing has not survived 119. AG 2999 libro 45 cc. 82v–83r.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 489 understood from our valiant lawyers to whom we communicated the facts of your case that the legacy of Madonna Lucrezia could easily be put into fassi;120 hence you too must be content. Since the fathers argue and insist that they could reasonably owe you nothing at all, they wanted to repay by giving the fifty ducats to us, and we accepted this for your greater security, knowing that if they have to give them to us, they will not delay in the ways they could easily do if they had to repay you. At present they have agreed to give twenty-five ducats at Easter and then twenty-five at Christmas, and thus [each year] following from Easter to Christmas they will pay the fifty ducats. We will now wait for you to respond with your wishes, which we think will conform to our idea, which was and is to accept what we can get peacefully rather than litigate at the risk of losing everything. To your pleasures we offer ourself always.

Letter 690: 1524 July 24 Mantua To Giovanni di Casale, regarding a stucco craftsman.121 The Magnificent Messer Giulio Gonzaga sent us the letter that Your Lordship wrote him saying that you have on your hands a good stucco master, and that if we would like, you will send him here to work on our rooms. Since for now we do not wish to take on new expenses except to repair the stuccos that are already made, as we are worn out and exhausted with building, Your Lordship should not bother just now to send the maestro. But if you come to the palio race of San Leonardo as you said you would, bring him in your company and then we will have some proper discussions. To see to Your Lordship’s comforts we offer ourself ever ready.

Letter 691: 1524 July 30 Mantua To the podestà of Isola, Canneto, and Viadana; the commissioners of Borgoforte, Governolo, and Marcarìa; and the vicars of Curtatone and Reggiolo, with orders regarding plague contagion.122 We know that the most illustrious lord marchese our son wants you to be most vigilant in defending this city and dominion of ours against contagion. We also understand that almost every day people coming from places either infected or suspected of plague are traveling that pass of ours in order to get to Mantua. This may be happening because you are not applying due diligence in observing the

120. Term unidentified. 121. AG 2999 libro 45 cc. 91r–v. For extended discussion of this correspondence and this phase of the studiolo project, see Brown, “ ‘Fruste et strache nel fabricare.’ ” 122. AG 2999 libro 45 c. 93r.

490 ISABELLA D’ESTE order our kinsman123 gave you. If so, it would seriously displease the aforesaid lord, our son, and also seem to us badly done. For this reason, we order you not to allow anyone to travel the pass to come to Mantua who comes from any of the suspected locations that were written to you by our kinsman, and especially not from the state of Milan, insofar as you hold dear our grace and that of our son.

Letter 692: 1524 August 17 Mantua To the podestà of Viadana, regarding a legal conflict among siblings.124 We are informed that a legal suit has arisen between Susanna, the daughter of Giovan Antonio di San Felice, and Felice and Passino, Susanna’s brothers, which is now coming before your tribunal. From what we understand, the case has already been argued and all that remains is the decision. Since we know that women always have greater need for help and favor than do men, we commend Susanna’s pleas to you, charging you to expedite this case so as to require the least possible expense in the carrying out of justice.125

Letter 693: 1524 September 1 Mantua To Ludovico Gonzaga, requesting release of a prisoner.126 Your Lordship has had a young man held prisoner for five years, for no other reason than some disputes he has with particular persons who fear harm by him, according to information we have from persons who desire his release. They have prayed us to commend him to Your Lordship, hoping that through us they might achieve their aim. Therefore, to please them we pray Your Lordship, if this young man remains imprisoned for no other offense than the aforesaid, be content for love of us to have him released, all the more because he has offered to provide every possible security that he will not harm those who fear injury by him. We will take this as a singular favor from Your Lordship, to whom we offer ourself continuously. 123. collaterale: this word indicates a “relative in a collateral line.” The term here functions as placeholder for the name of any number of Gonzagas outside Isabella and Federico’s immediate family who held positions of authority in the dominion. 124. AG 2929 libro 282 c. 1r. This copybook of 35 pages falls out of sequence in its archival collocation with respect to those cited above and below. Letters in book 282 date from 17 August to 16 December 1524; 5 January to 11 February 1525; and 5 July to 26 November 1527. All of these issued from Mantua, and most of them regard legal and administrative matters in which Isabella advocated for subjects, addressing taxes, property disputes, transport of merchandise, and the like. 125. A similar case involving Nicolina, wife of Antonio di Battaglia, a “poor woman,” is seen in a letter to Camilla Gonzaga of 3 October 1524 (AG 2929 libro 282 c. 14v). 126. AG 2929 libro 282 cc. 5v–6r.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 491 Letter 694: 1524 September 3 Mantua To Federico II Gonzaga, on mail he opened that was addressed to her.127 There was no need for Your Lordship to excuse himself for having opened two letters addressed to us which came into your hands, because we never intend there to be any time whatsoever for such formalities between you and us, nor do we wish for anything to be so secret in us that it is not manifest to Your Lordship. We are happy that you opened them. And the more familiarity with which you treat us the greater will be our pleasure and the more cause we will have to consider you the dear and loving son we take you to be. We are gladdened to hear that Your Lordship is feeling well. May God long keep you thus. Be happy.

Letter 695: 1524 September 10 Mantua To Vincenzo da Napoli, ordering candied orange peel and rose-scented sugar.128 We pray you be content to send us a jar of orange peels sugared in your fashion, which should be absolutely perfect. And the sooner this is done the more we will appreciate it. We would also like a small jar of rose-scented sugar. Send us word of the cost, for we will have the money sent to you. We offer etc.

Letter 696: 1524 September 16 Mantua In similar form to the podestà of Sermide, the commissioners of Castelli Borgoforte and Revere, and the vicars of Borgoforte, Gonzaga, Reggiolo, and Suzzara, asking for horses for her trip to Rome.129 As we would like to have several jades for use by our servants in this journey of ours to Rome, we want you to investigate diligently whether in that territory 127. AG 2999 libro 46 c. 56v. Isabella defers to her son as the ruler of Mantua, much as she had done toward Francesco during his reign. The question of secrecy versus privacy was indeed a matter of state within a ruling family; here Isabella takes pains to assure the marchese that she has nothing to hide. 128. AG 2929 libro 282 c. 8v. 129. AG 2929 libro 282 c. 10v. Luzio argues that Isabella planned this trip to Rome with the intention of remaining in the Eternal City for some time, “as a revindication of her offended dignity” due to Federico II Gonzaga’s marginalization of his mother in favor of his lover, Isabella Boschetti. This longstanding explanation is based in part on Paolo Giovio’s narration regarding emblems Isabella devised (the triangular candelabra with motto, “Sufficit unum in tenebris” [one light suffices in the darkness]; the lottery tickets which, he maintains, signified that Isabella had tried many ways to remedy her situation but none had worked; and the number XXVII, which in Italian denoted the number ventisette and, with a bit of bending, vinti sette, meaning that she had defeated seven obstacles. Though it is difficult to confirm Luzio’s reading of the situation, the correspondence of the Mantuan ambassador in Rome, Francesco Gonzaga, also bears evidence of Isabella’s sense of marginalization within Federico’s court. Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 9–11.

492 ISABELLA D’ESTE of ours anyone has any, and work with them to see that they be content to send them here for our satisfaction, consigning them to Lord Girolamo Andreasi our stablemaster, for if they are found to be suitable for our purposes, we would like to buy them, as would be honorable and fair. The sooner you can carry this out, the more grateful we will be.

Letter 697: 1524 October 8 Mantua To Jacopo Suardo, lamenting that her son’s letters only contain complaints.130 Though for a time we were in continuous desire for letters from Spain to have news of the illustrious Don Ferrante our son, we now think differently, because we get much more vexation than pleasure out of them, since they contain nothing but complaints of his poverty and hardship. And despite the fact that we never fail to achieve the impossible by supplying him with money, the usual troubles don’t end; in fact new ones keep piling up. You know it was written to me that our son could live on five thousand ducats. This provision was later considered insufficient, and both you and Pandolfo gave me to understand that he could live on no less than six thousand. We agreed to that and began to operate under this budget. Now we are told that it is impossible to live on six thousand ducats. All these variations are most displeasing to us. We don’t know whether to attribute them to our son’s prodigality or Pandolfo’s bad management. While we believed we had satisfied him and seen to his needs, we find we have done nothing at all. A provision of six thousand ducats seemed to us very comfortable for one of our son’s station, as long as he or those who advise him did not plan to live like kings. And you yourself know that our son, the lord marchese, had no more than four thousand ducats when he lived in the court of France while his dearly departed father our most illustrious lord was still alive. On that money he maintained himself honorably as the firstborn son of the marchese of Mantua. Our son complains of the weak provisions made for him and urges us to sell some of his assets. We have not failed and will not fail to do so, but we are not happy to see him come to these terms, since we would like to preserve his estate for him whole until his return. Since this is what he wants, however, and he doesn’t think he can otherwise live at court in the way he wishes, we will displease ourselves in order to please him. By the faith I have always had in you, please be content to inform me how he manages. And if you see his affairs in disorder, as we think they must be, do all you can to see that he is provided for as well as possible. Do not neglect to give him such good advice as you deem useful to his honor; you could do nothing that pleases us more. Never seeing anything but criticism of our actions here in the letters of Pandolfo and surmising that our son is being robbed of his income and that others are wallowing in it, we cannot overcome our 130. AG 2999 libro 46 cc. 70r–71r.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 493 anger. But we are not unhappy with you, and we would appreciate your keeping this to yourself; don’t show this letter to others, because we have written to you in confidence. By our faith, do not hesitate to inform us of the way things are run in Ferrante’s household and to tell us whether his expenses should exceed an income of six thousand ducats. We trust your judgement and opinion, and on the basis of that, we will try to calm our thoughts. Be well.

Letter 698: 1524 October 20 Mantua To Chiara Perugino, declining to buy paintings by the late Pietro Perugino.131 It is true that we were inclined earlier to have the figures of Vulcan, Venus, and Mars painted by the hand of your late consort and were willing to pay for them. But since, as you know, when buying such paintings, even by a famous and excellent painter as we hold these to be, it is fitting that they be seen and judged satisfactory in the eyes of the purchasers, and since we are now about to go to Rome and have made other commitments, you shall not hesitate to place them where you think best and to give them to someone who will be willing to pay you well for them. To your comfort we offer ourself.

Letter 699: 1524 November 3 Mantua To Camilla Gonzaga di Novellara, postponing travel to Rome.132 The arrival of the Most Christian King in Italy held greater sway over us than our wish to go to Rome in this period. Therefore, as Your Ladyship so prudently discusses in your letter to us, we have decided, upon further consideration, to remain here until these upheavals have ceased. We hope they will not last long, so that at the beginning of this coming Lent we can make our desired journey if weather permits. We plan to take with us the designated group, in which we most want and desire to include Your Ladyship, whom we exhort to remain prepared and provisioned with the necessary things for the trip. At the appropriate time we will send word to Your Ladyship, to whose comforts and pleasures we continue to offer ourself; and we pray you convey greetings in our name to the lady countess, your sister.

131. AG 2929 libro 282 c. 19v. For transcription see Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 11. 132. AG 2929 libro 282 cc. 20v–21r. On this new French invasion, see Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 146–54.

494 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 700: 1524 November 5 Mantua To the vicar of Roncoferraro, regarding a lost dog.133 A female dog has been lost that the Magnificent Alberto Capriano was raising for the Most Reverend and Most Excellent Lord Ercole, our son, and this cannot but displease us, all the more for the love we bear for this son. We therefore want, and we commission you, to publish an edict in that city so that this may come to the attention of your entire jurisdiction. And if someone has found her and does not come forward to reveal this fact, he shall receive such punishment as to be an example for all others; but if he comes forward to show it, he shall be paid courtesies that will please him.

Letter 701: 1524 November 10 Mantua To Francesca Fieschi de Gonzaga, regarding a fountain.134 We have been waiting two years now for that fountain from Rome. As it seems to us that the matter is taking too long, and longer than suits our desire and our need, we wanted to write this letter to Your Ladyship asking you to see whether you are in a position to assure that we get the fountain, and when you think you could send it to us; because if it is no longer possible to get it or if it will take some longer time, we would see to acquiring it via some other route. We await reply from you on all of this through the present rider, whom we are sending for this purpose. We offer and commend ourself to Your Ladyship.

Letter 702: 1525 January 22 Mantua To the podestà of Poviglio, regarding boats that must be delivered to Mantua.135 The most illustrious lord marchese, our son, has had some boats bought in the Parma region which are needed for his artillery, and he has sent two ships to load them and written to the podestà of Viadana for men and oxen to help carry the boats to the ships. Since His Lordship wishes for these to be brought quickly, he would be pleased if those men at Povilio would also help with men and oxen in order to load the ships that much more quickly. Therefore we want you to exhort the men in our name to do this favor for our aforesaid son, which will also be most appreciated by us. The present exhibitor [of this letter] will be the one to conduct the men to the place where the boats are.

133. AG 2929 libro 282 c. 21v. 134. AG 2929 libro 282 c. 22v. Brown discusses Isabella’s fountain purchases and notes that this one was ordered from Rome: “ ‘Fruste et strache nel fabricare,’ ” 34–36. 135. AG 2929 libro 282 c. 27v.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 495 Letter 703: 1525 March 3 Rome To Federico II Gonzaga, upon Isabella’s arrival in Rome.136 Your Lordship may hear from Tridapali’s letters of our journey’s progress until we reached Pesaro. From there, we decided to take the route via Loreto to fulfill our vow and so we would not need to go there on our return.137 We found the road difficult and longer than expected. And when we reached Terni, we heard news of His Excellency’s capture and the routing of his army, which was confirmed for us by a rider for the Venetian lords who was on his way to Rome for this reason.138 This news was cause for some distress, as we were given to understand that the roads to Rome were wrecked. Therefore, being at the port of the Foglia, we decided to write to Messer Francesco da Gonzaga139 and ask him, as someone better informed than we, how we should proceed, with the idea that we would not leave Civita Castellana, which was to be our lodging for that night, until we had Messer Francesco’s reply. Assured by the castellan of Civita Castellana, who had given us lodging at the castle and shown us enormous honor, and having received safe passage documents from the lord duke of Albany [John Stewart] through Count Ugo di Popoli, we set out on our journey without waiting for an answer from Messer Francesco. And about eight miles outside Rome, we were met by the captain of our lord’s [the pope’s] guard along with some light cavalry, who had been commissioned by His Beatitude to prepare a lovely dinner for us at Castelnovo, about twelve miles from Rome, and from there to accompany us the next day to Rome. This was through the offices of Messer Francesco who, as an expedient, had chosen to speak of our situation to His Holiness of Our Lord and to receive his opinion and counsel.140 Thus yesterday at about the twenty-second hour [two hours before sunset] we entered Rome. Nor was our arrival so sudden as not to be met by the ambassadors of Ferrara and Urbino and behind them our Messer Pirro Gonzaga, 136. AG 2929 libro 283 cc. 3r–4r. Having set her sights on obtaining a cardinalate for her son Ercole, Isabella arrived in Rome on 2 March 1525 and remained until 13 May 1527, when she fled the ruinous imperial sack of the city. See Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma.” 137. One of Isabella’s stated motivations for this trip was, as was often the case, to fulfill a vow by praying at the shrine of Loreto. 138. Pope Clement VII had struck a new accord with Venice and with François I in January 1525, making way for the French king to retake Milan from Charles V. But on 24 February, imperial forces destroyed the French army at Pavia, taking François I prisoner and setting the stage for enormous shifts of power on the Continent. Federico was at this time in Mantua. See Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 474–75. 139. This Francesco Gonzaga was now Mantuan ambassador to Rome. Castiglione had departed on 7 October 1524 as papal ambassador to Spain, serving Clement VII: see Claudio Mutini, “Castiglione, Baldassarre,” DBI 22 (1979). 140. This description of procedures and relays illustrates the efficient organizational triage that permitted Isabella to travel, even in treacherous times.

496 ISABELLA D’ESTE Messer Angelo Buffalo, Germinello, Ruta, and many other gentlemen who formed a beautiful cavalcade. We sent immediately to have our lord’s foot kissed by Messer Aloiso [Luigi] in our name. And from His Holiness were brought back to us courteous and most kind words, not without most loving commemorations of Your Excellency, which contented us greatly. For the next three days we will rest. Then we will go personally to show reverence to His Beatitude.141 We wanted to communicate all of this to Your Lordship, knowing that as the loving son you have always been, you would expect this and desire to know that we arrived safely.142 And we wanted to be the one to give you this information, even though you will have had news from Messer Francesco and others. There is great strife between these Orsini and Colonna lords; and even yesterday there was an armed skirmish that caused Orsini injuries and deaths, as our above-named ambassador must have written you. We will rely on him to convey this and other news worthy of your notice. We wish to hear of your wellbeing; and we send you a thousand greetings.

Letter 704: 1525 May 18 Rome To Federico II Gonzaga, on entertainments in Mantua and Rome.143 We can do nothing but praise Your Excellency if, after the daily cares and duties that usually come with the administration of states, you take some time for delightful activities, as you write to us in your most welcome letter of the 8th. And it gives us particular pleasure that you went for your recreation to our Porto palace. We will be much more pleased if you enjoy it more often, for we neither have nor want to have a thing in this world that is not yours. We too, while we remain here, where we are shown such courtesies and great honor as would befit a greater lady than we are, will attend as much as possible to living happily. Just last Monday a most elegant and gay dinner was given for us in our lord’s [the pope’s] lovely vineyard, where according to what everyone said, all the ceremonies that would have been performed for His Holiness himself were used.144 We were served with his silver and his own servants right down to His 141. Isabella first lodged in the palace of the duke of Urbino, then moved with her ladies-in-waiting to the Colonna palace at Santi Apostoli, which offered cooler temperatures. She recounts in a letter to Federico of 7 March 1525 that on the 6th she went to pay her respects to the pope, surrounded by many prelates and courtiers and met by “la signora Felice” (della Rovere). She writes that she assured the pope that Federico was “no less in control of his state than he was of his own person.” AG 2129 cc. 5r–v. On Felice’s negotiations with Clement VII, see Murphy, The Pope’s Daughter, 224–25. 142. There is possible irony in Isabella’s description of Federico’s affections for her, given her reported resentment of his recent behavior. 143. AG 2129 cc. 16r–v. 144. For partial transcription and commentary on this letter, see Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 478. Cartwright remarks that the pope was especially anxious to please his few remaining allies, hence

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 497 Holiness’s cupbearer;145 and during this whole dinner we heard various music that much delighted us. But the thing that exceeded all other pleasures was the room, which, though it is still unfinished, appeared beautiful to us and is in a most lovely location. It was full of many marvelous antiquities that we have often wished to have in one of our spaces. Nor will we omit for Your Lordship a courteous act performed at the end of the dinner by our lord’s cavallerino, who displays great affection for you and for us. Once the tablecloths had been removed, he had brought to every woman present a little box full of various accessories,146 and we received a pair of gloves. Thus we will continue with these entertainments until the time of our return home, making all possible efforts to keep ourself healthy in the heat that has by now begun to be felt here. We would like Your Excellency, to whom we commend ourself continuously, to do the same.

Letter 705: 1525 June 7 Rome To Federico II Gonzaga, regarding negotiations for the cardinalate of Ercole Gonzaga.147 We saw what Your Excellency wrote us and what you wrote more extensively to Messer Francesco Gonzaga regarding the negotiations that are underway through the Magnificent Giovan d’Asti of the archbishopric of Vienna for your brother, the monsignore elect. This gave us great pleasure, and we thank Your Lordship very much for it. Regarding the reports from our lord [the pope], we refer you to what Your Excellency must have learned through letters from Messer Francesco, who should have written you at length. We continue to desire the good outcome that Your Lordship and we would like, to the honor and benefit of your aforesaid brother. For now we have nothing more to report, except our good health and our great happiness at yours. May God keep you thus for a long time. We commend ourself to you always.

the great honors shown the marchesa of Mantua: Isabella d’Este 2:245. 145. Luzio transcribes this word (copero) as coperto. In context, I take it to be an abbreviation for copiero/coppiero. Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 15. 146. Though Luzio transcribes here the plausible perfomi (perfumes), the abbreviation sign above the word and the ambiguity of the m/n, together with Isabella’s notation of her own gift, suggest instead the French-derived word perfornimenti (furnishing, accessories). Cf. perfurnire (Du Cange, 6:273). It could, of course, be that Isabella received gloves while all the other women were given perfumes. 147. AG 2129 c. 19r. As this letter suggests, appointment as cardinal could require the mobilization of various allies within the Church hierarchy.

498 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 706: 1525 October 9 Rome To Federico II and Ercole Gonzaga, on the death of their uncle, Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga and an audience with Pope Clement VII.148 The death of our Monsignore brought me such dismay as befits the love I bore him. Certainly it could not have been greater if he had been my blood brother. But since it pleased God to have it thus, we must be content. If Messer Capino [Capini] had arrived at an hour that permitted going to the palace without inconveniencing our lord [the pope], I would have gone there immediately, but since the hour was late and then Saturday he went to his vineyard, I could not do so until yesterday. I went to His Beatitude’s feet and first expressed my sorrow that His Holiness had lost a loving and faithful servant and we had lost a father and protector of our entire family; and he replied in sorrow for the death of Monsignore and much praise for him. Then I answered that since it was in His Beatitude’s power to recover a servant for himself and restore us after such a loss, I begged him deign to remedy all in the person of Ercole, giving to him that which his uncle had possessed. His Beatitude replied that he wished to give him this dignity, and that he had always intended to do so, and that he will order the brief, and your merits are such that you deserve it,149 and he was all the more pleased to do this knowing that Ercole is literary and virtuous.150 I, upon hearing such a willing response, thanked His Holiness and said that I thought I should kiss his foot in your and Ercole’s names, and so I bowed and did so; and then in order not to disturb him further I took my leave. As soon as I stepped out of his chamber, the whole world ran to gather around me to rejoice and congratulate me, so I returned home very merry, though I first stopped in Santa Maria del Popolo to pray to her that this will come about soon and that we will enjoy it for a long time. And because this letter is long and I could not possibly write more this evening, it will be addressed to both Monsignore Ercole and Your Lordship; and I commend myself to both of you and send you a thousand kisses.

148. AG 2129 cc. 47r–48r. Autograph. The conversation Isabella narrates here represented a major achievement for her and merited a letter written in her own hand. For a full transcription, see Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 18–19. Sigismondo’s death in Mantua on 3 October 1525 enhanced Ercole’s chances of obtaining the cardinalship by a logic of compensation or replacement, and as we see from her letter, she lost no time. Luzio also cites a letter of condolence from Pope Clement VII to Federico in which the pontiff promises to turn all of the Gonzagas’ sadness into joy. 149. In her excitement, here Isabella slips into addressing Ercole alone. 150. Ercole Gonzaga’s love for literature and his serious studies were well known.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 499 Letter 707: 1526 February 11 Rome To Federico II Gonzaga, on the death of Duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga of Urbino.151 If Your Excellency felt great sorrow at the death of the most illustrious lady duchess of Urbino, our sister-in-law and most honored sister, as you write to me in your letter of the 2nd of this month, you certainly have great reason, for you have lost a person who loved you immensely and no less than if you had been her own son. In truth, we are saddened for the same reason, knowing how much she repaid the love we felt for her, like a sister. Nonetheless, considering that this is our common and irreversible course, we are compelled, and we will continue in every moment to compel ourself, to calm our soul as Your Most Illustrious Lordship has prudently urged us to do. We laud you for attending to the same task and for trying to maintain the good health in which you write that you find yourself, which brings us great contentment. Thanks to Our Lord God, we too are in excellent health.

Letter 708: 1526 March 1 Rome To Giovanni Battista Malatesta, ambassador of Federico II Gonzaga in Venice, ordering cloth.152 Since we wish to know the price there in Venice per ell of those black veils that those ladies use to make the capes they wear on their heads, we want you to have your consort diligently gather information and find out also whether we could have as much as seventy or eighty ells in one piece. You shall send us word of what you hear, and the sooner you do so, the more pleased we will be with you. Be well.153

Letter 709: 1526 July 15 Rome To Federico II Gonzaga, on not being ready to leave Rome.154 Though it is not news that Your Excellency loves us cordially and feels no less than we do our every good or ill, nonetheless your loving letter of the 6th of this month in which, fearing that something bad might happen to us in this time of plague suspicions here in Rome, you exhort and pray us leave here and come to 151. AG 2130 c. 362. Isabella had last seen her dearest friend in Pesaro on her way down to Rome. The duchess died on 28 January 1526. On this relationship, see Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino. 152. AG 2130 c. 232. 153. In her letter of 25 March 1526, Isabella thanked Malatesta and praised his good service. She also rejected the samples he sent her as not suiting her needs and ordered instead fifty ells of another kind of veil that is “more roundish” (più tondetta). On 12 May she declared that she was happy with what he had procured, and on 22 May she ordered thirty-five more ells. In this same period she ordered from Venice through the orator a pound of reubarbaro (rhubarb). See notes to Letter 659, of 10 March 1523. 154. AG 2130 cc. 368r–v. Isabella was repeatedly urged to leave Rome for her safety from plague and political calamity, but she heeded none of these requests.

500 ISABELLA D’ESTE Mantua, was dear and welcome beyond measure. We thank you as much as we can, assuring you that if we knew that remaining here was as dangerous as you write, we would not have waited until now to depart. We would have taken from ourself the advice that you give us. But you must know that outside Rome the rumors of plague here are much greater than is the case. It is quite true that several days ago it seemed to some people that the danger had increased a great deal when infantries were assembled here in Rome. For this reason we did feel some fear, as we had [others] write to Your Excellency, and we, too, feared that the danger might increase due to this disorder. But then, thanks be to God, when the troops departed, the contagion greatly diminished, so that everyone here considers it very low in Rome, and all are living merrily. We, like the others, fear little so long as no greater danger develops. For this reason everyone in our household is on guard, and they leave the house rarely. We almost never get into our carriage,155 as we have a lovely room and a beautiful garden where we stay, passing the time in games and entertainments with some noblemen and being very careful not to let into our house but a few persons who are also careful not to circulate much. And so, if there is no greater danger than we are aware of at present, we will remain until September, as we wrote in other letters to Your Excellency, as it does not seem wise to depart in this hot weather, in which without doubt a great part of our household would take ill and we ourself would not be sure to stay well. Moreover, from different sources we have been told that leaving Rome and changing air in this weather usually causes many infirmities, and this has been experienced many times. At the aforesaid time, we will come, doubtless eager to see and embrace Your Excellency, who in this meantime must try to stay healthy, for we will not fail, for our part, to do the same. Letter 710: 1526 August 2 Rome To Federico II Gonzaga, on a gift from the king of England.156 Along with Your Excellency’s letter we received that of the most serene king of England [Henry VIII] and learned of his gift to us of a saddle horse.157 Your Excellency did very well to accept it in our name, since we were not there; for this we 155. Isabella’s state-of-the-art carriages were the talk of Rome. Pizzagalli describes them as coaches with suspended, undulating compartments that had been introduced from Hungary by Ippolito d’Este: La signora del Rinascimento, 478. Lucy Byatt writes in her DBI entry on Ippolito d’Este, “Durante la visita della sorella a Roma, agli inizi del 1514, l’E. [= Ippolito d’Este] organizzò una lunga serie di banchetti e di cacce: si diceva anche che Isabella d’Este fosse stata fra i primi ad introdurre l’uso della carrozza nella società romana e che l’E. ne avesse fatto fare il disegno dagli abili artigiani di Cassovia, nella diocesi di Eger.” Byatt in DBI 43 (1993). 156. AG 2130 c. 370. 157. … il dono che S. M.ta ce ha fatto d’una Achinea.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 501 thank you greatly. If the nuncio of the aforesaid king has not yet departed, please be content to pronounce lovely words of thanks once more in our name, in addition to which we will have a reply sent from here and we will send our letters through the Magnificent Cavaliere [Gregory] Casale, His Majesty’s ambassador here. We are pleased to hear that the saddle horse is lovely and young, as Your Excellency has written us. And since we plan to make use of it on our return to Mantua, we have had word sent to our factor, Pancera, that he should take care of sending it to us. Your Lordship shall be content to consign it to him for all his requisitions.158 We were most gratified to hear that Your Excellency is well.159 We too, thanks be to Our Lord God, are most healthy, and we attend to taking care of ourself. You must do the same. Letter 711: 1526 September 12 Rome To Federico II Gonzaga, on his recovery from tertian fever.160 From Your Excellency’s letter of the 7th of this month we learned with great pleasure of your improved health that day, when the doctors had found you to be fever-free. We hope that also since then, you have felt no further disturbance, that every day you will feel better after the exhaustion you suffered from the illness, and that you will soon regain your former good health. Thus, just as we were very sorry for your illness, we are much gladdened by your improvement, and we await word from Your Excellency of your total recovery. We remain in our usual good health. Letter 712: 1527 May 22 Mantua Federico II Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este in Rome, on not hearing from her since the Sack of Rome began.161 Ever since I learned that the imperial captains and soldiers had entered Rome, not having received even the smallest letter from Your Excellency from then up to now, nor from Lord Ferrante my brother, nor from any of my ambassadors, nor indeed from any other person writing out of Rome, I have been and remain in the state 158. In a letter of 11 August 1526 (c. 371), Isabella decides against having this horse delivered. 159. AG 2130 c. 374r. This letter was preceded by several others replying to Federico on the persistence of “paroxysms” of this fever, due to which he had summoned his doctors. The fever returned in subsequent days and persisted well into October, posing a security risk to the Gonzaga state. 160. AG 2130 c. 375r. 161. AG 2131 cc. 373r–v. Given the lack of correspondence from Isabella in this important moment, this letter to, rather than from, her has been inserted as an exception to the general rule of the present volume. Federico had written to Isabella a briefer letter (c. 372r) on 15 May 1527, in which he

502 ISABELLA D’ESTE of anxiety and grief that Your Excellency may imagine.162 I fear that some disaster has happened to you—may God forbid—though I take considerable consolation in thinking that, being most prudent, you must have made every necessary provision, and that my brother must have helped you a great deal. We have only heard from Agnello, through reports from people who said they were coming from the League’s camp in Rome, that Your Excellency’s house was spared through the offices of my aforesaid brother, though at great danger to his life.163 Since my soul cannot rest assured until I have a letter from you or even from the others mentioned above, I wrote to Your Excellency by different routes, and I had the rider Turchetto, who speaks both the German and Spanish languages, sent just for this reason. And I still have had no reply, for which reason I wanted to try this other route, praying expressed alarm and worry for his mother’s safety now that the sack had begun. He wrote again on 31 May, still having no word from her but having heard via Ferrara that Isabella had departed Rome on 13 May, heading for Ostia. He sent his letter to Livorno, hoping it would reach her there once she had found safety. He also noted that he understood her to be carrying with her the cardinal’s hat destined for Ercole. For some important commentaries on this historic event, see Gouwens, ed., Remembering the Renaissance; and Guicciardini, The Sack of Rome. 162. Federico addresses his mother formally, in the third person (Your Excellency etc.), but as a sign perhaps of his intimate relation to her as a son, he speaks in the first person singular (I, me, my) rather than the plural (we). Isabella, out of deference to her son’s rank as marchese, generally writes to him in the first person plural (we, us, our) and refers to him formally, in the third person singular (Your Lordship, Your Excellency). 163. Ferrante himself wrote to his brother on 31 May that the Colonna family palace of the Santi Apostoli where Isabella had been living was already occupied by imperial officers Alessandro di Novellara and Alfonso di Cordova when he arrived there. They refused to let him inside, he writes, “unless I promised them not to interfere on behalf of anyone inside that place except to save Madama and her servants, among whom there were many gentlemen. I, who wanted nothing more than her wellbeing, consented, though afterwards it took great pains to save her. This was because a rumor had spread in the camp that in that place there were property and money and nobles to take prisoner worth more than a million in gold. This was a result of Madama’s mercy in taking in more than one thousand two hundred Roman ladies and a thousand men, who put together from their persons and their belongings more than forty thousand gold ducats for those two men, and I did not get a cent (quatrino). Nonetheless I felt I had gained more than anyone in saving her to whom we owe so much. To save her, as was my duty, I never ceased to beg all the captains to have respect for Her Excellency. This was no small thing to obtain in that moment, as may be seen from the way all other places were treated, for no other palace except that of Madama was saved, even though many of them were as crowded as hers. After [the occupants of other palaces] had paid, they were still sacked and required to pay ransoms for everyone who was inside. This will not surprise anyone who has seen them sack and despoil all the monasteries, not only of decorations and other things but of every holy object, taking the silver ornaments from atop the relics and throwing them on the ground with no respect, and taking cardinals, bishops and all other religious persons prisoner with no regard for personal quality or sex, so that this country (patria), which formerly held primacy of place as an empire, now holds that rank for calamity, which is inestimable.” Cited in Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 79–80, and transcribed in Luzio, Fabrizio Maramaldo: Nuovi documenti (Ancona: Morelli, 1883), 81–83.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 503 the most illustrious lord duke of Urbino be willing to send Trombetta to Rome with this letter of mine, which I am purposely sending unsealed. Through this Trombetta may Your Excellency please deign to have detailed word sent regarding your being and your condition, either in a letter or, if letters are not possible, then by word of mouth, the report of which Agnello will then send me in writing. Your Excellency please be advised that in addition to the afflictions we feel regarding you, other troubles and extreme misery are not lacking. We find ourselves in an unprecedented and pitiful famine, for since the new harvest is coming late, the granaries are empty. And though I have not failed to make all necessary provisions, I am still left in terrible straights, in addition to which there is now a swelling of the Po and the other rivers that is greater than any in the memory of man, so that it has been impossible to prevent the Po, the Oglio, and the Mincio from overflowing in many places.164 This has resulted in wretched destruction not only of the grain, but also of houses and palaces and haystacks in various places in this dominion, the best parts of which are now under water. There was terrible danger that the Po would overflow at Ronco di Corrente, though God helped us in this, for a rupture in that location would have ruined the Molini bridge and flooded all of Mantua, which nonetheless due to all of this is two thirds or more under water and many houses are ruined. Thus Your Excellency may be sure that I have never found myself less content. I pray God help and console me at least with some good news of Your Excellency and my aforesaid brother. To your good graces, very much from the heart, I commend myself. Letter 713: 1527 May 22 Corneto To Federico II Gonzaga, recounting her departure from Rome.165 It would be long and tedious to write Your Excellency of the number and variety of troubles, trials, and travails that we, and all who were harbored in our house, endured for nine days after the imperial forces reached Rome. We shall save these things to recount in person more comfortably than we can now when we cannot have them all written down. We tell you only that after that time, with the help of our son Ferrante, thanks be to God we left Rome safe and sound, with all of our household and our possessions. This is a truly miraculous thing, for of all the houses that were in Rome, not one was saved except for ours.166 164. Indeed, the flooding of the Po would have disastrous consequences: first a famine and then a wave of plague that took hundreds of lives in Mantua between the summers of 1527 and 1528. Mazzoldi, 295. 165. AG 2131 cc. 391r–v. 166. Isabella’s understatement here is stunning. Ambassador Francesco Gonzaga, the source of many remarkable descriptions of the sack, wrote to Federico II Gonzaga on 9 May 1527 about the scene of destruction in Rome: “Your Most Illustrious Excellency will have learned from my previous letters, if they have arrived at destination, of the most unhappy events of Rome, and how the whole city was

504 ISABELLA D’ESTE

sacked after the forced entry of the imperial army. Now I inform you that one could not imagine the extreme ruin and desolation that followed from this sack. No house or roof remains unaffected by the wrath, such that Rome will remain utterly ruined for many, many years, and I don’t know whether we can hope it will ever again look like Rome, so reduced is it to an extreme that is unimaginable. I cannot write or make mention of this miserable city without weeping, because there is no stone so hard as not to be moved at the sight of so much, and such, destruction. All the doors of the houses are broken, and in the streets one sees dead people and property of minor value, such as household supplies and other such things. It is true that the houses of some cardinals and other Romans were saved by ransom, but very few, and the sums required were so great that it is possible the houses and the property inside were not worth the amount paid. “This house where Madama Illustrissima was lodged was preserved by count Alessandro Gonzaga and by a Spanish captain called Don Alons, but because many persons from Rome and especially ladies in great number had gone there and brought with them a lot of things, the Spaniard garnered forty thousand ducats in all, though he exempted Madama and her entire household from feeling the weight of this payment. This was an extraordinary courtesy, given the degree of danger, such that we can call it a miracle that she escaped it. Count Alessandro was the first to come to the house, after which the Spaniard arrived, and since they had undertaken to defend the house, we survived, though not without many fears and the dangers that others would enter. Lord Ferrante could not come until that night, around perhaps the fourth hour of night, and though he arrived late, his presence helped a great deal in assuring that other troubles did not follow, for at different times the Spanish and the Landsknechts wanted to break in, to the point that it was necessary to keep guard constantly at the door. “Today there was an edict in Rome for all the soldiers to assemble in the Borgo and in Trastevere under their flags, and to cease taking prisoners and sacking, though by now so much damage has been done that I don’t think there is any more to do. All the property has been taken and all the people are made prisoners; and if they want to be freed, they have to pay whatever they can and whatever they cannot. Everyone is trying to make the impossible possible in order to diminish their misery, and some people have been taken prisoner two or three times. “Madama Illustrissima will depart as soon as she can, but for now she does not yet know which road to take to travel home safely; of necessity most of the trip must be made by sea. I will decide according to what I am told is the least of ills … . I have not left here since I came, because aside from the fact that no one whosoever is supposed to go into the Castello, as soon as a person steps outside he is taken prisoner, such that Lord Ferrante told me not to go out for any reason in the world until things take a different direction. “Many horrendous things have happened in this miserable revolution, things which turn one’s stomach only to think of them. Among other things, some Roman citizens, seeing themselves reduced to the necessity of being taken into Spanish custody, closed themselves in a room with their women— their wives and sisters—and killed the women and then themselves with the same dagger in order to escape falling into [Spanish] hands. This was done by three or four of whom I have been told, but one must think that many others did the same. In Rome one does not see a living soul of those who lived here before; only soldiers circulate. There are no provisions of bread or other necessities; all the bakers and artisans of every sort are dead or imprisoned, such that I don’t think a more stupefying and miserable sight has ever been seen. The famine is extreme, and in this house where we are staying several people have died of hunger. Bread has been sold at one ducat per loaf, and if it could be found, even at this price, it would be a bargain. Never was there a greater pity than this. I confess for my own part that I am beside myself and amazed, and the whole world seems to me altered, and I don’t know what greater hell there can be than this one, where one must wonder whether it is the beginning of the end

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 505 That day we left, we reached Ostia to make our way to Civitavecchia by water and sea on the galleys of Andrea Doria, who had promised to send for us. But we could not depart as quickly as we wanted, because the weather was so stormy that the galleys could not arrive until we had been in Ostia ten days, with extremely meager necessities and especially great need of bread. Finally, having reached a truce with the sea, three galleys of Messer Andrea came to take us from Ostia Wednesday evening, and Thursday morning at break of day we found ourselves at Civitavecchia, where we rested that day and also yesterday in order to send our things via water by way of Pisa, which we did. Today we came here to Corneto, and tomorrow we plan to lodge at Toscanella, whence in two or three days we will go up to the state of the most illustrious lord duke of Urbino [Francesco Maria della Rovere] and then we will head toward Mantua by whatever way we are advised is the shortest and best. Along the way, we will have word sent to Your Excellency whenever we have the convenience of being able to send letters, just as we would have done up to now if we had known by what route we could send them securely, for we know that you, along with the monsignor most reverend our son [Ercole Gonzaga], must have felt no small distress over our condition in this great turmoil. This letter will be shared by both of you, to your content, for we and all our company are well, and we are on the road to Mantua, where we will be able to speak at length together about all that has happened up to now. In this meantime, Your Excellency and the most reverend monsignore shall await us with the same longing that we feel to see both of you. See to keeping yourselves well. Letter 714: 1527 June 15 Mantua To the duke of Milan [Francesco II Sforza], regarding a bishop he had presumed dead.167 Because Your Excellency was persuaded that Monsignor Reverend, the bishop of Lodi [Gerolamo Sansoni], was killed at the hands of the Spanish in the Sack of Rome, some of your agents gave me to understand that you sent men to take back that bishop’s holding, with the idea of drawing its income and disposing of it as you like. I was amazed and dismayed at this. Amazed because I know for certain that the good lord is alive, having saved and sheltered him in my house and having had him in my company as far as Gubbio when I left Rome. Dismayed because the love I bear him for his honorable qualities compels me to be horrified at any of the world, since this must have happened by the hand of God or by some miracle rather than any other way. I don’t know how these letters of mine can reach Your Excellency, given the ruinous state the world is in, and yet I write, and I will try to send you what letters I can. I kiss your hand.” 167. AG 2999 libro 47 c. 1r. This letter gives some sense of the chaos as well as the opportunism that were created by the Sack of Rome. Isabella’s troubles multiplied as she tried to sort out her losses and those of others.

506 ISABELLA D’ESTE unkindness that I hear has been used with him. And so I am moved not only to testify with this letter to Your Excellency that the above-mentioned lord is alive, but also to pray you please order that the holding that was taken from him due to this false rumor be restored, and that if anything has been taken from him it be returned. Your Excellency will be performing an office characteristic of the just prince you are, and you will be doing me the greatest favor that I could receive of you in these times. I commend myself to you always. Letter 715: 1527 June 16 Mantua To Ferdinando [Ferrante] Gonzaga, recounting the theft of her belongings as she traveled home from Rome.168 By the grace of God, we reached Mantua safely with our company, but less happily than we would have wished, due to the calamity we suffered when all our belongings as well as yours and those of most of our company, which we had sent to Civitavecchia, were stolen by men in a brigantine169 and a foist.170 From what news we have been able to gather, this brigantine and foist were sent from Genoa to Piombino by the doge of Genoa [Antoniotto II Adorno] and Lord Don Lope de Soria, ambassador in the service of His Imperial Majesty [Charles V]. And so that you may better calculate our damages, I tell you that all we have left are the riding clothes in which we set out on our journey. We have written to the doge of Genoa and to other places to recuperate our things. Your Lordship can also work with those lord cardinals you think appropriate to the same purpose. They 168. AG 2999 libro 47 cc. 1r–v. Isabella’s strong suspicion that the doge of Genoa was behind the pirating of her belongings turned out to be unfounded: instead the culprits were a band of Tunisian pirates, who also took three of Isabella’s servants hostage. Her dogged efforts to recuperate her property continued for some time, both because she wanted these precious items back and because she wanted to show her critics that what she had carried away from Rome were only her belongings and not, as some contended, also items looted in the sack. Her claim of innocence was rather suspect in the eyes of some, because among the lost goods were tapestries designed by Raphael, which Isabella had saved by purchasing them from the looters with the professed intent of offering them once again to the pope if he would reimburse her. Since Pope Clement VII was in no financial circumstance to buy tapestries with all of Rome in ruins, the tapestries would likely have remained Gonzaga possessions. See Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 87–101. Pizzagalli draws largely on Luzio: La signora del Rinascimento, 509. Cartwright, whose biography of Isabella was published in 1903 before Luzio had published his article, seems largely unaware of this episode, though she makes brief mention (II.274) of a Saracen raid on one of Isabella’s galleys: Isabella d’Este, 2:274. On the Gonzagas’ tapestry collection, see Clifford M. Brown and Guy Delmarcel, Tapestries for the Courts of Federico II, Ercole, and Ferrante Gonzaga, 1522–1563 (Seattle: College Art Assocation in association with the University of Washington Press, 1996); Guy Delmarcel and Clifford M. Brown, Gli arazzi dei Gonzaga nel Rinascimento (Milan: Skira, 2010). 169. A bark with three-to-four masts. 170. A light galley propelled by both sails and oars.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 507 too should be most indignant, since this robbery cannot but weigh on them as well, having occurred while we were carrying safeguard papers given us by the lord prince of Orange171 at our departure from Rome. It seemed to us those would have commanded the respect of anyone who does not lack true devotion to His Imperial Majesty. Our entry was most joyful for us, for the most illustrious lord marchese, for our most reverend monsignore, and for this whole populace, for we entered alongside the monsignore in his cardinal’s habit, as his hat had already been presented to him by the lord marchese when he met us in Governolo.172 But this unforeseen and accursed event has clouded all our pleasure. Your Lordship must see to keeping safe and not exposing yourself to the dangers you may encounter. We give you a thousand greetings. Letter 716: 1527 June 21 Mantua To the viceroy of Naples [Charles de Lannoy], attempting to retrace stolen goods.173 Having left Rome in recent days, I decided to have my belongings and those of my company travel by ship, since it seemed to me the land routes were not as quick and secure as those by sea. I have been advised with certainty that when they were between Talamone and the river mouth at Grosseto, they came upon a foist from the fleet of the Kingdom of Naples, which was traveling in the service of Your Excellency. And once they had taken these belongings they carried them off to the aforesaid kingdom. As I am sure that if this news has reached Your Lordship you must be very displeased, since such treatment ill suits me as a servant of His Imperial Majesty and a sister to you,174 I have chosen the expedient of complaining about it to Your Lordship and praying you please order and enable the return of these goods to me. I assure you that these are not things taken from the Sack of Rome, as was perhaps the opinion of whoever took them; they are all things for my own comfort and use and that of other persons. If Your Lordship wishes for me to send one of my men for this purpose, with information about the quality and quantity of these things and the name of the boatman who was carrying them, please send me word right away, because I will send him immediately. And 171. Philibert de Châlons, nominal leader of Charles V’s troops, which had sacked Rome. 172. The monsignore here is, of course, Ercole Gonzaga. Federico had done the honors of presenting his cardinal’s hat when the two were reunited at Governolo. See Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 88. Pizzagalli notes that Federico’s bestowal of the hat was a gesture choreographed by Isabella in an effort to patch up differences between the two brothers: La signora del Rinascimento, 506. 173. AG 2997 libro 47 c. 6r. 174. Isabella’s reference to herself as a sister to the viceroy of Naples may be intended to remind him of her family’s ties to the Aragonese princes of Naples.

508 ISABELLA D’ESTE if you take up this matter, as I trust you will, I will be perpetually obliged to you. I commend myself to you.

Letter 717: 1527 June 25 Mantua To Don Lope de Soria, attempting to retrace pirated goods.175 Through letters from the lord doge and from the report of our gentleman who has returned to us, we have learned how unhappy Your Lordship was at the loss of our goods, and what great efforts you have made to obtain news of who was the author of this robbery. For this we thank you as much as possible, for we are greatly obliged to you. Since we have been assured that a certain Andrea Spinula was among those aboard the vessel that assaulted our ship, we pray Your Lordship not be displeased to have new inquiries made and to see whether through this Spinula the truth can be discovered, because since he is Genoese and the owner of the ship that carried our things was Savonese, we are not without some suspicion that they shared knowledge of this robbery.176 Since we are determined to try every possible avenue in hopes of recuperating our things, we are writing the attached letter to the most illustrious lord viceroy, praying His Excellency to favor our efforts if by chance our goods have been carried to Naples or some other place in that kingdom. Your Lordship shall please be content to take care to send them as quickly as possible, for we know of no other way that they can arrive at a secure and trustworthy destination. If it pleases you to commend our case to the aforesaid lord with a letter of your own, we will be even more obliged to you. We commend ourself always to you. Letter 718: 1527 July 5 Mantua To Lord Raffaello Armenzano, regarding provisions for food in a flood season.177 Since there is some threat that due to the flooding rains we have had and continue to have now in our Mantuan lands, the harvests will be so bad that we will likely need subventions from our neighbors, we thought that the state of the most illustrious lord duke [of Urbino], our son-in-law will be sufficiently supplied that we might easily hope to have a certain quantity of grain from there. In this opinion, 175. AG 2999 libro 47 cc. 5v–6r. Lope de Soria was Charles V’s representative in Genoa, 1522–1527. See Henar Pizarro Llorente, “Un embajador de Carlos V en Italia: Don Lope de Soria, 1528–1532,” in Carlos V y la quiebra del humanesimo politico en Europa, 1530–1558: Congreso internacional, Madrid 3–6 de julio de 2000, ed. José Martínez Millán (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, 2001), 119–56. 176. Savona is another Ligurian seaport, just southwest of Genoa. 177. AG 2929 libro 282 c. 32r.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 509 we ask you to content us by keeping us apprised of the price of grain as it falls and rises, because it could be such that when we know the lord duke could satisfy us, we will decide to ask His Excellency for grain. In this you will be doing us a singular favor, and we offer ourself to you.

Letter 719: 1527 July 29 Mantua To Matteo Casella, regarding provisions for a motherless child.178 Your letter of the 27th of this month gave me singular pleasure, as from it and its carrier I learned that the little boy of my laundress who died of plague in Comacchio is being cared for by the same man who brought me your letter. I did not fail to show him such courtesy as seemed fitting to me for the pains he took. Then, I ordered that the boy’s father be sent to fetch him and bring him here. And since I understand that that poor woman had some money and rings in her possession that could help feed her poor little son if they were recovered, in the most urgent of terms I pray you intervene with all your authority to see that diligence is used in getting back those rings and that money. I say nothing of her personal belongings, because since this woman died of plague I think they have been burned. For every loving action you take in this case I will be obliged to you more than a little, aside from the fact that it will be pious and holy. To your comforts I offer myself continuously.179 Letter 720: 1527 July 31 Mantua To Andrea Doria, doubting his innocence in the theft of her belongings.180 When we first got the news of our lost belongings, a rumor was coming from various directions that they had been taken by men in the service of Your Lordship, and really we lent little faith to this. The rumor then was confirmed by several people in Venice, who were going about that city saying that when they were in Civitavecchia, Your Lordship urged them to go take our ships, which ‘contained the greater part of the Sack of Rome,’ and that you offered them all your favor if they did so. Your Lordship writes us now that it has been discovered, according to two men (one from Rapallo and the other from Levanto) that our ships fell into the hands of infidels. We want to be honest with you: Your claim seems to us to contain few elements of realism for anyone who considers that when our things 178. AG 2929 libro 282 c. 33v. 179. A subsequent letter of 29 July 1527 (c. 35v) reveals that the laundress’s name was Marmirola and that her husband, Matteo, was believed to be in Ostiglia. In the latter letter, Isabella summons Matteo to assume his paternal duties on pain of unspecified punishment. 180. AG 2999 libro 47 cc. 10v–11v. I translate from copialettere 47 and the transcription in Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 90–91.

510 ISABELLA D’ESTE were taken as plunder Your Lordship’s two galleys were close by. It is not reasonable to believe that under the eyes of such great ships two foists of Moors risked approaching and conducting such an assault, while our other ship and yet another of the archbishop of Cypress,181 which were navigating the same waters, suffered no attack or impediment whatsoever. If, on account of this reasoning and other evidence—together with certain sinister words used by Messer Lazaro Doria, Your Lordship’s nephew who died a few days ago in Lucca and who was heard a few days before his death speaking with little respect for us and in terms that ill befit a gentleman nephew of Your Lordship—we were persuaded that our things were taken by Your Lordship’s men, we would not on this account consider ourself overly credulous, nor would we think we offend the friendship between us to such a degree that you will not excuse us, given our reasons. We are certain that by now it can be clarified that the goods were ours, and not things taken from the Sack of Rome; and whoever was of that opinion was much mistaken. We thank Your Lordship truly for the information you gave us from the two above-mentioned men, who said they were on the Moors’ two foists when they pillaged our things. If you could shed sufficient light to allow us to abandon the suspicions that, much to our regret, we harbor, we will be enormously obliged to you. We offer and commend ourself to you. Letter 721: 1527 August 4 Mantua To Benedetto Centurione, complaining that he has slandered her.182 In recent days, we sent you the hallmark of our silver pieces that were lost at sea, thinking that if by chance they appeared in Genoa you, as the friend we were convinced you were, would use this mark to help bring them to light. We would not have done this if we had already heard the news of words you spoke against us, news we would not have believed if it had not been referred by good men worthy of complete trust, since it seemed to us that sufficient proofs have been given to make us expect nothing from you but honorable words and behavior. Our complaint about you is that you said we connived with Don Ferrante and Count Alessandro [Gonzaga] da Novellara to demand ransoms for people who had taken refuge in our house during the Sack of Rome, and that we gave orders to remove them along with our own household during the night in order to leave the others there, at the mercy of the soldiers. This is utterly false, and it pains 181. George Hill, noting that Cyprus remained for many years without a papally appointed archbishop in residence, records that Livio Podocataro was named Archbishop of Cyprus in 1524 but never took personal possession of his see: George Hill, A History of Cyprus, vol. 3: The Frankish Period, 1432–1471 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), 1096. 182. AG 2999 libro 47 cc. 14v–15v. I translate from copialettere 47 and from Luzio’s partial transcription in Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 92–93.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 511 us exceedingly that it was said by you, who were so lovingly welcomed and taken in by us, along with your consort. If you didn’t want to behave as an ingrate, you should have sought to defend us against anyone who spoke such slanders, rather than being the one who spoke them. Not only did we not seek for anyone to come into our house, but the flow of people arriving there was so great that it was not in our power—even if we had had the heart for it—to stop anyone from entering. You, if you don’t want malignantly to dissimulate the truth, can bear authoritative witness to this fact, since you participated in all of it and saw that in order to make room for others we confined ourself with all of our women to two small rooms, in unbearable discomfort. And as for our having decided to depart at night leaving the others in danger, we say this is completely alien to the truth, because anyone who was present and who does not wish to lie knows well that though we had the means and the opportunity to depart with all of our company, we refused to consent to our own departure until we were assured that all of the women who had come to our house to save themselves were taken to a secure place. We call God as our witness, together with our own conscience. These we credit more than we do such false calumnies, which we think, in fact, were the reason why our belongings fell into the hands of Messer Andrea Doria. But nothing they could do to us would make us regret the faithful, pious, and loving actions we took in that most gruesome and terrifying situation. We hope they may at least please God, true observer of human hearts and repayer of all good deeds.

Letter 722: 1527 October 27 Mantua To Domenico Veniero, rejecting his excuses for violating the terms of his departure from Mantua.183 I received a letter from Your Majesty, which was full of lots of chatter but void of substance and truth. My only reply is that for some time this is what I expected of you: Since you have never wanted to meet any of your obligations and instead have always done exactly as you pleased, I anticipated nothing but your escape in the end. I will take that to be the thanks I get for doing you the favor of saving your life, because such a good deed could only be repaid with ingratitude. It pains me truly to have so greatly misplaced my good deed. Your Majesty must not feel you owe me for it, because I regret it as I would regret taking the life of another person. As for Your Majesty’s promise to be the singer of my praises, I advise you against this, for speaking well of me you will speak ill of yourself, who 183. AG 2999 libro 47 cc. 33v–34r. Luzio gives a vivid account of the conflict with Veniero, the Venetian ambassador who, along with so many others, had been given shelter and safety at the Colonna palace of Santi Apostoli where Isabella took refuge during the Sack of Rome. As Venetian ambassador,

512 ISABELLA D’ESTE have done me such a discourtesy. I thank you for your offers, but I hope never to have need to call upon you. If I should require something of the most illustrious signory [of Venice], I shall seek a more loyal friend than Your Majesty in whom, having found no loyalty, I could never trust in a good outcome. Letter 723: 1527 October 27 Mantua To the doge of Venice [Andrea Gritti], explaining Domenico Veniero’s ignominious failure to honor a commitment.184 Among the other vocations that I have kept close to my heart throughout my entire life there is one above all others, for which I have always believed I earned benevolence and praise; and that has been to please and to help gentlemen. The more I knew they were oppressed by fortune and thrown into great calamity, the more the desire grew in me to bring them relief and to please them. The Magnificent Messer Domenico Veniero, Your Sublimity’s gentleman, had direct experience of this fact when he was in Rome in the service of Your Serenity with our lord [the pope], for I never failed to show him all the honor and all the loving treatment I could and that I thought fitting to a gentleman of his quality. In fear and apprehension that the Spaniards and the Landsknechts would enter Rome and inflict the cruelty which that wretched city later did suffer, he came to me for help and counsel about how to avoid falling into that barbarous people’s hands. At that point, pledging that I would care no less for his well being than I would for my very own, I ordered him to come into my house if he needed to, and that in order to escape the danger of falling into the hands of the Landsknechts and the Spanish, he should let himself be taken prisoner by my son, the Lord Don Ferrante. When the imperial troops then entered Rome, Messer Domenico came incognito to my house, having revealed himself only to Giovan Maria dalla Porta, Veniero was in extreme danger of being captured and killed by Charles V’s troops. Taken into Isabella’s protection, he agreed to remain as a voluntary prisoner of Alessandro Gonzaga, Count of Novellara, until he could arrange for a nominal ransom for himself once arrived in Mantua. Though Isabella was proceeding with the poor and sickly Veniero’s release regardless of ransom, he fled in secret, thus prompting this letter and the following one to the doge of Venice. Both are transcribed by Luzio in full, with minor errors: Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 94–100. Letters in this period highlight the problem of competing narratives regarding what went on in the Colonna palace and who pirated Isabella’s possessions. Isabella used her network strenuously, but there was an extraordinary degree of distortion in the system due to the intense emotions attached to memories of the sack. These conflicting accounts remain a challenge for readers today. We also note that Isabella set aside some of her customary graciousness in these letters and, in the process, displayed her ability to express indignance and irony in masterful turns of phrase. 184. AG 2999 libro 47 cc. 35r–38r. This letter is transcribed in full in Luzio, “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 96–99. Pizzagalli offers a paraphrase: La signora del Rinascimento, 510–12.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 513 who was at the time the ambassador of the most illustrious lord duke of Urbino. And since Count Alessandro da Novellara185 was the first of the imperial troops to appear in my quarters, Messer Domenico sent word through Giovan Maria asking me to urge Count Alessandro to accept him as prisoner. At first I put up some resistance, remembering the agreement we had already made that he would be prisoner of my son, from whom he could be certain to receive all due respect and unquestioned liberty. I urged him to stay patiently hidden until my son arrived, since I expected him at any moment and was most willing and able to keep him well hidden, and since perhaps [my son] would have helped him (the way he helped the Magnificent Marco Grimani and the two ambassadors of Ferrara and Urbino who were saved by posing as members of my household staff).186 He was already under guard in one of my secretary’s rooms, but this did not make him feel safe, and he was of such cowardly spirit that he seemed to believe everyone could see him, as if the walls of that room were as transparent as glass. He would not hear of consenting to my loving advice, and he compelled me with a thousand tears and tribulations to yield to his tenacious desire to be taken prisoner by Count Alessandro, with whatever ransom seemed appropriate to his station. So the imprisonment that he got was due neither to me nor to anyone else but himself, who wanted it that way. If Messer Domenico wanted to take advantage of being Your Sublimity’s ambassador, since ambassadors are never subject to imprisonment, my reply is that he should have gone to the Castello187 as all the other ambassadors did; but he wanted to come to my house, where he could be quite certain I would not be able to defend him from the hands of the Spanish any more than I could remove myself from the same danger. But still Messer Domenico did not feel safe from the Spanish and the Landsknechts; so he asked me, as I was preparing to leave Rome, if I would arrange for Count Alessandro to allow him to come with me to Mantua, which I accomplished through great and numerous pleas. The count wanted me to pledge a security of five thousand ducats that once Veniero was taken to Mantua he would be sent to the castle at Novellara, as Your Sublimity will see from the copy of the document that was drawn up in authentic form between myself and the count, which I am including here. This document is consistent with another 185. Alessandro Gonzaga. Certain members of the imperial army were obviously motivated to save victims of the sack. Gonzaga officers, for example, wanted their loved ones to escape the slaughter. One way for the military officers to favor the survival of these victims was to take them prisoner, with the understanding that they would be freed later by paying a ransom, and it is this status as prisoner that Veniero sought for himself. Contemporary accounts of the Sack of Rome vary in their judgment of the motivations for these arrangements, which were potentially cynical and mercenary in the extreme but which did offer a way officially to preserve the prisoners’ lives. 186. Grimani evidently exited the Colonna palace dressed as a muleteer, sailing as far as Civitavecchia in the marchesa’s boat. See Giuseppe Gullino, “Grimani, Marco,” DBI 59 (2002). 187. Presumably the Castel Sant’Angelo, where the pope took refuge and was, indeed, trapped.

514 ISABELLA D’ESTE similar one that was drawn up between me and Messer Domenico, written in his own hand and sealed with his seal, which is now not available because it disappeared with other things of mine that were lost at sea; but this can be attested by persons worthy of faith who participated and mediated it all.188 Modesty prevents me from speaking about the way Messer Domenico behaved with me on the journey, which was not as the captive he was, but as if he had all the freedom in the world, and as if he owed me nothing whatsoever; I tolerated all of this, arming myself with patience. Once we arrived in Mantua, I reminded him of my duty to Count Alessandro to send him to the castle at Novellara. And though I urged him repeatedly, because I longed to fulfill this obligation and it seemed to me that I had done a great deal in bringing him here and freeing him from so much danger in Rome as to have given him his life, he nonetheless never would consent. And after many proposals to me about how to resolve his situation, all of which went up in smoke, he then denied the contract that obliged him to go to Novellara, saying it was different from the one he and I drew up in Rome, and that if he had understood that it was so strict he would not have agreed to it. He ignored the fact that as a prisoner he had no authority or capacity whatsoever either to accept or reject these terms. With this behavior and with the tears that come so easily to him, he won my forbearance up to that point. The privileges and favors the most illustrious lord my son and I extended to him and his consort, including the freedom to go wherever he pleased, were so obvious that Your Serenity has heard of them from others without my writing to you about them. And having no other way to repay me for the many favors I did him, Messer Domenico has compensated me with a contemptible escape, despite the promises he made many times that he would never leave Mantua without my express permission and blessing, promises that carried weight with me because he was a gentleman of that land, and which I took so seriously that I would have laid my life on them. I understand that his justification for escaping is based on a letter that Count Alessandro recently wrote to his sister who is here with me, of which I am sending Your Serenity a copy for your greater confusion. Here, as Your Serenity will see, [Alessandro] claims to have given me a third of the five thousand ducats189 but that the remaining two thirds must be paid to the other two men [of whom Veniero was prisoner], whence Messer Domenico alleges that for him, liberation from Count Alessandro is all that matters. He does not consider that the count has 188. The degree of attention to contracts and record-keeping in this most dire of situations—not to mention the expertise with which these were manipulated—testifies to the official state, legal, and commercial duties to which most of those sheltered in the Colonna palace normally dedicated their time. 189. This sum refers to the security Isabella laid down in order to take Veniero as far as Novellara. From Novellara, he would still have needed to negotiate his ransom from his official captor, the count.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 515 written neither to me nor to the other two men up to now. If we wish to believe and accept that letter in the form it was written, which is all we can do, he should not have left here without my permission and release. I won’t omit, so that Your Serenity may understand my good intentions, that once Messer Domenico was here, I expended all my effort and care to assure that he would be freed without ransom. We had managed to have his sister, one of his brothers, and his consort write in his favor—as is easily seen from his reply—and he was told repeatedly that he need not abandon hope of succeeding. And for his greater convenience and happiness, since things were dragging out, I had recently sent word to Your Sublimity asking you to write me, requesting that I let [Veniero] come to Venice and telling me that he would be sent back to me if I ever asked for this. Under this circumstance I was ready to comply, since it seemed to me that in the shadow of Your Serenity I could have excused myself with the count and it would be easier for Messer Domenico to negotiate his total release. After his escape, Messer Domenico wrote me a letter excusing himself. It is so diffuse and thinly veiled that I will not bother to relate it further in order not to tire Your Sublimity with reading it. I only want to touch on one particular, on which he founds his reason for fleeing. He says that he understood the malevolence of the counts of Novellara toward him from words spoken by Madonna Camilla [Gonzaga], their sister, and that recognizing that he was in clear danger of dying miserably if he were handed over to them, he chose as a last resort to flee. He did not consider that if I had held him for five months in observance of the pledge and obligation I had with Count Alessandro, with all the comforts and liberties he wanted from me, I would not have consented to have him taken to Novellara without assuring that he would be treated lovingly and honored by those gentlemen. And I do not doubt that they would have done so, since they are courteous and honorable, and they know well how important it is to honor or dishonor a man who is dependent on Your Serenity. I want also to tell Your Sublimity about requests Messer Domenico made first to me and then to Madonna Camilla. Of me he requested that I content him, in addition to so many favors I had already done him, by paying the ransom owed to Count Alessandro. Of Madonna Camilla, he asked that she pledge her dowry toward his liberation, a request whose discretion and honor I leave to Your Serenity’s judgment. I wanted to explain all of this to you in the certainty that what was done on our part out of pity for your gentleman was done equally out of respect and reverence for Your Serenity and for that most illustrious signory. If you take it as an offense to that most excellent state, and even if Messer Domenico has offended me with his ungracious action and given me cause to regret having given him favor, I will nonetheless never regret having favored Your Serenity with my loving behavior toward [Veniero], no matter what ingratitude it may have earned me from Your Majesty. I commend myself always to your good grace.

516 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 724: 1527 November 10 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, speaking frankly about his decision to join a newly formed anti-imperial league with France.190 I saw what Your Excellency was kind enough to communicate to me in your letter regarding the discussions and negotiations undertaken on your behalf by those lord ambassadors. I thank you, together with the most illustrious lord marchese, with whom I shared all of it. But if I may sincerely disclose my opinion in this case, of the propositions made to you, two appear to me so unwise and so dishonest that if I were in your place, they would make me want to leave a league I was in rather than join a league I was not in. Nonetheless, I trust in your prudence, which is much greater than mine. I pray Your Excellency please increase my satisfaction by notifying me of the outcome, which I pray to God will satisfy you and stabilize your holdings. I commend myself to your grace. Letter 725: 1527 November 28 Mantua An open letter to anyone who encounters its bearer, Marietta, a gentlewoman of Rhodes.191 The noble Marietta, gentlewoman of Rhodes, has appeared here before us and explained the miserable circumstance of her own former captivity as well as that of two of her grandchildren,192 who are still in the custody of the Turks. Having no other way to redeem them except through charitable donations, she sought us out and requested the aid of our favor. We are moved to pity by her ill fortune and long for her to find in everyone the affectionate compassion that she has found in us, all the more because we are assured by trustworthy persons that her situation is as she has recounted it to us. By virtue of this letter, we exhort any person to whom it is exhibited to extend a willing hand and assist her with whatever small or large charity is possible, so that she may redeem her grandchildren and snatch them out of the calamity in which they find themselves as captives of the infidel enemies of Our Lord. Such pious acts will be extremely pleasing to His Divine Majesty, who will render doubled honor and reward for them. And having commended her and her grandchildren to all, that they may not perish miserably, we too will be very satisfied and pleased at whatever loving and merciful actions such persons take. 190. AG 2999 libro 47 c. 39v. As a demonstration of his Francophile commitment, Alfonso at this time also betrothed his eldest son and heir, Ercole II, to Renée de France (known to Italians as Renata di Francia), sister-in-law to King François I and cousin of Marguerite de Navarre. The couple would marry in 1528. As duchess of Ferrara, Renata became a leading sponsor of Calvinist religious reform, much to the dismay of her devoutly Catholic husband. 191. 2999 libro 48 c. 1r. 192. The word here is nepoti, which could also refer to nieces and/or nephews.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 517 Letter 726: 1527 December 9 Mantua To Ferdinando [Ferrante] Gonzaga, regarding a new marriage prospect for him.193 A new marriage proposal has appeared, offering you as wife a young Pallavicino heiress who has an estate in the territories of Parma with a revenue of five thousand ducats, according to the person who presented us this deal; this is forty thousand scudi as offered by her co-proprietors,194 who hold half of her estate. The mother is a Pallavicina and holds assets partly from her dowry and partly from her inheritance worth another forty thousand scudi, which she is willing to leave to this, her only daughter, upon her death, though while still living she does not wish to relinquish control over it, as Your Lordship will understand from the enclosed letter written by Madonna Laura da Fontanella, her sister and the proponent of this offer, to Cesare da San Secondo, who has been selected as mediator in the negotiation. We have resolved to discuss this no further without notifying you of it and learning of your intentions in the matter. Hence, please be content to consider it well and to inform us what you think we should do, because without your information and reply the discussion will go no further. According to the information we have, the girl is about thirteen years old, more pleasant than she is beautiful. We have been given to understand that the mother will not hesitate to pledge her assets to her, though she will maintain privileges of use. For this reason, we did not want to delay in writing our own opinion to Your Lordship, which is that you ought to consider a higher match. Given who you are, and the fact that the Pallavicino house, while noble, has also seen its reputation decline in recent years for lack of men, we think you are more apt, with the help of the emperor, to find a more honorable match of higher rank in the Kingdom of Naples or in another of His Majesty’s lands. Having said this, however, we would not deny you the liberty to consider what you would like, and we will carry it out ever willingly, as one who delights in satisfying all your wishes. We send Your Lordship our customary greetings.

193. AG 2999 libro 47 cc. 48v–49r. Ferrante would eventually marry not this Pallavicina girl, but Isabella di Capua, daughter of the duke of Tremoli, in April of 1531. This letter nonetheless lays bare both the unsentimental practical and political considerations that guided dynastic betrothals and the circle of interested parties who often negotiated such high-stakes matches as those involving the Gonzagas. Partly because Ferrante is now a grown man, and partly because in the case of adults Isabella generally sought to satisfy those whose marriages she arranged, after voicing an informed opinion she here defers to her son’s wishes. 194. The word here is consorti, which I take to mean literally the sharers in her fortune.

518 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 727: 1528 April 30 Mantua To Francesco Aliprandi, suggesting that two chests and their contents be sent from Rome to Mantua.195 We are advised by Pandolfo della Mirandola196 that at the departure from Rome of our son, the Most Illustrious Lord Ferrante, Pandolfo left two chests of belongings in Castel Sant’Angelo in the care of a certain Maestro Prospero, a doctor who was for several months in the service of our above-named son. And also in the possession of Maestro Prospero remain three boxes that contain several portraits done by the painter Maestro Sebastiano,197 and a figure of the Madonna done by a pupil of Raffaello of Urbino. Since the above-named lord, our son, would appreciate having the two chests removed from Rome and brought to Mantua, where we too judge they will be more secure, you shall be pleased to undertake the task of having them removed, once you know that the roads from Rome to Orvieto are safe, giving orders also that the messenger assigned to carry out this task shall be under the authority of Maestro Prospero. And once they are brought into your possession, keep them until the opportunity arises to use mules that were sent here in the service of His Most Reverend Lordship, our son [Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga]. Send us word, in the meantime of what you have achieved in this regard.

Letter 728: 1528 May 7 Mantua To Enea Pio, regarding the goods Isabella thought were pirated at the instigation of Andrea Doria.198 In recent days we received Your Lordship’s letter of the 20th, from which we took great pleasure in learning that the Most Illustrious Don Ercole [d’Este] our nephew had arrived safely in Genoa with all of his company.199 We thank Your Lordship for this news and hope that the rest of his journey will be prosperous and happy. From the same letter, we learned of the conversation the Lord Andrea Doria had with you in which he lamented our ill opinion of him in thinking that our things had been taken by His Lordship’s men. To this we reply that we cannot express how much it pained us to make this accusation of a gentleman to whose graciousness and courtesy we owe so much for the loving treatment he showed us at our departure from Civitavecchia. But the evidence submitted against His 195. AG 2999 libro 47 cc. 69r–v. Luzio transcribes this letter in “Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma,” 387. The Aliprandi were a prominent family of Mantua. See, for example, Mazzoldi, 376–77. 196. It was Pandolfo della Mirandola who sent word from Rome to Isabella of Raffaello Sanzio’s death (1520). It is not clear, however, whether here the reference is to Sanzio or to the goldsmith Raffaello of Urbino. 197. Sebastiano del Piombo. 198. AG 2999 libro 47 cc. 69v–70v. 199. Ercole II d’Este was on his way to France, to marry Renée de France, François I’s daughter.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 519 Lordship was so abundant that whoever heard it would instantly understand our judgment and excuse our credulity. And now that it is clear that the things in question fell into the hands of Moors, our pleasure at this fact, through which we plainly recognized the innocence and integrity of Lord Andrea, is as great as was our dismay at the misfortune of losing these things to begin with. As soon as we have occasion to gratify His Lordship, we will show him with actions in what good opinion and account we hold him. Through various avenues we have clarified our understanding that these belongings of ours fell into the hands of Moors and were taken to Tunisia. Among others who have given us this clarity was one Messer Giovanni Contarino, a Venetian gentleman who goes by the nickname of Capitano Cacciadiavolo,200 and who recently returned to Venice from Tunisia with his ship, in which he brought back some of these belongings along with the lovely tapestries that belonged to His Holiness.201 He also brought back two of our poor servants who, along with Bozino, were on our ship, paying their ransom with his own money. Since poor Bozino remains a prisoner of that king [of Tunisia], who bought him for four hundred and thirty ducats and who refuses to free him without making a big profit, we cannot help but yearn for the release of the poor young man, for whom we feel extreme compassion having understood that he is kept in chains and is very badly treated. We would like, with Your Lordship’s mediation, to be granted a great favor by Don Ercole. Since we understand through reliable channels that His Most Christian Majesty202 can claim great friendship and authority with the king of Tunisia, we would like Don Ercole to request a letter from His Majesty to that king, in favor of the poor captive. We would like the letter to result in that king’s making a gift of the captive to His Majesty, or his releasing him for the price that he paid for him, because Bozino’s brothers will make every effort to find the money to pay his ransom. We pray Your Lordship please work with the aforesaid lord, our nephew, to achieve our much desired aim. You may assure His Lordship that at this time he could do nothing that would please us more. As for Your Lordship, we will be especially obliged to you, to whom we offer ourself.

200. The name means Captain Devilbuster or Devilhunter. The common translation for Cacciadiavoli is also a botanical name, St. John’s Wort (Hipericum perforatum), a shrubby plant which was once thought to rid the body of evil spirits. 201. In an ambivalent gesture of allegiance, Isabella’s son Ferrante had, during the sack of the city, brought to her Roman palace a set of precious tapestries, ostensibly for safekeeping to prevent them from being taken away as plunder by the army in which he was officially serving. Since one of the most damning accusations against Isabella was that in mercenary fashion she had planned to keep these prizes for herself, she was particularly keen to recover them and offer them back to the pope for the price she had paid to keep them from the marauding army. See the letter of 16 June, above. 202. The king of France, François I, future father–in–law of Ercole II d’Este.

520 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 729: 1528 June 18 Mantua To Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, recounting an epidemic of plague in Mantua.203 I have no choice but to inform Your Most Reverend Lordship, to my utmost sorrow, that several days ago the plague was discovered in several places in our city. The way it has begun has frightened us, especially because it has entered into some of the highest ranking and most noble houses of the land. Among these is that of Messer Francesco da Gorno, several of whose servants have died as well as his thirteen-year-old daughter. In the house of our Messer Giulio Gonzaga too, several servants have died. And given the close relations he has with him, Messer Girolamo da Nigi is a suspected case; he has a household member who is sick from this contagion. Poor Madonna Costanza Rozzona is now bereft of her only daughter, in addition to three women of her household who died earlier; and the very day that she lost her daughter another woman of her household died. In the house of the most reverend archdeacon, a woman died who had not been sick but for a day. In Grossino the carver’s house, a lady in service to his consort died, just as in the house of Count Nicola a woman who served his wife died. There are more sick in the house of Messer Carlo Nuvoloni. Poor Tridapali, my secretary, lost his wife, who had not been sick more than two days. The doctors concluded that the poor woman suffocated from catarrh,204 hence she is not counted among the suspected plague deaths; but this is a truly miserable event that inspires great compassion for her husband. There are many other houses of other citizens and lower persons, of which I will not write to Your Lordship so as not to trouble you further with this already grievious letter. I will only tell you that I am not so frightened that I have yet wished to leave Mantua. I have considered well that if things go on this way, I will separate myself off and go to my Porto [villa] for now. And if the carnage increases, in order to flee all commerce with the city I had the idea of going, with Your Most Reverend Lordship’s permission, to your place at Quingentole.205 Feeling certain that Your Lordship will be content with this, I have already arranged with your agents to have the palace there reserved for me. I got the copious news you sent in your letter of the 9th of this month, in reply to which I need say no more than to thank you. I commend etc.

203. AG 2999 libro 48 cc. 8r–9r. This letter captures the suddenness and magnitude of the plague’s waves of devastation, against which early moderns had so few effective weapons. They did, however, understand that the disease was contagious; the letter to Francesco Aliprando immediately following this one in Isabella’s copybook warns that any goods coming to Mantua should avoid the route through Orvieto, where there is also plague, so as not to aggravate Mantua’s situation. 204. Inflammation of the mucous membranes, especially of the nose and throat. 205. Ercole Gonzaga had a villa in Quingentole, a town in the southeast of the Mantuan province.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 521 Letter 730: 1528 July 9 Porto To Eleonora Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, thanking her for cheese and sending salame.206 The little cheeses Your Excellency sent me were very much appreciated, and I will gladly enjoy them in memory of you. I thank you for the good thoughts in which I see you keep me. In exchange, I am sending thirty-three pieces of salame, which you too must accept with a good heart and enjoy in my love, for this will please me greatly. If they seem few, please pardon me, for the monsignor most reverend, our cardinal [Ercole Gonzaga], had already snatched some. Your Excellency must see to keeping well, as I myself am doing. I commend etc.

Letter 731: 1529 March 2 Mantua To Francesco Gonzaga, regarding some medals Isabella is anxious to have.207 In recent months, when poor Pandolfo [Pico della Mirandola] was in Rome, he handed over some metal medals to the painter Maestro Sebastiano [del Piombo], who is currently living in Venice, so that they could be sent to us through him. Now that we have sent [Sebastiano] a letter reminding him of this, he replies that he left them in Rome, in a strong box in the possession of the house master of His Holiness, and that he hopes to be back in Rome in fifteen days, at which time he will give them to whomever we would like. Since we responded that he should consign them to you, please accept all of them, and when you have the convenience of a secure messenger, send them to us and inform us of their number.208 We have information that they are beautiful and antique medals, for which reason we value them highly and want very much to have them. We will be very pleased with you for doing this; and we offer ourself to you.

Letter 732: 1529 March 22 Mantua To Alessandro Bentivoglio, inviting him to Mantua for company and entertainments.209 Since Your Lordship was here in recent days at a time when we were absent, it seems to us that the honorable thing, since others were able to enjoy your company then, would be to let us enjoy you now, for we love you as much as anyone in the world does. So we thought we would invite and pray you nicely to please come stay with us 206. AG 2999 libro 48 c. 13r. 207. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 3v–4r. Francesco Gonzaga was the Mantuan ambassador in Rome. On this correspondence, see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2: 277 208. Presumably, Isabella wants to assure that none of the medals disappears en route; for this reason she asks Gonzaga to write down the number of them that he will be sending. 209. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 10r.

522 ISABELLA D’ESTE for a few days, because among the other amenities we are arranging, you will have the chatter of our Madonna Isabella [Lavagnola], who is just returned from Ferrara and is here with us. We await you anxiously, and we offer ourself to you.

Letter 733: 1529 May 1 Mantua To Alberto Bendidio, proposing a marriage match for Livia, a lady-in-waiting.210 A marriage proposal for Livia, our lady-in-waiting, has just come forth from one of our Mantuan gentlemen, a widower aged thirty-six or thereabouts, with assets of over eight thousand ducats, who has asked us for her hand in marriage. Though we have other girls who have served us longer than she has and who, by rights, deserve to be married before her, we nonetheless would not want to cheat her out of this good match which fortune has presented to her. But before we consent to carry it through, we want her father to be informed and to tell us what he plans to give her as dowry, for you well know that these days, the dowry matters as much as people’s social standing. Therefore we ask you, in the interest both of our satisfaction and the benefit of this young woman, to please speak with her father on our behalf and learn his feelings about the matter in such a way that we need not inquire further about the quality and the quantity of the dowry, nor about what terms he would like regarding full payment. As for us, though as we have said, Livia has not yet been in our service five years, we would be happy to give her what we usually give the others who have served longer than she has, considering her good manners and virtuous qualities and the family from which she descends. We await a quick and clear reply, therefore, on the whole question, so that we will know what decisions we can make. We offer ourself to your pleasures.

Letter 734: 1529 May 2 Mantua To Jacopo Malatesta, regarding the purchase of Venetian glassware.211 We understand that in the glassmakers’ shops there will appear some beautiful new vessels for this Feast of the Ascension. Be content to find ten or twelve drinking glasses for us in different shapes, both cups and glasses, with simple clear rims and no gold. It will please us if you take with you as your companion when you go to get them Alfonso Facino, who is there in Venice, because the two of you together, each aided by the opinion of the other, will be more apt to satisfy our wishes. You may give them to Gioanbono Andreasi, the carrier of this letter, whom we have specially assigned to obtain them for us. We will repay you the money for the expense. Be well. 210. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 18r–v. 211. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 19v.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 523 Letter 735: 1529 May 31 Mantua To the agent, Francesco Gonzaga, regarding figurines sold to Isabella by Raffaello of Urbino, which were not authentic antiques.212 Carlo Ghisi, our treasurer, should have initiated with you the commission we gave him before he left Mantua to speak with Maestro Raffaello of Urbino about two statuettes we bought from him for forty-four gold scudi, which were returned to him because we did not find them to be ancient, as he had certified them to be. One we sent back ourself, and the other was given to Messer Angelo Germanello to be repaired, since it was damaged. From what the treasurer has written us, it seems that it is now in the possession of Messer Angelo’s brother, at Narni, and may be obtained upon our request. And since, as we have said, Maestro Raffaello failed us, we have now had him sought out so that he can repay our money; he has one of the statuettes already in hand, and we will see that the other, which is at Narni, is returned to him. But the treasurer reports to us that it seems Maestro Raffaello refuses to repay the money based on some pale and frivolous excuses and says that the statuette that was left with him was lost with other possessions of his in the Sack of Rome. Since we understand that the treasurer made several other attempts at this negotiation after writing us his letter on the subject but was unable to follow up on them because he could not remain in Rome, and since we do not want to be left so disappointed, we hope you will not find it burdensome to assume this duty for love of us. If, when you receive this letter, the treasurer has already departed, please try in every way that seems expedient to you to see that we get our money back. Have letters written to the apothecary who is there in Rome and to whom we have directed [the money] on account of a debt we have to him for things we received from his shop. And if you can find no way to demand the money, see at least that we have the statuettes, for losing everything would seem to us too wicked and dishonest. Next, a table of ours is in the possession of Messer Ottaviano, the brother of the Most Reverend [Paolo Emilio] Cesi, as our bursar will have informed you. Be content also to see that it is returned to us. If Messer Ottaviano should deny this—which we don’t think he will do—the apothecary, who is the one who discovered it, can shed the light to clarify the situation so that you may demand it on good grounds. Even if he wanted to, he could not deny this, nor should you refrain from speaking with the aforesaid Most Reverend, his brother, if you find it

212. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 24r–25v. Transcriptions and discussion appear in Brown, Lorenzoni, and Hickson, “Per dare qualche splendore,” 297–304; Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:274–76; Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 284–86; Pizzagalli, La signora del Rinascimento, 524–25. Raffaello of Urbino, not to be confused with the painter Raffaello Sanzio (also of Urbino) who died in 1520, is identified as a goldsmith of Rome.

524 ISABELLA D’ESTE to be necessary. The faith we have in the goodness of His Most Reverend Lordship causes us to hope that you will not turn to him in vain. P.S.: If Maestro Raffaello persists in his opinion that the statuettes are antique, you may adduce the testimony of Maestro Giacomo Sansovino the sculptor, of Giovan Battista Colombo the antiquarian, and of a sculptor named Lorenzo, who have seen the two statuettes and judged them to be modern; they are men of such expertise in this art that one may put great faith in them.

Letter 736: 1529 June 8 Mantua To Matteo Casella, on the qualities of a good bride.213 We saw in the copy you attached with the letter of Messer Francesco Saraceno how willingly you lent yourself, out of love for us, to seeking from him some good terms for matching his sister Diana. We thank you for this, but since the terms correspond neither to our preferences nor to the needs of his sister, we cannot deny that we feel dissatisfied, because we know that with eight hundred ducats in dowry Diana, who is not the prettiest girl in the world, is not likely to find a suitable match.214 As virtuous and well mannered as the girl is, you know that in these times, of the three qualities one seeks in a marrying women, virtue is valued the least; so if she is not better supported by Messer Francesco and his brothers, we very much fear that the sweet young lady may grow old in our house. We would therefore be greatly pleased if, out of his own sense of honor and duty, the aforementioned Messer Francesco would reconsider. And if he knows he cannot go beyond the four hundred215 ducats he has already offered, he should think of trying to do all he can to marry her in Ferrara, where perhaps with the eight hundred ducats he can place her better than he could here in Mantua. We pray Your Majesty speak to him about this, because as long as the girl is well situated, we don’t care whether she is married in one place or another. Please do not mind taking the trouble of sending us word of what you have done about this. We offer ourself always to your pleasure. 213. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 27v–29r. See the letter of 12 March 1517 for Diana’s acceptance into Isabella’s court. 214. We see in this letter what a hard bargainer and firm advocate Isabella could be for the girls she took into her court. Who better than the marchesa of Mantua could know the practicalities and the culture of the dowry market in this period? Isabella’s suggestion below that Ferrara might be an easier place to match a bride with a smaller dowry may in fact indicate her own influence on raising the dowries expected for brides marrying in Mantua. 215. It is not clear whether this is a slip of the pen, or whether the figure of four hundred refers to Francesco’s personal contribution to the dowry of eight hundred ducats.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 525 Letter 737: 1529 June 27 Mantua To Francesco Gonzaga, more on the statuettes sold to Isabella by goldsmith Raffaello of Urbino as antiques.216 Through report of our treasurer, Carlo Ghisi, we understand what you and he have done to recuperate that table of ours and the statuettes. And from the reply received from the Most Reverend Cesi about returning the table, we gather that he intends to dispute the matter, which is completely alien to our intentions. If he will not recognize the proofs that have been given and that can be supplied again from our side through the marble worker who sold it to us and can testify that after the Sack of Rome it stood for a year outside his shop, then we don’t care to speak another word to him. As for Maestro Raffaello, who apologizes for having lost our statuette along with other things of his, let him go on insisting that the said statuette was antique. We believe his plan is to leave us bereft of both the statuette and the money, which would be enormously discourteous as well as dishonest. Be content to tell him that if he cannot give us the statuette because it is lost, and since it and the other one that is now with Germanello’s brother were both judged, in the presence of Messer Angelo, to be modern by those who saw them, and if he has no other way of repaying us the money, he should consent to give us in exchange that large medal of his that we liked, along with other things to make up the equivalency. As long as the medal is genuine and not something else, we will consider ourself satisfied by him. But if you should find him persistent in his fantasy of making good on his debt neither the one way nor the other, we think the matter should be enclosed in silence and spoken of no more. In that case, do not delay in getting back the statuette that Germanello has and sending it to us when you have access to a secure and trusted messenger, along with the two earthen vases that were put in your keeping by Monsignor Most Reverend [Andrea Matteo] Palmieri, which we very much desire to have. Our treasurer will have written you to the same effect, as we ordered him to do, but we wanted to notify you just the same, as further communication of our wishes. Be well. Letter 738: 1529 [August] Mantua To Francesco Gonzaga, continuing the discussion of the statuettes.217 We received your letter of the third of this month and learned of the good work you have done with Monsignore the Most Reverend de Cesi and with Maestro Raffaello, and how much you wish to see us satisfied in our desire to have that table and our two statuettes. We will not elaborate much on this now, since we believe you must by now have in hand a letter our secretary Tridapali wrote you 216. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 22v–34v. 217. AG 3000 cc. 44r–v. The letter appears between others dated 12 and 24 August 1529.

526 ISABELLA D’ESTE in recent days, and you clearly understand our intentions in the matter. We merely confirm what we already wrote you in a letter of ours, that we neither wish nor intend to quarrel with His Most Reverend Lordship, because we wish to deal with him affectionately in this affair, without adopting language that is harsh and alien to the reverence we always want to show him. Regarding the difficult behavior of Maestro Raffaello who sings so much of his poverty, we have the sense that he does not intend to satisfy us in any way, though we do not know how he can justify his claims that he is unable to do so. We know that when the fury came down on the Colonnas he told us he had saved the ancient medal and other things that were dear to him by removing them from Rome. This leads us to feel certain that if he was clever enough to save things in that chaos, he must have been all the more diligent to do so in the Sack of Rome, under the fury of the Spanish. If he says otherwise, we are not about to be easily taken in by him. Rather we are of the opinion that it is within his faculties to give us the medal we want, if he wants to give it to us. Therefore be content to insist; and assure him that we would sooner be left with no repayment whatsoever for our statuettes than to play such shady and vulgar games. Be well. Letter 739: 1529 August 27 Mantua To Giovannino di Casale, imperial commissioner, on the ill conduct of troops in Poviglio.218 The men of Poviglio have turned to me complaining of various extortions and murders that are being committed every day by soldiers conducted there in the name of His Imperial Majesty, as they tell it. Since it seems to me that duty and honor would dictate that that city, which is under the rule of Lord Ferrante my son who serves His Majesty, should be respected and not harmed in this way, I thought to write you this letter asking you to see that those soldiers remove themselves as soon as possible and go to another location so that the city will not be damaged so. For this could easily be cause for the men there to go to ruin and to be forced to abandon their homes and their property, if they should not be relieved of this intolerable and most unjust burden. I am quite certain that these things would dismay His Imperial Majesty if he knew of them. To your pleasures I offer myself always.

218. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 46v.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 527 Letter 740: 1529 August 30 Mantua To the commissioner of Castiglione Mantovano, ordering an edict against rice thieves.219 Reminded of the damage that was done last year in our rice fields when everyone took the liberty of robbing us without regard, we aim to see that this year they do not do the same. We want you to publish an edict in our name, so that it comes to everyone’s attention that whoever is found robbing our rice fields will be given three jerks on the strappado, with no exceptions. If they are found doing the same at nighttime and are wounded or killed, the fault will be their own. And whoever wounds or kills such persons will incur no penalty whatsoever. And since we are informed that those who come to steal our rice are for the most part Veronese, command that if the Veronese arrogantly show up to do us harm, your men should block any obstructions [by the Veronese] to our managers’ requisitions. Letter 741: 1529 September 20 Mantua To Alfonso Trotti, on the high yield of the rice crop this year.220 The Germans are still in Lonato and will not depart until they have left a deep memory of themselves for the extreme harm and ruin they have brought to that poor city. I will be left with a good quantity of rice this year. I pray Your Majesty please investigate whether there are merchants to be found in that city who would like to buy some, and if they would be pleased to come here to get it or to have me send it there. Then also inform me what amounts they would like. You will be doing me a singular favor. I offer myself to you always. Letter 742: 1529 September 29 Solarolo To Ferrante Gonzaga, describing her arrival at Solarolo.221 I received a letter from Your Lordship of the 19th of this month, which was written at Castiglione Aretino, and which was an immense pleasure to me since I learned from it of your well being and the happy successes of your excellent 219. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 47r–v. In an unpublished typescript held in the ASMn, Romano Sarzi reports that though rice was introduced to the West by Alexander the Great in 320 BCE, the first record of its cultivation in Italy dates to 1475. Sarzi advances a tentative hypothesis that the Gonzagas may have begun to grow this crop between 1519 and 1522, perhaps having learned about rice cultivation from the Sforzas after years of importing rice from Lombardy. As Sarzi illustrates, rice production was abundant for the Gonzagas and was closely tied both to the quality of Mantuan terrains and to water rights. Romano Sarzi, “Il riso e le pile da riso nel mantovano (dal XVI al XX secolo),” unpublished typescript, 1997, Mantua, Biblioteca Archivio di Stato. Here and in the following letter (as is also the case with correspondence about fish supplies), we see how tightly the ruling elites controlled precious food commodities. 220. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 52v. 221. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 53v.

528 ISABELLA D’ESTE [commander]. These delight me insofar as they make me think that each day they bring you closer to this territory. I hope that soon we will be able to see and embrace each other. I have come here to Solarolo, a castle in Romagna which belonged to His Most Illustrious Lordship the marchese, your brother, and which is now mine through a contract concluded between His Excellency and me. And truly, since it is a place with perfect air, fertile and well located, inhabited by good and prosperous people, I find myself more content each day. I will remain for nine or ten days; then I will make my return to Mantua. And since it is certain that His Holiness will be in Bologna for All Saints’ Day and the emperor will also be there in person, it will be easy for me to stop there for six or eight days to see something I have never seen. And I can hope to see Your Lordship there too. Thanks be to God, I am well, and may the same be true of you, to whom I send my customary greetings. Letter 743: 1529 October 9 Solarolo To the commissioner of Lugo, defending a subject of Solarolo.222 I am informed that Antolino da Gozzolo of Solarolo, who is in the employ of the abbot of St. Ippolito da Faenza, has been detained there in Lugo by order of Your Lordship on the charge that he transported grain from there to Solarolo in violation of the statutes of the most illustrious duke of Ferrara, my brother [Alfonso I d’Este]. I have determined that this poor man is entirely innocent, as someone who duly shared the grain with his employer, the abbot, but did not transport it as has been charged, for he affirms that the aforesaid employer had it transported here to Solarolo by other workers. Knowing that this poor man is innocent, I wanted to commend him to Your Lordship with this letter praying, for love of me and in duty to justice, you command that he be released, and that you pursue charges against those who are the true authors of this error. You will be doing me a singular favor. I offer myself always to you. Letter 744: 1529 October 9 Solarolo To Eleonora Brogna de’ Lardis [“La Brogna”], on a joke letter she had sent to Paula.223 Just as we were about to go to the dinner table, the agent presented us with your two letters, one to us and the other to Paula. Since she was in her room, we sent the directive to her there. Once she had read it, she plunged into such distressful tears that it was both miserable and hard to believe. She persisted in this state until 222. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 56v–57r. 223. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 57v. On this and other facetious letters, see Shemek, “Mendacious Missives.” I have been unable to trace “La Brogna”’s letters to Isabella and Paula, who is likely Paula Fantina.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 529 we had eaten. And when she saw that it was a lie and that what you had written was a joke, it took great effort to persuade her to come to us and to [explain to her] the matter because it seemed true. In the end, she calmed down and changed her tears to laughter. In eight days we will be going to Bologna to see the pope and the emperor. We have invited Signora Diana, and you can come in Her Ladyship’s company, leaving your daughter-in-law with her father until your return. Be well.

Letter 745: 1529 November 16 Bologna To the agent Paniera, asking him to send a doctor to her right away.224 We have written the enclosed to Maestro Battista Cremasco, our physician, urging him greatly to come here to care for us, as we are suffering from some catarrhal disturbance. We want you to give him this letter immediately, and do not fail to do your part, so that he will set out with all due speed given our great need for him. See that he has a boat to conduct him to Torre della Fossa225 and sufficient money for his journey. Be well. Letter 746: 1529 November 21 Bologna To Suor Ippolita Gonzaga, on feeling better after a mild illness.226 We are certain that upon hearing news of our indisposition you and all those other mothers227 felt, and perhaps still feel, disturbed, thinking that our indisposition was more significant than in fact it was. And so you must hear now, to your relief, that our sickness was a headache caused entirely by perspiration, with so little fever that we hardly felt it. But out of too much affection, certain members of our household took it upon themselves to write without our knowing it to Maestro Battista Cremasco telling him to come to our aid. Once he was here, he found us, thanks be to God, recovered. Today we left our bed and gave everyone permission to see us and speak with us as much as they like. Please share this letter with Suor Paola, your sister, who we think must be equally worried. Since we are convinced that your prayers and those of the other mothers helped us in this ordeal, we commend ourself once again to your prayers and theirs.

224. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 69v. 225. A village on the edge of Ferrara, point of embarcation for journeys on the Po River between Ferrara and Bologna. 226. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 69v–70r. The addressee is Isabella and Francesco’s cloistered daughter, Ippolita. Note that this text directly contradicts the urgency of the previous letter sent by Isabella (and not her household) to request her doctor’s immediate presence. 227. Isabella refers here to the other nuns.

530 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 747: 1529 November 21 Bologna To Giovanni Giacomo Calandra, ordering paper requested by Paolo Giovio.228 The Most Reverend Paolo Giovio would like to have printed several of his dialogues, and he has asked us to help in carrying out this laudable plan by giving him seventy reams of the kind of paper that is made in Mantua, of the type that will be explained to you by his present messenger who stands before you. We, who greatly love Messer Paolo for his virtues, are content to grant his request gladly. We thought to give this task to you, knowing that you will gladly accept it since you share in this good and honorable enterprise, and you will see that the specified quality of paper is consigned to this messenger. Promise the paper makers for us that the money for it will be immediately and without fail repaid when we return to Mantua. And if it should be a hardship for them to wait until that time, see that they content themselves at least with taking payments of two scudi a week until they are fully repaid. And if you can, speak with our general agent, who will see to providing this money. Messer Paolo had asked to acquire this paper from Mantua without paying duties or other tariffs, but we do not know how this can be done since all the taxes are leased out.

Letter 748: 1529 November 10 Bologna To Renée de France, duchess of Ferrara, on Emperor Charles V’s entry into Bologna to meet Pope Clement VII.229 Yesterday His Imperial Majesty traveled from Castelfranco to the Certosa a mile outside Bologna and was received first by the governor and the regiment of Bologna and then by all these most reverend cardinals, who had gone all together, followed by countless gentlemen, to meet His Majesty. He stayed that night at the Certosa along with those of his company who could be accommodated. The others entered Bologna and stayed in designated lodgings, as did the most reverends who had gone out to pay His Majesty honor. Today, then, was his entry into

228. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 70r. Transcribed in D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 322. On this celebrated historian’s relations with Isabella and the Gonzagas, see Luzio and Renier, who indicate the difficulty of identifying the work in question, noting that Giovio’s dialogue on emblems was published posthumously: La coltura, 148–52. They also recall that a further request was made for this same paper in February of 1530. Giovio contributed mottos for two of Isabella’s emblems, that of the candelabra and that of the lottery tickets: see Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 33. More generally, see T. C. Price Zimmerman, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), who plausibly assumes (11) that the text Giovio wished to print (but did not) was his dialogue in Latin, Notable Men and Women of Our Time. For a modern, bilingual edition, see that of Kenneth Gouwens (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2013). 229. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 65v–67r. Renée [Renata] daughter of the French King Louis XII and Anne of Brittany, married Alfonso I d’Este’s son Ercole II on 28 June 1528, and was thenceforth Isabella’s niece.

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 531 Bologna at about the twenty-second hour [two hours before sunset], which took place in the following order. First came three companies of light cavalry, very well armed with lances and beautifully astride their horses. Behind them appeared the artillery, followed by their spoilers. Then came fourteen companies of infantry, some with crossbows and some with pikes and halberds, all splendid looking and well armed, and in the midst of them was Lord Antonio de Leyva [Charles V’s general], unarmed and borne on a chair by his servants since he is crippled with gout. And truly he appeared no less vigorous and strong being carried that way than if he were at the height of his powers and fully armed. Behind this company appeared the Burgundian horses, all armed in white, cloaked in velvet robes, and wearing the same livery of yellow, green, and red. Behind these was a most beautiful company of lightly armed cavalry in wool robes of the same colors, with their lances. And each of the Burgundians had his page, with helmet, lance, and a fine steed. There followed the gentlemen of His Majesty, armed, in robes and overdresses of different styles with heraldry reflecting the feelings and intentions230 of each. Behind these gentlemen appeared His Majesty’s pages, all with yellow velvet caps and robes also of velvet but trimmed in three colors: yellow, gray, and black. They were on most beautiful and noble horses, jennets as well as other kinds, all richly adorned. At that moment, His Holiness of Our Lord descended from the palace, borne on a chair and in pontifical robes, surrounded by his chamberlains and bedchamber servants. Before them came the ambassadors, then all the most reverend cardinals on foot, two-by-two, followed by an infinite number of bishops and other prelates. He reached a wooden tribunal that had been erected above the stairs in front of the church of San Petronio and covered in white cloth. The floor where His Holiness and the most reverend lords were to stand was covered in red cloth, and the other areas in which persons of less regard stood were covered in cloth of other colors. On the other side, there continued the procession of His Imperial Majesty’s people. Once the pages had passed, there appeared His Majesty’s guard, all beautiful people dressed in the same colors as the pages. Behind them could be As Alfonso was now a widower, Renata bore the title of duchess. For another translation of this important letter, see Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 2:297–301. Cartwright dates the letter 6 November 1529. Following the treaty of Cambrai, Charles V went to Bologna to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement VII. After this ceremony, which took place on 24 February 1530, on the steps of Bologna’s basilica of San Petronio, the leaders of spiritual and secular Europe spent five months in adjoining apartments within Bologna’s Palazzo Pubblico. On 22 March 1530, Charles departed for Mantua, where he was hosted by Federico II Gonzaga. At this time, he granted Federico the title of duke: Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 219–21. 230. li animi et intentioni di ciascun di loro.

532 ISABELLA D’ESTE seen those who were greatest and most dear to His Majesty, mounted, armed, and adorned in most sumptuous gowns and overdresses, all most beautiful and charming to see. Behind them came His Imperial Majesty, before whom rode one of his gentlemen carrying his drawn sword. He rode a most noble, all-white jennet and was armored with a gown and an overdress in riccio sopra riccio231 brocade. But his right arm and the whole right side of his chest were exposed. At his stirrups were about forty young men of the city, all dressed in robes and doublets of white satin, slashed, with linings of gold brocade, in velvet caps with white plumes and rose-colored stockings.232 They escorted His Majesty from the door through which he entered under a canopy of gold brocade that was carried by other high-ranking gentlemen of this city. And once he had reached the stairs of San Petronio, His Majesty dismounted and approached the feet of His Holiness, who awaited him standing at his chair. And after he had kissed His Holiness’s foot, hand, and then mouth, he was most tenderly received and seated at his left hand. The words His Majesty said to His Holiness of Our Lord when he met him were these: “Padre Sancto, son venido a besar los piès de Vuestra Sanctitad, lo que es mucho tempo lo che deseados, agora lo complido con l’obra. Suplico a Dios che sea en su servicio y de Vuestra Santitad.”233 To which Our Lord replied in similar words, “Let us thank the Lord God that he has brought us to this day which we have much awaited, hoping that through Your Majesty will arise great service to God and to Christianity.” Having said these words, His Imperial Majesty rose to his feet and offered our lord a gold cloth purse filled with many gold medals, among which there were two valued at one hundred scudi apiece and many others that must be valued at a total of a thousand scudi all together. And after His Majesty kissed the foot of His Holiness atop that tribunal, having been up there for some time but with little personal conversation, they removed themselves, descending on foot, with the emperor always at His Holiness’s left side. Though Caesar [Charles V] had gestured to accompany His Holiness to the palace, he was nonetheless persuaded by the Holy Father to remain; and he entered San Petronio with four most reverends [cardinals]: Cesarini, Ravenna, Napoli, and Ridolfi, who had remained in His Majesty’s company. Our lord (the 231. Frick indicates that riccio sopra riccio velvet was “a more intense velluto… which had metal loops grouped together to form a solid-looking gold or siver shape raised higher than the velvet ground.” Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 99. 232. The slashes in the men’s garments are part of the doublets’ design, allowing the brocade to be pulled through the slashes to display tufts of the rich fabric worn underneath. On men’s adornments in the period, see Timothy McCall, “Brilliant Bodies: Material Culture and the Adornment of Men in North Italy’s Quattrocento Courts,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 16, no. 1–2 (2013): 445–90. 233. Isabella seldom includes direct quotations in her letters, but here she clearly aims to capture (however approximately) the flavor of the emperor’s Spanish as well as to provide a documentary report: “Holy Father, I have come to kiss Your Holiness’s feet, something I have long desired to do and that now I have accomplished. I pray God that this be in His service and in that of Your Holiness.”

1520–1529: Letters 609–748 533 pope) retired to his rooms, atop his chair and accompanied by the other most reverends on foot. And while the emperor dismounted and stood at the feet of His Holiness and then went into San Petronio, the procession of people following His Majesty continued, with light cavalry and other infantry and great numbers of guns. After he had paid his debt to Our Lord God, performing those rituals that are appropriate to such occasions, he went to the palace escorted by four most reverends. There, rooms were prepared for him so close to those of our lord that, from what I am told by someone who has seen them, only one wall separates the one from the other. This spectacle, Madama mia, was so beautiful to me that I confess I have never seen, nor believe I will ever see again in all my days, a similar one. If I had wished to describe to Your Excellency all its details, I would have given you too much to read! I will not, however, omit that through all the streets where His Majesty passed, coins of gold and silver were tossed as a gesture of joy and liberality. Now I must pray God that the conversation for which these two great lords have come together will be followed by those good results that everyone desires for the tranquility and universal peace of Christianity. I well believe that Your Ladyship has perhaps heard more diligent report of all this from your ambassadors here. Nonetheless, in order to satisfy the request made of me by your gentleman who was here, I have informed you of the same through this letter. I commend myself to you.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 In the final decade of her life, Isabella remained a vigorous advocate for Mantuan, and now, Solarolan, subjects. Representative letters here show her negotiating the freedom of a servant who was taken captive with her pirated boat after the Sack of Rome, trying to resolve a conflict between two Jewish brothers, defending the rights of a murdered son’s father, and executing the estate of her dear friend, Margherita Cantelma. Family affairs in this period became more settled. Isabella saw Gonzaga heir Federico II married at last. Having rejected Maria Paleologa (whose marriage to him back in 1517 remained unconsummated) in a bizarre and cynical set of manipulations, he accepted a politically advantageous engagement to the thirty-eight-year-old Giulia d’Aragona, aunt of Emperor Charles V. But when Maria Paleologa became a rich heiress, Federico backtracked on his repudiation of her and petitioned to have their marriage legitimated once more, dropping Giulia d’Aragona. Maria died before this deal could be worked out, but a year later, on 15 September 1530 Federico married Maria’s sister, Margherita, thus becoming lord of Monferrato as well as duke of Mantua. Ferrante Gonzaga too was married, in August of 1530, to Isabella di Capua. Ferrante’s military service to the Holy Roman Emperor kept him from spending much time with his bride, and Isabella sought to console him in letters of 1531. Children promptly ensued from both of these marriages, and the next generation of Gonzagas, like the next generation of the Este line, was well underway. With a daughter and two sons married, a son in high ecclesiastical office, and two daughters in Mantuan convents, Isabella’s work as a dynastic mother was finished. Her projects now included correspondence about her grandchildren; ordering a luxurious bed canopy for her daughter, Eleonora; keeping a good stock of perfumes and soaps for her court, and raising at least one parrot, who was taught to speak by Isabella’s dwarf lady-in-waiting, Delia. She also continued to read: In December of 1531, she complimented Bernardo Tasso on poems he had sent her, and in October of 1532, she thanked Ludovico Ariosto for the final edition of his great Orlando furioso, a poem that immortalizes Isabella herself in lines of fulsome praise. Isabella suffered from fevers and headaches all her life; now her health was in steady decline due to stomach problems that plagued her for the remainder of her years. She undertook a trip to Venice in May of 1530 and stayed there for about a month but said the journey home left her stomach upset; in 1531 she declined to attend Carnival in Ferrara, citing stomach troubles that would prevent her from being able to enjoy it. Several letters attest to her attempts at various cures, which appear to have been mildly helpful. As she set out for the medicinal 535

536 ISABELLA D’ESTE baths in 1532, she requested the return of her clown, then on loan to her brother Alfonso I d’Este, so that he could distract her from her discomforts. The Isabella who loved to eat so many foods wrote to her son Ferrante in 1533 that without her favorite cook to prepare her meals, nothing tasted good to her anymore. While Isabella’s greatest undertaking in these years was the construction of a new, women’s monastery in Mantua (Santa Maria della Presentazione) in fulfillment of the last wishes of her friend Margherita Cantelma, her major source of stress must have been her government of Solarolo. Her letters show that Solarolo was a financially profitable purchase for Isabella, but there were few other satisfactions to be derived from it. Violations of water rights required lengthy contestations, while the Church hounded her with legal battles over her right to own the fiefdom. Still worse, far from the idyllic town Isabella had anticipated governing from afar, Solarolo was rife with clan violence, mostly involving two families, the Baldessari and the Scardovi, and required constant vigilance. Her problems as an absentee ruler were compounded by the fact that her appointed commissioner, Leonello Marchese, was corrupt. As others tried to send her word of Marchese’s dishonesty, Isabella clung to confidence in her own good judgment of his character. Finally, she was compelled to dismiss him, banish him, and replace him with the reliable Pietro Gabbioneta. Even then, the violence continued, as attested here by a letter from late October of 1538, in which she tries to disentangle the criminally guilty from those who are culpable by association, in an uncomfortable disagreement with her nephew, now duke of Ferrara, over bandits from Solarolo. Isabella spent the month of October and part of November in Venice with her son, Federico, lodging in a palace she had first visited as a little girl with her mother.1 While there, she received word that her son-in-law, Francesco Maria della Rovere, had died, possibly by poison. Feeling ill from the journey back to Mantua, she took to her bed, never to recover fully. Isabella died in Mantua on 13 February 1539, as narrated in a letter by her son, Federico. Her body was buried according to her wishes, simply and in the inner choir of the monastery of Santa Paola where her daughter, Ippolita, was cloistered. Due to a series of events that remain unexplained, the body of Isabella d’Este has disappeared.2

1. Banks Amendola, First Lady, 440. 2. Banks Amendola, First Lady, 444–45; Giancarlo Malacarne, Chi ha ammazzato Isabella d’Este? (Mantua: Tre Lune (Artiglio), 2001).

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 537 Letter 749: 1530 January 8 Bologna To the master of receipts and expenditures, on how to collect debts.3 We have some creditors who are urging with great insistence that we pay them. Since our wish would be to repay them with certain credits owed to us, which will be difficult to collect from our debtors, and since we know no better or surer way to oblige them to repay us than by means of reason, we have chosen you as intermediary, for we are confident that you will spare no good means of persuasion on our behalf. Be content, therefore, to lend all possible assistance and effort to Panciero our general agent, as he seeks to collect a great deal of money that is owed us, in the way that you will hear from him is feasible. We will be most grateful if you use the force of reason in insisting with our debtors, so that they may know our firm intention to be promptly satisfied and may act in this matter insofar as they respect our authority. Do this task heartily and boldly if you care to be in our grace, because we are of a mind to be satisfied. Be well.

Letter 750: 1530 April 9 Mantua To Giulia d’Aragona, on her engagement to Federico II Gonzaga.4 I rejoice with all my heart and congratulate Your Excellency to my greatest ability on the newly contracted engagement between you and the most illustrious lord marchese, my son. At this news I feel incredible pleasure and inestimable peace of mind, and I thank God for giving me this blessing. In truth, nothing I could desire would have given me greater contentment. I therefore pray the Lord God will allow me to enjoy this consolation at length, and increase Your Ladyship’s happiness. The Magnificent Lords Francesco Gonzaga and Giovanni Battista Malatesta have been sent to you by the lord marchese and me; from them you will hear additional things on my behalf. I pray you lend them the faith you would lend to me myself. I commend myself to you with all my heart.

3. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 76r. 4. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 86v–87r. Though the bride was not present, Charles V was in fact in Mantua for this betrothal between Federico and the Infanta Giulia of Aragon. Isabella’s happiness at her son’s engagement was likely mixed. Federico had long delayed marrying, perhaps in part due to his ongoing affair with the married Isabella Boschetti; but Giulia’s age, at thirty-eight, did not bode well for the production of many heirs. This engagement, which was proposed by Charles V himself, went hand-inhand with Federico’s appointment as duke of Mantua on April 8th, but Federico did not marry Giulia. See Davari, “Federico Gonzaga e la famiglia Paleologa”; Shemek, “Marriage Woes.”

538 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 751: 1530 May 10 Mantua To Giacomo Malatesta, asking him to secure lodgings for Isabella in Venice.5 We have decided to come to Venice in eight or ten days and to stay there at least a month. So that upon our arrival we find our lodgings ready, we want you, assisted by the Monsignor Protonotary Casale, to make a diligent search for a house for us and our staff. And if it is not possible to find one that will hold so many people, we would be pleased if you saw to providing two, assuring that they are close together and as near to the church of San Marco as possible. Spare no effort in this regard.

Letter 752: 1530 June 3 Venice To Paolo Andreasi, instructing him to open the grotta and find certain things to send to Isabella in Venice.6 We received your letter of the 25th, to which we need make no further reply. We commend you heartily for your correspondence. We are happy to hear that the Magnificent Monsignore the Most Reverend Pisani saw our apartments, and we took great pleasure in hearing that he liked them, as you wrote he did. We are sending you enclosed with this letter the keys to the grotta and to the jewelry chest. We want you to look inside the smaller boxes in the chest, where you will find a little case of slightly variegated black bone, inside which there are some loose rubies. And there is another case of boxwood, which contains some small diamonds that are also loose. Send these to us via a trusted messenger. Look also inside the armoires, where you will find among the many keys those to the white wood chest that is in the first camerino. In one of its little drawers there is a crown of hyacinthine7 without markings, and another one of garnets. Send those as well. Also tell our agent Giovan Andrea to have our gardener from Porto come here by boat, because we want him to see some of these Venetian gardens, which are most beautiful and from which he can learn some little things. We have written the enclosed to the sindaco. We pray him please speak to our son, the duke, imploring His Excellency for a condemnation regarding the forced legittima of Alessandro our agent in Solarolo.8 And so that he may know that the matter is important to us, we want you, in addition to this letter we are writing, to urge and exhort him to carry out this task with all possible diligence.

5. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 92r. 6. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 96v–97r. 7. Also known as hyacinth or jacinth, hyacinthine was known to the ancients as a blue, precious or semi-precious stone, possibly a sapphire or an aquamarine, or a variety of transparent zircon. 8. La legittima refers to the rightful portion of a patrimony which must go to a specific heir and over which the testator has no choice.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 539 P.S.: We are sending the key to the chest containing our chemises. Give it to Paula9 and go with her to find inside this chest the keys to the armoires in the hallway going toward the balcony. Look in one of those armoires and find a gold-plated silver cup in a painted case. Send that along with the above-named items. Put back in their places the key to the grotta and the one to the jewelry chest, and tell Paula to keep in her possession the one to the chest containing our chemises.

Letter 753: 1530 June 12 Venice To Paolo Andreasi, treasurer, requesting money to pay Isabella’s Venetian bills.10 We received from Agnello the rubies and diamonds along with the two crowns of garnet and hyacinthine, and also the keys we sent you for our sub-agent. We find ourselves without money. Since we have decided to buy a crystal pane for the tabernacle priced at fifty scudi, and since there are several other things to pay for including the room rent and other items we wish to settle before our departure, we want you to act as quickly as possible to collect a good sum of money and send it, because we plan to set out for Mantua in nine days. Among other things, we need soap and short candles, so do furnish the money. Be well.

Letter 754: 1530 August 25 Mantua To Benedetto Agnello, ordering bird seed.11 Be content to find a bushel of those seeds that are given to parrots to eat, and send them to us as soon as you can, informing us also of the cost, which we will have repaid to you immediately.

Letter 755: 1530 September 18 Mantua To Isabella di Capua, princess of Capua and of Molfetta, welcoming her betrothal to Ferrante Gonzaga.12 Your Ladyship has great cause to express your happiness to me as you did in your letter of the 27th of last month, for the joyous event of the betrothal between you and the Most Illustrious Lord Don Ferrante my son. In truth, I am as consoled and contented by this as I could be by anything I desire in the world, not only out of respect for the most illustrious lord duke your late father and your other ancestors, who have always maintained good friendship with this most illustrious house, but 9. Presumably Paula Fantina, lady-in-waiting. 10. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 101r. 11. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 123r. 12. AG 3000 libro 49 c. 128v.

540 ISABELLA D’ESTE also for the sweet scent of your virtues and your most noble ways, which I have perceived even at this great distance. I therefore feel a great debt to Our Lord God, and I think I may be certain to be more content with each passing day. Since you have lovingly promised to be a most obedient and loving daughter to me, I also want to promise to be a good mother to you, ever ready to serve your pleasures and comforts, no less than I am to my fair son, your consort. I pray His Divine Majesty keep you in love and in the happiness that each of you desires. Fare most happily. Letter 756: 1530 October 2 Mantua To the podestà of Poviglio, defending Simone the Jew.13 We understand that Simone the Jew, a banker in that city, has been detained in prison, taken from his own house by force by you or by Roberto, your court officer, on the insistence of Lucio the Jew, Simone’s cousin, who claims to be his creditor. Since he is unable to find a way to contest the charge unless the accounts between them are settled—which he cannot do if he is not released—we want you to release him from prison so that he can bring you receipts for all his property, both liquid and real estate, and accounts of all his debtors, so that no confiscation may be made before they have settled and the accounts between these two show that he is a creditor to (Lucio). This is all the more just since the laws of that city dictate it, according to the information that we have been given. Be well.

Letter 757: 1530 October 9 Mantua To the contessa of Collesano [Susanna Gonzaga di Sabbioneta], proposing a prisoner exchange.14 A poor servant of mine, who was navigating the seas when I departed Rome after the terrible sack that took place there, to his misfortune fell into the hands of Moors, and at this moment the poor wretch is a prisoner of the king of Tunisia. And though many attempts have been made to free him, all of them up to now have been without result. Since I heard from a good source that Your Ladyship happens to have in her custody some captive Moors who would make it easy to bring about the liberation of my servant, I am moved by extreme compassion to pray Your Ladyship, if you feel yourself able, either through an exchange or by some other means, to bring about this liberation for the love of God and of me. If, in addition to the exchange, it should be necessary to disburse a sum of five hundred or six hundred ducats—because this prisoner has written to us here that it would be easy to reclaim him for such a sum—or for something more if it should be necessary, Your Ladyship may turn to Messer Francesco Rinochi and Messer 13. AG 3000 libro 29 cc. 132r–v. 14. AG 3000 libro 49 cc. 137r–v. See the letter of 7 May 1528, above.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 541 Vincenzo di Tommei, a merchant in Palermo, because they have orders from here to make such a disbursement if there is need. Your Ladyship may be certain of doing such good as to be greatly worthy in the eyes of Our Lord God; and I will owe you a singular debt. I offer and commend myself to you heartily. Letter 758: 1530 October 25 Mantua To the monsignore vice legate of Bologna, regarding a mill.15 I heard via a letter from my commissioner in Solarolo di Romagna [Leonello Marchese] that the men of Castel Bolognese, showing little respect for my interests, are trying with all their might to deviate the water from a mill of mine, and they are diverting it out of its canal. This act is truly inappropriate between good neighbors, which I always considered them to be. And since I know how much damage I could suffer from this diversion if it impeded the grinding at my mill, which is just now ready to begin to produce, and because I believe that given the true friendship we share between us Your Lordship will be displeased that such insolent behavior is taking place against me, I thought to write you this letter and to pray you have a letter written to those men, ordering them expressly to desist from holding up that water, and to have more respect in the future and do less damage than they have done now. I will receive this as a singular favor from Your Lordship, to whom I offer and commend myself heartily. Letter 759: 1530 October 25 Mantua To Ginevra Malatesta, regretting that she cannot send her a sable.16 It pains me to my soul that I cannot satisfy Your Ladyship’s request for a sable, for at present I have no sables of any kind except the one that I carry at my side. If I had any others of the type that I know Your Ladyship uses, you may be most certain that I would not fail to please you with one most willingly, as I always wish to do out of love. I offer and commend myself thus to you. Letter 760: 1530 October 29 Mantua To the podestà of Poviglio, following up on the case of Simone the Jew.17 We have heard that Simone the Jew, who was detained in prison there on the insistence of his brother-in-law Lucio the Jew, has been released. We were pleased, but we would have been more pleased had this been done at the time we ordered 15. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 8r–v. See the letter of 30 December 1530 above, where this addressee is referred to as Monsignor da Gambara. 16. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 9v. 17. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 11r–v.

542 ISABELLA D’ESTE his release, immediately after you received word through Vincenzo Andreaso, general manager of the most illustrious lord, our son, concurring with our wishes in this matter. You have demonstrated little esteem for our letters, showing more respect for Messer Roberto than for us. For this you deserve no small blame. Henceforth if you make a similar mistake, we will make you feel your error, because we will never give you orders that are not justified. It seems to us proper that we be obeyed in every situation that arises in that city so long as we govern as mother of its lord. And Roberto, though he may be leader and podestà of that place, must not think himself its lord and patron; he must be certain that he is clearly subject to rule, as were all of his predecessor podestà in that city. See now that you proceed justly in the case between the two Jews and that you find for whichever one is in the right. And since this Simone has charged that his rights are being denied him, make sure that he has no just cause for complaint. Letter 761: 1530 October 29 Mantua To the same, on interracial affairs.18 Intendadio the Jew, son of the banker Simone the Jew in that city, has made known to us that he is being wrongly and against all reason accused of having relations with a Christian woman. And because he fears he will be imprisoned for such a charge, it is our wish and command that you let him freely defend his case without being put in prison or required to give any security. This is our feeling, wish, and intention. Be well. Letter 762: 1530 November 3 Mantua To Master Cleofas, arranging for delivery of a fountain.19 I saw what you wrote me in your letter of the 25th of last month, to which I reply that I received from Niccolò my goldsmith the needles20 and the four pins that you sent me. It pleases me that the fountain is at the stage that you indicate. When you tell me that it is completely finished, the rest of the payment to the masters who are crafting it will be sent. I will also be pleased if you will take the trouble of arranging for the boat to bring the finished fountain here to Mantua, and if you apply your diligence to having it brought here in the best possible condition. I will hold it very dear if you would like to come with two other masters who will set it

18. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 11v. 19. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 14r–v. 20. agocchie: Battaglia’s closest word is agucchia (needle) with referral also to aguglia (spire, obelisk). I translate “pins” for spontoni.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 543 up. Keep a good account of all you spend to deliver this fountain, for once you are in Mantua you will be courteously compensated. Be well. Letter 763: 1530 November 15 Mantua To Ferrante Gonzaga, sympathizing with him while he is far away from his wife.21 In recent days I got your letter of the 30th of last month, which was, like your others, most welcome to me. Among its other news, I was most pleased to hear the report by your lord who had come from there that the lady princess your consort has fully escaped the peril she was in over the past several days. I would be no less pleased to hear that Your Lordship were finally free to leave your military labors and to go avail yourself enjoyably of your consort. I cannot help but feel compassion at the fact that you must pass this winter season without her, whom I think you are must long to see, since I hear tell of her beauty and her most gentle ways from different persons and especially from a gentleman who recently arrived here. May God grant you the grace to enjoy each other lovingly. By the grace of God, I am well, as you will hear from Lord Nuvoloni, who spoke with me. It’s true that for six days I have been bothered by a bit of a chill, of which I hope soon to be free. Last Saturday the most illustrious lord duke of Milan [Francesco II Sforza] arrived here with a large and honored company of his gentlemen, just returned from Venice where he had stayed for many days and was, from what we hear, very welcome and pampered by that most illustrious signory. This morning, His Excellency departed and went to Caneto where provisions had been made for lodging and for tonight’s dinner. Tomorrow he will go to Cremona. And truly, for the short time that the duke stopped here, our own lord duke [Federico II Gonzaga] omitted no sort of honor or show of affection. Yesterday I got a letter from the duchess your sister [Eleonora Gonzaga], which informed me of the improvement she has begun to feel in her quite serious and dangerous illness;22 each day she feels better results, for which God be praised. I send Your Lordship my usual greetings.

21. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 17v–18r. 22. This may be a reference to Eleonora Gonzaga’s syphilis, contracted from her husband early in their marriage.

544 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 764: 1530 December 14 Mantua To Diana d’Este, ordering materials for a special sparviero.23 I wish to have sufficient cord to adorn a sparviero that I will have made for the lady duchess of Urbino, my daughter. And since here in Mantua no one is to be found who knows how to fashion it as beautifully and quickly as I desire, I think I will be better and faster served in Ferrara, where there are infinite numbers of maestri of that art. I have confidently chosen Your Ladyship as my intermediary; I know that for the love you bear me you will happily do all that is possible to see that I am well served. Therefore, I am sending you here enclosed a sample of the cord that is desired. I pray you have made one hundred eighty ells, all in the same style and width except for what will go above the doors of the sparviero, which must be one and one-half times as wide. In order to have it finished soon, it will do well for Your Ladyship to give it to two or three maestri, to whom the four gold scudi here enclosed may be given as a deposit, so that they will work more energetically. As to the price per ell, I defer to Your Ladyship’s judgment, for I know you to be more capable in such things. As long as it is beautiful and is finished soon, there will be no argument about money. When it is finished, Your Ladyship must take the trouble of informing me, as the money will be sent immediately to pay for it. To Your Ladyship I offer and commend myself always.

Letter 765: 1530 December 16 Mantua To Margarita Gambacurta, regarding more materials for the sparviero.24 We are sending you eight gold scudi, here enclosed. Be content to see whether those nuns there at Reggio who usually have coth for making sparavieri have some lovely sort of windowpane-patterned filigree and cotton padding, and send a sample of it here to Mantua, because if I like it, I would like you to get seventy ells of it for me.25 The sooner you send me the sample the dearer it will be to me. This money is being sent to you now because a trusted courier was available. Keep it until you receive written word that you should give it to the nuns as a deposit for the cloth. In addition, I would be most grateful if a sparviero similar to the one you got for me years ago could be obtained from some gentlewoman or another person. Or it could be of another fashion, so long as it too is made of windowpane-patterned filigree and cotton padding. So please take the trouble to search diligently for one 23. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 28r–v. On the sparviero, see Letter 383, of 29 August 1506, and notes. 24. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 30r. 25. The fabric is described as tela di filo et bambaso facta a friati. For bambaso (imbottitura di cotone), filo (fillo: filigrana), and a friati (freada→ friada→ feriada: una tipologia decorativa del tessuto a motivi geometrici simili a inferriate o piccolo inferriate), I approximate from Ferrari’s glossary in Le collezioni Gonzaga, 423, 430.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 545 that is for sale and advise me of the price, for the money will be sent immediately. If it is necessary to send a special messenger for this, let me know and he will be sent. Do not delay for this reason, however, in sending the sample, because both things are needed. I offer myself heartily to your comforts. Letter 766: 1530 December 30 Mantua To the governor of Bologna, regarding the mill in Solarolo.26 I complained to Monsignor da Gambara in these past days that the men of Castel Bolognese were blocking the water from a mill of mine at Solarolo, to my great detriment. And though His Lordship promised me he would look into this disorder, he was later removed from that office and nothing more was done. Now that I have heard that Your Lordship has been appointed in his place, I am no less confident of you than I was of the aforesaid monsignore. I wanted similarly to complain through you and to pray you not permit me to be harmed for no good reason by these men and that you address this matter by whatever provision you understand is necessary from my commissioner, the exhibitor of the present letter, who is informed of my thoughts. I will certainly be obliged to Your Lordship, to whom I offer and commend myself heartily.

Letter 767: 1531 January 14 Mantua To Benedetto Agnello, ordering luxury items.27 Be content to see that we receive a good-sized gourdful of orange blossom water and another of good quality damask rose water, and some pistachios of the best to be found in Venice. Send us everything together as quickly as you can, informing us also of the cost, for you will be reimbursed the money. Be well.

Letter 768: 1531 January 30 Mantua To Coglia, discussing masks and other preparations for Carnival and directing money to a women’s monastery.28 I received two of your letters almost at once. From one of them I learned to my great pleasure that the production of masks and stage sets has begun for the comedies and celebrations that will take place in Ferrara, whence one knows that your Carnival will be most merry. But certainly, if you come to Mantua as you have promised to do, you will find the same variety of pleasures and entertainments, so we feel no envy toward you. 26. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 34r. 27. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 39v. 28. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 44v, 45r.

546 ISABELLA D’ESTE In your other letter you ask me to inform you what you should do with the money that was given you by Madonna Alda, to which I say that my feeling is that this money should be given to Suor Laura, her sister who is in the monastery of San Bernardino.29 Please be content to consign it to her in my name. Nothing else occurs to me to tell you for now, except that I wish for you to commend me to the most illustrious lord duke [Alfonso I d’Este]. To your pleasures I offer myself always. Letter 769: 1531 February 8 Mantua To Giovanni Borromeo, requesting soap and other items for beauty and hygiene.30 Finding myself in the greatest need of hand soap, and knowing no better way to supply myself with it than via Florence, I pray you please send me as soon as you can four casks of the silk kind that you have sent me in years past. Let me know the cost, and you will be repaid the money right away. I offer myself ever disposed to your needs. Letter 770: 1531 February 9 Mantua To Coglia, regretting that she cannot leave Mantua for Carnival.31 I received your letter of the 2nd and understood how dearly I am awaited in Ferrara by all the lords there. I do believe that my arrival would be a great satisfaction and contentment to all, since those who love me would like to enjoy my presence, and it pains me not to be in any condition to satisfy their wishes. Given the stomach trouble which you know has been seriously afflicting me for many days, I would never have the heart to leave home, for fear of having to leave in great dismay a place to which I had come for entertainment. Truly, if I were able to come, I would do so most willingly, both in order to please those lords and for my own delight. But for all I love their lordships, they must content themselves to have Carnival without me. I am pleased to hear of the stage sets that have been made for the comedies and celebrations. 29. The women’s monastery of San Bernardino in Ferrara was founded in 1510 by Lucrezia Borgia. See Raffaele Tamalio, “Borgia, Lucrezia” DBI. The women referred to here are undoubtedly Isabella’s dear friend, Alda Boiarda, and her sister Laura, the latter of whom had entered monastic life in Ferrara’s Corpus Domini but had become abbess at San Bernardino upon its foundation: see Bellonci, Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 348. Laura and Alda were sisters of the poet Matteo Maria. Cf. Hickson, who refers to Suor Laura as both the sister and the cousin of Matteo Maria. Women and Architectural Patronage, 61–62. 30. AG 3000 libro 50 c.46v. 31. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 47r–v.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 547 I think that your arrival in Mantua, which was supposed to be last Monday, must have been deferred, as I understand from the lord duke [Alfonso I d’Este], to whom I wrote about my plans. To clarify things, I wanted also to write this letter to you, to whose comforts I offer myself cordially ever ready. P.S.: La Brogna [Eleonora Brogna de’ Lardis] almost died from joy when she saw the array of beautiful stones sent to her by the most illustrious duke. She is beside herself with jubilance at having received so many beautiful and precious vases from such a man. She kissed my hands so many times that she left them black and blue! Letter 771: 1531 Last day of February, Mantua To Ferrante Gonzaga regarding his military responsibilities and his efforts to be with his bride.32 In addition to what you reported in your two letters of the 15th and the 20th about the events up to now in that unpleasant campaign of yours, I also received the other one of the 15th, which was written in your own hand. You need not have excused yourself for having been too busy to write me in your own hand for many days, for I am very well aware of both your good intentions and your duties. The latter are so numerous as to inspire my compassion, both because in themselves they are most bothersome and ought, by now, to be finished, and because they are the reason why you have not yet been given leave to see your princess. Truly, if it were possible to measure my displeasure at this, you would see that it is equal to yours. As for the advice you ask of me regarding your idea to have the abovenamed princess brought to Mantua, where you think you would have greater possibility and ease of seeing and enjoying her than if she were in her own state, some reasons come to mind that move me to propose the contrary. First, I know that having her come from the Kingdom to here could not be done without enormous and unbearable expense, as she would require a large company. And since, as you know, your house here is lacking every necessity, I 32. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 51v–52v. After a number of delays and obstacles including his own duties as a military officer, Ferrante Gonzaga married Isabella di Vespasiano Colonna di Capua in August of 1530, in a secret ceremony and by proxy. In the same month, his service to Charles V, now as general commander of the imperial army, culminated in a victory over the Florentines and—in observance of Charles’s agreements with Clement VII—preparations for restoration of the Medici as lords of that city. The next frontier was Siena, where Ferrante’s charge was to aid the repatriation of Sienese who had been exiled for assisting the imperial effort in Florence. Ferrante was apparently less effective than Charles had wished in the effort to win the Sienese to imperial allegiance and was replaced in Siena early in 1531. By 1532, he was accompanying Charles to Hungary to fend off the Turks. See Giampiero Brunelli, “Gonzaga, Ferrante,” DBI 57 (2001); Mallet and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 219–26; Tamalio, Ferrante Gonzaga alla corte spagnola, 23.

548 ISABELLA D’ESTE surmise that if she came here she would have to suffer honorably, in great discomfort, the exchange of the comforts she now enjoys in her house. Yet, for all this, you cannot be sure that once things are settled in Siena His Excellency will be coming to Lombardy. In fact, now that the castle of Milan has been returned to the most illustrious lord duke [Francesco II Sforza], for which reason one could realistically presume that the emperor no longer had designs on that state, one should believe just the opposite, all the more because that poor land is destroyed and reduced to such poverty that it would be unable to tolerate the burden of new troops on the heals of the last ones.33 I would sooner think that once the Siena campaign is finished, the army will have to resort to other places, closer to friends, and in that case, His Imperial Majesty would be less likely to mind giving you leave to transfer to the Kingdom for a month or for as long as necessary to marry your princess, consummate with her, and put your other affairs in order. I should think that since you have in fact not yet married her or consummated the marriage, her mother the lady duchess would not easily or happily part with her daughter.34 But all these difficulties would vanish if the princess had a way of coming to where Your Lordship is, which cannot be, given the current condition of things. One other reason that I consider no less, and perhaps more, important moves me to these arguments, and this is that the women of Mantua—by which I mean more those of high station than the others—have fallen into such lasciviousness and become so crude that I would never approve of the princess’s being here without you. If I did, I would be failing to provide all the loving care that befits a good mother. But you know well that I would not be able to see and control everything. So now Your Lordship understands my view. I think that if you reflect on it with mature consideration, you will see that it is based in reason, and you will continue to await a better occasion—which I hope will not be long in coming—to please yourself and satisfy your perfectly honorable desire. I send you etc.35

33. Presumably here Isabella is acknowledging that invading armies take up residence in the homes of locals, living off of their supplies and victuals. If Milan has already been wrecked and consumed by earlier waves of troops, it has nothing left to give but is also vulnerable in its present weakness. 34. Marriages of state took places in stages. The proxy ceremony was not a marriage in the sense Isabella intends here, because Ferrante had not yet met his bride. 35. A letter of 9 April 1531 acknowledges Ferrante’s news that Charles V has given him leave to travel to the Kingdom of Naples to consummate his marriage.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 549 Letter 772: 1531 Last Day of February, Mantua To the commissioner of Solarolo [Leonello Marchese], regarding feuding families there.36 Since we took control of that land we have always aimed to deal gently in the affairs of all those men of yours, for we were convinced that they were reasonable people and did not need to be treated with the club. And you know better than anyone else that we have treated them in no other manner than this. But more and more each day we recognize our error, and now that you have reported on the great unrest that has once again occurred between the Scardovi and the Baldessari, our thoughts are clearer. Whereas we will not allow that due to excessive indulgence on our part our people of Solarolo take greater license than is appropriate, and since we want them to recognize us as their signora, who wishes for people to live in our land lawfully and peacefully, we want you to proceed according to justice and consistent with the statutes of that place against all those who have participated in the disobedience and who have committed excesses in the above-mentioned case. Having seen the proclamations you made in our name to assure that in the future, offenses between one family and another will not come to such cruelty as they have up to now, we praise you. We want you to execute these measures without exception, as you have maturely and prudently ordered. It is true that in the chapter where you hold responsible the whole family of someone who has committed a crime if the perpetrator has no way to pay his penalties, we think you proceed too harshly, because this would punish people who have not erred or had a way to err. Therefore, once that chapter is removed, we approve the rest, and we wish for you to execute it without exception, having it proclaimed once more so that everyone will be well informed and no one may claim ignorance as an excuse. We will write to those men in support of your office and in order better to halt the insolence of beastly and wicked people, that if instances should be discovered such as those that have occurred between the Scardovi and the Baldessari, on pain of losing our grace, they should show themselves ready and armed at any request from you, and should lend their obedience in all that you command them to do against such delinquents.37

36. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 53r–54r. 37. Subsequent correspondence reveals that Marchese was himself a part of the problem in Solarolo; he was eventually dismissed in disgrace and supplanted by Pietro Gabbioneta. See the letters of 7 June 1532; 31 March 1536; 4 April 1536; 5 August 1536; and various letters from the fall of 1538, in AG 3000.

550 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 773: 1531 March 2 Mantua To the commissioner of Ostello, ordering a straw sun hat.38 We need a hat to wear in the sun. Therefore, we will be pleased if you have one made for us of lovely braided straw, in the size that you think appropriate for the head that wears the hat we are sending you here enclosed. Take care above all to have it made with two parts, in the style of a cap, with each part separate from the other, so that one part may be raised and lowered as we wish. Letter 774: 1531 March 10 Mantua To [Benedetto] Agnello, an order for India hens and perfumed waters from Venice.39 After we wrote you our other letter for the three India hens, the most illustrious duke our son gave us three of them, for which reason we will not be needing so many. We would be well pleased if you would do what is possible to get us two, either through that gentleman who has six and does not want to sell them separately, or through some other avenue if we may not be contented by that gentleman. Send them to us when you have an appropriate messenger. Regarding the amber, for now we don’t care to make the purchase. About the damask water that you write is unavailable in Venice, we fear we have not understood each other, because those waters are usually available in Venice at any time. So that you may better grasp our idea, these are waters that come from the East and are preserved in little gourds covered in straw. We would like you to get as many of those little gourds as would fill a rather small one of acqua nanfa,40 or in other words send us up to fourteen or fifteen of the little gourds. We await the acqua nanfa that you write you are about to send us, and we will provide you with the money for everything, including the waters that were discarded, when you advise us of the cost.

Letter 775: 1531 April 20 Mantua To Coglia, regarding gifts to send to the pregnant wife of Ercole II d’Este.41 Though I had heard through a letter in his own hand from Lord Don Ercole the good news you gave me that our madama is pregnant, your information was no less welcome, because good news repeated multiplies the pleasure and joy of the one who hears it. Thus I feel I must thank you greatly and assure you that in this 38. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 54v–55r. 39. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 57r. On India hens, see the letter of 8 May 1523, and notes. 40. Acqua nanfa is distilled from orange blossoms and used in the production of perfumes and food flavorings. 41. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 66v.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 551 moment you could not have given me more delightful news. May Our Lord God grant that following this good news will come more that is just as happy, as is my greatest desire. I had in mind to send to Madama some of those strange things that usually please pregnant women; but I found nothing that I could not be certain is not to be found in abundance also in Ferrara, so I thought it superfluous to send anything at all. Still, if you hear that in Mantua there is to be found something that could please Her Most Illustrious Ladyship, and you send me word of it, I will send her some of it. To your comforts etc. Letter 776: 1531 May 4 Mantua To the general and visiting fathers of the (Congregation) of Regular Canons, informing them of nuns who escaped from their convent.42 Your Reverences must have heard of the scandal that occurred here several months ago in the monastery of the sisters of the Annunciation through the fault of several heedless nuns, who, caring little for their personal honor, let themselves be carried away by such mental blindness that having exited the monastery they turned to leading a dishonorable life. In doing so, they not only brought infamy and perpetual shame upon themselves; they also partially stained the good and shining name of the mothers who lead good and holy lives in the service of God in the same monastery. Your Reverences must have prudently come to understand already what pain this has brought to those poor women, who not only live good and full lives as nuns but also desire to keep their good name intact. And so it is that in punishment, the above-mentioned culprits have been separated from the other nuns and confined to a prison with the understanding that they must live apart from the good ones. Nonetheless, for fear that in the future the guilty nuns could once again be placed inside the monastery with the other sisters (who, when they think of the perpetual infamy and dishonor that would come to them, would prefer death to the company of these disgraced women), the latter have turned to me asking that I take them into my protection in this matter. Therefore, out of the love I bear these mothers, and mindful of the honorable respect that moves them to this request, I am writing this letter to Your Reverences asking that, aside from the many other reasons that should move you, also out of regard for me you will use your authority to assure and confirm that the harmful nuns will be confined to the prison where they are now being held 42. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 68v–69r. Canons regular are priests who reside in religious communities (often under the rule—regula—of Augustine) but are not cloistered, and who engage with the lay community through the liturgy and the sacraments. Anthony Allaria, “Canons and Canonesses Regular.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908, . The word transcribed here in parentheses interpolates the manuscript abbreviation Rel.ne.

552 ISABELLA D’ESTE until it is manifestly known that, repentant and sorry to have committed such an enormous sin, they are ready to apply themselves to living as good and virtuous nuns and that they will persevere in good ( ) so that we may be sure that they shall never again ( ) what it is their duty to maintain in ( ) to God. In addition, because aside from diabolical temptations, the prior who has up to now overseen these mothers’ supervision may in part have inadvertently caused the wretches to fall into such error by having failed in some way to warn them, I pray Your Reverences please attend in the next election for this monastery to providing a prior who, through careful attention and good care, will not only protect these mothers who are leading good, God-fearing lives, but will also employ warnings and correction to encourage such firmness and disposition in them as to make them wish to live ever more uprightly, so that such scandals and embarrassments will no longer occur. In doing so, as I trust you will, Your Reverences may be certain that in addition to performing a holy and praiseworthy act that will please Our Lord God, you will also be doing something more welcome to me than anything I can wish for in the world at this moment. I offer myself etc. Letter 777: 1531 May 8 Mantua To Domenico Veniero, requesting an hourglass from Venice.43 I have come to desire one of the small, six-hour sand clocks trimmed in ebony that are sold in Venice. I pray Your Majesty please be content to send me one that you judge to be beautiful, and be pleased to inform me of the cost, for I will order the money to be sent to you immediately. If I often trouble you with these nuisances, it is because my great trust in you makes me feel free to do so. Whenever I could do you some pleasure, you may be certain that you may seek me out for your every need and I will be prepared to respond. Letter 778: 1531 July 13 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, announcing the emperor’s permission for Federico II Gonzaga to marry Margherita Paleologa of Monferrato.44 After long anticipation, this morning we received the hoped-for decision of His Imperial Majesty, by which he grants the most illustrious lord duke, our son, the liberty to take Madonna Margherita di Monferrrato as his wife. And doubling the grace and pleasure we feel in receiving such news is that according to the Most Illustrious Lord Ferrando and Ferrante45 our second son, words cannot con43. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 72v. 44. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 102r. 45. Ferrante, stationed at Charles V’s court in Spain, had begun to use the Spanish version of his name, but Isabella used these two names interchangeably for him. Here, she seems to clarify that she

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 553 vey how willingly this was granted and how many honorable and loving words His Majesty spoke about this duke of ours. He thought it a good thing, and His Majesty announced in his consent, that the lord duke will pay three thousand ducats annually to Lady Donna Giulia as long as she lives.46 I would have felt quite remiss in my duties if I had not sent a special messenger to share these happy tidings with Your Excellency, so that you could share equally in the great pleasure we feel. I commend myself always to your good grace. Letter 779: 1531 November 3 Mantua To the marchesa of Monferrato, expressing joy over Isabella’s new daughter-inlaw, the marchesa’s daughter.47 On the first day after the arrival here in Mantua of the most illustrious Madama lady duchess our shared daughter, I did not feel I could write to Your Ladyship of my pleasure and happiness, because I wanted at first to take constant pleasure in her company. Now that the first, second, and third days have passed, I do not want to delay any longer in letting you know that I find I have acquired a daughter who, for beauty, virtue, and manners is exactly what I wanted and wished for. And since I recognize that this precious gift comes from Our Lord God and from Your Most Illustrious Ladyship, I consider myself most obliged to praise His Divine Majesty and to thank Your Ladyship for her. You may be most certain that the lady our daughter will be loved no less and with no less tenderness than she would by you yourself. And if in the past, between you and me there was the love befitting two good sisters, it seems to me now that this new knot binds us in such a way that our love could not be strengthened more. I offer myself to you always, from the heart.

Letter 780: 1531 November 22 Mantua To Ercole II d’Este, on the birth of his daughter [Anna d’Este].48 I took singular pleasure in the news Your Lordship sent me of the lady duchess, your consort’s happy delivery, for I had been waiting in great desire and expectation to hear. I am all the more happy that both mother and daughter are healthy. And though I feel certain that Your Lordship would have been more content to have a little boy, given the small favor in which we poor women are held, nonetheless since the lady duchess came through as well as Your Lordship writes me she is indeed speaking of him. 46. Giulia d’Aragona, the aunt of Emperor Charles V, whose engagement to Federico was broken in order to make way for Margherita Paleologa of Monferrato as his preferred bride. 47. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 152v. Evidence indicates that Isabella indeed treasured Margherita’s presence in her life and in the Mantuan court. 48. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 153r. Ercole II was Isabella’s nephew, heir to the duchy of Ferrara.

554 ISABELLA D’ESTE did, by the grace of God, you may well hope to be fully contented with another birth. I thank you very much for this news, and I commend myself to you. Letter 781: 1531 December 21 Mantua To Bernardo Tasso, thanking him for a composition of his.49 I received and have in good part read the vernacular love poems you sent me. I find them so refined and beautiful that you must know they have not only earned you praise and honor from me for their elegance; you may be certain that for the delight and pleasure they gave me and continue to give me still, I must also be obliged to you for having given me such a noble gift. I therefore convey to you my infinite thanks, and I say to you that you could have given me no more welcome gift, nor one that could have disposed me more than I already was to gratify you somehow. I certainly hope that an occasion will present itself for me to show you how great is my good will toward you, to whose pleasures I offer myself ever and cordially disposed. Letter 782: 1532 January 31 Mantua To Coglia, sending a portrait of Isabella at age three.50 To please the most illustrious lady duchess [Renée de France], I am sending the portrait of me that I think must be the one you wrote me about, since it was done when I was about three years old. You may be the certain judge of whether it resembles Her Excellency’s little girl in any way. If God should grant that according to the lord duke [Ercole II d’Este] she resembles me, I would be incredibly content. I had another portrait of me, which was done after I was married, given to the 49. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 158r. For Tasso’s letter sending his poetry to Isabella see D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 322–23. Bernardo Tasso (father of Torquato) had been in France when Isabella’s nephew Ercole II d’Este married Renée de France and had accompanied her to Ferrara as one of her courtiers. According to Luzio and Renier, it was in these years that he came to know Isabella d’Este. The work to which this letter refers was the Libro degli amori, published in 1531 in Venice. Bernardo had also written an epithalamium for the marriage of Federico II Gonzaga to Margherita Paleologa. See Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 127–28, where a transcription of this letter also appears. 50. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 169v. This letter attests to one of the important functions of portraiture for Isabella and her contemporaries: that of recording faithful likenesses of portrait subjects. The little girl in question is obviously Isabella’s newborn niece. To my knowledge, this portrait of Isabella at age three has not survived, unless she refers to the one in an Este family tree that depicts her at an early age: see Ferino-Pagden, Isabella d’Este,” 25. It is doubtful that the portrait Isabella refers to here as needing touching up is that of a woman with a lapdog painted by Lorenzo Costa (1507), now in Hampton Court, which has been proposed as figuring her. By 1507 she had been married seventeen years. On Isabella’s portraits, see Hickson, “ ‘To See Ourselves”; Syson, “Reading Faces”; Joanna Woods-Marsden, “ ‘Ritratto al Naturale’: Questions of Realism and Idealism in Early Renaissance Portraits,” Art Journal 46, no. 3 (1987): 209–16.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 555 painter for touching up; as soon as it is ready, I will send it to you. I will be very pleased if the one and the other are sent back to me. I commend myself to the lady duchess, and to you I offer myself always. Letter 783: 1532 February 15 Mantua To Coglia, expressing joy that her grandniece resembles her, and speaking of Ludovico Ariosto.51 I was extremely gratified to hear that the features of the most illustrious lady duchess’s little girl resemble my little portrait, as your letter of the 8th informed me. I am as pleased at this as I could be at any news that could have come to me from you, and all the more because you write that Madama is so content. Your other news of the jousts and the comedies that have taken place this Carnival was equally delightful, for I cannot but be cheered when I hear that those most illustrious lords live merrily and in so many happy pursuits. May God grant them the grace to endure in a joyous and pleasurable life, and to grow in spiritual tranquility as they themselves must wish. We too had various comedies, but they were not acted in the good way that would have suited them, nor were they of the quality that yours must have been due to the direction that must have been brought to them by Messer Ludovico Ariosto, who today has no equal in such things. I thought it indeed very odd that at a time when evenings consisted in such merriment, you were departing, as if not to participate in the pleasures. Then I was glad to hear that in spite of you the bad weather tripped you up and blocked your trip to Venice, which in my view was out of place. I thank you for all you wrote to me, and I offer myself always cordially to your comforts. That boatman Francesco justified himself, and nothing was done to punish him for the error that you wrote he had committed. Letter 784: 1532 March 7 Mantua To the podestà of Viadana, on Isabella’s status as universal heir to the dying Magherita Cantelma.52 Since we are named as the universal heir of the Most Illustrious Lady Margherita Cantelma, and since Her Ladyship is now in danger of dying, we wish and we command you, as she has ordered in her will and testament, to see that all property to be found in Viadana that belongs to the signora shall now be considered 51. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 175r. 52. AG 3000 libro 50 c. 187v. Though one might plausibly view the contents of this letter as further evidence of Isabella’s acquisitiveness regarding estates of the deceased, in context it carries more the spirit of her lifelong efforts to protect women’s rightful property and their wills. Isabella expended considerable energy in efforts to fulfill Cantelma’s last wishes.

556 ISABELLA D’ESTE ours. For if Our Lord God should do otherwise with her, we will later advise you of what should be done in our regard. Be well. Letter 785: 1532 March 12 Mantua To Pignatta [Battista Stabellino], on the death of Margherita Cantelma.53 You will have perhaps heard by this hour through some other avenue of the death of our Lady Margherita Cantelma. You, who knew better than anyone else the love I bore her, from all the signs of true love I showed her, will understand on your own what dismay this brings me. While I take pleasure in knowing that we will see each other again, I feel much obliged to her since her death, for the lady wished in her last moments to show the great love and affection she felt for me by constituting me in her will as the universal heir to all her possessions, as you will see from the copy of the will which I send you here enclosed. Therefore, since my wish is that on her sepulcher there should appear an epitaph that will capture her spirit and her virtuous qualities, please be content to ask Messer Heronimo in my name to please accept the task of composing this epitaph, or of assigning its composition to someone else if there is someone he likes more. I am certain that since he was always so attached and devoted to the lady as I knew him to be, and given the love he felt for her, he will readily accept this undertaking, and that no one will need to instruct him on what should be said about Her Ladyship, for certainly he will be well informed by his own acquaintance with her. I will await with expectation its arrival, for the place where it shall be written on the sepulcher has already been reserved. To your pleasures I offer myself always.

Letter 786: 1532 April 2 Mantua To the governor of Bologna, reporting the brutal robbery and murder in his territory of a Mantuan subject.54 In recent days, one of our poor young Mantuan men was suddenly assaulted on the road to Modena by one Niccolò Zarlatino, a Modenese who had a servant with him, because they thought he must be carrying money. And after wounding him twelve times, they killed him and took one hundred and fifty gold scudi he had on him as well as a list of debtors from whom he intended to collect fifty more scudi: an act that truly, for its atrocity, demands the most severe demonstration of 53. AG 3000 libro 50 cc. 190r–v. On the Augustinian female monastic community founded in her own home by Cantelma in 1530 and the Santa Maria della Presentazione monastery built by Isabella d’Este according to Cantelma’s wishes expressed in her last will and testament, see Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage, 65–84. 54. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 1r. Following this letter is a note in the copybook that a similar letter was written to the governor of Carpi, saying that Niccolò was reported to be in Carpasano territory.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 557 punishment. The father of the poor victim, who presents you with this letter, had the sense that the criminal had escaped to papal territory. Since it is my desire that this murder not go unpunished and that the father not lose this money as well as his son, I am moved to write Your Lordship this letter asking you please to act in all diligence, using your authority to see that the murderer is apprehended and is given the punishment that befits his most serious crime, and that money that was taken, or what part of it may be had, together with the debtors book be restored to the father. Because Your Lordship will in this case perform an act worthy of yourself and pleasing both to God and to the people, one that will place me forever in Your Lordship’s debt. Letter 787: 1532 April 3 Mantua To Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, regarding a monastery to be built from the inheritance of Margherita Cantelma.55 My Most Reverend and Most Illustrious, Honored Son. I received Your Most Reverend Lordship’s letter of the 22nd of last month and understood from it your desire that expense for the construction and furnishing of the monastery I must build for Signora Cantelma be drawn from the Annunziata for the reasons that Your Lordship adduced to me.56 Since by now you must have learned of my wishes from the letter I wrote you, it seems unnecessary to repeat myself on this subject here. It truly pains me not to be in a position to grant your wishes, but since I find myself bound by the will of the signora I see no way to comply with Your Most Reverend Lordship without weighing on my own conscience, to the likely dissatisfaction of the testator, who may be believed to have left me as her heir more out of the confidence that I would carry out her wishes, for the faith she had in me, than for other reasons. Therefore, Your Most Reverend Lordship must excuse me and accept my inclination, which would be to please you if I could, which I truly cannot. From another of Your Most Reverend Lordship’s letters, I saw how readily you offered to speak with Our Lord about my Solarolo matters. I thank you very much for this, and in reply I tell you that if Messer Fabrizio Pellegrini had acted as he should have, according to orders he had from me, it would not have been necessary for you to write this to me, because my intention was for him to do nothing without your participation. But Messer Fabrizio spoke with Our Lord without saying a word to Your Most Reverend Lordship, and from a response he 55. AG 3000 libro 51 cc. 1v–2r. 56. che la spesa che si ha a fare in construire et dotare il monastero ch’io ho da erigere per il testamento della S.ra Cantelma si facci nella fabrica dell’Annuntiata. The Annunziata was an Augustinian monastery in the San Giorgio quarter of Mantua and, for this reason, was also sometimes called San Giorgio: Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage, 73, 79.

558 ISABELLA D’ESTE later sent me, I understood that His Holiness is quite satisfied with the provisions I have made to prevent contraband. He accepted all my justifications, and in addition, His Beatitude confirmed that he wishes for me to preserve the liberty that the lords and men of Solarolo have always had to dispose of their grain as they like. This leaves me quite satisfied, and I don’t think it necessary to speak with him further about it. Therefore, Your Most Reverend Lordship need not bother to do any more with His Beatitude regarding this other task. Thanks be to God, I am well, and I desire to hear often of Your Most Reverend Lordship’s well-being. I commend myself etc. Letter 788: 1532 April 4 Mantua To Pignatta, regarding the epitaph for Margherita Cantelma’s tomb.57 I learned from your letter that our Messer Floriano was unable to accept the task of composing the epitaph for the tomb of the dearly departed Lady Margherita Cantelma, as I would have liked, because he is too distraught. My desire was for him to compose it since he is someone who, given the close friendship he had with the signora, knew her life and her ways. Nonetheless since he is not up to it, I thought that since there are so many good minds there in Ferrara, it would be good to do as you already suggested and give the assignment to someone else. I will therefore be grateful if you ask Messer Celio Calcagnini and several others who seem appropriate to you to compose something for this purpose. And for love of me, you shall perform the labor of informing them about the life of Lady Margherita. I give you this awkward assignment because you knew the signora better than any other person. I will then choose among all the epitaphs the one that I like best, and I will have it placed upon the tomb. In the meantime, I offer myself to you from the heart. Letter 789: 1532 April 16 Mantua To the marchesa of Massa [Ricciarda Malaspina], thanking her for artichokes and discussing the difficulty of finding a husband for the marchesa’s daughter.58 I thank Your Ladyship extremely for the artichokes you sent to be presented to me. They were most appreciated for two reasons: one because they come from Your Ladyship, whose things are always dear to me for the love I bear you; and the other because they are something new, since for now we find only a very few here. I will enjoy them for love and memory of you. 57. AG 3000 libro 51 cc. 2v–3r. On Celio Calcagnini, see Quirinus Breen, “Celio Calcagnini (1479–1541),” Church History 21, no. 3 (1952): 225–38. On this letter, see Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage, 72. I have been unable to identify Messer Floriano. 58. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 8v.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 559 I wish no less than Your Ladyship for a good match to present itself for your daughter, and you may be sure that if anything appropriate had come to me from these parts, I would not have failed from my side to do all I could to place her. But matches are so rare here among us that nothing has presented itself that seemed to me to meet the conditions we desire; thus in this case I don’t know where to turn my thoughts. If Your Ladyship should discover a match that you find desirable and in which I can intervene to see it succeed, I assure you that I will be ready to perform in this case all the good works and offices that I would perform for my own daughter. I commend and offer myself to you always, from the heart. Letter 790: 1532 April 18 Mantua To the factor of Ferrara, regarding a grain shipment from Solarolo.59 Bertoncino Parone, exhibitor of the present letter, is traveling to Solarolo for the purpose of conducting from there to Mantua nine hundred baskets of grain derived from that mill of mine and from the rent of some of my fields in Solarolo. And so that he may return without any impediment, I wanted to pray Your Majesty with this letter of mine as I am doing, to order your officers to let Bertoncino pass freely on his return with the nine hundred bushels of grain, without making him pay duties or other fees, and that they should have the same respect for this grain as is customary with all my things. For I give Your Majesty my full and entire assurance that this grain is all mine. You will be doing me a most welcome favor. I commend myself always to you, from the heart. P.S.: So that Your Majesty will not marvel that after conducting other grain from Solarolo a few days ago I am now again bringing this quantity, I tell you that a part of it came from my mill, and the rest I got from some renters who rent certain fields of mine, and to whom I am content to offer the convenience of taking grain instead of money from them. Letter 791: 1532 April 18 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, asking to have her clown back.60 Your Excellency has now enjoyed my Sier Polo for ten months and I, as one who wishes to please and comply with you in any way I can, have willingly been without him. Now, I too would like to enjoy my share of his folly, all the more because I must go to the baths, where I will have great need of entertainment. 59. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 10r. Among other things, this letter suggests how productive Solarolo was as an investment for Isabella. 60. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 10v. On court entertainers, see Bregoli-Russo, Teatro dei Gonzaga; Luzio and Renier, “Buffoni, nani e schiavi”.

560 ISABELLA D’ESTE Therefore I pray you as much as I can to content me by handing him over to Messer Ludovico da Bagno, who will take care of conducting him to Mantua. I will truly recognize this as the most singular favor I could at this time ask of you, as you will better understand from Messer Ludovico. I commend myself always to your good grace. Letter 792: 1532 April 27 Mantua To Celio Calcagnini, praising his epitaph for the tomb of Margherita Cantelma.61 Your Majesty not only met but by a great measure exceeded my desires and expectations of receiving from you the epitaph for the late Lady Margherita Cantelma, for truly I found it so adorned and so polished that I would not have known how to wish for more. I thank you for the trouble you have taken in this matter out of love for me, and I offer myself once more, ever disposed to your comforts and pleasures. Letter 793: 1532 June 14 Mantua To Guido da Crema, arguing the legitimacy of Isabella’s rights to Solarolo.62 We delayed up to now in responding to your letter of the 25th of last month on the case of Solarolo, because we wanted first to put together the papers we have in our possession, which we are now sending to you. We have no doubt that when the most reverend monsignore our son [Ercole Gonzaga], you, and those to whom His Most Reverend Lordship wishes to assign the task of defending our position will have seen and examined these writings well, it will be widely recognized that our cause calls not for favor, but for justice. Solarolo was not, as you write, given by Pope Leo of holy memory to the dearly departed most reverend monsignor our brother-in-law [Sigismondo Gonzaga] to govern, but fully as his own and for his heirs. This was in compensation for the twenty thousand ducats the Apostolic See was obliged to disburse to the Illustrious S. Galeazzo Sforza for the castle of Pesaro and for which money he [Sigismondo] had consigned to the aforesaid lord [Sforza] the court at Polesine di Gonzaga. In the contract, said city and territory of Solarolo were completely sundered and detached from the lands of the Church, as you will see from this authentic document we are sending you. After the death of the most reverend monsignore [Sigismondo] the land was confirmed 61. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 12. I thank Sally Hickson for the reference to an online image of the epitaph at Archivio delle Stampe di Traduzione, . 62. AG 3000 libro 51 cc. 32r–33r. Since Solarolo lay within papal territories, Isabella more than once had to defend her ownership of it. For further discussion of her dealings with the Church regarding Solarolo, see Deanna Shemek, “Isabella d’Este and the Properties of Persuasion.”

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 561 as property of the most illustrious lord duke our son [Federico II Gonzaga], as His Most Reverend Lordship’s heir. Then, with the consent of His Holiness of Our Lord, we bought it from the duke on the same terms that it had been granted to him by His Beatitude, as you will see from the copy of the papal bull we hold in our possession from the most reverend monsignor chamberlain. Therefore, pray our most reverend monsignore embrace this undertaking in virile fashion and make every effort to resolve it, so that our city will not be inappropriately burdened, and so that it will enjoy the same liberty under us as when it was owned by the most reverend monsignore and by the lord duke our son for the whole time in which they were its lords, and which His Holiness of Our Lord confirmed for it, because truly there would be great cause for complaint if in this case we were to be so greatly and unjustly wronged. The most reverend monsignore may be sure that if we wanted to permit Solarolo to be obliged to pay contributions along with the Romagna, it would be a principle for placing a noose on his neck, so that he would never again be given any lands; and His Most Reverend Lordship will be acting in this case for his own good. Therefore we await with great desire the news of what has been done and to hear that the case has been resolved in our favor. We will be well pleased if you send the authentic document back to us, because given its importance for us, we wish to have it in our possession, and we would be very sorry if it were to go astray. The most reverend monsignor wrote recommending Don Ludovico di Zadosi of Solarolo, asking us to see that the dispute he has with Xigilio his brother go no further until Don Ludovico can come to Mantua this September to argue his position. Be content to tell His Most Reverend Lordship that if he wants to listen to the chatter of that priest, he will be as annoyed with him as we were, for we assure him that there never were two brains of two men as beastly and unbridled as those of these two brothers. Their case was presented for us to Messer Bartolomeo Aliprandi and then referred; and given the negligence shown on the part of the aforesaid Xigilio, we think it will remain suspended until the priest finds it convenient to come, even after the deadline for producing his arguments. Commend us to the most reverend monsignore, and tell him that we reap more benefits daily from the waters of the baths. Though for the past three days we have suffered a little increased salivation,63 we think this is due to nothing more than changes in the weather, and should be no cause for concern.

63. I translate broadly the phrase, un poco di discesa in bocca. Isabella suffered from various gastric problems in her later years. She could be referring to symptoms of what today would be recognized as acid reflux, or another gastrointestinal condition.

562 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 794: 1532 July 6 Mantua To the lord chief commander of Lyon, sending rose pillows.64 Last year I sent to the most reverend monsignor archbishop of Bari several pillows filled with roses, for I had been told that His Most Reverend Lordship very much desired to have some. And when, a little later, I learned that he had shared some of them with Your Lordship, it pained me greatly not to have known this in time to send some to you also. It has seemed a thousand years from then until the return of the rose season when I could fulfill my wish, as I may do now that I have had these four made which I am now sending Your Lordship. I hope they please you, for on my part I have seen that no art or science was spared assuring that they turned out well. I do pray you please share with the most reverend monsignor whatever portion you deem appropriate. And though this gift, which invites a man to repose, may seem ill fitted to these times in which matters of war are at hand, I am not without cause moved to send it to you, so that in what little time your tiresome business allows, you may with these pillows take some rest. I commend myself heartily to you always.

Letter 795: 1532 September 11 Mantua To Diana d’Este, expressing the wish to send a child dwarf as a gift to Renée de France.65 Illustrious lady, four years ago I promised the Most Illustrious Madama Renata that I would give Her Excellency the first fruit to issue from my race of little dwarfs, by which I meant a female. As Your Ladyship knows, two years ago a little girl was born. Though we cannot hope she will stay so small as my Delia, she will nonetheless without a doubt remain a dwarf, and given her beauty, she deserves to be treasured. Since she is now at the point where she is beginning to speak and walk and is able to get around confidently all by herself, and since the weather has cooled off so that there is no danger of her suffering from the heat, I thought I would send her to Madama. But then I thought it might be better to alert Her Excellency so that she knows the details about this little girl and can let me know whether she wants her or not. I thought it best to give this task to Your Ladyship. I pray you be content to inform her of all I have told you and tell her in detail about this little maid. Once I have been advised of her wishes, I will arrange to send [the girl]. Having no other news for Your Ladyship, save that by the grace of Our Lord I am well, I take my leave, commending myself to you infinitely and from my heart.

64. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 42r. 65. AG 3000 libro 51 cc. 64r–v. On the trafficking in dwarfs and other humans in the Gonzaga court, see Luzio and Renier, “Buffoni, nani e schiavi,” which includes at 134 a transcription of this letter.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 563 Letter 796: 1532 October 13 Venice To the duchess of Mantua [Margherita Paleologa], welcoming her to use Isabella’s palace at Porto.66 I cannot express to Your Excellency what satisfaction it gives me that you have gone, as you write you have done, to enjoy my Porto palace, for I neither can now nor ever will in the future find any greater contentment than in knowing that Your Excellency partakes of all my possessions with the confidence you feel in partaking of your own, and with which I myself use them. Thus I assure you that I feel incredible pleasure, and I greatly hope that since you have chosen that place as the most peaceful and salutary of all we have, you will have the amusement and pleasure there that you anticipate, so that in the future you will want to return there to enjoy it, as I very much hope you will. I am well, praise be to God; and I commend myself as heartily as possible to Your Excellency.

Letter 797: 1532 October 15 Venice To Ludovico Ariosto, thanking him for a copy of his newly amplified poem, Orlando furioso.67 The book of your Orlando furioso which you sent me is highly appreciated in all respects, especially because since you have newly corrected and expanded it as you write me you have, I cannot but be certain that new pleasures and delights await me in reading it. I thank you as much as I possibly can for keeping me in your memory as you show you do, and I assure you that I hope to be presented with an occasion when I can in some way please you and make known to you the singular affection I feel for your most rare virtues, which deserve to be favored. And so I offer myself always from the heart, to all your pleasures and comforts.

66. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 72r. 67. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 74r. For a transcription of this letter as well as Ariosto’s letter accompanying the book, see D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense, 323–24. The special esteem and affection in which Isabella held Ludovico Ariosto are well known. In 1507, Ariosto visited Isabella as she recuperated from giving birth to Ferrante Gonzaga and entertained her by reading to her from the Orlando furioso, then in progress. When the poem was finished in 1516, Ariosto brought personal copies to Mantua for Francesco and Isabella. Luzio and Renier remark that there is no documentation of Ariosto’s presenting the Gonzagas with the 1521 edition of the poem, though it is likely he did so. Isabella no doubt appreciated this final edition most of all: amplified by six canti, it also featured references to the marchesa herself (13.59; 29.26–29). See Luzio and Renier, La coltura, 125–27; Lisa K. Regan, “Ariosto’s Threshold Patron: Isabella d’Este in the Orlando Furioso,” Modern Language Notes 120, no. 1 Supplement (2005): 50–69; Renier, “Spigolature ariostesche.”

564 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 798: 1533 February 3 Mantua To Ferrante Gonzaga, requesting that he send back Isabella’s favorite cook.68 At the time when the most reverend monsignore was preparing to go to Rome, I consented to let my cook Massimo go to serve him, and I gave him up on condition that if he should leave His Most Reverend Lordship he would come back to my service. For this reason, when I heard that he had left the service of the most reverend, I wrote him a letter reminding him that my dismissal of him was not a dismissal but more like a loan. He then apologized for not being able to come to me, because he is already obliged to serve Your Lordship. I stand in immense need of him, because truly I have found myself for some time now to be so lacking in appetite that after the departure of Massimo and the death of Piangilato, no cook has appeared who knows how to prepare anything that tastes good to me, though I have had searches conducted in several places to try to find one. Your Lordship, who does not need such delicacies, since you have the stomach of a young man and a soldier, will do me a great favor and accommodation if you will please me in this, if, that is, Massimo is content to come. For I have never wished for anyone to serve me against his will. On this matter I await Your Lordship’s firm reply, and I send you a thousand greetings.

Letter 799: 1533 February 11, Mantua To Ferrante Gonzaga, discussing the cook, Massimo.69 Even if I could expect from him the most delicate dishes anyone could desire, I would dismiss a cook who served me unwillingly. And so, Your Lordship may calm his spirits if Massimo declines to come into my service because he does not fancy returning to Mantua and wishes instead to roam, to see the world, and to try to set aside some earnings. Though on account of this news I suffer more than a little, this is no reason for you not to keep him in your service. On the contrary, I will be pleased if you are well served by him. I truly want to believe that since I never saw a cook who enriched himself by serving the dearly departed most illustrious lord, your father, now with Your Lordship Massimino will make some gains, since he was always too accommodating toward [your father’s] disorderly appetites.70 Nothing more occurs to me for this letter, except to say that I am well and that I desire to hear the same of Your Lordship, to whom I send my customary greetings.

68. AG 3000 libro 51 cc. 85r–v. 69. AG 3000 libro 51 cc. 88v–89r. 70. The implication here seems to be that Ferrante is less likely than Isabella to help a cook develop his craft, since the son, like the father, is a soldier of simple (and disorderly) tastes. On the other hand Isabella, who appreciated Rome and loved to travel, was in a good position to understand the young cook’s reluctance to leave the great city.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 565 Letter 800: 1533 March 7 Mantua To Domenico Veniero, ordering leather wall dressings for a room.71 I greatly desire to furnish one of my rooms with leather hangings for this coming summer. I would like them to be simple, in gray and black with only the borders and the columns gilded. And since I was well served and satisfied with all the other rooms that were done for me in the past by that master there in Venice through Your Majesty, I would be of a mind to have him serve me this time also, for which I will be most grateful. I pray Your Majesty please engage him to serve me, making him understand what I want and asking him his price, because as soon as I have that I will send him the measurements of the walls and money for a deposit so that he may more comfortably and quickly do the work. Nothing else occurs to me to tell you, except that I offer and commend myself to you heartily.

Letter 801: 1533 April 24 Mantua To the countess of Caiazzo [Barbara Gonzaga], accepting some cameos as payment for a debt.72 I am content, if Your Ladyship is content, to accept the four cameos you sent me in recent days for the eighty ducats at which, as I wrote you, they were appraised here in Mantua. I also received the six others you sent me, and though one of the two satyrs pleases me less, given that Your Ladyship is about to come here shortly, I thought I would keep them with the thought that when you are here I will have them appraised by a man who knows about such things, as I know Your Ladyship will agree. Then I will be happy to take not only those that I like best but also those that Your Ladyship writes me are here on deposit, because even if my desire exceeds the credit of two hundred ducats that I have with you, I will not mind paying in money whatever greater price will cover their value. And I assure you that if I had known that you had these cameos but you had not mentioned them to me, I myself would have asked you for them, both to your greater convenience and to my satisfaction, for I very much delight in such things. On this subject I will say no more for now, waiting instead to act on all of this when you will be in Mantua, where I await you with great desire to enjoy your company. Until then, I commend myself to you with all my heart and offer myself to you always.

71. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 91v. 72. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 100v. For a partial translation of a previous letter, in which Isabella agrees to accept a set of cameos in repayment for a debt of 200 ducats but disputes the worth of the four sent to her thus far, see Banks Amendola, First Lady, 432. On the widowed Barbara Gonzaga’s patronage and her founding of a monastery near Parma, see Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage, 68.

566 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 802: 1533 May 25 Mantua To Cagnino [Gianfrancesco Gonzaga], explaining that the painter Anselmo is unavailable because he is busy working on a project for Isabella.73 From the letter you wrote me I understand that you would like to have the services of Master Anselmo the painter, to carry out projects you have planned for when you bring your consort home to you. Certainly I would like to please you in this request as in any other thing you would appreciate; but one fact renders me unable to comply with your wish. This is that Maestro Anselmo has begun painting in a house that I have had built here in my place at Dosso. It is by now within a month of being ready for enjoyment, and if Maestro Anselmo should leave, it would be difficult to find another painter to work with the established plans in the way that I wish. Since it would not be without my displeasure if he were go, Your Lordship must reasonably excuse me, also because really in Mantua there is no shortage of painters whom Your Lordship could engage in whatever suits your projects without Maestro Anselmo. Him I esteem and care for no more than the others, except that since he has already begun this chore, I want him to be the one to finish it, to my greater contentment. I’ll say no more on this topic, commending myself to you infinitely. Letter 803: 1533 August 5 Mantua To Girolamo Ziliolo, requesting a balsam to give to her pregnant daughterin-law.74 The Lord Don Ferrando [Ferrante] my son has asked me to please send him a bit of balsam to use when the lady his wife will have given birth, as is hoped, because it is very good for newborn babies. But I was unable to satisfy his desire in this case, because I find I don’t have any, since all I had was lost with my belongings at the time of the sack [of Rome]. Since I believe the most illustrious lord duke my brother [Alfonso I d’Este] has some, and that if this is so you could put your hands on it, on the good faith I have always had in you and in the ready disposition you have always shown toward pleasing me, I have taken it upon myself to ask you, as I do here, to please send me what little bit you think you can give me, if you do have it. It seems to me that a few drops will satisfy the needs of Lord Ferrando, for whom you will be performing a most welcome favor and a great service. And I, who am very eager to see him contented, will be in no small debt to you. I offer myself most disposed to your every comfort.

73. AG 3000 libro 51 cc. 107v–108r. 74. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 132v.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 567 Letter 804: 1533 September 22 Mantua To the commissioner of Solarolo, on matters of economy and governing.75 We received your letters of the 11th and 12th. Though they are so long that you apologize to us, we nonetheless appreciated them very much, and we commend you for them. In reply regarding the things you have bought for our arrival in Solarolo, we say that since our intention is to be in Solarolo for Lent, or until Easter at the latest, you should retain the things that are likely to keep until that time; the others you may sell and get some money for them. The three sacks of ground grain we are content to have you keep and add to your expenses. Do the same with the five casks of wine, keeping whatever is left over from your expenses to serve us when we are in Solarolo. As for the linen, we will be pleased if you order it to be spun and make draperies out of it in the way that you wrote us. The firewood you should use in the moderation that we are confident you observe. Our hay and grains that you have on your hands you should store, keeping us informed from time to time of the price, because according to the news you give us we will let you know our wishes, because we have in fact decided that our grain should not leave Solarolo in this year so afflicted with famine, to the comfort and benefit of our people there. We wish for others in Solarolo who have grain to sell to follow our example. You must prohibit them, on pain of whatever punishment you think best, from selling or taking out of Solarolo grains of any kind, to any person, from the governor of Bologna on down. To him we will confirm the liberty we have already granted him. As for your reminding us to provide a rider, please advise us of the expenses he will need before we decide what should be done.76 We want under no circumstances for Grassino da Gaiano to remain in Solarolo. And if there are other banished subjects, we want them all dismissed without exception, because our intention is for Solarolo to be a place of peace and not ruined by evildoers.77 On the matter of the workers who would like to be helped with the seeding, we refer you to what our manager Panzera has explained to them. The two hundred and forty scudi that you write you have in hand, and any of the four hundred that have to be collected this St. Michael’s Day that could be obtained, could be sent with the two hundred forty through Moretto the rider who is being sent to you for this purpose. We would be very grateful because we could use them, for we are

75. AG 3000 libro 51 cc. 145v–147r. 76. Here Isabella uses the word cavaliere, which could also mean a mounted military officer. Below, where she clearly refers to a delivery courier, she uses the word cavallaro. 77. I translate as “banished subjects” the term banditi, which could also mean, more generically, “known criminals” or “malefactors.” Such persons were often subject to banishment, which is what Isabella seems to intend here.

568 ISABELLA D’ESTE planning a journey to Venice, which will be in six or eight days. You should then see to putting together the other money as soon as you can. Regarding the mill house that is in danger of ruin, we are content to have you repair it in whatever way you deem necessary. The other buildings can be dealt with from year to year, and those that are in the greatest need. We received the one hundred twenty boxes you sent us and were most pleased with them. Regarding the limitations on your expenses which you wish to have on account of the farm, we understand they are the same as what the other manager, Don Steffano’s predecessor had, which I will clarify for you at another time. On increasing the number of guards since these are such tumultuous times, we leave the matter to your will; it seems to us that in this matter you have acted reasonably and prudently. And if those men there wanted to resist in this, we would think they held us and Solarolo’s particular welfare and benefit in low account. We are most satisfied with all your other actions. We give you liberty to do all that you think necessary, without seeking our permission for each particular instance. We are certain that, given the worth you have demonstrated in greater undertakings than the commission of Solarolo, and given how lovingly you have acted with us on so many occasions, you will do nothing but laudable things that will satisfy us completely. Regarding the poor obedience you are shown by some in Solarolo who want to bear arms however they like, graze in our fields, and do other things against your rules, we assure you that we could hear nothing more displeasing to us, because our will is for you to be respected and obeyed in that place as we ourselves would be. On the bearing of arms, publish again the edict from the other times, and if you find after this that someone does not obey it, make him pay the penalty without exception. As for those who want to play the lord and show little respect for us and you, we expect and order you to tell us who these persons are, because we will demonstrate effectively to them that they are subjects, and we are lords capable of punishing them. Be well. P.S.: We have thought well on what those men in Solarolo requested of us in recent days regarding the legittima. And since this is something that we know would go against all laws divine and human and that is practiced nowhere else, we inform you that we do not want in this case to do something for which we would merit blame rather than praise. And if they are of a mind to remedy this legittima, they can very well do what we do here, which is that when a gentleman or a citizen wants to marry or cloister his daughter in a monastery, first he has her renounce the legittima, and then he assigns her the dowry that he likes and thinks appropriate.78

78. On the legittima, see Letter 752 of 3 June 1530 and notes.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 569 Letter 805: 1533 November 24 Mantua To the princess of Molfetta regarding the arrival of a dwarf girl from Isabella.79 From the letter Your Ladyship wrote me on the 25th of last month, I heard that the dwarf girl had arrived. I was very glad to hear it, since I longed to know that she had made it safely; and my pleasure was doubled when I learned from Your Ladyship’s letter how happy you are to have her with you, and what amusement she is providing you. But I was just as dismayed to hear the discomfort you are feeling in your left breast due to the great quantity of milk that you cannot use as quickly as would be necessary. My displeasure is lightened considerably by the hope that I will soon hear you are recovered from this affliction and returned to your previous health, for our duchess here [Margherita Paleologa] had the same problem with one of her breasts after she gave birth. In just a few days, she was completely cured, whence Your Ladyship too must hope for the same good outcome and not let this distress you. The lord your consort writes me that Your Ladyship’s mother, the duchess [Antonicca del Balzo], lost a sister, and that she is feeling much aggrieved. I therefore cannot help feeling great sorrow along with her. Your Ladyship shall convey condolences for this loss in my name, and commend me to her infinitely. As to my present state, I cannot report very good tidings to Your Ladyship, because for the last few days I have been vexed by my usual stomach ache, which came upon me after I returned from Venice, due more to the discomforts I felt on the trip than to anything else. I am now sufficiently improved, however, as to have every hope of a full recovery. I send Your Ladyship a thousand greetings.

Letter 806: 1534 March 6 Mantua To Benedetto Agnello, requesting the return of a portrait.80 Because those who lent us the portrait of us, which Maestro Titian borrowed in order to make a similar one, are urging us greatly to return it, we want you to see that it is given to you, and that you send it back to us through a trustworthy and discreet person who will treat it with respect, so that it will be in no danger of being damaged. Be well.

79. AG 3000 libro 51 cc. 155r–v. The addressee is Isabella di Capua, who, with her marriage to Ferrante in April 1531, brought the principality of Molfetta with her as part of her dowry. Luzio and Renier transcribe the daughter-in-law’s enthusiastic reply upon receipt of this gift: “Buffoni, nani e schiavi,” 34. 80. AG 3000 libro 51 c. 190r. Here we find a trace of the production of Isabella’s best-known portrait. Titian based this work on another painting, probably by Francesco Francia, that was executed when Isabella was a young bride. Francia’s painting, which was itself perhaps based on a 1507 portrait known as Woman with a Lapdog by Lorenzo Costa, now in the Royal Collection of Hampton Court, is now lost, while that of Titian hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna. See Hickson, “To See Ourselves.”

570 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 807: 1534 June 7 Mantua To the commissioner of Solarolo, on slanders made against him.81 We have seen what you wrote in your two letters defending yourself against the slanders that Filippino the butcher spoke to us against you. We will say no more about this except that we would be very sorry indeed if, with so little respect for your honor or ours, you had fallen into the errors of which you have been accused. Indeed, we would no longer know whom to trust if we were to be deceived by someone in whom we have always put all our faith. But we hope one day to understand all of this clearly. Given the love we bear you, we hope that the accusations against you are false, and that we will have reason to maintain that good opinion in which we have always held you and to punish those who have accused you falsely. With the same conviction that caused us to dismiss from our service the above-named Filippino, we exhort you not to pay attention to gossip, for we are not so easily taken in by it as those who spread it perhaps think we are. Be well.

Letter 808: 1534 December 10 Mantua To Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, explaining that the Solarolo court is hers to keep.82 Though in the past few days my commissioner has informed me of Faentini’s plans regarding the question of our castle, I nonetheless did not want to bother Your Most Reverend Lordship about it any further, since I thought my own justification to be extremely valid and thus that there was hardly need. Now that you write asking me to send you my arguments so that you can use them if they should be necessary, I am sending them with this letter, certain that since they are so well founded His Holiness will not fail to render me justice, nor will he alter in any way what was granted me and confirmed by his predecessors. This must be all the more so considering what I am sure must be the very high regard in which His Blessedness holds Your Lordship. I thus anticipate a positive result. I commend myself heartily to Your Most Reverend Lordship. P.S.: I have refrained from sending Your Lordship all the authentic papers I had planned to send pertaining to my rights to Solarolo, because I consider my justifications to be so well founded that when His Holiness hears them he will not allow Faentini to proceed with litigation against me. For this reason I am sending only a copy of the brief that His Holiness Pope Clement conceded to the first lord duke, your most reverend lordship’s brother [Federico II Gonzaga] , along with 81. AG 2936 libro 311 c.21v. This letter and the one following provide glimpses of the deteriorating situation in Solarolo, where Isabella had installed Marchese as her commissioner. See the note to Letter 803 of 22 September 1533. 82. AG 2936 libro 311 cc. 54r–v. See note 62, above.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 571 the consent His Holiness gave for the contract that His Excellency made with me for Solarolo. For now, I am sending this copy to enlighten Your Most Reverend Lordship so that you can respond and act in my favor if you hear people speak of it or if indeed His Holiness should be of some other opinion (which I neither expect nor fear) and in case it should be necessary to make my arguments through legal channels. In that case Your Most Reverend Lordship must inform me, because I will immediately send you my said justifications in authentic form so that you can demonstrate and produce whatever is necessary.

Letter 809: 1535 January 6 Mantua To Benedetto Agnello, discussing a parrot and other items.83 At first, the parrot did not start speaking in a way that made us hope we would be quite satisfied. But thanks to the talents of his teacher, Delia, he has been trained in such a fashion that she says nothing that he does not repeat. We are sending you what he would say when he was in good form, and we would like to have a list of all he said in the company of his previous handler. Arrange, therefore, to have that all written down and send it here. We would like to have immediately some Malvasia moscadello, which should be precious, the sweetest and best that can be found in Venice.84 Send me a quarta, along with word of the cost, and we will send you the money.

Letter 810: 1535 March 21 Mantua To Benedetto Agnello, thanking him for glass vases and ordering several more.85 We received the eight glass vases you sent us. Of these, we found nothing that pleased us much, except for that tall jug that has three buttons, which we like more than the others because it is unusual. We would therefore like you to have two similar ones made for us, with the addition of some thread worked into a white netting. Once they are finished, send them to us along with notice of their cost and that of the eight vases already sent. We will repay you the money. Be well in the meantime.

83. AG 2936 libro 311 c. 59v. 84. Isabella is apparently ordering wine that is made by mixing these two grapes, each of which is also known for its own wine. 85. AG 2936 libro 311 c. 72v.

572 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 811: 1535 September 11 Mantua To the cardinal of Mantua [Ercole Gonzaga], thanking him for bringing to successful closure the security of her rights to Solarolo.86 I was enormously consoled by the letter Your Most Reverend Lordship sent me from our lord’s [the pope’s] secretary, since I learned from it what good will His Beatitude feels toward me. I can now therefore be at peace about the matters of Solarolo. I thank Your Most Reverend Lordship for the trouble you have taken in this negotiation, in which I defer to you now as to when you think it will be appropriate to take further action. I am sure that you will overlook in this nothing more than you would in an affair of your own. I commend myself to you.

Letter 812: 1535 November 29 Mantua To Suardino, instructing him to buy a Spanish cat for her.87 When Messer Benedetto Rame was here a few days ago, we assigned him to find us a handsome Spanish cat. Now he has let us know that he has captured two pretty ones, and though we are sure his judgment is good, we nonetheless wish to compare it to yours, for our greater certainty and satisfaction. Therefore please see to getting your hands on both of them and, once you have considered each, choose the one that seems most fitting for our purposes and pay Messer Benedetto three gold scudi for it, which we are sending you now. Send it to us at the first opportunity. Be well.

Letter 813: 1535 December 29 Mantua To Benedetto Agnello, requesting nuts and seeds from Venice.88 If you should find good pistachios in Venice, send us what you think is an appropriate quantity. Don’t forget to send also the thistle seeds for our parrots. Be well.

Letter 814: 1536 January 5 Mantua To the cardinal of Mantua, sending him a gift of food.89 This letter of mine will be accompanied by some salamis and certain candies I am sending you. I pray you please enjoy it all for love of me. I commend myself to you heartily.

86. AG 2936 libro 311 c. 95r. 87. AG 2993 libro 311 c. 110r. 88. AG 2993 c. 118r 89. AG 2993 libro 311 c. 118v.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 573 Letter 815: 1536 August 5 Mantua To Pietro Gabbioneta, commissioner of Solarolo, on punishments to be meted out to convicted criminals.90 From your letter (…) we understand in detail the events that took place with that rascal Roia and with Giovanni Cornachino, and it seems to us that in this as in your other actions, you have proceeded with maturity and dexterity. It gives us satisfaction to hear this, because it pleases us to see that the wicked are justly punished; hence we commend you for all you have done regarding this case. And from what those other men have written to us on behalf of Cornachino we understand that you are inclined to lessen the punishment of cutting his tongue which should be given him for his false testimony, we inform you that we would be satisfied if you merely have him flogged and paraded through Solarolo with the pointed cap, so that others may learn from his example not to fall into similar error, for truly, leaving him unpunished could give others the idea to do worse (…). Your idea is excellent about how to get your hands on those hooded men who are so boldly wrecking that town, and if your plan succeeds, by all means proceed against them without restraint, since their crime deserves no pity whatsoever.

Letter 816: 1537 March 22 Mantua To the vicar of Bigarello, on a debt he owes to someone who owes her.91 We understand that you are in debt to Madonna Orsina Gonzaga for one hundred ducats, which it appears you are difficult in paying. Since she is in debt to us for the same amount for a payment she must make on a house we sold her, and since she relies on the money you owe her in order to satisfy us, we inform you that, so that she will not have difficulty in paying us, you must provide payment to her of the hundred scudi or ducats as soon as possible. Then once she is repaid by you, she can repay us. We ask you lovingly to pay her, for if we should see that you are proceeding slowly in the matter, we will take another approach that could doubtless be damaging to you and of little honor. Therefore, do not fail to see that she is satisfied and soon. Be well.

90. AG 2936 libro 311, cc. 154v–55r. Gabbioneta replaced the disgraced Marchese. 91. AG 3000 libro 52 c. 2v. The letter illustrates once again the network of debts and debtors that structured the economy of Isabella’s time. The lady Isabella invokes is Giovanna Orsini, widow of Federico I Gonzaga of Bozzolo.

574 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 817: 1537 August 13 Mantua To Ferrante Gonzaga, describing her stomach problems.92 I find so much inconsistency in this stomach of mine, between the good and the bad, that I am confused and nearly desperate. And though Your Lordship congratulates me on some improvement, it would behoove you to prepare to bemoan the pain that follows thereupon, because after having been well for a few days, I have returned to new sufferings since we have had this hot weather, which here has been intolerable. I hope that once it is past, this sickness will also end, even as I add new remedies that have been ordered by our doctors. I pray the Lord God it will be so, and I thank His Divine Majesty for keeping Your Lordship and the lady princess and your little children healthy in the way you described to me in your letter of the 19th of last month. Your brothers and sisters here are well, though they would have been better if our lord marchese93 had not kept them all anxious for several days when he was vexed by a most unpleasant and most dangerous fever, from which by the grace of God he has been sufficiently relieved now for two days that we can consider him arrived in the port of health. Your Lordship’s factor spoke with me at length about the three deals proposed to you by Lord Aloise regarding agreements for the contract between Castiglione and Povilio. I urged him not to delay in bringing the matter to conclusion in one way or another, because really to remain in discussion for so long to no result seems at this point to be an embarrassment. And I must maintain my opinion that from Lord Aloise you will never get anything but irresolution, and he will pose obstacles to prevent any conclusive agreement between you. We shall see what comes about this time. I know that Your Lordship has no shortage of troubles in these turbulent times, such that I feel compassion for you. Look to your own honor and to preserving yourself. I send you a thousand greetings, and to your lady princess and to my little babies an equal number of kisses.

Letter 818: 1537 September 1 Mantua To Sister Eleonora d’Este, conveying affectionate remembrance.94 Having seen how affectionately and lovingly I am visited by Your Ladyship, I cannot but be greatly cheered, for which I must thank you, for you are not at all erased from the memory I certainly keep of you, just as I see you have not erased your 92. AG 3000 libro 52 cc. 24v–25r. 93. Perhaps Federico’s son, Francesco III, though he would not inherit the title of marchese of Monferrato until his father’s death in 1540, when he also became duke of Mantua. 94. AG 3000 libro 52 c. 29v. Hickson notes that Eleonora d’Este (d. 1575) was a nun in the Corpus Domini monastery of Ferrara: Women, Art and Architectural Patronage, 61–62.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 575 memory of me.95 I thank you very much for the constant prayers you say to God Most Great on my behalf. I have to think that it is partly due to these that the water cure I am taking at present for the stomach troubles I have suffered for so many days now is helping me and doing some good. If the end shall be similar to the beginning, then I will be able to say I am healthy. And with this good taste in my mouth, I commend myself to you. Letter 819: 1537 October 27 Mantua To the marchesa of Massa, anticipating their visit.96 In truth I cannot deny that it seems a long time until we can see and enjoy each other, and this all the more because I have so many times allowed myself to hope and expect to see you such that it seemed the hour was almost arrived for us to embrace, and then due to legitimate impediments this wish of ours has been denied the one and the other. And if this visit too must be postponed, I will be patient. In the meanwhile, I will enjoy the firm conviction you give me that next spring, having put all obstacles behind us, you will keep your promises, which I pray you not break. Until then, if I may do your pleasure, please have your usual confidence in me. I commend myself heartily to you and to Signora Taddea.

Letter 820: 1537 November 17 Mantua To Sister Eleonora d’Este, confirming Isabella’s improved health.97 From your letter of the 22nd of last month, I understood how pleased and consoled you were in these past days at the good news I gave you that the water of the baths had produced the desired results. I truly had no doubt that you cared or that you took joy in my every good fortune, as one who has always loved me as a mother and whom I have loved as a daughter. For this I thank you. And so that you may know how I am doing, I tell you that I find myself, thanks be to God, feeling better than I have in many months during which I was unable to praise and be glad as I do now. Of this you may hear good testimony from Mother Sister Margherita, with whom I have spoken of it many, many times. I refer you to her as one who is well informed on all counts. If I can do something that would please you, I offer myself always to your comforts, and I commend myself to you heartily.

95. Isabella’s word here is not erased, but extinta: extinct or dead. Though this adjective sounds too harsh in English and I have chosen the more colloquial “erased,” Isabella’s term bears noting, as it underscores the sense of irreversibility and separation that accompanied girls’ entrance into cloistered life. 96. AG 3000 libro 52 c. 38r. 97. AG 3000 libro 52 c. 47r.

576 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 821: 1538 February 11 Mantua To Ferrante Gonzaga, confirming receipt of his letters.98 Though Your Lordship has gone more days that you would like without any letters from me, this is not because I do not write to you at every opportunity that presents itself, but the carelessness and negligence of those who assume the task of delivering them may cause and encourage you to think that I am trying to starve you of news. And if sometimes it may happen that someone from our parts appears on that island without any testimony from me, it may be that I was not aware of the visit.99 You must be sure that I will never fail in this office, knowing how much you appreciate news of my wellbeing. And since I know you are eager to hear of it, I can confirm for you what Our Lord permits me to write, which is that I am well; and this is all the more so when I hear the same of you and of your lady princess, of whom I am delighted to hear that her pregnancy proceeds from good to better. May it be like that of Don Cesar, which I take as an irrefutable sign that His Divine Majesty will bless you with another baby boy. I thank Your Lordship for the news that you have been ordered by His Majesty to make large provisions of victuals for the new assault to be launched against the Turk. This allows one to believe that in the end we will see a blessed peace. This letter is in reply to two of yours, of the first and the 10th of this past October, which I received at the same time. I send you my usual greetings and blessings.

Letter 822: 1538 August 31 Mantua To Ferrante Gonzaga, offering an obstetrical opinion.100 I take great pleasure in the news that the lady princess and the children are well, which Your Lordship sends in your letter of the first of this month that just arrived in my hands today. And having learned from the same letter of your opinion that the signora your consort may be pregnant again, just after giving birth, I think I should assure you that this opinion of yours is false. If you were as well informed as we women are, you would take another view, for it is nothing new when the signs Your Lordship adduces to me appear in women after they give birth. But on this I will say no more. The news Your Lordship gave me of the courteous and affectionate offers made to you by the lord commander [Charles V of Habsburg] was as satisfying and welcome to me as you may guess on your own, because when they come sincerely and from the heart, as I truly believe they did, since His Lordship’s nature is such that one cannot think otherwise of him, Your Lordship cannot but hope for a good outcome and hope that much good will follow, for His Lordship has such 98. AG 3000 libro 52 c. 66r. 99. Ferrante Gonzaga was serving as viceroy of Sicily under Charles V. 100. AG 3000 libro 53 cc. 13r–v.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 577 authority with His Majesty that really no one can be said to be greater or more capable than he. Therefore, if the will corresponds to the way, Your Lordship may justly hope for great favor and benefit. I, thanks be to God, am healthier than ever, which I convey to Your Lordship willingly, knowing that this is one kind of news you greatly wish to hear. Nothing more occurs to me at present, except to bestow upon you my usual blessings. Letter 823: 1538 August 31 Mantua To the duchess of Urbino, sending maternal affection.101 The rarity of receiving letters from Your Ladyship will never suffice or allow me to think you are not still the loving daughter you have always been to me, but the letter I recently received, which was written in your own hand, gave me supreme pleasure, learning as I did from it what I always wish to hear, which is that you are well. If, as you write me is the case, this health is accompanied by some cares and few pleasures, you must nonetheless esteem it no small thing, for truly when one is deprived of good health, we may say that the loss of all other good things follows. I can cheer you by telling you that by the grace of God I am very well. I would be content if I could write the same of your brother the duke, because His Excellency has up to now suffered two bouts of tertian fever and tomorrow will be the third. But since this fever is mild and has brought with it no complications, we hope that soon it will end. Our marchese similarly has felt a bit touched by fever these days. It has stopped, but he is left feeling listless, which makes one suspect he is not entirely well. I was very pleased at the news in Your Ladyship’s letter regarding our monsignore the archbishop of Salerno’s decision to come here to our territories.102 Your Excellency did well to assure him that he will be received and honored by all of us as a person who, given his worthy qualities, is loved and held here in no less esteem than that which His Lordship enjoyed among you. I am already feeling an incredible desire to see and to enjoy His Lordship’s company. Nothing more occurs to me except to bestow a thousand greetings upon Your Ladyship.

Letter 824: 1538 September 3 Mantua To the commissioner of Solarolo on violence and arms.103 Tonello appeared before us and complained on behalf of himself, Vighetto Bitol, and Antonio di Brunaro that since they had been aware of and had ordered the pact from which followed the murder of the three from Lugo, at the insistence of 101. AG 3000 libro 53 cc. 13v–14r. 102. Salerno’s archbishop at this time was Niccolò Ridolfi, a grandson of Lorenzo de’ Medici. 103. AG 3000 libro 53 cc. 14r–15r.

578 ISABELLA D’ESTE their enemies the Fachini they have been banished by the commissioner of Lugo along with those men who committed that crime. And for this reason, they want our assurance that they will not be turned over to the most illustrious lord duke of Ferrara [Ercole II d’Este] if His Excellency should ask for them. It does not seem to us that they need be so anxious, since they received assurances from us through our secretary. Nonetheless to their greater satisfaction we wanted to put our wishes into writing with the present letter, and we are writing to tell you what we want you to do. Based on the pleas of all the Baldessari, we are content to allow them to carry arms freely and without any opposition whenever they wish to leave the castle, so they can defend themselves from their enemies the Fachini. And whatever occurs in Solarolo, they should be allowed this same liberty to bear arms against said enemies without any impediment. This means, however, that within the city they may not carry arms except in the above-named circumstance. And if their own forces are insufficient to this purpose, you should not fail to give them all the help and favor you can from your side. Be well.

Letter 825: 1538 September 17 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara [Ercole II d’Este], on matters of government and order between Ferrara and Solarolo.104 From Your Excellency’s letter I gathered your resentment against me regarding some men banished from your state who, after committing numerous excesses, fled to Solarolo. And you ask that by virtue of our agreements I order my commissioner of Solarolo to act on all the requests of your ministers by having these bandits apprehended. My reply is that it is difficult for me to believe that bandits from your state have come to Solarolo, because if the commissioner were to tolerate them, he would be doing something totally against my wishes. As long as he has held that position he has had special orders from me not to permit any bandits from any place whatsoever, whether from Your Excellency or from anyone else, to live in Solarolo without my special permission. And if Your Excellency perhaps refers to my subjects the Baldessari, who in recent days committed murder in your territory of Lugo—something I regret incredibly, not so much for the enormity of the crime as for its perpetration in Your Excellency’s lands—I inform you that when I heard news of it from my commissioner, I ordered him not to allow them to stay in Solarolo for any reason. I have no doubt that this rule has been obeyed, also because the Baldessari who are relatives of the murderers sought me out to urge me to allow them to stay in Solarolo, since Your Excellency allowed—and continues to allow— to live safely in their homes with no restrictions those men of yours who earlier 104. AG 3000 libro 53 cc. 15v–16r. The duke of Ferrara was Isabella’s nephew, Ercole II. Her brother, Alfonso I, died 11 January 1534.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 579 wickedly killed that poor priest, Don Andrea of Solarolo, on the public street as the poor man was going to celebrate Mass. Your Excellency, who understands things as they are, may consider it as you wish and advise me of your will, because from my side I will not fail to make every due and honest provision to see that the wicked are punished and that our mutual subjects may be certain to live calmly and in holy peace, as you and I both desire. I commend myself to you endlessly.

Letter 826: 1538 October 27 Venice To the duke of Ferrara, on apprehending the true culprits in recent crimes.105 I would be very pleased if Your Excellency could look into my heart and see how much I regret the disturbances that have newly come about because of those wicked bandits from Solarolo, which I came to understand through letters from your commissioner of Lugo and mine at Solarolo, for then you would certainly know that my desire to see the guilty punished is no less than yours. You complain that they are in Solarolo, but I assure you that they have never lived in my castle or territory of Solarolo since I had news of the murder they committed against these men of yours from Lugo. And I cannot believe that my commissioner allowed anything to the contrary once he knew of my wishes. If they were indeed perhaps seen at times in Solarolo territory as I have newly heard they were, this was without the consent or knowledge of my commissioner and on their own presumption. I do not deny that on my orders, my commissioner refused to give over three men who were under my protection and who were being sought by the commissioner of Lugo, because I have been assured that they were not among those who participated in the murder of those men of Lugo. Though they were summoned and denounced by Your Excellency’s commissioner as having been aware of and advisors to such an evil deed, it did not and does not seem to me appropriate that out of a suspicion of this sort they should be grouped together with those who actually committed the crime, and whom I desire no less than you to see punished. I have renewed orders to my commissioner of Solarolo to do all he can, if the murderers should appear on Solarolan territory, to get his hands on them and turn them over to the commissioner of Lugo. He understands me well in this matter. If Your Excellency has heard from your commissioner of Lugo that those men banished from Lugo are here in Solarolo and that they were denied him, as he complains they were, Your Excellency may be certain that this followed from my commissioner’s being unable to satisfy this demand because the situation in Solarolo was already more than he could manage. For when they entered into Solarolo, hunted down by their enemies, they appeared at a time and in such 105. AG 3000 libro 53 cc. 20v–21r.

580 ISABELLA D’ESTE numbers that they could not be opposed, as I have had clarified for me. I am no less aware than Your Excellency of the imminent danger that your and my subjects may incur on account of these bandits, and I do not intend to spare any measures to assure that greater violence does not follow that which is past. I pray Your Excellency, since I am not allowing and am not about to allow my subjects who committed the murder to murder those Fachini, please see that by the same law the Fachini who earlier killed Don Andrea Baldessari are pursued and punished, all the more because it was they who first offended my subjects and it is their fault that all this fire has been sparked. I commend myself always to Your Excellency.106

Letter 827: 1539 January 10 Mantua To the podestà of Sermide, regarding the cause of death of a young girl.107 Our treasurer Paolo Andreasi has given us to understand that since in recent days, meaning the first of this month, the young daughter of a certain Giovan Antonio Rosetto who is a resident in Villa Nuova of Sermide has died, this Giovan Antonio is bringing before you a suit against Paulo d’Adam, his land steward, alleging that Paolo struck the girl several times this past September when the grapes were still on the vines because he found her with stolen grapes from his vines, and that she died from these blows. If this is the case, it seems not only incredible, but impossible that she would die from such a thing and after a period of four months; and so one might truly judge that the father of the deceased girl is moved to attack the steward more out of passion than out of reason. We want you not to disturb the steward further with such a wicked and false accusation. Rather, we will be pleased if you use your effective persuasion and skillful ways to calm the poor man’s soul and make him believe that his daughter’s death resulted from the judgment and the will of God, and not from any violent event. Be well.

Letter 828: 1539 January 23 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, on her improving health.108 If my letter of the 13th of this month dismayed Your Excellency and you were distressed to hear of my long and stubborn illness, you must now prepare to trade all 106. In an undated letter directly following the one above in copybook 53, Isabella instructs the commissioner of Solarolo to persevere in his pursuit of the bandits and warns that they had better not be harbored in Solarolo. She notes that if they should be tolerated there, these criminals would bring on “the total ruin of our mutual subjects [la total ruina deli nostri comuni subditi]” and that therefore, the commissioner must assure that the duke of Ferrara is not correct in his assumptions regarding the culprits’ whereabouts. 107. AG 3000 libro 53 cc. 37v–38r. 108. AG 3000 libro 53 cc. 40r–41r.

1530–1539: Letters 749–830 581 your melancholy and displeasure for just as much joy and contentment of spirit. After my return from Venice, I persistently felt (sometimes a little and sometimes a lot) a certain pain and upset stomach, which at times even tormented me immeasurably. And however much the doctors helped me and gave me remedies, not only did it never go away, but it also gave me many symptoms of tertian fever. So when the doctors saw that this was caused by some malignant and negative humor and that the situation could easily have turned for the worse if they did not treat it promptly, they decided on Sunday morning to give me a medicine that for the whole day made me suffer more than a little, and my distress was all the greater in that it coincided with the combustion of the moon.109 Nor did my suffering ever cease that night. But after waking up and resting quietly, I began thenceforth to feel relief from all the ills that had bothered me, in such a way that thanks be to Our Lord, I have continued to make gains and gradually improve. Now I feel no stomach pain or fever, and I hope that through Divine goodness in a few days I will be able to send tidings of the complete and total return of my health. To fulfill your wishes, to satisfy my own spirit, and given the evidence I have of your love for me, I wanted to send this good news to Your Excellency, certain that you will feel incredible pleasure and joy. I commend myself heartily to Your Excellency. Letter 829: 1539 January 27 Mantua To the duke of Ferrara, thanking him for his concerns about her health.110 In addition to what I learned from Your Excellency’s letter about your great displeasure at my indisposition, Messer Augusto Mosto your chamber gentleman confirmed this further in a report he made to me. And though I understood this quite clearly from the filial benevolence I have always known you to feel for me, nonetheless I cannot deny that your loving and courteous message brought me singular pleasure. I thank you for it as heartily as I can. Following upon the report I made to you in these past few days in another letter of mine about the onset and the development of my malady, Your Excellency shall understand from Messer Augusto in what condition he found me during his visit, and how he left me perhaps better at his departure than he feared he might. Therefore, relying on his report, I will say no more, except that I commend myself always to Your Excellency.

109. I thank Crystal Hall for clarifying for me that “combustion” is an astrological term (still used today) referring to a celestial body’s location within the seventeen degrees occupied by the Sun. Since it is consumed by the fire of the Sun, the planet or moon in this position is invisible; those under its influence are weakened, and the planet or moon cannot be considered in an astrological reading. 110. AG 3000 libro 53 c. 42r. This is the penultimate letter found in Isabella’s copialettere.

582 ISABELLA D’ESTE Letter 830: 1539 January 30 Mantua To the podestà of Sermide, regarding the land rent of a Mantuan subject.111 In recent years we have passed to Giovan Francesco di Dainesi the rent due us from the Pigozzi family for certain meadows in which we had invested in your jurisdiction. There is a balance due to di Dainesi of up to five hundred pounds. It appears that he had no way or form in which to obtain this payment. And since Giovan Francesco has complained to us about it, we want to take him into our protection and favor him in this matter, as we believe is our obligation given the promise we made him that this rent would be collectible and that he would have no difficulties in obtaining it. Therefore, we want you now and in the future to give him whatever assistance and favor you deem necessary against the Pigozzi for his payment; because if he were unable in any other way to collect this rent, we ourself would be forced to pay him from our funds, in order not to default on our debt. So do not fail to provide good and swift justice. Be well.

111. AG 3000 libro 53 cc. 42r–v. This is the final letter appearing in Isabella d’Este’s copybooks. She died on 13 February 1539, in Ferrara.

Weights, Measures, and Time Braccio

Unit of measure employed in many Italian locales prior to the adoption of the metric system. A Mantuan braccio corresponded to .637 meters.

Ducat (ducato)

Silver or gold coin produced under the jurisdiction of a duke (or doge), especially the Venetian gold ducato, which weighed 2.174 grams.

Florin (fiorino)

Florentine gold coin weighing 3.53 grams.

Libbra

.31 kilograms

Marchetto

Gold coin valued at .05 Venetian lire [Treccani]

Onza

26.23 grams (liquid); .31 kilograms (dry); .03 meters.

Peso

7.8 kilograms (25 libbre).

Quarta

8.65 liters (liquid); .25 bushels (dry).

Scudo

Gold or silver coin of variable value produced in many Italian states and bearing the impression of the sovereign’s shield (scudo) [Treccani]. In the mid-1530s, one scudo paid a month’s salary for a footman and over two month’s pay for a stableboy.1

Units of weight, currency, and measure varied in the sixteenth century from state to state. The figures given above are meant to serve as general guides. Unless otherwise indicated, they draw from Angelo Martini, Manuale di metrologia, ossia misure, pesi, e monete in uso attualmente e anticamente presso tutti i popoli (Rome: E. R. A., 1976).

Time Telling Isabella usually refers to hours of the day according to a variable twenty-fourhour clock that counted sunset as the twenty-fourth hour, the next hour as the first hour of the night. Thus, for example, when she refers to “the sixth hour of night,” she means six hours after sunset, which, depending on the season, could range considerably. At times, she seems also to observe another practice common among her contemporaries, of counting the hours from sunrise forward. In this case, the second hour is in the early morning. Adding to this complexity for readers today is the fact that mechanical clocks of various kinds were also 1. Barbara Hollingsworth, The Cardinal’s Hat: Money, Ambition, and Everyday Life at the Court of a Borgia Prince (Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 2005), 71.

583

584 Weights, Measures, and Time widely in use. A magnificent astrological, twenty-four-hour clock made by the Mantuan mathematician Bartolomeo Manfredi was erected in the city’s Piazza delle Erbe and may still be seen atop the Torre della Ragione; and Isabella herself collected time pieces. It is therefore likely that in some cases she takes her time references from a clock. Where her sense is relatively clear, I have hazarded indications in square brackets as aids for the reader, but these should be regarded as approximations.

Genealogies

Alberto d’Este Birth Death

Niccolò I d’Este 12th marchese of Ferrara

Isabella d’Este

Birth 1393 Death 1441

Birth Death

Illegitimate children include: Ugo (1405– 1524), executed for adultery with stepmother Parisina; Leonello (1407–1450), 13th marchese of Ferrara who married Margherita Gonzaga (mother with him of Niccolò (1438–1476) and then Maria d’Aragona; Borso (1413–1471), 1st duke of Ferrara; Beatrice (1427–1497) who married Niccolò da Correggio mother of Niccolò Postumo da Correggio (1450– 1508) ; and Alberto (c. 1437–1502).

Death

1474

Laura Parisina Malatesta Death

1425 / Executed

Gigliola da Carrara Death

1416

1474 1539

Francesco II Gonzaga 4th marchese of Mantua Birth Death

1466 1519

Beatrice d’Este Ercole I d’Este 2nd duke of Ferrara

Ricciarda di Saluzzo

1480? 1481?

Birth Death

1475 1497

Birth 1431 Death 1505 Illegitimate children include: Lucrezia (1472–1518) who married Annibale Bentivoglio and produced Isabella (b. 1500), Ginevra (1478–1561), and Ercole (1506–1573); and Giulio (1478–1561).

Eleonora d’Aragona Birth Death

1450 1493

Sigismondo Birth 1433 Death 1507 Illegitimate children include: Ercole who married Angiola Sforza; Lucrezia who married Alberico Malaspina; Diana who married Uguccione de’ Contrari.

Ludovico Maria “il Moro” Sforza duke of Milan Birth Death

1452 1508

Alfonso I d’Este 3rd duke of Ferrara Birth 1476 Death 1534 Illegitimate offspring include: Alfonso (1527–1587) marchese of Mentecchio who married Giulia della Rovere of Urbino with whom he fathered Alfonso (1560–1575), Eleonora (b. 1561), Cesare (b. 1562) duke of Modena, Ippolita (b. 1565), Alessandro (b. 1604); and Alfonsino (1530–1547).

Ercole Massimiliano Sforza Birth Death

1493 1530

Francesco Maria (Francesco II) Sforza duke of Bari & Milan Birth Death

1496 1535

Alessandro d’Este Birth Death

1504 1505

Ercole II d’Este 4th duke of Ferrara Birth Death

1508 1559

Lucrezia Borgia Birth Death

1480 1519

Renée de France Birth Death

1510 1575

Anna Sforza Birth Death

1476 1497

Ippolito II d’Este cardinal Birth Death

Ferrante d’Este Birth Death

1509 1572

Illegitimate child: Renea.

1477 1540

Eleonora d’Este nun Ippolito d’Este cardinal Birth Death

1479 1520

Illegitimate children include: Isabella (or Elisabetta) who married Gilberto Pio of Sassuolo; Ludovico?

1. Este family tree

Birth Death

1515 1575

1480 1524

Birth Death

1531 1607

Alfonso II d’Este 5th duke of Ferrara Birth 1533 Death 1597 Married three times but no issue. Ducal title passed to Cesare d’Este but was unrecognized by the pope, who confiscated Ferrara, and Cesare remained duke of Modena only.

Lucrezia d’Este Birth Death

1535 1597

Eleonora d’Este Birth Death

1537 1581

Luigi d’Este cardinal Birth Death

1538 1586

Francesco d’Este marchese of Massa Lombarda Birth Death

1516 1578

Sigismondo d’Este Birth Death

Anna d’Este

Bradamante d’Este Maria di Cordona Marfisa d’Este

child,

Alessandro

1416

Birth 1421 Death 1448

Gianlucido Gonzaga

Lucia d’Este

Birth

Carlo Gonzaga

Birth 1423 Death 1481

Barbara Hohenzollern von Brandenburg

2. Ancestors and Siblings of Francesco II Gonzaga

Death 1453

Paola Malatesta

One illegitimate (1423–1466).

Birth 1395 Death 1444

Gianfrancesco I Gonzaga 1st marchese of Mantua

Birth 1412/1414 Death 1478

Ludovico III “Il Turco” Gonzaga 2nd marchese of Mantua

Leonard von Gorte

Birth 1464 Death 1495

Paola Gonzaga

Birth 1460 Death 1511

Ludovico Gonzaga

Eberhard von Würtemberg

Birth 1455 Death 1505

Barbara Gonzaga

Antonia di Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta

Caterina di Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola

Birth 1452 Death 1495

Rodolfo Gonzaga lord of Castiglione delle Stiviere, Solferino, Suzzara, Poviglio

Birth 1449 Death 1467

Death 1523

Laura Bentivoglio

Birth 1474 Death 1523

Giovanni Gonzaga lord of Vescovato

Birth 1466 Death 1510

Giovanni Sforza d’Aragona lord of Pesaro

Birth 1472 Death 1490

Maddalena Gonzaga

Birth 1472 Death 1508

Guidobaldo da Montefeltro duke of Urbino

Birth 1471 Death 1526

Dorotea Gonzaga

Elisabetta Gonzaga Birth 1460 Death 1538

Birth 1469 Death 1525

Sigismondo Gonzaga cardinal

Birth 1474 Death 1539

Isabella d’Este

Birth 1466 Death 1519

Francesco II Gonzaga 4th marchese of Mantua

Birth 1443 Death 1496

Gilbert de Bourbon count of Montpensier

Birth 1464 Death 1503

Chiara Gonzaga

Antonia del Balzo

Birth 1446 Death 1496

Gianfrancesco Gonzaga lord of Bozzolo and Gazzuolo, count of Sabbioneta and Rodigo

Birth 1444 Death 1483

Francesco Gonzaga cardinal

Birth 1441 Death 1479

Margarete von Wittelesbach

Birth 1441 Death 1484

Federico I Gonzaga 3rd marchese of Mantua

Death 1481

Susanna Gonzaga

1474 1539

1490 1538

July 1496 September 1496

1510 1566

1501 1570

1503 1508

1505 1563

1510 1519

Birth Death

1508 1569

Livia Osanna Gonzaga nun

Birth Death

Isabella di Capua

Birth 1507 Death 1557 Several children died as infants. Ferrante had one illegitimate daughter, Lucia (1517–1573).

Ferrante Gonzaga count of Guastalla

Birth Death

Ercole (Luigi) Gonzaga cardinal

Birth Death

Livia Giulia Gonzaga

Birth Death

Ippolita Gonzaga nun

Birth Death

Margherita Paleologa

Birth 1500 Death 1540 Illegitimate offspring: Alessandro (1520–1580) and Emilia (1517–1573), both by Isabella Boschetti.

Federico II Gonzaga 5th marchese & 1st duke of Mantua

Birth Death

Margherita Gonzaga

Birth Death

3. Children and Grandchildren of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga

Birth Death

Isabella d’Este

Birth 1466 Death 1519 Francesco II Gonzaga also fathered several illegitimate children, including: Orfeo (b. 1494), Margherita (1487–1537), Teodora (b.c. 1493) who married Enea Furlano, Antonia who married Jacopo Suardo, and Maddalena who died in infancy in 1504.

Francesco II Gonzaga 4th marchese of Mantua

1493 1550

Francesco Maria della Rovere duke of Urbino

Birth Death

Eleonora Gonzaga

1514 / Death

1523 / Death

1521 / Death

1525 / Death

1561

1602

1574

1574

1529 / Death

1531 / Death

1563

1561

1533 / Death

1532 / Death

1536

1578

1533 / Death

1533 / Death

1537 / Death

1579

1572

1550

1538 / Death

1534 / Death

1539 / Death

1540 / Death

1531 / Death

1563

1565

1595

1536 / Death

1546 / Death

1538 / Death

1566

1582

1575

1539 / Death

1586

1540 / Death

1591

Birth

1543 / Death

1583

Ottavio Gonzaga lord of Cercemaggiore

Birth

Gianvincenzo Gonzaga cardinal

Maria Lopez de Padilla y de Mendoza (Gonzaga)

Birth

Andrea Gonzaga 1st marchese of Specchia and Alessano

Birth

Francesco Gonzaga cardinal

Birth

Camilla Borromeo

Birth

Cesare Gonzaga count of Guastalla

Fabrizio Colonna prince of Paliano

Birth

Ippolita Gonzaga

Birth

Federico III Gonzaga cardinal

Henrietta of Cleves

Birth

1594

1587

Ludovico Gonzaga duke of Nevers

Birth

Eleanor of Austria

Birth

Guglielmo Gonzaga 3rd duke of Mantua

prince of Francavilla & marchese del Vasto

Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos

Birth

Isabella Gonzaga

Birth

Catherine of Austria

Birth

Francesco III Gonzaga 2nd duke of Mantua

Birth

Alma Gonzaga

Birth

Giulio della Rovere cardinal

Alfonso d’Este marchese of Montecchio

Birth

Giulia (Giuliana) della Rovere

Alberico Cybo

Birth

Isabella (Elisabetta) della Rovere

Antonio d’Aragona duke of Montalto

Birth

Ippolita della Rovere

Birth

Vittoria Farnese

Birth

Giulia da Varano

Birth

Guidobaldo II della Rovere duke of Urbino

Louise de Bourbon Birth 1482 Death 1561

Louis II de Bourbon count of Montpensier Birth 1483 Death 1501

Chiara Gonzaga Birth 1464 Death 1503

Gilbert de Bourbon count of Montpensier Birth 1443 Death 1496

Charles III de Bourbon count of Montpensier, duke of Bourbon, constable of France Birth 1490 Death 1527

Suzanne de Beaujeu

François de Bourbon duke of Chatellerant Birth 1492 Death 1515

Renée de Bourbon Birth 1494 Death 1539

Anne de Bourbon Birth 1496 Death 1510

4. Children of Chiara Gonzaga

Federico Gonzaga Birth 1495 Death 1545

Francesco Gonzaga Birth 1496 Death 1523

Lucrezia Sforza

Alessandro Gonzaga lord of Vescovato Giovanni Gonzaga lord of Vescovato Birth 1474 Death 1525

Laura Bentivoglio

Birth 1497 Death 1527

Ginevra Gonzaga nun Birth 1498 Death 1570

Death 1523

Sigismondo Gonzaga lord of Vescovato Birth 1499 Death 1530

Camilla Gonzaga Birth 1500 Death 1585

Pietro Maria Rosi

Eleonora Gonzaga Birth 1501 Death Died in infancy

Galeazzo Gonzaga Birth 1502 Death 1573

5. Children of Giovanni Gonzaga Lord of Vescovato and Laura Bentivoglio

Glossary of Names Numbers following the names in this glossary refer to letters (not pages) within the present edition. Boldface type identifies letters addressed to the persons named. Names containing particles (di, de, de’, da) are indexed with the particle in final position (e.g., Vinci, Leonardo da), with the exception of compound names containing particles (e.g., Acquaviva d’Aragona, Caterina). Readers are advised that dates, in particular, can be slippery even for well-known figures. Common variants of names appear in square brackets. Morphological variation abounds in both manuscript and print sources, however, and is not limited to the examples included here. Nicknames appear within quotation marks, in square brackets after the standard name (e.g., Borgia, Cesare [“Valentino”]). Abrabanel, Judah [Leone Ebreo] (b. ca. 1464). Jewish physician and philosopher. 681 Abrama. Reported ill. 317 Abramo. Jewish doctor. Possibly Abramo Portaleone of Mantua, though referred to as physician of Alfonso d’Este. 643 Accolti, Benedetto (1497–1549). Bishop of Cremona (1523–1524). Secretary to Pope Clement VII (1523). Cardinal (1527). 683 Accolti, Bernardo [“l’Unico Aretino”] (1458–1535). Poet and playwright. 378, 379, 381, 520, 683 Acerbi, Jacopo di. Mantuan citizen. 322 Acquaviva, Caterina. Sister of Gian Francesco. 535 Acquaviva d’Aragona, Caterina. Daughter of Gian Francesco. Married Enrico Pandone, count of Venafro (1514). 520 Acquaviva, Gian [Giovan] Francesco (d. 1527). Son of Andrea Matteo Acquaviva. Condottiere. Duke of Atri. Marchese of Bitonto. Married Dorotea Gonzaga, daughter of Gianfrancesco. 511, 520, 535, 582 Adam, Paulo d’. Land steward (gastaldo) of Giovan Antonio Rosetta. 564, 827 Adorno, Antoniotto II (1479–1528). Doge of Genoa (1522–1528). 715 Adorno, Giuliano. Genoese nobleman. Married Caterina Fieschi (1463). 198 Adria, Giacomo d’. See Atri, Jacopo Probo d’. Adrian VI, Pope. See Boeyens, Adriaan Florenszoon. 593

594 Glossary of Names Agabiti, Pietro Paolo (ca. 1470–ca. 1540). Painter. 149 Agnello, Benedetto. Gonzaga ambassador to Venice. 7, 65, 97, 712, 753, 754, 767, 774, 806, 809, 810, 813 Agnello, Ludovico (ca. 1450–1499). Protonotary in the court of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga. Named clerk of the apostolic chamber in 1478. Archbishop of Cosenza. Governor of Viterbo. 130, 138, 182, 184 Agnelli, Carlo (1480–1528). Gonzaga envoy. Husband of wetnurse. 220 Albani, Alvise [Aloisio] degli. Sent wine to Isabella. 605, 635 Albani, Vincenzo degli. Sent wine to Isabella. 605, 635 Albano, Pietro. Venetian banker. 120, 126, 171, 178 Albano, Taddeo (d. 1517). Venetian banker and merchant. Gonzaga agent. 294, 366, 367, 368, 373, 374, 447, 457, 482, 484, 534, 543 Albany, Duke of. See Stewart [Stuart], John. Albergini, Antonello. Lord. Resident of Ceresara. Father of Benedetto. 44 Albergini, Benedetto. Son of Antonello. Husband of Francesca Maiocho. 44 Alberto. Courier. 91, 296 Alberto, Angelo. Count of Balbiano. 130 Aldegatti, Giovanni Battista. Deceased husband of Elena. 650 Aldegatti, Elena [Helena]. Resident of Ostiglia. Widow of Giovanni Battista. 650 Aldegheris, Costanza de. Potential wetnurse. 193 Alegni, Monsignore de. Count of Ligny. 201 Alençon, Anne d’ [Anna Alençon] (1492–1562). Marchesa of Monferrato. Married Guglielmo IX Paleologo (1508). Mother of Maria, Margherita, and Boniface. 572, 573, 578, 579, 581, 584 Alessandro. Agent at Solarolo. 752 Alessio. Courier. 170, 191 Alidosi, Francesco (d. 1511). Cardinal. 449, 463 Alighieri, Dante (1265–1321). Poet. Author of the Divine Comedy. 249, 294, 478 Aliprandi [Aliprando], Bartolomeo. Mantuan. 793

Glossary of Names 595 Aliprandi, Francesco. Mantuan. 727, 729 Aloise, Lord. 817 Aloise, Messer. Doctor of the queen of Naples. 478 Alvarez de Toledo, Fernando (ca. 1507–1582). Duke of Alva. Officer in armies of Charles V. 667 Amadori, Alessandro. Canon of Fiesole. Brother of Leonardo da Vinci’s stepmother. 369 Amboise, Charles II d’ [“Gran Maestro”] (1473–1511). Seigneur de Chaumont. Governor of Milan under Louis XII. Grand Master of France (1502–1511). French commander in the League of Cambrai. 396, 416, 420, 424, 428, 429, 434, 435, 436, 437, 439, 442 Ambrogio [Ambroso]. Courier. 130, 132, 288 Andreasi, Gianbono [Gioanbono]. Messenger to Venice. 734 Andreasi, Girolamo. Stablemaster to Isabella d’Este. 696 Andreasi, Osanna (1449–1505). Dominican tertiary. Mystic. Spiritual advisor to Isabella d’Este. 224, 321, 401, 523 Andreasi, Paolo. Treasurer of Isabella d’Este from late 1520s until her death. 752, 753, 827 Angeli, Teodora degli. Ferrarese lady-in-waiting to Beatrice d’Este. 261, 380, 551? Angelo, Bartolomea. Mantuan lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este. 345 Angoulême, François (1494–1547). Count of Angoulême (1496). Duke of Valois (1498). King François I of France (1515–1547). Son of Charles d’Angoulême and Louise de Savoie. Married Claude de Bretagne [of Brittany, of France] (1515); and Eleonor of Austria (1530). 322, 523, 544, 549, 551, 552, 566, 567, 569, 614, 646, 647, 699, 703, 724, 728 Angoulême, Marguerite d’ [Marguerite de Navarre] (1492–1549). Queen of Navarre (1527). Daughter of Charles d’Angoulême and Louise de Savoie. Married Charles, duke of Alençon (1509); and Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre (1527). Sister of François I, king of France. Author of the Heptameron, published posthumously in 1559. 551, 581, 724 Anichini, Francesco (d. 1526). Ferrarese gem carver, active in Venice. 110, 118, 119, 144 Anselmo. Master painter. 802

596 Glossary of Names Antico. See Bonacolsi, Pier Jacopo Alari. Antimaco. See Sacchetti, Matteo. Antonio. See Dente, Antonio. Apuleius (ca. 124–170 CE). Latin prose writer. Author of The Golden Ass. 489 Aragona, Alfonso II d’ (1448–1495). King of Naples and Jerusalem (1494– 1495). Son of Ferdinand I of Aragon and Isabella of Clermont [Isabella di Chiaramonte]. Married Ippolita Maria Sforza (1465). 79, 80, 83, 86, 87, 103, 184 Aragona, Beatrice d’ (1457–1508). Queen of Hungary (1476). Daughter of Ferdinand I of Aragon [Ferrante], king of Naples, and Isabella of Clermont. Married Màtyas Corvinus (1476), king of Hungary. 15, 62, 225, 235, 236, 380, 397 Aragona, Cesare d’. (b. 1501). Son of Federigo I d’Aragona and Isabella del Balzo. 236, 590 Aragona, Eleonora [Leonora] d’ (1450–1493). Duchess of Ferrara. Daughter of King Ferdinand I of Naples and Isabella of Clermont. Married Ercole I d’Este (1473). Mother of Isabella d’Este. 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 21, 26, 27, 32, 33, 36, 59, 61, 67, 69, 76, 77, 159, 168, 258, 356, 388, 504, 520 Aragona, Federigo I d’ [Federico d’Aragona] (1451–1504). King Federigo IV d’Aragona of Naples (1496–1501). Son of Ferdinand I, King of Naples (1496– 1501) and Isabella of Clermont. Married Anne de Savoie (1478) and Isabella del Balzo (1486). Father, with Anne, of Carlotta (ca. 1479) and, with Isabella del Balzo, of Ferrante [Ferrandino] (1488), Giulia (1492), Isabella (1500?), Alfonso (1499), and Cesare (1501). 64, 236, 278, 479, 511 Aragona, Ferdinand [Don Ferrante] I d’ (1424–1494). King of Naples (1458– 1494). Natural son of Alfonso V of Naples. Married Isabella of Clermont [di Chiaramonte] (1444), then Giovanna d’Aragona (1476). Father of Giovanna (of Naples) and natural father of Alfonso II. 79, 86, 517, 520 Aragona, Ferdinand [Ferrante] d’ (1488–1550). Duke of Calabria and Apulia. Son and heir apparent of King Federigo IV of Naples. 80 Aragona, Ferdinand [Ferrante/Fernando] II d’ (1452–1516). King of Aragon, Sicily, Naples (1504–1516), Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre. Son of Juan II of Aragon and Juana Enríquez. Married Isabella of Castile (1469), then Germaine de Foix (1505). Also known as Ferdinand the Catholic. 389, 393, 544

Glossary of Names 597 Aragona, Ferdinand [Ferrante/Ferrando/Ferrandino] II d’ (1469–1496). Son of Alfonso II. King of Naples (1495–1496). Married Giovanna d’Aragona [Giovanna of Naples] (1496). 79, 83, 86, 87, 106, 517, 520 Aragona, Galeazzo Sforza d’. See Sforza d’Aragona, Galeazzo. Aragona, Giovanna d’ [Giovanna of Naples] (1479–1518). Daughter of Ferdinand I and Giovanna d’Aragona. Married Ferdinand [Ferrandino] II d’Aragona (1496), who died that same year. 517, 520 Aragona, Giovanna d’ (d. 1517). Queen of Naples (1476). Daughter of Juan II, king of Aragon and Navarre, and Juana Enríquez. Married Ferdinand [Ferrante] I d’Aragona, king of Naples (1476). Mother of Giovanna d’Aragona [Giovanna of Naples]. 397, 517, 518, 520 Aragona, Giulia d’ (ca. 1492–1542). Daughter of King Federigo I d’Aragona and Isabella del Balzo. Aunt of Emperor Charles V. Betrothed to Federico II Gonzaga (1530). 590, 655, 750, 778 Aragona, Isabella d’ (1470–1524). Duchess of Milan (1489–1494) and Bari (1499). Daughter of Alfonso d’Aragona, duke of Calabria, and Ippolita Maria Sforza. Wife of Gian Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Maternal cousin of Isabella d’Este. 80, 181, 397, 479, 481, 483, 520 Aragona, Isabella d’ (1500?–1550). Daughter of King Federigo I d’Aragona and Isabella del Balzo. 655 Aragona, Laura Caetana. Married Antonio de Guevara. 520 Aragona, Luigi d’ (1474–1519). Cardinal (1493). Natural son of Ferdinand I, king of Naples, and Polissena Genteglia. Nephew of Ferrante I. Married Battistina Cibo (1492, annulled 1494). 462, 519, 520, 527, 538, 595, 598 Arco, Odorico d’. Count. 290 Ardinghelli, Pietro (1470–1526). Secretary to Pope Leo X. Informant to Alfonso d’Este. 633 Arienti, Giovanni Sabadino degli (ca. 1445–1510). Humanist author. Diplomat. 55 Ariosto, Alfonso (1475–1525). Ferrarese courtier. Cousin of Ludovico Ariosto. Dedicatee of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. 502 Ariosto, Ludovico (1474–1533). Poet and courtier to the Este of Ferrara. Author of theatrical comedies, lyrics, satires, and the heroic epic Orlando Furioso

598 Glossary of Names (1532). Son of Count Niccolò Ariosto and Daria Malaguzzi Valeri. Secretly married Alessandra Benucci (ca. 1528). 270, 312, 388, 783, 797 Armenzano [Armenzono], Rafaello. Lord. In service to the duke of Urbino (1527). 718 Arrivabene, Giovanni Pietro [Giampietro] (1439–1504). Humanist and connoisseur of books and antiquities. Secretary to Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga. Apostolic nuncio in Spain. Bishop of Urbino (1491). Author of a heroic poem, Gonzagis, on the military exploits of Ludovico Gonzaga. 116 Arrivabene del Carmine, Fra (Friar) Pietro. Mantuan friar. 54, 125, 316, 317 Arsago, Girolamo de’ Capitani d’. Bishop of Nice. Bishop of Ivrea (1510–1511). 461, 483 Asti, Giovanni [Giovan]. Helped negotiate the cardinalate of Ercole Gonzaga. 705 Atalante. See Migliarotti, Atalante. Atri, Jacopo Probo d’. Count of Adria and Pianella. Secretary to Francesco II Gonzaga. Gonzaga diplomat in France (1503–1507, 1509–1510) and elsewhere. Reformer of the Gonzaga chancery. 64, 66, 290, 322, 418, 428 Aubigny [Obignino], Bèraut Stuart d’. French military commander under Charles VIII. 87 Aurelio, Niccolò. Gonzaga secretary. 435, 437, 440 Avalos, Alfonso d’ (d. 1495). Marchese of Pescara. Son of Iñigo and Antonella d’Aquino. 87 Avalos, Costanza d’ (1460–1541). Duchess of Francavilla (1501). Daughter of Iñigo and Antonella d’Aquino. Married Federico del Balzo. 66 Avalos, Fernando Francesco d’ (ca. 1489–1525). Marchese of Pescara. Condottiere. Son of Alfonso and Diana de Cardona. Married Vittoria Colonna (1509). 501 Avanzini [Avanzino], Roberto d’. Musician. 526 Baese, Alessandro da. Seneschal of Isabella d’Este. 14, 78, 307, 360, 591 Baesio, Leonello di. Gonzaga agent. 104 Baesio, Malatesta di. Recipient of letter from Federico di Casalmaggiore. 199 Baglioni, Gianpaolo [Paolo] (ca. 1470–1520). Condottiere. Lord of Perugia. Beheaded 1520. 292, 293, 300, 301 Baglioni, Giovanni. Surrendered at Perugia to Cesare Borgia. 292, 293

Glossary of Names 599 Bagnacavallo, Francesco. 77 Bagno, Ludovico da. Courtier. Secretary to Ippolito d’Este. 404, 791 Baiardo, Giacomo. In possession of a jewel owned by Isabella d’Este. 674 Balarina, la. See Lavagnola, Isabella. Baldessari, Don Andrea. Priest of Solarolo. Murdered. 772, 824, 825, 826 Balzo, Antonia del (ca. 1460–1538). Daughter of Pirro and Maria Donato Orsini. Married Gianfrancesco Gonzaga (1479), count of Sabbioneta and Rodigo and lord of Gazzuolo. 23, 125, 130, 236, 293, 511, 591 Balzo, Antonicca. Wife of Ferrante di Capua. Mother of Isabella di Capua. 805 Balzo, Eleonora Orsini del. Marchesa of Crotone [Cotrone]. 278 Balzo, Isabella del (d. 1533). Princess and queen of Naples. Second wife of King Federigo I d’Aragona of Naples. Mother of Ferrante [Ferrandino] (1488), Giulia (1492), Isabella (1500?), Alfonso (1499), and Cesare (1501). 64, 236, 479, 590, 655 Bandello, Gian Michele. Nephew of Matteo Bandello. 195 Bandello, Matteo (1485–1561). Prose writer. Author of Novelle (1554, 1573). Dominican friar. 327, 529, 539, 585, 603 Baptista. Resident of Villimpenta. Kidnapper. 53 Barbara. Greeted at Ferrarese court. 11 Barbarelli da Castelfranco, Giorgio [Giorgione] (1477/78–1510). Painter. 447 Barbarigo, Agostino (ca. 1419–1501). Doge of Venice (1486–1501). 67, 134, 135 Barbon, Giovine di. See Bourbon, Jean de. Bardassino. Stradiotto (mounted soldier). 405 Barone. Jester at the court of Milan. 170 Bartolomea. Daughter-in-law of Andrea de Conradis. 190, 194 Bartolomea. Sister-in-law of Martino Peglione. 7 Basalisco. Tailor. 283 Bassano, Lazzaro. Teacher. 644 Bastiano. Footman. 226

600 Glossary of Names Battista [Baptista]. Courier. 122, 123, 125 Bayezid II (1347–1512). Son of Mehmed II. Ottoman sultan (1481–1512). 79, 267 Becco, Giovan Maria. Commissioned to repay debt of Isabella’s. 674 Bellini, Giovanni (ca. 1430–1516). Venetian painter. 166, 227, 238, 241, 245, 279, 280, 281, 287, 289, 295, 336, 337, 347, 348, 358, 366, 368, 482 Bembo, Pietro (1470–1547). Humanist intellectual, poet, and literary theorist. Cardinal (1539). 358, 366, 367, 368, 426 Benaduso, Petro Francesco. Maestro. 298 Bendidio [Bendedeo], Alberto. Courtier and secretary in Este court. Son of Niccolò. 603, 733 Bendidio [Bendedeo], Niccolò [Nicolao]. Secretary of Eleonora d’Aragona. Father of Alberto. 77, 105, 145 Bendidio [Bendedeo], Taddea. Wife of Niccolò. 603 Bendidio [Bendedeo], Timoteo. Gonzaga agent. 474, 603 Benedetto. Son of the barber Belzane. Suspected arsonist. 123 Benedetto. Son of Mantuan citizen, Gardone. Murderer. 670 Bentivoglio, Alessandro (1474–1532). Condottiere. Son of Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Ginevra Sforza. 472, 678, 732 Bentivoglio, Annibale (1469–1540). Condottiere. Lord of Bologna (1511–1512). Son of Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Ginevra Sforza. 262, 266, 292, 297, 387, 391 Bentivoglio, Antonio Galeazzo. Protonotary. Brother-in-law of Isabella d’Este’s natural sister, Lucrezia d’Este. 347, 348, 512, 580, 603 Bentivoglio, Eleonora [Leonora]. Wife of Ghiberto Pio da Carpi. 459 Bentivoglio, Ginevra. See Sforza, Ginevra. Bentivoglio, Giovanni II (1443–1508). Lord of Bologna. Married Ginevra Sforza (1464). 285, 292, 293, 297, 301, 387, 390 Bentivoglio, Laura (d. 1523). Daughter of Giovanni II and Ginevra Sforza. Married Francesco II Gonzaga’s brother, Giovanni (1493). 122, 125, 252, 261, 264, 300, 321, 473, 501 Bentivoglio, Lucrezia. See Este, Lucrezia d’.

Glossary of Names 601 Bentivoglio de Gonzaga, Camilla. Daughter of Giovanni Bentivoglio. Married Pirro Gonzaga, son of Gianfrancesco. 649, 723 Benvenuto. Murder victim in Mantuan territory. 156 Bergami, Ghirardo di. Gonzaga subject. 607 Bernardino. Courier for Francesco Gonzaga. 315 Beroaldo, Filippo (1472–1518). Son of Nicola Beroaldo and Bartolomea Formaglini. Humanist author and university professor. 483 Bertie, Philippe de la Roche [Filippo della Rocca Bertì]. Ambassador of King Louis XII of France. 259, 260, 262, 266 Bevilacqua, Bonifazio. Ferrarese gentleman. 259 Bibbiena, Bernardo. See Dovizi da Bibbiena, Bernardo. Bidoux, Prégent de. French commander. 87 Bitol, Vighetto. Resident of Solarolo. 824 Bitonto, Marchese di. See Acquaviva, Gian Francesco. Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–1375). Poet, fiction writer, and humanist. Author of the Decameron. 55, 409 Boeyens, Adriaan Florenszoon (1459–1523). Pope Adrian VI (1522). 637, 639, 642, 647, 651, 657, 685 Bohemia and Hungary, Anna of. See Jagellonica, Anna. Boiarda, Alda. Sister of Matteo Maria and Laura. Ferrarese lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este. 540, 661, 689, 768 Boiarda, Laura. Sister of Matteo Maria and Alda. Nun in the Ferrarese monastery of Corpus Domini. 501, 768 Boiarda, Lucrezia. Daughter of Matteo Maria and Taddea Gonzaga. 689? Boiardo, Matteo Maria (ca. 1440–1494). Count of Scandiano. Humanist. Poet, author of the chivalric adventure poem Orlando innamorato (1494). Married Taddea Gonzaga (1472). Governor of Reggio (1478) and of Modena (1481– 1486). 41, 43, 88, 489 Bologna, Alberto da. Treasurer and agent of Isabella d’Este (early 1490s). Secretary to Francesco II Gonzaga (1496). 30, 150 Bologna, Antonio da. 319

602 Glossary of Names Bolon, Donato da. Veronese citizen. 53 Bolon, Katerina. Daughter of Donato da Bolon. Kidnapped. 53 Bolzano, Vincenzo. Chamberlain to Isabella d’Este. 290, 291, 296, 299 Bonacolsi, Pier Jacopo Alari (ca. 1460–1528). Mantuan sculptor known as Antico. 204, 288, 332, 333, 334, 335 Bonavalle, Giovanni. Lord of Lodi. 646 Bonazzo, Carlo. Resident of Revere. Abusive husband. 24 Bonvesino, Alessandro. Impoverished Mantuan subject. 253 Bonzani, Vincenzo. 299 Borgia, Angela. Lady-in-waiting to and cousin of Lucrezia Borgia. 359, 362 Borgia, Cesare [“Valentino”] (1475–1507). Natural son of Rodrigo Borgia and Vanozza Catanei. Cardinal (1493–1498). Duke of Valentinois (1498) and of Romagna (1501). Married Charlotte d’Albret (1499). 20, 172, 215, 226, 262, 275, 278, 284, 285, 291, 292, 293, 299, 300, 301, 302, 304, 307, 317 Borgia, Giovanni (1474–1500). Cardinal (1496). Frequent papal legate. Grandnephew of Rodrigo Borgia. Brother of Pier Luigi Borgia. 222 Borgia, Jeronima. 262 Borgia, Lucrezia (1480–1519). Natural daughter of Rodrigo Borgia and Vanozza Catanei. Married Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro (1493); then Alfonso d’Aragona, prince of Salerno and duke of Bisceglia (1498); then Alfonso d’Este (1502). 252, 255, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 270, 272, 276, 305, 359, 394, 398, 495, 496, 550, 594, 606, 651, 768 Borgia, Luisa [Louise] (1500–1553). Duchess of Valentinois (1507). Daughter of Cesare and Charlotte d’Albret. Married Louis II de La Tremouille (1517), then Philippe de Bourbon (1530). 278, 302 Borgia, Pier Luigi (1472/92–1511). Archbishop of Valenza (1500). Governor of Spoleto (1500). Cardinal (1500). Grandnephew of Rodrigo Borgia. Brother of Giovanni Borgia. 222 Borgia [Borja], Rodrigo (1431–1503). Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503). 79, 80, 140, 161, 222, 224, 226, 252, 262, 266, 270, 285, 290, 292, 293, 297, 301, 302, 303, 304, 307, 359 Borso. 628

Glossary of Names 603 Borzo, Signore. 211 Boschetta, Giovanna [Zoanna] (d. 1523). Natural daughter of Count Albertino. Boschetto. Lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este, then Suor (Sister) Prudenzia (1506). 382, 384, 673 Boschetti, Isabella. Mistress of Federico II Gonzaga. Daughter of Giacomo. 696, 750 Boschetto, Albertino. Ferrarese count. Natural father of Giovanna Boschetta. 230, 268, 382, 386 Boschetto, Jacomo. Son of Albertino. 57, 382 Bosco, Cristoforo dal. Notary. Master of revenue. 40, 290 Bourbon, Jean de [Giovine di Barbon]. 424 Bourbon, Pierre II de (1438–1503). Duke of Bourbon. Married Anne de Beaujeu [Anne of France]. 322 Bourbon, Suzanne de (1491–1521). Duchess of Bourbon (1503). Daughter of Pierre de Bourbon and Anne de Beaujeu. Married Charles III de Montpensier (1505). 552 Bozino [Bogino], Carlo. Credenziere (steward) of Isabella d’Este. Kidnapped by pirates. 728 Braciolo, Luca. Sacristan of St. Peter’s in Mantua. Bretagne, Anne de [Anne of Brittany] (1477–1514). Queen of France as wife of Charles VIII (1492), then Louis XII (1499). Daughter of Duke Francis II of Brittany and Margaret of Foix. Mother of Anne de Bretagne and Renée de France. 414, 424, 438, 566, 569, 748 Bretagne, Claude de [Claude of Brittany, Claude of France] (1499–1524). Queen of France as wife of Francis I (1514). Mother of Henri II. 548, 551, 552, 566, 567, 569, 581 Brogna de’ Lardis, Beatrice. Lady-in-waiting to Eleonora d’Este. Daughter of Ludovico Brogna de’ Lardis. Wedded Ercole Compagni (1491). Mother of Eleonora Compagni [“La Brognina”]. 498 Brogna de’ Lardis, Caterina [“La Brognolla”] (d. 1505). Lady-in-waiting and librarian to Isabella d’Este. Daughter of Ludovico Brogna de’ Lardis (d. 1 May 1505). 16

604 Glossary of Names Brogna de’ Lardis, Eleonora [“La Brogna”]. Daughter of Ludovico Brogna de’ Lardis. Lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este, who came with her to Mantua from Ferrara in 1490, and later to Margherita Paleologa. Wife of Matteo Bonatto (1496–1506). 16, 145, 520, 744, 770 Brognina, Eleonora. See Compagni, Eleonora. Brognolo, Floramonte (d. 1514?). Brother of Giorgio. Apostolic diplomat for the Gonzaga court at Rome. Protonotary (1505). 161, 349 Brognolo, Giorgio (d. 1500?). Gonzaga agent and diplomat. Resident ambassador in Venice, Rome, and Milan. 19, 34, 37, 40, 46, 47, 80, 99, 110, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 126, 134, 135, 136, 144, 157, 177, 302 Brognolo, Ludovico (d. ca. 1511). Son of Giorgio. Frequent Gonzaga representative at papal court. 418, 420, 432, 435, 436 Brolo, Leonello da. Mantuan gentleman. 61 Bruggia [Brugi], Benedetto di. Este fattore generale. 427, 450 Brunaro, Antonio di. Resident of Solarolo. 824 Brusati, Simone de. Nominated as appellate judge. 123 Bufalo [Buffalo], Angelo dal [del]. Roman gentleman. 529, 703 Bugatto, Antonio. Courier. 315, 526 Busseto, Paolo. Father of a woman wrongly detained. 29 Cacciadiavolo. See Contarino, Giovanni. Caetani, Guglielmo (1465–1519). Lord of Sermoneta. Son of Onorato III and Caterina Orsini. Married Francesca di Bruno Conti (1490). 520, 539 Cagnino. See Gonzaga, Gianfrancesco. Cagnolo, Niccolò. Gentleman of Parma. Ambassador of French king, along with Philippe de la Roche Bertie, to Ferrara (1502). 266, 270 Calandra, Giovanni [Gian] Giacomo (1488–1543). Courtier. Castellan and then secretary of Francesco II Gonzaga. 747 Calcagnini, Celio (1479–1541). Ferrarese poet, playwright. Apostolic protonotary. 788, 792 Caligaro. Possessor of a stolen horse. 607 Calza, Ludovico. Purveyor of eye ointment. 395

Glossary of Names 605 Camerino [Camarino], Ercule da. 50 Camerino, Giovanni Maria Varano da. Lord of Ancona. 290, 293, 301 Camposampiero, Ludovico [Vigo] (d. 1521). Courtier to Francesco II Gonzaga. Envoy to papal court (1507–1508). 321, 444 Canale, Paolo. Accompanied Pietro Bembo to Mantua. 358 Cantelma, Margherita. See Maloselli, Margherita. Cantelmo, Sigismondo (ca. 1455–1519). Duke of Sora. Gentleman in the court of Ercole I d’Este of Ferrara. Soldier. Married Margherita Maloselli. 129 Cantelmo, Vescovo. Bishop. 116, 130 Capelletto. Muleteer. 288 Capello, Francesco. Venetian ambassador at Isabella d’Este’s wedding. 67 Capilupi, Benedetto [Benedicto Codelupo] (1461–1518). Secretary to Isabella d’Este. 33, 50, 140, 170, 226, 255, 315, 317, 326, 332, 343, 371, 386, 479, 491, 495, 497, 502, 507, 514, 519, 520, 521, 522, 526, 528, 529, 530, 575, 598 Capilupi, Camillo (1504–1548). Son of Benedetto. Poet. 598, 601 Capilupi, Cochino. Son of Benedetto. 575 Capilupi, Flavia. Daughter of Benedetto. 575 Capilupi, Lelio (1497–1560). Son of Benedetto. 519 Capilupi, Niccolò. Mantuan noble and citizen. 614 Capini, Capino (d. 1545). Mantuan condottiere. 647, 706 Capriano, Alberto. Presented gift to Isabella d’Este from Diana d’Este. 655, 700 Capua, Ferrante di. Prince of Molfetta (1522). Duke of Termoli. Married Antonicca del Balzo. Father of Isabella. 755, 805 Capua, Isabella di (ca. 1510–1559). Heiress of the principality of Molfetta. Neapolitan daughter of Ferrante, prince of Molfetta and duke of Termoli, and Antonicca del Balzo. Married Ferrante Gonzaga (1531). 726, 755, 771, 803, 805, 821, 822 Capua, Jacopo da. Capitano della guardia to Francesco Gonzaga. 74 Cara, Marchetto [Marco] (ca. 1465–ca. 1525). Composer and musician. 526, 535, 582, 595

606 Glossary of Names Caracciolo, Giovanni Battista [Giovambattista] (1450–1508). Neapolitan condottiere. Married Dorotea Malatesta of Rimini. 226 Caracciolo [Caratiolo], Marino Ascanio (1468–1538). Neapolitan patrician. Ambassador of Milan to Rome (1513). Papal nuncio to Imperial court (1520– 1523). Cardinal (1535). 672 Cardinale, Alessandro del. Agent of the Urbino dukes. 383, 389 Cardona, Don Ramon. See Folch de Cardona, Ramón. Carmine, Friar Pietro dal. 54, 125, 316? Carretto, count of. Died in a duel with Fabrizio Maramaldo (1523). 676 Carretto, Galeotto del. (ca. 1455–1531). Poet, playwright, and courtier associated with the courts of Monferrato, Milan, and Mantua. 117, 188, 196, 242 Carpi, Alberto III, Pio da. See Pio, Alberto III. Carpi, Antonio Pio da. See Pio, Antonio da Carpi. Carpi, Emilia Pia da. See Pia, Emilia. Carpi, Giberto Pio da. See Pio, Giberto. Carrero, Matteo di. Resident of Revere. 206 Casale. Protonotary and Monsignore. 751 Casale, Francesco da. 549 Casale, Giovanni di. Father of Scipione. 648, 790 Casale, Giovannino. Imperial commissioner. 739 Casale, Gregory. Ambassador of King Henry VIII of England to Rome. 710 Casale, Isabella [da]. 581, 664 Casale, Scipione di. Son of Giovanni. 648 Casalmaggiore, Federico di. 59, 199 Casati, Francesco [Franceschino] (d. 1528). Magistrate and ambassador for court of Milan. Married Isabella Trotti. 175, 176, 180 Casella, Matteo (1475–1542). Podestà of Ferrara (1509–1510). Diplomat in service to court of Ferrara. Ambassador to Rome (1526–1527), sheltered by Isabella during the sack. Husband of Claudia (d. 1528). Father of Vincenzo, Giovan Paolo, and Giovan Pietro. 719, 736

Glossary of Names 607 Castagna, Rosso. Deceased land owner in Revere. 555 Castellano, Federico. Brother-in-law of wetnurse. 220 Castello, Francesco da. Personal physician to Ercole I d’Este. 12, 16, 37, 137, 162, 220, 256, 257 Castiglione, Baldassarre (1478–1529). Courtier and diplomat. Humanist author. In service to the courts of Urbino (1506–1516) and Mantua (1499–1504, 1516– 1523). Papal nuncio to court of Charles V (1524–1529). 106, 116, 161, 183, 216, 486, 539, 565, 572, 612, 633, 634, 637, 640, 644, 682, 683, 684, 703 Castiglione, Sabba da. Friar. Writer. Knight of Rhodes. 396 Cattaneo [Catanio]. Nuncio from Urbino. 458 Cattaneo, Federico. Mantuan agent and envoy. 345, 441, 624 Cattaneo, Giovani Battista. Mantuan agent. 517 Cattaneo, Giovanni Lucido. Gonzaga Agent. Archdeacon of the cathedral of Mantua. 301 Cavaniglia [Cabaniglia], Troiano (1479–ca. 1537). Count of Montella. 424 Centurione, Benedetto. Genoese shipping merchant. 721 Cerarossa. 317 Ceresa, Antonio. Hosted Isabella in Piacenza. 32 Ceresara, Paride da [“Tricasso”] (b. 1466). Astrologer. Humanist. Married daughter of Odorico d’Arco (1502). Provided Isabella with the subject matter for several paintings in her studiolo. 290, 347 Cesare. 372 Cesarini, Alessandro (d. 1542). Cardinal (1517). 682, 748 Cesi, Ottaviano. Brother of Paolo Emilia. 735 Cesi, Paolo Emilio (1481–1537). Cardinal (1517). 735, 737, 738 Châlons, Philibert de. Prince of Orange; Viceroy of Naples (1528–1530). Nominal head of troops who sacked Rome under Emperor Charles V in 1527. Commander of imperial troops who invaded Florence in 1529–1530. 715 Charles VIII of France. See Valois, Charles. Chiamono, Monsignore de. See Amboise, Charles II d’.

608 Glossary of Names Chiara. Repentant prostitute. 143 Chiara, Madonna Sore. 354 Chiaramonte, Count of. Son of the prince of Bisignano. 521, 522, 524 Chigi [Ghisi], Agostino (1466–1520). Banker. Married Margherita Saracini, then Francesca Andreazza [Ardeasca] (1519). 539 Cibo [Cybo], Francesco [Franceschetto] (ca. 1449–1519). Natural son of Pope Innocent VIII (Giovanni Battista Cibo). Married Maria Maddalena Romola de’ Medici. Father of Innocenzo, Lorenzo, Giovanni Battista, Caterina, Ippolita, Eleonora. 519 Cibo [Cybo], Giovanni Battista (1432–1492). Pope Innocent VIII (1484–1492). Father of Francesco [Franceschetto] Cibo. 83 Cibo [Cybo], Innocenzo (1491–1550). Cardinal (1513). Son of Francesco [Franceschetto] Cibo and Maddalena de’ Medici. Nephew of Pope Leo X. 519, 520, 527, 531, 683 Cimarosto. Boatman. 457 Ciminelli, Serafino [Serafino Aquilano] (1466–1500). Also known as Fra (Brother) Serafino. Poet and musician. 147 Cipriano. Courier. 238 Cistovello, Girolamo. Ambassador of Ercole I d’Este. 130 Clement VII, Pope. See Medici, Giulio de’. Cleofas. Master craftsman. 762 Coglia. See Sestola, Girolamo da. Colla, Giovan Francesco. Stablemaster to Federico Gonzaga. 660 Colla, Messer. Greeted at Ferrarese court. 11 Collecchio. Court functionary at Mantua. 290 Colleoni, Cassandra. Wife of Niccolò Postumo da Correggio. 382 Collis, Antonio Maria de. 85 Colombo, Giovan Battista. Antiquarian in Rome. 735 Colonna. Neapolitan lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este. Governess of Isabella d’Este. 1, 271, 375

Glossary of Names 609 Colonna, Ascanio (d. 1557). Grand Constable of the Kingdom of Naples (1521). Condottiere in service to Charles V. 667 Colonna, Fabrizio (d. 1520). Grand constable of the Kingdom of Naples. Son of Odoardo, duke of Marsi, and Jacovella Celano. Married Agnese, daughter of Federico da Montefeltro. Father of the poet, Vittoria Colonna. 520 Colonna, Prospero. Condottiere. Commander of papal forces (1521–1522). 603, 646 Cominato, Constantino. Governor of Casale Monferrato (1499). Virtuoso musician. 28, 187, 188, 201 Compagni, Eleonora [“La Brognina”]. Lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este. Daughter of Beatrice Brogna de’ Lardis. 16, 491, 495, 497, 498, 500, 501, 504, 509, 658 Compagni, Ercole. Husband of Beatrice de’ Lardis (1491). 16 Compagnono, Anselmo da. Merchant. 94 Conradis, Andrea de. 190, 194 Conradis, Giovan Francesco. 190 Contrari, Beatrice de’. Senior lady-in-waiting to Eleonora d’Aragona. Ferrarese governess of Isabella d’Este, then her lady-in-waiting and overseer of her court in Mantua. 59, 69, 131, 159, 321, 397, 504, 603 Contrari, Uguzone [Uguccione] de’. Ferrarese count. Son and heir of Count Ambrogio de’ Contrari. 259 Contarino, Giorgio. 67 Contarino, Giovanni [“Capitano Cacciadiavolo”]. Venetian gentleman. 728 Contarino, Zacharia. 67 Cornachino, Giovanni. Punished in Solarolo. 815 Cornaro, Marco (1482–1524). Cardinal (1500). 519, 527 Cornazzano, Antonio (ca. 1430–ca. 1483/84). Poet, playwright, dancing master. 327 Correggio, Cassandra da. See Colleoni, Cassandra. Correggio, Eleonora da. Daughter of Niccolò da Correggio. Married Loterio Rusca, lord of Corno and count of Locamo. 169, 583, 604 Correggio, Galeazzo [Gian Galeazzo] da. Son of Niccolò. 398, 399

610 Glossary of Names Correggio, Giberto [Ghiberto] da (d. 1518). Count of Correggio. Married Veronica Gambara (1509). 201 Correggio, Niccolò Postumo da (1450–1508). Courtier, condottiere, playwright, and poet. Son of Niccolò, prince of Correggio, and Isabella’s aunt, Beatrice d’Este (natural sister of Ercole and Borso). Married Cassandra Colleoni (1472). 39, 62, 87, 88, 168, 252, 260, 266, 268, 308, 382, 399 Cosmico, Niccolò Lelio. Paduan poet and humanist (ca. 1420–1500). 244 Cossa, Andrea. Lord. 459, 460, 572 Costa, Lorenzo (d. 1535). Painter. 347, 348, 424, 449, 471, 546, 782, 806 Costabili, Antonio di. Ferrarese ambassador to Milan. 170 Costantino, Lord. 28, 165, 188, 201, 646 Cottino. 165 Covo, Jacopo [Giacomo] da. Bursar of Federico II Gonzaga. 591, 668 Crema, Guido da. 79 Cremasco, Battista. Physician. 745, 746 Cremasco, Matteo. Physician. 108, 125, 132 Cremona, Giovanpietro da. Courtier. 449 Creno, Francisco. Gonzaga envoy. 100 Crespellano, count of. Uncle of Giacomo. 301, 322 Crespellano, Giacomo (d. 1503). Castellan of Canneto sull’Oglio. 301 Cristina [Crestina], Caterina di Giovanni [Zuanno] di. Resident of San Benedetto. 156 Cristina [Crestinina], Gianalberto di Giovanni [Zuanno] di. Son of Caterina. 156 Cumani, Diana di. Lady-in-waiting to Eleonora d’Aragona. 11 Cusatro, Beltramino. Mantuan legate who conducted the nuptial agreements between the families of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga. Father of Matteo and Geremia. 3, 49 Cusatro, Matteo. Son of Beltramino. 161 Dainesi, Giovan Francesco di. Mantuan beneficiary of Isabella d’Este. 830 Dataro. Jewish actor. Native of Ferrara. 677

Glossary of Names 611 Delia. Dwarf lady-in-waiting in Isabella’s court. 795, 809 Della Rovere. See Rovere. Dente, Antonio. Gonzaga courier. 123, 125, 130, 132 Diodato. Jester. 167, 192 Doge of Venice. See Barbarigo, Agostino; Gritti, Andrea; Loredan, Leonardo. Donato, Antonio. Gonzaga official. 93, 97, 317 Donato, Giovan Francesco. Doctor. 317 Doria, Andrea (ca. 1466–1560). Genoese statesman and admiral. 713, 720, 721, 728 Doria, Lazaro (d. 1527). Nephew of Andrea Doria. 720 Dovizi da Bibbiena, Bernardo (1470–1520). Cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico (1513). Author of the comedy Calandra (ca. 1507). 492, 527, 530, 612 Duca. Bailiff. 649 Equicola, Mario (1470–1525). Courtier, humanist. Tutor of Isabella d’Este (1508– 1519). Secretary of Isabella d’Este (1519–1525). 371, 372, 445, 450, 492, 546, 575, 590, 606 Este, Alberto (ca. 1437–1502). Natural brother of Ercole I d’Este. 22, 258, 260, 261, 397 Este, Alfonso I d’ (1476–1534). Third duke of Ferrara, brother of Isabella d’Este. Married Anna Sforza (1491); Lucrezia Borgia (1502). 5, 11, 15, 36, 39, 69, 77, 89, 101, 151, 159, 167, 183, 192, 234, 235, 239, 244, 252, 253, 256, 258, 259, 261, 262, 263, 266, 268, 270, 305, 344, 351, 353, 359, 362, 376, 382, 386, 393, 394, 397, 398, 404, 406, 417, 418, 419, 442, 444, 450, 487, 489, 492, 497, 499, 546, 559, 562, 570, 588, 589, 599, 600, 606, 622, 625, 632, 636, 641, 643, 647, 651, 656, 657, 669, 673, 679, 724, 743, 748, 768, 770, 778, 791, 803, 825 Este, Anna d’ (1531–1607). First daughter of Ercole II d’Este and Renée de France. 780, 782, 783 Este, Beatrice d’ (1475–1497). Duchess of Bari and Milan. Daughter of Ercole I d’Este and Eleonora d’Aragona. Married Ludovico Sforza of Milan (1491). 5, 9, 10, 18, 32, 39, 62, 64, 69, 76, 83, 84, 85, 88, 90, 96, 103, 111, 112, 115, 124, 125, 133, 159 Este, Bianca Maria d’ (1440–1506). Natural daughter of Leonello III d’Este and Anna de’ Roberti. Married Galeotto Pico, lord of Mirandola (1468). 310, 317, 603

612 Glossary of Names Este, Borso d’ (1413–1471). Natural son of Niccolò I d’Este. First duke of Ferrara. 377 Este, Diana d’. Natural daughter of Sigismondo d’Este the elder. Married Uguccione de’ Contrari. 524, 567, 655, 764, 795 Este, Eleonora d’ (1515–1575). Daughter of Alfonso d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia. Nun in Corpus Domini monastery, Ferrara. 818, 820 Este, Eleonora [Leonora] d’. See Aragona, Eleonora [Leonora] d’. Este, Ercole I d’ (1431–1505). Second duke of Ferrara. Married Eleonora d’Aragona. Father of Isabella d’Este. 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 15, 22, 23, 30, 31, 41, 57, 61, 63, 67, 72, 79, 102, 103, 105, 115, 116, 125, 126, 133, 137, 157, 162, 164, 179, 211, 212, 224, 244, 252, 253, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 266, 267, 268, 270, 276, 278, 297, 305, 308, 310, 315, 344, 351, 398, 427, 489 Este, Ercole II d’ (1508–1559). Fourth duke of Ferrara. Son of Alfonso I d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia. Married Renée de France [Renata di Francia]. 651, 677, 728, 748, 775, 780, 782, 824, 825, 826, 828, 829 Este, Ferrante [Ferdinando] (1477–1540). Brother of Isabella d’Este. 61, 199, 261, 266, 268, 305, 344, 359, 362, 363, 386, 679 Este, Giulio (1481–1561). Natural brother of Isabella d’Este. Son of Ercole I and lady-in-waiting Isabella Arduin. 5, 109, 116, 183, 261, 266, 270, 305, 359, 362, 382, 386, 398, 679, 680 Este, Ippolito d’ (1479–1520). Archbishop of Esztergom (1486). Archbishop of Milan (1498). Cardinal (1493). Brother of Isabella d’Este. 11, 109, 116, 130, 132, 169, 170, 221, 261, 305, 307, 317, 324, 349, 359, 362, 377, 386, 388, 392, 393, 397, 404, 419, 433, 444, 490, 499, 502, 519, 520, 527, 709 Este, Ippolito II d’ (1509–1572). Cardinal of Santa Maria in Aquiro (1538). Archbishop of Milan (1519). Son of Alfonso I and Lucrezia Borgia. 636 Este, Lucrezia d’ (1472–1518). Natural daughter of Ercole I d’Este. Married Annibale Bentivoglio (1487). 9, 11, 253, 258, 261, 262, 359, 387, 391, 392, 393, 394, 422, 471, 472, 473, 477, 485, 567 Este, Margherita d’. Natural daughter of Alberto d’Este. Married Phebus, natural son of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga of Bozzolo. 22, 23 Este, Niccolò Maria (d. 1507). Bishop of Adria (1487–1507). 77 Este, Polissena d’. Ferrarese lady-in-waiting to Beatrice d’Este. 10 Este, Sigismondo (1433–1507). Paternal uncle of Isabella d’Este. 362

Glossary of Names 613 Este, Sigismondo (1480–1524). Youngest brother of Isabella d’Este. 5, 15, 116, 152, 261, 305, 397, 478, 567, 613, 630, 679, 680 Euffreducci, Oliverotto [Levorato] (1475–1502). Lord of Fermo. Murdered by Cesare Borgia at Senigallia. 292, 293, 301 Evangelista. Stud groom in the stables of Francesco II Gonzaga. 123, 185, 260, 653 Fachini. Family of Solarolo. 824, 826 Facino, Alfonso. Carver in Isabella’s household. 639, 734 Fantina, Paula. Mantuan lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este, then governess of Eleonora Gonzaga. Daughter-in-law of Francesco da Fantino. 744, 752 Fantino, Francesco da. Book keeper and accountant. 131 Farnese, Alessandro (1468–1549). Cardinal (1493). Pope Paul III (1534). 811 Fasolino, Francesco. Resident of Ostiglia, in marital dispute. 615, 617 Fatino. Representative of Constantino Cominato. 28 Faustina. Niece of Giovanni Roveto. Bride of Giovan Francesco Colla. 381, 660 Feriolo, Giovanni. Recommended to Francesco II Gonzaga. 25 Ferreri, Antonio (d. 1508). Cardinal of San Vitale (1505). Papal legate at Bologna under Pope Julius II. 390, 391 Ferrero, Bonifacio. Bishop of Ivrea (1505–1510, 1511–1518). 461 Feruffina, Caterina. Spouse of Alessandro. 453 Feruffino, Alessandro. Spouse of Caterina. 239, 454 Fidele, Giovan [Zoan] Franco. 502 Fieschi, Caterina [Caterina del Flisco] (1447–1510). Daughter of Giacomo and Francesca de’ Negri. Married Giuliano Adorno (1463). Mystic. Canonized as Saint Catherine of Genoa (1737). 33, 198, 603 Fieschi [Flisca/Fricia], Francesca. Wife of Ludovico Gonzaga, second count of Rodigo. 198, 701 Fieschi, Niccolò (ca. 1456–1524). Cardinal. 603 Filippo. Gonzaga court employee. 57, 631? Fioramonda, Ippolita. Marchesa of Scaldasole. 572

614 Glossary of Names Fiore, Giovan Andrea da. Venetian jeweler and supplier of scents. 157, 158, 174, 202, 279 Fiume, Matteo da. Mantuan. 201 Flisco, Caterina del. See Fieschi, Caterina. Floriano. Poet. 788 Foix, Odet de (1485–1528). Vicomte of Lautrec. French soldier. Governor of French-occupied duchy of Milan (1516–22). Commander of French forces in Italy (1527–1528). 558, 566, 646 Folch de Cardona [Cordona], Ramón (1467–1522). Viceroy of Naples (1509– 1522). 487, 495, 497, 498, 500, 504, 520, 536 Folenghino. Gonzaga agent in Rome. 424 Fontanella, Laura da. Sister of potential Pallavicina bride for Ferrante Gonzaga. 726 Fornasaro, Giovan Pietro [Zoan Petro]. Field guard for Francesco II Gonzaga. 317 Forno. In service at Gonzaga court. 654 Foschi, Tommaso. Bishop of Cornacchia. 262 France, Renée de [Renata di Francia] (1510–1574). Wife of Ercole II d’Este and duchess of Ferrara (1528). Daughter of King Louis XII of France and Anne of Brittany. 724, 728, 748, 775, 781, 782, 795 Franceschino. 135 Franceschetto. See Cibo, Francesco. Francesco. Son of Vanino. Murderer. 94 Francesco. Steward of Ferrante Gonzaga. Murderer of Gian [Zoan] della Serra. 668 Francesco, Messer. Son of Niccolò. 391 Francesco, Pietro. Doctor. 322, 342 Francia, Francesco [Francesco Raibolini] (mid-1400s–ca. 1516). Bolognese painter and goldsmith. Court painter in Mantua (1506). 449, 451, 471, 475, 806 Francia, Renata di. See France, Renée de. François [Francis] I. King of France. See Angoulême, François.

Glossary of Names 615 Frara, Carulina da. Ferrarese lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este. Fregoso, Ottaviano (1470–1524). Doge of Genoa (1513). Son of Agostino Fregoso and Gentile, natural daughter of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino. Nephew of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino. 106, 149 Fricia, Caterina. See Fieschi, Caterina. Furlano da Cavriana, Enea [“Il Cavaliere”] (ca. 1475–1521). Courtier. 322 Furnaro, Domenico. Gonzaga subject in Governolo. Husband of Giovanna. 277 Furnaro, Giovanna. Gonzaga subject in Governolo. Wife of Domenico. 277 Fuzio, Lucca de. Father of condemned man in Mirandola. 350 Gabbioneta, Alessandro (d. 1534?). Archdeacon of Mantua. Gonzaga ambassador to Rome. 449, 518, 525, 527, 528, 529, 598, 652, 653 Gabbioneta, Pietro. Replaced Leonello Marchese as Isabella’s commissioner in Solarolo. 772, 815 Gadio, Stazio (ca. 1480s–ca. 1534). Employed in Gonzaga court chancery. Accompanied Federico II Gonzaga both to Rome and to France. Later served as secretary. 468, 545, 568, 569, 588 Gaiano, Grassino da. 804 Galasso, Signor. Greeted at Ferrarese court. 11 Galetto. Apparecchiatore. 283 Gambara, Monsignor da. Vice legate of Bologna. 758, 766 Gambacurta, Margarita. Neapolitan lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este. 64, 66, 765 Gandino, Cristoforo da. 156 Gardone. Mantuan citizen. Father of Benedetto. 670 Gaspare. Courier. 331 Gasparino, Angelo. Father of Bartolomea. 345 Gasparino, Bartolomea. Daughter of Angelo. Married off by Isabella. 345 Gasti, Lord. 633 Gazoldo, Francesco. Count. 538 Gazoldo, Mattia. Count. 538

616 Glossary of Names Gemetto. See Nesson, Jamet de. Germanello [Germinello], Angelo (d. 1529?). Secretary to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. Mantuan Ambassador to Rome (1519–1528). 703, 735, 737 Ghisi [Ghisio], Carlo. Treasurer to Isabella d’Este. 735, 737 Ghivizzano, Angelo. Mantuan treasurer and ambassador. 321, 326 Giacomo. Dealer in musical organs. 93 Giacomo, Giovan. Man-at-arms to Galeazzo San Severino. 28 Gianfrognino [Zanfrognino]. 321 Gianpedrone. Courier. 290 Giorgino. Servant to Francesco II Gonzaga. 420, 440 Giorgione. See Barbarelli da Castelfranco, Giorgio. Giovan, Andrea. Gardener at Porto. 752 Giovan Maria, Messer. 122 Giovanna. Runner from Brescia in the palio di San Pietro (1496). 122 Giovanni [Zoanne]. Footman. 278, 302, 303 Giovanni, Don. Canon regular. 2 Giovan Pietro, Count. 213, 317 Giovio, Paolo (1483–1552). Historian and physician. Bishop of Nocera de’ Pagani (1528). 696, 747 Giusto, Maestro. 618 Golfo, Sigismondo. Humanist tutor to Eleonora Gonzaga. Secretary. 125, 274 Gonzaga, Agostino. Archbishop of Reggio Calabria (1537). Nephew of Francesco II Gonzaga. 539, 634 Gonzaga, Alessandro [Luigi] (1494–1549). Son of Rodolfo and Caterina Pico della Mirandola. 713, 721, 722, 723 Gonzaga, Alessandro (1496–1530). Count of Novellara (1515–1530). Son of Giovanni Pietro and Caterina Torelli. 644, 712, 713, 721, 722, 723 Gonzaga, Antonia. See Balzo, Antonia del. Gonzaga, Antonio de. 217, 397

Glossary of Names 617 Gonzaga, Baby (1503–1503?). Unnamed child of Isabella d’Este. 322, 324 Gonzaga, Barbara (1455–1505). Paternal aunt of Francesco II Gonzaga. Married Count Eberhard von Wurtemberg (1474), founder of the University of Tübingen. 139 Gonzaga, Barbara (1482–1558). Daughter of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga of Bozzolo and Antonia del Balzo. Married Giovan Francesco Sanseverino (d. 1501), becoming countess of Caiazzo (1499). 395, 801 Gonzaga, Camilla. Sister of Giovanni Pietro Gonzaga di Novellara. 692, 699, 723 Gonzaga, Caterina. Daughter of Ludovico Gonzaga of Rodigo and Francesca Fieschi. Nun. 198 Gonzaga, Chiara (1464–1503). Countess of Montpensier. Sister of Francesco II Gonzaga. Married Gilbert de Bourbon de Montpensier (1482). 4, 84, 88, 89, 106, 125, 155, 185, 201, 290, 293, 297, 306, 354 Gonzaga, Dorotea (d. 1550). Marchesa of Bitonto. Daughter of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga of Bozzolo. Married Gianfrancesco Acquaviva. 511, 520, 535, 582 Gonzaga, Eleonora (1494–1550). Duchess of Urbino. Firstborn child of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga. Married Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino (1509). 82, 89, 96, 105, 107, 109, 116, 122, 125, 130, 131, 197, 215, 216, 223, 235, 254, 274, 283, 288, 293, 298, 315, 316, 321, 322, 343, 353, 354, 375, 400, 406, 407, 408, 410, 416, 418, 420, 421, 423, 424, 427, 428, 432, 435, 458, 464, 471, 473, 505, 548, 574, 636, 640, 645, 646, 662, 670, 730, 763 Gonzaga, Elisabetta (1471–1526). Duchess of Urbino. Married Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino (1489). Sister of Francesco II Gonzaga. 4, 13, 15, 17, 52, 58, 67, 68, 89, 96, 106, 124, 125, 140, 147, 149, 197, 208, 215, 216, 226, 254, 258, 261, 262, 265, 266, 271, 284, 297, 300, 306, 307, 308, 309, 322, 323, 326, 343, 354, 358, 378, 383, 389, 397, 407, 410, 415, 416, 418, 420, 421, 423, 427, 428, 432, 435, 458, 463, 464, 467, 470, 505, 548, 561, 565, 645, 646, 662, 670, 707 Gonzaga, Ercole [Luigi/Aloyse/Alvise] (1505–1563). Bishop of Mantua (1521). Cardinal (1527). Papal legate to the Council of Trent (1561). Second son of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga. 361, 362, 386, 515, 541, 566, 633, 634, 637, 639, 640, 644, 652, 653, 654, 665, 700, 703, 705, 706, 712, 713, 727, 729, 730, 787, 793, 808, 811 Gonzaga, Federico di Bozzolo (ca. 1480–1527). Son of Gianfrancesco and Antonia del Balzo. Condottiere. Lord of Bozzolo and Sabbioneta. 645, 646, 815

618 Glossary of Names Gonzaga, Federico I (1441–1484). Third marquis of Mantua. Father of Francesco II Gonzaga. Married Margarete von Wittelsbach of Bavaria (1463). 3, 489, 609 Gonzaga, Federico II (1500–1540). Eldest son of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga. Fifth marquis of Mantua (1519). First duke of Mantua (1530). Married Margherita Paleologa of Monferrato (1531). 196, 211, 215, 216, 219, 220, 226, 231, 246, 247, 248, 250, 254, 255, 263, 265, 273, 278, 283, 284, 292, 293, 298, 299, 300, 301, 307, 309, 310, 315, 316, 317, 319, 321, 322, 325, 332, 341, 361, 386, 387, 395, 400, 411, 429, 432, 436, 437, 439, 442, 449, 451, 458, 461, 463, 466, 467, 468, 469, 483, 486, 490, 492, 495, 513, 514, 515, 516, 518, 519, 520, 522, 524, 526, 529, 544, 545, 548, 551, 552, 563, 564, 566, 567, 568, 569, 571, 577, 578, 588, 591, 594, 600, 606, 608, 612, 614, 616, 619, 624, 625, 626, 629, 633, 634, 636, 640, 641, 645, 646, 647, 653, 659, 660, 670, 682, 683, 691, 694, 696, 697, 703, 704, 705, 706, 707, 708, 709, 710, 711, 712, 713, 715, 742, 748, 750, 763, 778, 781, 793, 808, 817, 823 Gonzaga, Ferrante [Ferdinando] (1507–1557). Founder of Gonzagas of Guastalla line. Count of Guastalla and lord of Ariano. Commander in chief of Imperial army in Italy (1527). Viceroy of Sicily (1535–1546). Governor of Milan (1546– 1554). Third son of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga. Married Isabella di Capua (1534). 387, 492, 515, 541, 566, 640, 648, 658, 662, 667, 668, 675, 676, 682, 687, 689, 697, 713, 715, 723, 726, 727, 728, 739, 742, 755, 763, 771, 778, 797, 798, 799, 803, 805, 817, 821, 822 Gonzaga, Francesca Fieschi [Flisca] de. See Fieschi [Flisca/Fricia], Francesca. Gonzaga, Francesco. Mantuan ambassador to the Vatican (1520s). 696, 703, 705, 713, 731, 735, 737, 738, 750 Gonzaga, Francesco [Gian Francesco] (1444–1483). Cardinal. Uncle of Francesco II Gonzaga. 244 Gonzaga, Francesco Grande de. Lord. 555 Gonzaga, Francesco III (1533–1550). Second duke of Mantua. Son of Federico II and Margherita Paleologa. Married Catherine Habsburg of Austria (1549), daughter of Ferdinand and niece of Charles V. 817 Gonzaga, Gianfrancesco [“Cagnino”] (1502–1539). Lord of Bozzolo. Son of Ludovico and Francesca Fieschi. Grandson of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga of Bozzolo. Married Luigia Pallavicini. 802 Gonzaga, Gian Francesco [Francesco] II (1466–1519). Fourth marquis of Mantua. Son of Federico I Gonzaga and Margarete von Wittelsbach. Husband of Isabella d’Este. 3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 13, 17, 18, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 45, 48, 50, 54, 57, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 75, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95,

Glossary of Names 619 96, 97, 98, 100, 107, 108, 116, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 139, 140, 146, 149, 155, 160, 163, 164, 165, 170, 179, 186, 189, 191, 195, 200, 201, 212, 214, 215, 216, 219, 220, 223, 224, 231, 232, 239, 240, 246, 247, 248, 250, 255, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 270, 271, 275, 276, 278, 283, 285, 288, 290, 292, 293, 297, 298, 300, 301, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 309, 310, 311, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 325, 327, 341, 343, 345, 353, 354, 361, 362, 364, 380, 381, 382, 386, 387, 390, 393, 400, 401, 402, 404, 405, 406, 408, 409, 410, 411, 412, 415, 416, 417, 419, 420, 424, 426, 427, 428, 429, 431, 432, 434, 437, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 444, 445, 446, 448, 449, 472, 483, 487, 491, 492, 501, 506, 507, 508, 509, 514, 518, 520, 523, 525, 526, 527, 529, 530, 546, 549, 552, 565, 572, 573, 576, 577, 590, 602, 603, 604, 610, 616, 645, 659, 671, 694, 696, 799 Gonzaga, Gianfrancesco [Giovanfrancesco] (1446–1496). Lord of Bozzolo and of Sabbioneta. Count of Rodigo and lord of Gazzuolo. Son of Marchese Ludovico III of Mantua and Barbara Hohenzollern of Brandenburg. Married Antonia del Balzo (1479). Founder of the Gonzagas of Sabbioneta and of the Gonzagas of Bozzolo. 22, 124, 125, 130, 132 Gonzaga, Giovanni (1474–1523). Brother of Francesco II Gonzaga. Founder of the Gonzagas of Vescovato. Married Laura Bentivoglio. 24, 27, 57, 116, 122, 171, 178, 201, 252, 285, 292, 293, 297, 300, 301, 343, 353, 364, 387, 417, 430, 436, 444, 446, 465, 533, 563, 626, 676 Gonzaga, Giovanni Pietro [Giampietro] (d. 1519). Count of Novellara. Married Caterina Torelli. 215, 301, 644, 723 Gonzaga, Giulio. 363, 364, 690, 729 Gonzaga, Guidone da. 18, 57, 116, 644 Gonzaga, Ippolita (1502–1570). Nun and then prioress in the Dominican monastery of San Vincenzo, as Suor (Sister) Ippolita. Daughter of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga. 235, 278, 283, 288, 293, 298, 316, 424, 438, 470, 472, 473, 485, 516, 746 Gonzaga, Livia Giulia (1503–1508). Daughter of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga. 317, 397 Gonzaga, Livia Osanna (1508–1569). Nun and then prioress in the Franciscan monastery of Santa Paola, as Suor (Sister) Paola. Daughter of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga. 401, 485 Gonzaga, Ludovico III [“Il Turco”] (1412/14–1478). Second marchese of Mantua (1444). Son of Gianfrancesco and Paola Malatesta. Married Barbara of Brandenburg, niece of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund (1433). 267, 609

620 Glossary of Names Gonzaga, Ludovico (ca. 1460–1511). Apostolic protonotary. Bishop-elect of Mantua (1483). Son of Ludovico III Gonzaga and Barbara Hohenzollern of Brandendburg. 116, 228, 244, 327 Gonzaga, Ludovico (ca. 1480–1540). Lord of Rodigo and of Sabbioneta (1521). Son and coheir of Gianfrancesco (1446–1496) and Antonia del Balzo. Married Francesca Fieschi. 198, 417, 686, 693 Gonzaga, Luigi [Aloyso/Rodomonte] (1500–1532). Imperial captain under Charles V. Son of Ludovico (1480–1540) and Francesca Fieschi. 538, 668 Gonzaga, Maddalena (1472–1490). Sister of Francesco II Gonzaga and wife of Giovanni Sforza, lord of Pesaro. 4, 532 Gonzaga, Margherita (1496–1496). Daughter of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga. 122, 127, 130, 131, 149 Gonzaga, Phebus [Febo] (ca. 1462–1504). Natural son of Gianfrancesco (1446– 1496). Married Margherita d’Este. 22, 99, 215 Gonzaga, Pirro. Son and coheir of Gianfrancesco (1446–1496) and Antonia del Balzo. 643, 703 Gonzaga, Rodolfo (ca. 1452–1495). Founder of the Gonzagas of Castiglione. Lord of Castiglione delle Stiviere, Solferino, Suzzara, Castel Goffredo, Luzzara, and Poviglio. Son of Ludovico III and Barbara of Brandenburg. Married Antonia Malatesta (1481), then Caterina Pico della Mirandola (1484). Uncle of Francesco II Gonzaga. 116, 121, 122 Gonzaga, Sigismondo (1469–1525). Protonotary, then cardinal with titular church of Santa Maria Nuova (December 1505). Brother of Francesco II Gonzaga. 95, 116, 122, 125, 126, 130, 131, 178, 191, 210, 214, 300, 301, 307, 320, 323, 354, 364, 411, 420, 437, 439, 440, 441, 502, 520, 529, 624, 633, 636, 637, 639, 644, 706, 793 Gonzaga, Sigismondo (1499–1530). Son of Giovanni. Heir of Vescovato. 563, 566 Gonzaga, Susanna. Daughter of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga of Sabbioneta and Antonia del Balzo. Married Pedro Folch de Cardona, count of Collesano [Golisano]. 757 Gorno, Francesco da. Mantuan gentleman. 364, 729 Grado, Antonio da. Doctor. 342, 390, 420 Grande de Gonzaga, Francesco. 555 Grassi, Dorotea. 269

Glossary of Names 621 Grecia, Giovan Antonio da. Doctor. 446 Gregorio, Maestro. Shoemaker in Ferrara. 403 Grimani, Marco (ca. 1494–1544). Venetian patrician. 723 Gritti, Andrea (1455–1538). Doge of Venice (1523–1538). 723 Grossino. Gonzaga carver or scalcho (steward) and agent. 554, 645, 729 Guarini [Guarino], Battista (ca. 1434–1503). Humanist. Tutor of Isabella d’Este (beginning ca. 1481). Son of Guarino Guarini and Taddea Cendrata. Married Bettina Brutturi. 77, 145, 264 Guarnero, Antoniomaria. Ferrarese gentleman. 259 Guevara, Antonio de. Interim viceroy of Naples. Married Laura Caetana d’Aragona. 520 Guidoni, Giovanmaria [Zoanmaria] di. Podestà of Mantua. 105 Guidoni, Guido. Count. Uncle of Giovanmaria. 105, 116 Guinizano. 132 Gusberto, Ludovico. Son of Raffaello. Exhibitor of letter to Giovan Maria Becco. 674 Gusberto, Raffaello. Father of Ludovico. 674 Gusnasco, Lorenzo [Lorenzo da Pavia] (d. 1517). Wood craftsman and master instrument maker. 72, 112, 115, 147, 148, 153, 171, 173, 200, 202, 205, 207, 243, 245, 249, 279, 280, 294, 336, 366, 367, 368, 373, 374, 447, 480, 482, 484, 533 Habsburg, Charles V (1500–1558). King Charles I of Spain (1516). Holy Roman Emperor (1519). Son of Philip IV of Burgundy. Married Isabella of Portugal (1526). Father of Philip II of Spain. 518, 606, 614, 625, 636, 645, 646, 647, 658, 662, 667, 671, 672, 676, 703, 715, 716, 717, 722, 726, 739, 742, 744, 748, 750, 771, 778, 821, 822 Habsburg, Ferdinand [Fernando] I (1503–1564). King of Bohemia and Hungary (1526). King of Croatia (1527). Holy Roman Emperor (1558). Married Anna of Bohemia and Hungary (1521). Son of Philip I and Juana of Castile. Father of Maximilian II. 380 Habsburg, Maximilian I (1459–1519). King of the Romans [German king] (1486). Holy Roman Emperor (1508). Married Mary of Burgundy (1477), Anne of Brittany (1490), and Bianca Maria Sforza (1493). 80, 131, 133, 170, 195, 215,

622 Glossary of Names 233, 278, 297, 380, 389, 406, 412, 413, 414, 416, 417, 420, 426, 428, 432, 434, 435, 436, 437, 439, 442, 465, 508, 549 Habsburg, Philip (1478–1506). Philip IV [“the Handsome”], duke of Burgundy and lord of the Netherlands (1482). Philip I of Castile (1502). Son of Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy. Married Queen Juana [“the Mad”] of Castile (1496). Father of Charles V and Ferdinand I. 322 Hebreo, David. Jewish man. 312 Hebreo, Leone. Jewish man. Deceased 1523 in Revere. 681 Hieronimo. Painter? 76 Hieronimo [Girolamo] Magnanimo. 151 Imola, Vicino da. Jouster at wedding of Alfonso d’Este to Lucrezia Borgia. 266 Intendadio. Jewish resident in Poviglio. Son of Simone. 761 Ippoliti, Giovanni de. Count. 130 Ippolito, Federico. Count. Father of Francesco. 340 Ippolito, Francesco. Son of Count Federico. 340 Ippoliti, Matteo. Tutor to Federico II Gonzaga. Servant in the Gonzaga court. 69 Isabella. Greeted at Ferrarese court. 11 Jacopo. Footman. 36 Jacopo [Jacomo]. Pantry credenziere (manager). 365 Jagellonica, Anna [Anna of Bohemia and Hungary] (1503–1547). Queen of the Romans (1521). Daughter of Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary and Anne of Foix-Candale. Married Ferdinand I of Habsburg (1521). Mother of Maximilian II. 380 Julius [Giulio] II, Pope. See Borgia, Rodrigo. Lang, Matthaùs (d. 1540). Bishop of Gurk (1505) and of Cartagena (1510). Cardinal (1511). Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg (1519). 487, 491 Lannoy, Charles de (ca. 1487–1527). Viceroy of Naples (1522–1527) in service to Maximilian I and Charles I [Charles V] of Spain. 658, 716 Lannoy, Colinet [Carlo] de. French soprano. 31 Lautrec, Vicomte de. See Odet de Foix.

Glossary of Names 623 Lavagnola, Isabella [“La Balarina”]. Ferrarese lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este. 732 Lazioso, Bartolomeo. Gonzaga operative (fattore) in Ostiglia. 610 Lazioso [Latioso], Gabriele. Gonzaga manager (massaro). 321 Leonbruno, Lorenzo [Lorenzo di Liombeni, Lorenzo Leombruno] (1477–ca. 1537). Painter. Adopted son of Gian Luca Liombeni. 337, 357, 659 Leone, Girolamo. Venetian envoy. 67 Leyva [Leiva], Antonio de (ca. 1480–1536). Duke of Terranova. Prince of Ascoli. Spanish general. Captain General of Charles V’s 1533 league of Italian states. 748 Liombeni, Gian Luca. Paduan painter. Adoptive father of Lorenzo Leonbruno. 48, 49 Livia. Lady-in-waiting. 733 Lombardo, Antonio (ca. 1458–1516). Venetian sculptor. Son of Pietro and brother of Tullio Lombardo. 556, 557, 559 Lombardo, Tullio [Tullio Solari] (ca. 1455–1532). Venetian sculptor. Son of Pietro and brother of Antonio. 659, 666 Loredan, Andrea. Venetian nobleman. Collector. 366, 373, 374 Loredan, Leonardo (1436–1521). Doge of Venice (1501–1521). 336, 366, 417, 430, 440 Lorenzo. Sculptor in Rome. 735 Lorenzo, Lord. 684 Lorqua, Ramiro de [Ramiro d’Orco] (ca. 1452–1502). Majordomo of Cesare Borgia. Governor of Romagna (1501). 300 Louis XII of France. See Valois-Orléans, Louis. Luca, Monsignor. 552 Lucido, Giovanni. Mantuan envoy. 314 Lucio. Jewish resident in Poviglio. Cousin of Simone. 756, 760 Lucretia [Lucrezia]. Woman from Ostiglia living in Ferrara. 141 Maffei, Giovan Battista. 633

624 Glossary of Names Magiosso, Antonio. Employee of Grossino. 554 Magistrello, Antonio. Correspondent from Rome during pontificate of Julius II. 418 Magnanimi, Girolamo. Ducal secretary in the court of Ercole I d’Este of Ferrara. 151 Magni, Africano di. Resident of Sermide. 554 Maiocho, Antonio. Father of Francesca. 44 Maiocho, Francesca. Resident of Ceresara. Daughter of Antonio Maiocho. Wife of Benedetto, son of Antonello di Albergini. 44 Malaspina, Argentina. Married Piero di Tommaso Soderini. 369 Malaspina, Guglielmo. Count. 439, 440 Malaspina, Ricciarda (1497–1553). Marchesa of Massa and Princess of Carrara. Daughter and heir of Alberico II Malaspina and Lucrezia d’Este. Wife of Scipione Fieschi, count of Lavagna (d. 1519), then of Lorenzo di Francesco Cibo. 439, 440, 604, 789, 819 Malaspina, Taddea. Daughter of Alberico II Malaspina and Lucrezia d’Este. 819 Malatesta, Carlo (1368–1429). Condottiere. Married Elisabetta Gonzaga (1386). 184 Malatesta, Dorotea (1478–1527). Natural daughter of Roberto Malatesta and a Mantuan woman probably of the Crema family. Married Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (1500). 226 Malatesta, Francesco. Gonzaga agent in Florence (1502–1503). Named as Francesco’s cameriere (manservant). 4, 275, 282, 290, 292, 296, 297, 299, 301, 304 Malatesta, Giacomo [Jacopo]. Mantuan ambassador to Venice (1528–1530). Son of Federico Malatesta and Lucia Ferrari. Brother of Giovanni Battista. 734, 751 Malatesta, Ginevra. 759 Malatesta, Giovanni [Giovan] Battista (ca. 1490–after 1532). Mantuan ambassador to Venice (1519–1528). Ambassador in France (1528), then Spain (1529). Son of Federico Malatesta and Lucia Ferrari. Brother of Giacomo. 659, 671, 688, 708, 750 Malatesta, Pandolfo IV (1475–1534). Condottiere. Natural son of Roberto Malatesta, lord of Rimini, and Elisabetta Aldobrandino. 435

Glossary of Names 625 Malcalazato, Cristoforo. Messenger. 313 Maloselli, Margherita. (d. 1532). Duchess of Sora. Literary patron. Founder of women’s Augustinian monastery in Mantua (1530). Daughter of Bartolomeo Maloselli and Lucia di Paride Ceresara. Married Sigismondo Cantelmo (ca. 1490). 129, 371, 372, 478, 510, 520, 521, 611, 784, 785, 787, 788, 792 Manfredi, Francesco. Lord. 322 Manfredi, Manfredo de. Ambassador of duke of Ferrara (Ercole I d’Este) in Florence. 63, 72, 73 Mantegna, Andrea (ca. 1431–1506). Court artist at Mantua (from 1460). 57, 66, 125, 170, 184, 296, 328, 347, 357, 381 Manutius, Aldus [Aldo Manuzio] (1449–1515). Venetian printer. 243, 308, 355, 546 Maramaldo, Fabrizio. Lord. 676, 712 Marcello, Alvise (d. 1517). Venetian ambassador to Mantua. Podestà of Ravenna (1509). 336 Marchese, Leonello. Appointed commissioner of Solarolo by Isabella d’Este. Replaced by Pietro Gabbioneta. 758, 772, 804, 807 Marchetto, Gian Battista. Factor. 611 Margherita, Mother Sister. Abbess of Corpus Domini monastery in Ferrara. 361, 397, 820 Marietta. Gentlewoman of Rhodes. 725 Mario. Chamberlain of Anne d’Alençon. 586 Marmirola. Laundress. Wife of Matteo. 719 Martinengo, Violante. Wife of Count Ugo Rangoni. 143 Martino. Rider. 66 Martino, Giovan [Johannes Martini]. Composer in the chapel of Ercole I d’Este. Vocal instructor of Isabella d’Este. 31 Massimo. Cook. 798, 799 Massimo, Messer. Negotiator in marriage of Eleonora Gonzaga. 408, 410, 420 Mastino, Benedetto. 44 Mastino, Francesco (d. 1503). Natural son of Giovanni. 317

626 Glossary of Names Mastino, Giovanni [Zoanne]. Father of Girolamo and Francesco Mastino. 317 Mastino, Girolamo [Hieronymo]. Son of Giovanni. 317 Matella. Servant. 580 Matteo. Husband of Marmirola. 719 Maximilian I Habsburg. See Habsburg, Maximilian I. Mazzo. 315 Mazzoni [Mazone], Bernardino. Courier. 30, 244 Medici, Giovanni di Lorenzo de (1474–1521). Cardinal (1489). Pope Leo X (1513–1521). Son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and Clarice Orsini. 492, 494, 510, 518, 519, 520, 523, 524, 525, 526, 528, 529, 530, 544, 614, 633, 634, 635, 636, 645, 646 Medici, Giuliano de’ (1479–1516). Co-ruler of Florence with Lorenzo the Magnificent. Son of Piero di Cosimo and Lucrezia Tornabuoni. Assassinated in the Pazzi Conspiracy (1478). 492, 519, 531, 539, 548 Medici, Giulio [Giulio di Giuliano] de’ (1478–1534). Pope Clement VII (1523). Natural son of Giulio de’ Medici and Fioretta Gorini. 651, 671, 682, 683, 684, 703, 704, 705, 706, 715, 723, 728, 731, 742, 744, 748, 771, 787, 808 Medici, Lorenzo de’ [Lorenzo the Magnificent] (1449–1492). De facto ruler of the Florentine Republic (1469–1492). Humanist. Patron of arts and letters. Poet. Son of Piero di Cosimo and Lucrezia Tornabuoni. Married Clarici Orsini (1469). 290, 478, 483, 519, 823 Medici, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco (1463–1503). Son of Pierfrancesco de’ Medici and Laudomia Acciaioli. 291 Medici, Lorenzo II de’ [Lorenzo di Piero] (1492–1519). Ruler of Florence (1513– 1519). Duke of Urbino (1516–1519). Son of Piero di Lorenzo and Alfonsina Orsini. Nephew of Pope Leo X. Married Madeleine de la Tour (1518). Father of Catherine de’ Medici. Dedicatee of Machiavelli’s Prince. 291, 527, 548 Medici, Piero (di Lorenzo) de (1472–1503). Ruler of Florence (1492–1494). Son of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Clarice Orsini. 63, 76, 520, 548 Meli, Cavalier di. Gentleman. 572 Mercurio. Resident of Mantua. 290 Merli, Giacomo. 299

Glossary of Names 627 Messalia [Messaglia], Bernardino. Envoy in the service of Francesco II Gonzaga. 97 Migliarotti, Atalante. Cithara player long in service at the Mantuan court. 72, 73 Mila, Adriana. Daughter of Pedro de Mila. Niece of Rodrigo Borgia. Tutor to Lucrezia Borgia. Married Ludovico Orsini (d. 1489). Mother of Orsino Orsini. 262 Milanese. See Regazzi, Antonio Maria di San Secondo. Milano, Niccolò [Nicolao] da (d. 1541). Goldsmith. 553 Mirandola, Giulia da. Recipient of land previously owned by Rosso Castagna. 554, 555 Montefeltro, Antonio da (d. 1500). Count of Cantiano. Condottiere. Natural son of Federico III da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino. Married Emilia Pia da Carpi. 216 Montefeltro, Federico III da (1422–1482). Duke of Urbino (1474). Married Gentile Brancaleoni (1437), then Battista Sforza (1460). Father of Giovanna, Antonio, Guidobaldo. 80 Montefeltro, Giovanna da (1463–1514). Duchess of Sora and Alee. Daughter of Federico III da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza. Wife of Giovanni della Rovere. 253, 301, 353 Montefeltro, Guidobaldo da (1472–1508). Duke of Urbino (1482). Married Elisabetta Gonzaga, sister of Francesco II. 79, 80, 97, 139, 140, 149, 215, 284, 292, 300, 301, 307, 315, 316, 323, 326, 420, 646 Montefeltro, Violante da (1430–1493). Daughter of Guidantonio da Montefeltro and Caterina Colonna. Sister of Federico III da Montefeltro. Married Domenico Malatesta Novello (d. 1465). Entered monastic life in Ferrara as a widow, becoming Suor (Sister) Serafina. 11, 15 Montpensier, Charles III de (1490–1527). Duke of Montpensier. Son of Chiara Gonzaga and Duke Gilbert de Montpensier. Married Suzanne, duchess of Bourbon (1505). Duke of Bourbon (1505). Commander of Charles V’s troops in the 1527 Sack of Rome. 84 Montpensier, Gilbert de (1443–1496). Count of Montpensier. Condottiere. Married Chiara Gonzaga. 84 Morello, Vincenzo [Vincenzo da Napoli]. Neapolitan confectioner located in Ferrara. 303, 404, 478, 494, 695

628 Glossary of Names Moscus, Demetrius. 546 Mosto, Augusto. Chamber gentleman to Ercole II d’Este. 829 Motta, Monsignore della. Governor of Pavia. 572 Mozzanica [Mozanica], Lorenzo da [Lorenzo d’Orfeo di Lodi] (d. ca. 1515). Condottiere in service to Milan and to France. 428 Mulieribis, Giovan Antonio. 21 Murano, Angioletto da. Glass craftsman. 366 Napoli, Vincenzo da. See Morello, Vincenzo. Nassau-Breda, Enrique III de. Count of Nassau. 667 Negro. See Trotti, Negro. Negro. Wardrobe master. 592 Neideck, Georg von (d. 1514). Bishop of Trent (1505–1514). 499 Nesson, Jamet de [Gemetto]. Secretary and envoy. 201 Nicolas V. See Parentucelli, Tommaso. Nigi, Girolamo [Hieronimo] da. 729 Nigri, Marco de. Agent. 187 Novellara, Fra (Friar) Pietro Gavasetti da. Carmelite vicar general. 229 Novellara [Novolara, Nuvolara], Count of. See Gonzaga, Giovanni; Gonzaga, Alessandro. Nuvoloni [Novolono], Carlo. Mantuan gentleman. 729, 763 Oldoino, Giulio. Gonzaga agent. 421 Oldrato, Messer. 259 Olivero. Sescalco (chief steward) to Isabella d’Este. 375 Oliverotto da Fermo. See Euffreducci, Oliverotto. Orlando, Girolamo di. Friar. Messenger for queen of Hungary. 380 Orologio, Ludovico de. Mantuan citizen. Father of Giovan Ludovico. 686 Orologio [Horologio; Horologho], Giovan Ludovico de. Son of Ludovico. 686 Orsello, Roberto. Visitor from the court of Urbino. 410

Glossary of Names 629 Orsi, Cristoforo. Father of runaway wife of Giacomo Sedazarro. 21 Orsini, Adriana Mila. See Mila, Adriana. Orsini, Cavaliere. 301 Orsini, Eleonora. See Balzo, Eleonora Orsini del. Orsini, Felice. See Rovere, Felice della. Orsini, Giambattista (ca. 1450–1503). Cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Domenica (1483). Papal legate in Romagna, the Marches, and Bologna. Son of Lorenzo Orsini and Clarice Orsini. Archbishop of Taranto (1491). 140, 293, 297 Orsini, Gian Giordano (d. 1517). Son of Gentile Virginio, lord of Bracciano. Married Maria d’Aragona (1487), then Felice della Rovere (1506). 537 Orsini, Giovanna. Married Federico Gonzaga of Bozzolo (1504). 816 Orsini, Giulio (d. 1517). Count of Monterotondo. Duke of Ascoli. Condottiere. 140 Orsini, Niccolò di (1442–1510). Son of Aldobrandino and Bartolomea di Carlo Orsini. Count of Pitigliano. Condottiere. 87, 322 Orsini, Orsina. Married Francesco Colonna. 262 Orsini, Paolo. 292, 301, 304 Orsini, Rinaldo. 301 Orsini, Virginio (1434–1497). Condottiere. Vassal of the Papal States and of Naples. 87 Ortolano. Gonzaga agent. 373 Osanna. See Andreasi, Osanna. Ostuni, Serafino da. Friar. 523 Ovid [Publius Ovidius Naso] (43 BCE–17 CE). Poet. 243, 249 Pagano. Venetian merchant. 110, 171, 178 Palazzo [Palazo], Giovanni Francesco. Treasurer of Isabella d’Este. 202, 205, 207, 249, 294 Paleologa, Margherita (1510–1566). First duchess of Mantua. Daughter of Guglielmo IX Paleologo of Montferrat and Anne of Alençon. Married Federico II Gonzaga (1531). 567, 572, 778, 781, 796, 805

630 Glossary of Names Paleologa, Maria (1509–1530). Daughter of Guglielmo IX Paleologo and Anne of Alençon. First fiancée of Federico II Gonzaga. 196, 567, 571, 572, 573, 578, 584, 594 Paleologo, Boniface [Bonifaccio] III (1483–1494). Marchese of Monferrato. Father of Guglielmo. 28 Paleologo, Boniface IV (1512–1530). Son and heir of Guglielmo IX. 572 Paleologo, Guglielmo IX (1486–1518). Marchese of Monferrato (1494). Married Anne d’Alençon (1508). 459, 572, 578, 594 Pallavicini, Antonio Gentile (1441–1507). Cardinal (1489). 161 Pallavicini, Luigia. Wife of Gianfrancesco [“Cagnino”] Gonzaga. 802 Pallavicino, Antonio Maria. Maestro. Brother of Galeazzo. 200 Pallavicino, Galeazzo (d. 1520). Husband of Isabella’s cousin, Elisabetta Sforza. Brother of Antonio Maria. 200, 401, 487 Pallavicino, Gerolamo (d. 1503). Bishop of Novara (1485). 182 Palmieri, Andrea Matteo (1493–1537). Cardinal (1527). 737 Panazza, Chiappino. Innkeeper at Revere. 316 Panciero [Pancera/Paniera?]. Mantuan agent. 710, 745, 749 Pandolfini, Girolamo. 631 Pandolfo. In service to Ferrante Gonzaga in Spain. 676, 697 Pane, Carolo dal. Messer. Resident of Pesaro. 670 Parentucelli, Tommaso (1397–1455). Pope Nicholas V. 297 Paris, Messer. 322 Parisi, Giovan Paolo [Paulo Giano Parrasio]. Humanist. 598, 600 Parone, Bertoncino. Courier. 790 Pasolino. See Fasolino, Francesco. Patrizia [“Comatre”]. Cook. 132 Paulo. Steward to Federico II Gonzaga. 564 Pavese, Nicolosa. Gentlewoman. 665 Pavia, Lorenzo da. See Gusnasco, Lorenzo.

Glossary of Names 631 Pavono. Messenger. 419 Pedrono Arciero, Joan. 293 Peglione, Martino. 7 Pendaglio, Borso. Ferrarese gentleman. 259 Peregrino, Don. 529 Peregrino [Pellegrino]. Engineer, builder, carpenter. 316 Perugino, Chiara. Widow of Pietro Perugino. 698 Perugino, Pietro. See Vannucci, Pietro. Petrarca, Francesco (1304–1374). Poet and humanist. 243, 249, 294, 308, 478, 547 Petrogentile, Signor. Resident at Gonzaga court. 57 Petrucci, Alfonso (1491–1517). Cardinal of Siena (1511–1517). Son of Pandolfo. 520, 527 Petrucci, Pandolfo (1425–1512). Lord of Siena. 300, 301 Peveraro, Girolamo. Mantuan merchant. 563 Pezopo, Pietro. 156 Pia, Eleonora. Wife of Giberto Pio da Carpi. Mother of Marco. 460 Pia, Emilia (d. 1528). Daughter of Marco Pio, lord of Carpi. Wife of Antonio da Montefeltro (natural brother of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino). Widowed (1500). 106, 216, 218, 284, 354, 505, 645, 646 Piangilato. Cook. 798 Piatese, Aldrovandino. Soldier in service of Annibale Bentivoglio. Jouster. 266, 268 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (1405–1464). Pope Pius II (1458–1464). 83 Piccolomini, Francesco Todeschini. Pope Pius III (22 September 1503–13 October 1503). 317 Picenardi, Alessandro. Secretary to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. Poet. Courtier in company of Eleonora Gonzaga in Rome. 416 Picenino, Giovan. Saddler. 624 Pico della Mirandola, Antonio Maria (d. 1501). Count. Lord of Concordia. Brother of Galeotto and Giovanni Pico. 29, 184

632 Glossary of Names Pico della Mirandola, Caterina (1454–1501). Wife of Rodolfo Gonzaga (1484). Daughter of Gianfrancesco I, lord of Mirandola. 121, 132, 134 Pico della Mirandola, Federico. Third son of Galeotto Pico and Bianca Maria d’Este. 317 Pico della Mirandola, Galeotto (d. 1499). Lord of Mirandola. Married Bianca d’Este (1468). 310 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni Francesco II. First son of Galeotto Pico and Bianca Maria d’Este. 317 Pico della Mirandola Lodovico I (ca. 1472–1509). Condottiere. Count of Concordia. Lord of Mirandola. Second son of Galeotto and Bianca Maria d’Este. 268, 317, 350, 411, 412, 416 Pico della Mirandola, Pandolfo. Gonzaga agent. Accompanied the young Ferrante Gonzaga to Spain as his guardian. 668, 675, 727, 731 Piemonte, Bernardino da. Father of Michele. 82 Piemonte, Michele da. Page. 82 Piero, Domenico di (d. 1497). Venetian jeweler. Collector of antiquities. 158 Pignatta. See Stabellino, Giovan Battista. Pigozzi. Family under Gonzaga rule. 830 Pincaro, Alessandro. Chamberlain of Isabella d’Este. 116, 211, 212 Pio, Alberto III (1475–1531). Prince of Carpi. Gonzaga agent in French court, subsequently in service to Louis XII. Ambassador of Maximilian I at papal court (1510–1520). Son of Marco I Pio, lord of Carpi. Married Camilla Gonzaga (1494), then Cecilia Orsini (1518). 123, 125, 424, 428, 436, 442, 445 Pio, Enea. 728 Pio, Giberto da Carpi (d. 1500). Married Eleonora Bentivoglio. Father of Marco. 459 Pio, Giberto. In service to Alfonso d’Este. 636 Pio, Ludovico da Carpi. 70 Pio, Marco da Carpi. Son of Giberto and Eleonora Bentivoglio. 459 Pio di Sabaudia, Alberto. 274

Glossary of Names 633 Piombo, Sebastiano del (1485–1547). Venetian painter and draughtsman active in Rome. 727, 731 Pironeo, Maffio [Mapheo]. 165 Pisani, Francesco (1494–1570). Cardinal (1517). 752 Pisano, Giorgio. Venetian gentleman. 67 Pitigliano, Niccolò. See Orsini, Niccolò di. Plato (429?–327 BCE). Greek philosopher. 482, 484 Plautus, Titus Maccius (ca. 254–184 BCE). Roman playwright. 137, 162, 264, 265, 266, 268, 270, 327 Podocataro, Livio. Archbishop of Cypress (1524). 720 Poggio [Podio], Cristoforo da. Bentivoglio agent. 311 Polidoro, Friar. Possibly Polidoro Virgili (1470–1555), cleric, historian, and humanist who emigrated to England. 161 Polissena, Lady. 10 Polo, Ser [Sier]. Clown. 791 Pomponazzi, Pietro (1462–1525). Philosopher. Professor at University of Bologna (1511). Teacher of Ercole Gonzaga (1522). 644, 652 Pontano, Giovanni (1422–1503). Humanist writer in diplomatic service to the lords of Naples and a central figure in the Neapolitan Academy. 87 Ponzano, Giacomo. Podestà of Mantua. 572 Popoli, Ugo di. Count. 703 Porta, Giovan Maria della. Ambassador to Rome of Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino (1527). 723 Porto, Giovan Maria da. Agent in Ferrara. 256, 257 Pozzo, Giovanni dal [Zoanne dal Pozo]. Mantuan citizen. 322 Pozzolengo, Bravo of. Robber. 154 Prete. Courtier in Ferrara. 252 Preti, Donato de. Gonzaga agent. Envoy to the Imperial Court (1510). 165, 171, 178, 316, 322, 432, 543 Preti, Federico de. Gonzaga courtier. 469

634 Glossary of Names Preti, Vincenzo de. 644, 663 Preti, Violante de’. Teacher to the children of Federico I Gonzaga and Margaret of Bavaria. Supervisor of the ladies in Isabella d’Este’s service. 131 Prisciani, Pellegrino. Humanist intellectual in Ferrara. 403 Prosperi, Bernardino de’. Ferrarese courtier. Correspondent and informer of Isabella d’Este. 60, 77, 78, 164, 356, 359, 362, 376, 377, 403, 476, 477, 478, 485, 488, 495, 497, 623, 642, 651, 657 Prosperi, Elionora de’. Daughter of Bernardino. Lady in service at Isabella d’Este’s court. 495 Prospero, Maestro. Doctor who served Ferrante Gonzaga in Rome. 727 Puttis, Niccolò [Nicolao] de. Agent. 203 Raffaello [Raphael]. See Sanzio, Raffaello. Raffaello di Urbino. See Urbino, Raffaello di. Rame, Benedetto. Agent. 812 Ramiro. Lord. See Lorqua, Ramiro de. Rangoni, Ercole (1494–1527). Cardinal (1517). Bishop of Adria (1519). 683 Rangoni, Guido. Count. Commander of the French army of François I in the wars against Emperor Charles V. Son of Bianca Bentivoglio and Niccolò Rangoni of Spilamberto. 614 Rangoni, Violante. See Martinengo, Violante. 727, 735, 737, 738 Raphael. See Sanzio, Raffaello. Redini, Girolomo [“Heremite”] (ca. 1459–1524). Augustinian friar. Gonzaga agent. Gonzaga envoy to Rome (1496–1508). 163 Regazzi, Antonio Maria di San Secondo [“Milanese”]. Maestro di camera of Francesco II Gonzaga. 300, 321, 325 Remolino. See Remolins, Francisco de. Remolins, Francisco de [“Remolino”] (1462–1518). Archbishop of Sorrento (1501–1512). Cardinal (1503). Bishop of Fermo (1504). 292 Renata di Francia. See Renée de France.

Glossary of Names 635 Renée de France [Renata di Francia] (1510–1575). Duchess of Ferrara (1534– 1559). Daughter of Louis XII of France and Anne of Brittany. Married Ercole II, duke of Ferrara (1528). 724, 728, 748, 781, 795 Rezo [Reggio], Dorotea da. Orphan. 209 Riario, Raffaele Sansone (1460–1521). Cardinal of San Giorgio in Velabro (1477). 518, 520 Ricardo. Captain. 363, 364 Ricciardetto. Dancing master. 221 Ridolfi, Niccolò (1501–1550). Cardinal (1517). Archbishop of Salerno (1533–48). Son of Piero Ridolfi and Contessina de’ Medici. 748, 823 Rigaldo, Monsignor. Recipient of wedding gift. 455 Rinochi, Francesco. Facilitator of prisoner exchange. 757 Riva, Francesco di. Hosted Isabella d’Este during plague (1506). 363, 364 Rivarol, Iseppo da. Jewish man living near San Martino. 685 Rizio, Antonio. Engineer working in Florence and Carrara. 150 Rodiano. Mantuan resident. 191 Rohan, Pierre de. Marshall of Gie. 320 Roia. Punished in Solarolo. 815 Romano, Giancristoforo (ca. 1465–1512). Roman sculptor. 150, 204, 241, 378, 379, 381 Rosetto, Giovan Antonio. Resident of Villa Nuova of Sermide. 827 Rossano, Maria. Daughter of Bartolomeo. Complained about attempted rape of a child. 56 Rossetto, Roberto de. Entered Novara with Cesare Borgia (1500). 201 Rossi, Mino di. 297 Rosso. Bishop. 674 Rosso, Filippo. Count. 400, 674 Rovere, Felice della (ca. 1483–1536). Daughter of Pope Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere). Wife of Gian Giordano Orsini. 537, 703

636 Glossary of Names Rovere, Francesco Maria della (1490–1538). Duke of Urbino (1508) and of Sora. Captain General of the Church (1509). Lord of Pesaro (1512). Son of Giovanni della Rovere and Giovanna da Montefeltro. Nephew of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, adopted as Guidobaldo’s son. Married Eleonora Gonzaga (1508). 254, 289, 353, 354, 406, 407, 408, 420, 427, 432, 441, 442, 449, 463, 467, 470, 492, 505, 548, 636, 645, 646, 703, 712, 713, 723 Rovere, Giovanna della. Mother of Francesco Maria. Sister of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro. 353 Rovere, Giovanni della (ca. 1457–1501). Roman prefect (1475). Duke of Sora and Alce. Lord of Senigallia. Son of Rafaello and Teodora Manirolo. Father of Francesco Maria della Rovere. Nephew of Pope Sixtus IV; brother of Pope Julius II. Married Giovanna da Montefeltro (1475). 79, 254 Rovere, Giuliano della (1443–1513). Papal legate to France (1476, 1480). Bishop of Bologna (1483–1502). Cardinal of St. Peter in Chains. Archbishop of Carpentras. Pope Julius [Giulio] II (1503). 301, 307, 317, 318, 320, 321, 322, 323, 347, 349, 353, 383, 387, 389, 391, 392, 393, 394, 406, 407, 408, 409, 411, 412, 413, 415, 416, 418, 420, 422, 423, 424, 427, 428, 429, 432, 434, 435, 436, 437, 439, 440, 441, 442, 445, 449, 462, 463, 468, 470, 483, 492, 511 Roveto, Giovanni. Uncle of Faustina. 660 Rozone, Galeazzo. Son of Gian Stefano. 577 Rozone, Gian Stefano. Gonzaga envoy. Ambassador to France; tutor there to Federico Gonzaga. Father of Galeazzo. 536, 548, 551, 552, 563, 566, 568, 569, 571, 577 Rozzona, Costanza. Mantuan gentlewoman. 729 Ruberti, Antonio de. Gonzaga agent. 126 Ruberti, Giovan Francesco di. Gonzaga agent. 373 Ruberto [de Ruberti], Stefano. 42 Ruffino, Alessandro de. Courtier in Ferrara. 234 Ruggiero. Singer. 59 Rusca, Girolamo. Presumed son of Loterio and Eleonora da Correggio. 583 Rusca, Loterio. Spouse of Eleonora da Correggio. 604 Ruta. Gentleman in Rome. 703 Sacchetta, Greco da. Isabella d’Este’s secretary and trusted court functionary. 50

Glossary of Names 637 Sacchetti, Matteo [“Antimaco”/“Antimacho”]. Secretary to Francesco II Gonzaga (1484–ca. 1505). 33, 50, 116, 171, 321 Sala, Antonio Maria. Owner of book on antiquities. 182 Salamaco, Girolamo. Steward to the duke of Urbino. 441 Salamoncino. Jewish man in danger of eviction. 189 Salimbene, Antonio. Mantuan ambassador in Venice. 71, 72, 91 Salviati, Giacomo [Jacopo] (d. 1533). Son of Giacomo Salviati and Lucrezia de Medici. Father of Maria Salviati. 64 San Felice, Giovan Antonio di. Father of Susanna. 692 San Felice, Susanna. Daughter of Giovan Antonio. Participant in a legal suit. 692 Sannazaro, Jacopo (1458–1530). Neapolitan poet and humanist, most famous for his pastoral novel, Arcadia (ca. 1489). 511, 535 San Piero, Girolamo da. Conveyer of marriage contract. 301 San Secondo, Cesare da. Negotiator of potential marriage for Ferrante Gonzaga. 726 San Secondo, Jacopo [Giacomo] da [di]. Musician. 683 Sanseverino, Antonio Maria (d. 1509). Condottiere. Lord of Bassignana, Cittadella, and Montorio Veronese. 122 Sanseverino, Bernardino (d. ca. 1516). Prince of Bisignano. Father of count of Chiaramonte. 522 Sanseverino, Federico (ca. 1475–1516). Cardinal (1492). 140, 215 Sanseverino, Galeazzo da (ca. 1458–1525). Condottiere. Son of Roberto. Married Bianca Sforza (d. 1496), then Elisabetta del Carretto (1481–1531). 28 Sanseverino, Gaspare [“Il Fracassa”/ “Fracasso”] (1455–1519). Condottiere. Lord of Piadena, Spineda, Cittadella et al. Son of Roberto. 122, 300 Sansoni, Gerolamo (d. 1536). Bishop of Lodi (1519–1527, 1533–1536). 714 Sansovino, Giacomo Antonio [Jacopo Tatti] (1486–1570). Sculptor and architect. 674 Santa Croce, Giacomo. Taken prisoner by Pope Alexander VI. 301 San Vitale, Gualtiero da. Poet. 70

638 Glossary of Names San Vitale, Laura da. Perhaps Laura Pallavicino Sanvitale (ca. 1495–1576). Daughter of Federico Pallavicino and Clarice Malaspina. Married Gianfrancesco Sanvitale (d. 1519). 674 San Vitale, Niccolò da. Son-in-law of Niccolò da Correggio. 260 Sanz. Agent of Isabella d’Este. 376, 377 Sanzio [Santi], Giovanni (ca. 1435–1494). Painter and writer. Father of Raffaello. 66, 486 Sanzio [Santi], Raffaello [Raphael] (1483–1520). Painter. Son of Giovanni. 66, 486, 532, 539, 715, 727, 735 Saracena, Diana. Lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este. Daughter of Gherardo and Eleonora. 570 Saracena, Eleonora Nasella. Wife of Gherardo Saraceno. Mother of Diana. 570 Saraceno, Gherardo. Father of Diana Saracena. 570 Saraceno [Sarasino], Francesco. Son of Gherardo. 736 Sassatello, Giovanni da (d. 1530?). Condottiere. 641 Sassetta [Sasetta], Ranieri della. Condottiere. 301 Savelli [Savello], Silvio. Roman nobleman. Condottiere. 292 Savoie, Louise de [Louise of Savoy] (1476–1531). Duchess of Auverne and Bourbon. Duchess of Nemour. Married Charles d’Orléans (1488). Mother of King François I of France. 551, 552 Scaldamazza, Niccolò. Gonzaga agent. 315 Scalona, Battista. Secretary and agent of Francesco II Gonzaga. 287, 386, 430, 434, 439, 440 Scalona, Giancarlo. Gonzaga secretary and agent. 316 Scardovi. Family resident in Solarolo. 772 Schifo, Ottobono. Proposed by Francesco II Gonzaga as appellate judge. 123 Scozia. Recommended by Isabella d’Este to her mother. 6 Secco, Francesco (ca. 1423–1496). Condottiere. Lord of San Martino Gusnago. Married Caterina, natural daughter of marchese Ludovico Gonzaga. 21, 33 Sedazarro, Antonio. Mastro. Father of Giacomo. 21

Glossary of Names 639 Sedazarro, Giacomo. Husband of a runaway wife in Mantua. 21 Selim I (1470–1520). Ottoman sultan (1512–1520). Son of Bayezid II and Gulbahar Sultana. Father of Suleyman [“the Magnificent”]. 518 Serafina, Sister Violante. 485 Serafino. See Ciminelli, Serafino. Serafino, Fra. Chaplain and medical doctor. 523, 527 Serra, Zoan dalla. 668 Sestola, Girolamo da [“Il Coglia”]. Organist at the church of San Paolo in Ferrara from 1488. One of Isabella d’Este’s music teachers. 234, 256, 257, 560, 613, 768, 770, 775, 782, 783 Sforza, Anna (1476–1497). Duchess of Ferrara. Daughter of Galeazzo Maria and Bona of Savoy [Bonne de Savoie]. Niece of Ludovico. Sister of Giangaleazzo. First wife of Alfonso I d’Este (1491). 39, 69, 77, 89, 102, 159 Sforza, Bianca. Natural daughter of Ludovico and Bernardina de Corradis. Married Galeazzo Sanseverino (1496). 501 Sforza, Bianca Maria (1472–1510). Daughter of Galeazzo Maria and Bona of Savoy [Bonne de Savoie]. Second wife (1494) of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. 233 Sforza, Bona (1494–1557). Queen of Poland by marriage to Sigismund I Jagiello (1518). Daughter of Gian Galeazzo and Isabella d’Aragona. 481, 520 Sforza, Francesco [“Il Duchetto”] (1491–1512). Count of Pavia (1491–1499). Abbot of Noirmoutiers. Eldest son of Gian Galeazzo Sforza and Isabella d’Aragona. 481 Sforza, Francesco Maria [Francesco II] (1495–1535). Duke of Bari (1497) and Milan (1521). Son of Ludovico Maria Sforza and Beatrice d’Este. Married Christina of Denmark (1534). 83, 645, 714, 763, 771 Sforza, Gian Galeazzo (1469–1494). Duke of Milan (1476–1494). Son of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Bona of Savoy [Bonne de Savoie]. Married Isabella d’Aragona of Naples (1489). 28, 80, 83, 181 Sforza, Ginevra (1440–1507). Natural daughter of Alessandro Sforza. Married Sante Bentivoglio (1454), then Giovanni II Bentivoglio, lord of Bologna (1464). Dedicatee of Gynevera de le clare donne by Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti. 55, 387, 390

640 Glossary of Names Sforza, Giovanni (1466–1510). Lord of Pesaro. Married Maddalena Gonzaga (1489), daughter of Francesco I, then Lucrezia Borgia (1492; annulled 1497). 261 Sforza, Ludovico Maria [“Il Moro”] (1452–1508). Duke of Milan (1494–1500). Son of Francesco I and Bianca Maria Visconti. Married Beatrice d’Este (1491). 32, 33, 39, 51, 69, 76, 79, 80, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 103, 111, 113, 122, 123, 125, 133, 140, 155, 160, 164, 165, 166, 170, 175, 180, 181, 195, 201, 645 Sforza, Massimiliano (1493–1530). Duke of Milan (1512–1515). Son of Ludovico and Beatrice d’Este. 76, 442, 490, 491, 492, 498, 513, 514, 517, 520, 532, 544, 645 Sforza d’Aragona, Galeazzo. 331, 532, 793 Sguagna. Guardian of girl married to a Gonzaga servant. 321, 564 Silvestri, Guido Postumo of Pesaro (1479–1521). Professor of medicine at Ferrara (1510). Poet. 493 Simone. Jewish banker resident in Poviglio. Cousin of Lucio. 756, 760, 761 Sirvia [Silvia]. Lady in service to Isabella d’Este. 1 Socio, D. Addressee of order for garden plants. 476 Soderini, Francesco (1453–1524). Cardinal of Volterra. Brother of Piero Soderini of Florence. 518 Soderini, Piero di Tommaso (1450–1522). Gonfaloniere of Florence (1502–1512). Married Argentina Malaspina. 297, 369 Solomon. Jewish man. 15 Sommi, Paolo [Paulo]. Recipient of gifts for Alessandro Bentivoglio. 678 Soncino. Chamberlain to Sigismondo Gonzaga. 624 Soria, Don Lope de (d. 1544). Ambassador of Emperor Charles V in Genoa (1522–1527). Imperial Ambassador to Venice up to 1539. 715, 717 Spagnoli, Tolomeo. Chancellor and secretary of Francesco II Gonzaga (ca. 1506– 1519). Natural son of Gonzaga courtier Pietro Spagnoli and brother of poet Battista Spagnoli. 138, 161, 171, 491, 517 Spagnolo, Alfonso. Informed Isabella of a murder. 186 Spagnolo, Andrea. Maestro. 420 Spagnolo, Gianicco. Clown. 558

Glossary of Names 641 Spagnolo. Squire. 263, 365 Spagnolo [Spagnoli], Alessandro. 316, 529 Spinula, Andrea. Genoese. 717 Stabellino, Giovan Battista [“Il Pignatta”]. Actor and courtier in Ferrara. 478, 550, 596, 785 Stanga, Girolamo [Hieronimo]. Courtier in service to Ludovico Sforza. 29, 75, 76, 133 Stefano. Correspondent from Ferrara. 301 Stella, Giovan Antonio. Cat owner. 597 Stewart [Stuart], John (d. 1536). Duke of Albany (1485). Count of Auvergne and Lauragais (1505). Son of Alexander Stewart and Anne de la Tour d’Auvergne. Grandson of King James I of Scotland. 703 Store, Tommaso da le. 51 Strozzi, Agostino. Augustinian canon. Abbot of San Bartolomeo in Fiesole. Author of La Defensione delle donne, of uncertain date. Member of the Mantuan branch of the Strozzi family. 129, 130 Strozzi, Ercole (1473–1508). Ferrarese poet. Son of Tito Vespasiano Strozzi. 258 Strozzi, Lorenzo. Count. 496, 514 Strozzi, Ottaviano. Count. 629 Strozzi, Tommaso. 575 Suardi, Barbara. Wife of Gianmarco. 269 Suardi, Gianmarco. Husband of Barbara. 269 Suardino. See Suardo, Jacopo. Suardo, Jacopo [“Suardino”]. Gonzaga envoy. 396, 428, 429, 436, 438, 498, 501, 549, 667, 682, 812 Suleyman I. Ottoman sultan (reigned 1520–1566). 518, 657 Taddea. Signora. 819 Tagliapietra, Maddalena. Governess to Federico Gonzaga from December 1502, including during his period as hostage to Pope Julius II. Supervisor of the ladies-in-waiting (1514). 298, 466, 483

642 Glossary of Names Tarlatino. Having wood cut for making a bastion. 445 Tasso, Bernardo (1493–1569). Poet and courtier. Father of Torquato Tasso. 781 Tassoni, Giulio. Courtier to Ercole I d’Este. Married Ippolita d’ Contrari (1487). 266 Tebaldeo, Antonio. Poet. 221, 358, 469 Terzo, Lodovico. Son of Jacomino. Accused of attempted rape. 56 Tesina, Agnese. Unlawful woman. 587 Testagrossa. 150 Testagrossa, Giovan Angelo. Lute player. 579 Tezoli. Agent. 519 Thomaso, Master. 35 Tintori, Alessandro di. Citizen of Crema. Recommended as appellate judge. 123 Tolentino, Antonio da. Condottiere. 80 Tomba, Del. Mantuan family. 123 Tommei, Vincenzo di. Merchant in Palermo. 756 Tonello. Resident of Solarolo. 824 Tonini, Lucia di. Resident of Medole. 609 Torrelli, Achille (d. 1522). Condottiere. Count of Guastalla (1494). Married Veronica Pallavicino. 317 Torelli, Guido (d. 1501). Lord of Montechiarugolo. Condottiere. 116, 130 Torelli, Ippolita (d. 1520). Married Baldassarre Castiglione (1516). 612 Torelli, Ludovica (1500–1569). Countess of Guastalla (1522). Daughter of Achille Torelli. Married Ludovico Stanga, then Andrea Martinengo (1525). 116 Toresella. Mantuan wool carder. 122 Torre, Pagano della. Courtier in service at Urbino. Nephew of Benedetto Capilupi. 343 Tosabezzi, Benedetto (1450–1524). Named counselor to the commune in 1479. Replaced Giorgio Brognolo as Gonzaga ambassador to Venice in 1497. 132, 135, 142, 150, 157, 215

Glossary of Names 643 Tovaglia, Agnolo. Florentine merchant. Gonzaga agent in Florence. 299, 301, 337, 338, 346, 603 Trémoille, Louis II de [Tremoglia] (1460–1525). Lieutenant general of Louis XII’s French army in Milan (1499–1500). Admiral of Guyenne and Brittany (1502– 1525). Governor of Burgundy (1506–1525). Married Louisa Borgia (1517). 87, 201, 424, 498 Tridapali, Antonio. Mantuan citizen. 322 Tridapali, Giovanni Francesco. Secretary to Isabella d’Este after Mario Equicola passed into service for Federico. 703, 729, 738 Trionfo, Antonio di. Delivered emerald. 19 Trionfo, Giovan Maria. Lover of Bartolomeo Tromboncino’s wife. 186 Trissino, Giangiorgio (1478–1550). Humanist poet. 510, 638 Triumfi, Ludovico de. Father-in-law of Eleonora, lady-in-waiting to Camilla Bentivoglio. 649 Trivulzio, Giovanni [Gian] Giacomo. Milanese general under King Louis XII of France. 201, 293, 297, 300 Troches, Francesco. Servant to Cesare Borgia. 292 Trombetta. Messenger in service to Giovanna della Rovere. 225, 353 Tromboncino, Bartolomeo (ca. 1470–after 1535). Composer. 183, 186, 188, 196, 268, 270 Trotti, Alfonso. Ferrarese nobleman. Brother of Giovanna. 237, 244, 547, 556, 741 Trotti, Brandolizio [Brandalisi]. Ferrarese nobleman. 557, 559 Trotti, Galeazzo. Agent. 38 Trotti, Giovanna. Lady-in-waiting to Isabella d’Este. Sister of Alfonso Trotti. 237 Trotti, Isabella. Daughter of Brandolizio. Sister of Negro Trotti. Married Francesco Casati. 175, 177, 180, 181 Trotti, Negro. Isabella d’Este’s master of the horse. 175, 177, 303 Trotti, Sigismondo. Ferrarese nobleman. Knight of Malta. 556, 557 Trotti [Trotto], Gianmaria [Giovanmaria]. Ferrarese nobleman in service to Ercole I d’Este. 12, 13 Tucca, Giovan Tommaso [Zoan Tomaso]. Secretary of Don Alfonso d’Avalos. 668

644 Glossary of Names Tudor, Henry (1457–1509). King Henry VII of England (1485). 161 Tudor, Henry (1491–1547). King Henry VIII of England (1509). 418, 429, 434, 487, 614, 672, 710 Turchetto. Courier. 712 Uberti, Ludovico degli. Member of the Florentine family, a branch of which migrated to Mantua. 116, 315 Uberti, Uberto degli. Mantuan citizen. 321 Urbano (d. 1522). Factor in service to Ercole Gonzaga. 653 Urbino, Raffaello di. Goldsmith. 727?, 735, 738 Valcamonica, Lorenzo. Cowherd. 54 Valentina. Courtesan. Daugher of Diodato. 192 Valentino. See Borgia, Cesare. Valerio, Francesco. Perhaps Gian Francesco Valier, Venetian nobleman. 373 Valier, Carlo. Venetian nobleman and friend. 447 Valier, Gian Francesco. See Valerio, Francesco. Valle, Andrea Delia (1463–1534). Bishop of Crotone (1496) and of Mileto (1508). Titular of cardinal of Sant’Agnese in Agone (1517). 529 Valois, Charles (1470–1498). King of France (1483). Invader of Italy (1494). Married Anne de Bretagne (1491). 79, 80, 83, 86, 96, 122, 129, 165 Valois-Orléans, Louis (1462–1515). King Louis XII of France (1498–1515). Married Anne de Bretagne (1499), then Mary Tudor (1514). 165, 170, 200, 201, 260, 278, 290, 292, 293, 297, 300, 301, 307, 309, 312, 317, 322, 360, 361, 389, 393, 406, 407, 413, 416, 424, 428, 429, 431, 432, 434, 435, 436, 438, 439, 443, 523, 748 Valtellina, Antonio. Secretary of Niccolò Postumo da Correggio. 398, 399 Vannucci, Pietro [Pietro Perugino] (1446/50–1523). Painter. 282, 296, 299, 328, 337, 338, 347, 348, 357, 698 Varrotaro, Bovetto. Furrier. 290 Vasto, Ludovico II del (1438–1504). Marchese of Saluzzo (1475–1504). 201 Veniero, Domenico. Venetian ambassador to Rome during 1527 sack of the city. 722, 723, 777, 800

Glossary of Names 645 Vergil. See Virgil. Verità, Giacomo de. Servant. 19 Viadana [Vitelliana], Marco di. Venerable friar. Messenger from queen of Hungary. 380 Vianello, Michele. Citizen of Venice. Art collector. Connoisseur and mediator for Isabella’s art purchases there. 227, 238, 241, 245, 279, 281, 287, 289, 295, 336, 366, 367, 368, 373, 374 Viano, Messer de. Ferrarese. Prepared party for Isabella. 526 Vicenza, Girolamo da. In service at Gonzaga court. 633 Vieze, Cesare da le. Manuscript illuminator. 478, 547 Villa, Agostino [Augustino de]. 77 Vincenzo, Don. Greeted at Ferrarese court. 11 Vinci, Leonardo da (1452–1519). Artist. Polymath. 72, 166, 228, 229, 275, 338, 339, 346, 369 Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro] (70–19 BCE). Roman poet. Author of the Aeneid. 39, 184, 243, 245, 249, 355 Visconti, Antonio. Courtier and musician in the service of Beatrice Sforza at Milan. Diplomat in service to Milan at Ferrara. 115, 170 Visconti, Eleonora. Hosted Isabella in Pavia. 572 Visconti, Filippo Maria (1392–1447). Duke of Milan (1412–1447). 83 Visconti, Galeazzo. Envoy of Louis XII of France. 424, 436, 440 Visconti, Gaspare [Gasparo]. Poet. 62, 315 Vismali [Vismara, Vicemali]. Family of Milanese nobles. 400 Vismara [Vicemala/Vismali], Giovan Angelo. Milanese nobleman. Gonzaga agent in Milan. 290? Vismara [Vicemala/Vismali], Giovan Battista. Milanese nobleman. Gonzaga agent in Milan. 352, 385 Vitelli, Paolo (1461–1499). Condottiere. Lord of Montone. 140 Vitelli, Vitellozzo (ca. 1458–1502). Condottiere. Lord of Montone, Città di Castello, Anghiari, and Monterchi. 292, 301

646 Glossary of Names Volta, Antonio dalla, (d. ca. 1515). Condottiere. Bolognese. 301 Volta, Giovanni della [da Bondeno di Gonzaga]. Huntsman. Dog keeper. 425 Zachetto. Courier. 239 Zadosi [Zudosi], Don Ludovico. In dispute in Solarolo. 793 Zadosi [Zudosi], Xigilio [Vigilio]. Brother of Ludovico. 793 Zaffardo, Francisco. Imprisoned for debts. 81 Zanardo, Antonio. Man at arms to Ludovico Sforza. 28 Zanino. Courtier. 278, 507 Ziglioli [Zilioli/Ziliolo], Girolamo [Hieronimo/Gerolamo]. Courtier in Ferrara. 35, 212, 403, 489, 546, 592, 669, 803 Zorzi, Mario. Venetian doctor. 67

Abbreviations

ASMo

Archivio di Stato, Modena

ASMn

Archivio di Stato, Mantua

AG

Archivio Gonzaga, Archivio di Stato, Mantua

Baretti

Dizionario italiano, ed inglese. Edited by Giuseppe Marco Antonio Baretti. Livorno: Pozzolini, 1828.

Battaglia

Grande dizionario della lingua italiana. Edited by Salvatore Battaglia. Turin: UTET, 1973.

Battisti and Alessio

Dizionario etimologico italiano. Edited by Carlo Battisti and Giovanni Alessio. 5 vols. Florence: Barbera, 1975.

Condottieri di ventura

Condottieri di ventura: Il dizionario anagrafico di condottieri di ventura; Note biografiche di capitani di guerra e di condottieri di ventura operanti in Italia nel 1330–1550. .

Castiglioni and Mariotti

Vocabolario della lingua latina. Edited by Luigi Castiglioni and Scevola Mariotti. Turin: Loescher, 1971.

CH

David M. Cheney. The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church. .

Cherubini

Vocabolario mantovano-italiano. Edited by Francesco Cherubini. Milan: Bianchi, 1827.

CHRC

Salvador Miranda, Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. .

DBI

Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–. .

Du Cange

Charles DuFresne Du Cange. Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis. Edited by G. A. Louis Henschel,  P. Carpentier, Christoph Adelung, and Léopold Favre. 10 vols. Graz: Akademische Druck-und Verlagsanstalt, 1954.

Mazzoldi

Mantova: La storia. Vol. 2: Da Ludovico secondo marchese a Francesco secondo duca. Edited by Leonardo Mazzoldi. Mantua: Istituto Carlo d’Arco, 1961.

OED

Oxford English Dictionary. .

Pizzati

Lodovico Pizzati., Venetian-English English-Venetian: When in Venice do as the Venetians. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2007. 647

648 Abbreviations Sabatini Coletti

Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti. Edited by Francesco Sabatini and Vittorio Coletti. Florence: Giunti, 1997.

TLIO

Tesoro della lingua italiana delle origini. .

Treccani

Vocabolario Treccani. .

Zingarelli

Lo Zingarelli 1994: Vocabolario della lingua italiana di Nicola Zingarelli. Edited by Miro Dogliatti and Luigi Rosiello, 12th ed. Bologna: Zingarelli, 1993.

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668 Bibliography Tuohy, Thomas. Herculean Ferrara: Ercole d’Este (1471–1505) and the Invention of a Ducal Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Tyler, James. “The Renaissance Guitar, 1500–1650.” Early Music 3, no. 4 (1975): 341–47. Tylus, Jane. Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, Literature, and the Signs of Others. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Ventura, Leandro. “Leonbruno, Lorenzo, “ DBI 64 (2005). Vercesi, Pier Luigi. “Il Leonardo mai visto: Scoperto il ritratto fatto a Isabella d’Este.” Corriere della Sera, October 11, 2013, p28. Viatte, Françoise. Léonard de Vinci: Isabelle d’Este. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux; Paris: Musée du Louvre, Département des arts graphiques, 1999. Vigilante, Magda. “Ciminelli, Serafino (Serafino Aquilano).” DBI 25 (1981). Villa, Alessandra. Istruire e rappresentare Isabella d’Este: Il “Libro de natura de amore” di Mario Equicola. Lucca: Fazzi, 2006. Walker-Meikle, Kathleen. Medieval Pets. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2012. Welch, Evelyn. Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400– 1600. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. __________. “Shopping with Isabella d’Este.” In Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 245–73; 352–59. Wikipedia. . Woods-Marsden, Joanna. “ ‘Ritratto al Naturale’: Questions of Realism and Idealism in Early Renaissance Portraits.” Art Journal 46, no. 3 (1987): 209–16. Yriarte, Charles. “Les relations d’Isabelle d’Este avec Léonard de Vinci.” Gazette des beaux arts 30, no. 37 (1888): 121–31. Zampetti, Pietro. “Agabiti, Pietro Paolo.” DBI 1 (1960). Zapperi, Roberto, “Brognolo, Giorgio.” DBI 14 (1972). __________.“Camposampiero, Ludovico.” DBI 17 (1974). Zimmermann, T. C. Price. Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of SixteenthCentury Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Lo Zingarelli 1994: Vocabolario della lingua italiana di Nicola Zingarelli. Edited by Miro Dogliotti and Luigi Rosiello. 12th ed. Bologna: Zingarelli, 1993.

Index The following index is analytical but not exhaustive. Entries refer to page numbers in the present edition. For references to individual persons, please see the Glossary of Names. Omitted are references found in an especially large number of letters (women, government, Mantua, Ferrara, and other major cities). References to Ferrara, Mantua, Milan, Naples, Rome, and Urbino can be found through other thematic entries (antiquities, artists, Italian Wars, Sack of Rome) or by seeking out the chronological timeframe of important events. References to these cities and others (excluding Mantua) include a “letters sent from” category, so that readers might more easily track Isabella’s travels (“letters sent from” a given city refer to letters sent by Isabella d’Este and not by others to her). Note that place references that figure in people’s names (e.g. Vinci) have also been excluded. Readers are advised to move between the Glossary of Names and the analytical index in search of specific events and topics. accounting. See finances actors. See theater advice: accounting, 93; decorating, 124; medical, 263–64, 413n300; offers of, 127–28, 276, 288, 291, 334, 336, 492, 512–13, 547; requests for, 124, 298, 486; taking of, 304n515, 318, 319, 324, 362, 500 Africans: as property, 22, 41–42, 46, 127–28, 135; attacks by, 510, 519, 540; in theater, 183. See also children and childhood agriculture, 22; destruction of crops, 307; farmers and farming, 45, 51, 73, 76, 85, 470, 568; gardens, nurseries, and orchards, 137, 264, 308, 352–53, 371–72, 441, 446, 453–54, 473n75; harvests, 93, 235, 314n15, 358, 503, 508; in theater, 189; ordering and receiving plants, 137, 474; plants, poachers and poaching, 171, 233n300. See also food; gardens and gardening alimony. See marriage allowances. See finances ambassadors, 15; accompaniment of, 68, 101, 124n322, 533; and political matters, 28, 64, 175–76n60, 204, 220, 323, 496,

501, 516; and weddings, 24n5, 57, 174–75, 178–81, 190, 192; Baldassare Castiglione as, 400n256, 414, 420n317, 441, 455n39, 485, 495n139 (see also under authors); children as, 312n10; delivering news, 64, 67, 90, 305, 327, 406, 496, 501, 533; handling money and goods, 60–61, 133; Isabella d’Este as, 9–10, 15, 22; receiving of, 233n301; sending and receiving letters, 64, 285, 345, 501; thanking of, 105–6, 314; to/in Florence, 53n94, 61n113, 318; to/in France, 175–76, 185n153, 204, 232; to/ in Rome, 210, 302, 303n508, 318, 318n21, 422n321, 441, 455n39, 485, 495n139, 501, 503n166, 512–13, 521n207; to/in Spain, 292, 295–96, 318, 323, 495n139; to/in Venice, 32n27, 55n98, 57, 105, 479n93, 491n129, 499, 511–12n183, 302 (see also Venice) Americas, discovery of, 479n91 amulets, 223n269 animals: asses (donkeys), 92; bird seed, 539; cats, 72, 125, 434, 572; cattle, 115; chickens, 478; civets, 39, 126, 471; dogs, 23, 125, 127, 164, 189, 669

670 Index 250, 314, 344, 356, 356n119, 357, 391n227, 398, 494; dragons, 184– 85; ermines, 403n265, 122n313, 180, 186, 191, 191n170; falcons, 43, 118, 164, 448, 449; goats, 109n268, 138n380, 187, 434; goslings, 160; horses, 38, 41, 202, 333, 357, 408, 439, 477, 485, 500–1 (see also cavalry); horses, and jousts, 112, 187–88; horses, and the palio, 92, 96, 160n68, 182n141, 192n174; horses, Arabian, 96n228, 188n164; horses, Friesian, 132n356; horses, in ceremonies, 178–80; horses, in travel, 74, 135, 175, 190, 250, 295–96, 373, 375, 288, 392–93, 413, 419–20, 423, 458, 491; horses, masters of, 126, 411n293; horses, Turkish, 245, 465; horses, racing, 91, 176, 338, 356; horses, strong, 131–32; lions, 39, 189; lynxes, 341; mules, 76, 133, 156, 180, 181, 201, 219, 296, 386, 420, 518; muleteers, 107, 138, 149, 201, 239, 295, 513n186; oxen, 446–47, 494; panthers, 189; parrots, 535, 539, 571, 572; pigs, 51–52, 80n175, 271, 434; racehorses, 91n219, 176, 356; sables, 178, 401–2, 541; tigers, 402; unicorns, 223 Annunciation, 220, 373, 376, 551 antiquities, 7, 89, 116–17, 130, 142, 158, 164n82, 242–43, 286n461; admiring of, 383, 497; collecting of, 5, 158n58, 242, 265n404, 273–74, 308; failure to acquire, 268, 397, 523–25; inquiries about, 130, 286, 383, 396, 521; shopping for, 7, 116, 117, 356–57. See also coins and medals apartments. See Ducal Palace Apollo. See myth apologies, 235, 262, 426; expressing disappointment, 95, 223, 361– 62n136, 471, 561, 570; expressing

sympathy, 105, 196, 226, 280; for being unable to send goods, 56, 85, 122–23, 136, 358; receipt of, 234, 240, 354n11, 415, 525, 564, 567; refusal of, 243; religious, 282; requests for, 114; upon death or illness, 237, 264, 268, 380, 501 apothecaries, 426, 523 architecture, 18, 50n84, 308, 373–74. See also Ducal Palace archives, 3n5, 11–12, 19; Archivio Gonzaga, 12, 478n91; in Modena, 23n2; Isabella d’Este Archive (IDEA), 12, 19 armies, 441, 463, 447, 519n201, 548n3; and taxes, 73; destroying crops, 307, 314n15; of Alfonso d’Aragona, 64–65; of Charles V, 4, 442, 451n28; of Alfonso d’Este, 449; of Charles d’Amboise, 301, 305, 332; of Francesco II Gonzaga, 72; French, 76, 232, 236n309, 237, 326, 495n138; Imperial, 210, 406n278, 504n166, 513n185, 547n32, 548; papal, 214, 344n86, 388n219, 458n44, 495; passing through, 136, 325–26; Spanish, 370; Swiss, 452, 453; Venetian, 56n101, 112n279, 307, 320, 334, 463n53. See also infantry; Italian Wars; soldiers; weapons arms. See weapons ars dictaminis, 14, 172n107 art: discussion of Isabella d’Este as patron of, 1, 5–6, 16, 17, 46–47, 89n208; drawings, 41, 43, 62, 83, 194; drawings, as references, 479, 488; drawings, of paintings, 122n313, 158n60, 249, 253; frescoes, 6, 50n84, 124n323, 199n192, 359n129; historia, 164, 247n345, 253n365; inventions, 198, 201, 202, 208, 253–54, 357, 408n285; paintings, 1, 5, 7n14, 18, 264, 249–50, 253, 442; paintings,

Index 671 commissions for, 159, 165n83, 208, 212–13, 249, 253, 254, 266, 308, 312, 313n12, 316, 328, 339, 399– 400, 493; paintings, Mannerist, 17; paintings, mythological, 17, 247, 266; paintings, narrative, 6, 220n208, 53n365; paintings, negotiations surrounding, 141, 157n56, 163, 164n81, 166–67, 197–98, 201–2, 207, 244, 248, 259, 260n389, 265n404, 266, 268–69, 336, 396n240; paintings, requests to see, 122n313, 403–4; portraits, 43, 54, 56, 83, 161, 164, 240, 257, 273, 518; portraits, of Federico II Gonzaga, 231, 238n316, 308, 337– 38, 339, 358, 359n129; portraits, of Isabella d’Este, 1, 6, 7, 122, 129, 142, 158–59, 249, 308, 349–50, 352, 554–55, 569; sculpture, 6, 7, 43, 158, 273n432, 356, 357, 411; statues and statuettes, 131, 141, 158n57, 246, 523–26. See also artists; devotional objects; marble; myth; printing artillery, 301, 305, 332, 333, 387, 420, 494, 531; artilleryman, 232. See also weapons artists: Andrea Mantegna, 6, 17, 50n84, 56n100, 95n227, 96, 124n323, 131n351, 208, 244, 254n368, 259, 273; Antonio Allegri da Correggio, 6; apprentices, 248; complaints about, 56, 253; Francesco Francia, 6, 308, 337n64, 338, 339, 349–50, 352, 569n80; Giancristoforo Romano, 6, 114, 146, 165n83, 271, 273; Giovanni Bellini, 6, 122, 141–42, 157, 163–64, 166–67, 197–98, 201–2, 207, 247–48, 253n366, 254, 260n389, 265n404, 266, 356n118; Leonardo da Vinci, 1, 3, 6, 17, 60n112, 122, 142, 158, 194, 249, 253, 267; Lorenzo Costa, 6, 142, 254, 266n408, 313, 337n64,

349–50, 404n271, 544n50, 569n80; Michelangelo Buonarroti, 3, 6; Pietro Perugino, 6, 141, 142, 198, 208, 212, 244, 248, 249, 253n366, 254, 259, 493; Raphael, 56n100, 358, 359n129, 399, 400, 506n168, 518n196, 523n212; Rubens, 1, 7, 350n97; sculptors, 43, 114, 142, 146, 165, 246, 271, 273, 410, 442, 473n75, 524; Titian, 1, 6, 7, 308, 350n97, 569. See also art Asola, 314, 315n16, 316–18, 330n53 assets. See finances astrology, 69, 180, 255, 304, 356n119, 581n109, 584 attorneys. See justice Augustinians, 23, 551n42, 556n53, 557n56 authors: Baldassare Castiglione, 8, 10, 82n180, 130n349, 151n31, 420n317 (see also under ambassadors); Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, 8, 363, 391, 394, 395n238; Catherine of Siena, 14; Cicero, 8, 13; Coluccio Salutati, 13; Dante, 8, 14, 168, 207, 353; dedications to the Este from, 4n8, 44n63, 287–89, 377; Gian Giorgio Trissino, 8, 459; Giovanni Boccaccio, 49n80, 296n489; Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, 8, 49; Jacopo Sannazaro, 8; Lorenzo de’ Medici, 8, 354n113, 291; Ludovico Ariosto, 4n8, 8, 191n171, 226n278, 280, 535, 555, 563; Mario Equicola, 8, 11n26, 18, 142, 267, 268 (see also under secretaries and chancellors); Matteo Bandello, 8, 393n234, 400n255, 428, 437n356; Matteo Maria Boiardo, 4n8, 8, 44, 360; Niccolò da Correggio, 8, 43, 53, 71n147, 123, 170n101, 175, 186, 190, 224; Niccolò Machiavelli, 13n30, 191n171, 200n195,

672 Index 213n235; Ovid, 8, 166, 168; Paolo Giovio, 8, 491n129, 530; Petrarch, 8, 13, 165–66, 168, 207, 404– 5nn275–76; Pietro Aretino, 14–15, 16n37, 80n176; Pietro Bembo, 8, 142, 259, 260n289, 265, 266, 315n16. See also Latin; literature; vernacular autograph letters, 12, 25n8, 442 banking. See finances banquets, 29–30, 359, 383; feasts, 33, 34, 91, 92, 192, 350, 376, 380n83, 397, 422, 482, 522. See also meals; religion and religious life; weddings baptism, 98–99, 150–51, 291n473, 380n184 baths (medicinal), 103, 379, 535–36, 559, 561, 575 beads, 7, 40, 145n5, 166–67 beds: and illness, 252, 264, 282, 529, 536; bedposts, 470; bedtime, 184, 380, 408n286; birthing, 239, 241; canopies, 149, 275, 535; funeral, 101; mobile, 281n450; returned after marriage, 33, 169; tapestries and hangings, 78, 275; sparvieri, 275–76, 278, 544 benefices, 394n237; obtainment of, 392, 394, 395; requests for, 23, 309, 383n201, 392, 485–85; transfer of, 303n509 bequests, 33, 339 Bergamo, 69, 70, 335, 381 betrothals, 258n382, 272n427; of Alfonso I d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia, 170; of Eleonora Gonzaga and Francesco Maria della Rovere, 142, 196n183, 200, 257–58; of Ercole II d’Este and Renée de France, 516n190; of Federico II Gonzaga and Giulia d’Aragona, 535, 537, 553n46; of Federico II Gonzaga and Maria Paleologa,

137n375, 416, 417, 418n313, 535; of Ferrante Gonzaga and Isabella di Capua, 517n19, 539. See also brides; marriage; weddings births: and age, 16–17n37; and community, 94n226, 117n302; announcements of, 62–63, 98; as a metaphor, 76n159, 107; birthing stones, 63; congratulations on, 62–63, 149, 150, 260–61, 281; dangers of, 63, 104, 117n300, 188n102, 113n285; disappointment about birth of daughters, 22, 62–63n120, 142; epistolary protocol for, 12n616; of daughters, 22, 62–63, 113n285, 143; of sons, 22, 59n106, 62n119, 67n138, 141, 142; midwives, 51n88, 153, 238, 239n322; postpartum purgation, 285. See also children and childhood; health and medicine; motherhood, mothers, and maternity; pregnancy bishops, 97, 101, 130, 166n86, 220n260, 359n131, 391n228, 480, 502, 531; archbishops, 1, 131, 216, 237, 430, 458, 497, 510, 562, 577; bishoprics, 23, 223, 344, 388; of Italian cities, 63, 87, 88, 179, 186, 210, 232n296, 243n332, 281, 343n83, 369, 393, 505, 485–86; of French cities, 344n85, 357n123, 423n323; suffragan, 88 blacksmiths, 234 boats and ships, 35; attacks on, 332–33, 508, 509–10, 535; barges, 39, 43, 56–58; boatmen, 79, 341, 355, 488, 507, 555; for carrying troops, 332, 453, 471; in ceremonies, 58–59, 387; lodging in, 38; races, 393; sickness, 424; transporting goods, 114, 123, 125, 333, 376, 423, 444, 507, 542, 494; travel by, 38, 56, 86, 103, 173, 174, 176–77, 230, 376, 413n300, 423, 513, 529, 538

Index 673 Bologna, 22, 80, 177, 205, 276, 298, 475; and Bentivoglio family, 141, 209– 10, 253n367, 279, 281–83, 285, 310; letters sent from, 529–31, 537; military events in, 143, 213n234, 279–80, 281–83, 285, 310, 465; study in, 435–37, 455, 462, 469, 482n100; travel to/through, 205n207, 330–32, 335, 338, 443, 469–70, 528–29; requesting goods (art, jewelry, etc.), 253, 304, 338, 358, 390 bonfires, 236, 482 books: and Venice, 45, 165, 404n273; binding, 168, 287–88, 438n359; booksellers, 21, 45; borrowing and lending of, 166n86, 243n332, 353n109, 354, 430; collecting of, 5, 6, 7–8, 308; financial, 94, 557; gratitude for, 378, 563; in theater, 191; inventory of, 360n133; lyrical, 53, 353, 354, 404; manuscripts, 1, 19, 165n85, 289n468, 353n109, 360n133, 404n273; musical, 53, 62, 419; Nec spe nec metu, 267–68; of antiquities, 130; of eclogues, 60; prayer, 193, 287–88; printing, 14, 165, 166, 258, 405; requests for, 45, 289, 312, 314, 360, 377, 403. See also Latin; libraries; literature; printing; vernacular Borgoforte, 39, 87n200, 225, 230, 245, 448, 453, 489, 491; letters sent from, 409–10 Brescia, 55, 69, 70, 92n222, 105, 115, 318, 381, 439n363 Bressello, 38 breastfeeding, 153, 569 brides, 238, 475, 524; Eleonora Gonzaga as, 293–94, 303, 305n519; Elisabetta Gonzaga as, 200n194, 257; Isabella d’Este as, 3, 21, 569; Isabella di Capua as, 535, 547; Lucrezia Borgia as, 173–92; Maria Paleologa as, 417, 418n313,

420–21, 424–25, 428, 433, 553n46; of Christ, 350, 358. See also betrothals; marriage; weddings cameos, 6, 565 candles, 101, 183, 187, 264, 345–46, 376n172, 432, 539. See also lighting Canneto, 419, 477; letters sent from, 200 cannons. See weapons canopies. See beds card games. See games and sports cardinals, 108, 118, 119, 151, 154, 187, 344, 347, 361, 362n136, 363, 382–83, 391, 392, 394, 395, 399–400, 433–34, 484–86, 502n163, 504n166, 506, 530–32; Ercole Gonzaga as, 4, 10, 441–42, 455–56, 458n44–45, 462, 469n66, 495n136, 497, 498n148, 502n161, 507, 518, 520–21, 557, 570, 572; Ippolito d’Este as, 1, 83, 86–88, 101, 124, 153, 334, 345, 369, 371, 383; Sigismondo Gonzaga as, 10, 87n195, 97n234, 371, 286n213, 392n231, 441, 443, 497 Carmelites, 84, 365n146 Carnival: and theater, 128, 555; in Ferrara, 535, 545; in Mantua, 377, 546; in Milan; 68–69, 124, 361; in Rome, 309, 389–91, 394 carpets, 276 carriages and coaches: as gifts, 471; discomfort of, 373; in ceremonies, 178, 180, 393, 420; Isabella d’Este traveling by, 92, 102, 175, 176, 178, 385, 387, 431, 500 cartography, 255, 479n93 Casale: letters sent from, 419, 421, 423; travel to/through, 130, 145, 309, 418n313, 423, 424 Casalmaggiore, 47, 230 castellans, 51, 156, 217, 359n131, 375, 437, 449, 495

674 Index Castello San Giorgio. See Ducal Palace Castelnuovo, attack on, 70 Castiglione Mantovano, 45, 50, 58, 195 Castrodurante: letters sent from, 64 cavalcades, 314n15, 317, 326, 415, 453, 458, 460, 496 cavalry. See animals: horses; cavalry Cavriana, 143, 282, 332, 333, 335, 373, 401; letters sent from, 29, 35, 290–91 census, 335 ceremonies. See banquets; processions; religion and religious life; weddings Ceresara, 45 Cervia, 43, 179, 338–39 charity, 211, 274–75, 394–95, 480, 516 childbirth. See births children and childhood: burden of, 341, 487; clothing of, 201n199; correspondence for and by, 23n2, 380n185, 401n260; early death of, 4, 93n223, 102, 111n276, 143, 162n74, 188n302, 233n301, 260, 239n323, 287n463, 345; godparents, 61n112; grandchildren, 516, 535; importance and treatment of sons, 63n120, 98n235, 99n238, 152n34, 211n227, 221n262; in ceremonies, 373, 419; in criminal cases, 47, 50, 444; noting health of, 218, 258, 276, 292, 332, 380, 415, 424, 574, 576; orphans, 42, 148, 509; provision for, 91, 134, 427, 429n334, 509; spanking, 23; stepchildren, 341; temperament of, 211–12, 225; tone when reporting on, 154n65, 206n212, 211n228. See also Africans; births; dwarfs; motherhood, mothers, and maternity; pregnancy Chioggia, 56–58 chivalric literature. See literature

Christ: as a lamb, 75n158; Ascension, 56n101; body and blood of, 365n145, 380n183; Crucifixion of, 48n77, 75n158, 184n149; entering the convent as marriage to, 350n100, 358; feet of, 262; paintings of, 249–50; Passion of, 48n77; people healed by, 423; prophets foretelling of (in theater), 221; Sermon on the Precious Blood of, 49. See also convents and monasteries; religion and religious life clemency, 48, 132, 456, 260, 261n392, 274n433, 306, 322, 310, 321, 471, 483, 487, 502n163 clocks and timepieces, 291, 355, 552, 583–84 clothing, 7, 53n94, 90n211, 111n275, 158n59, 173–92, 267n412, 328n49, 365n146, 405n277; blouses, 40n50, 54–55, 56, 169, 178, 195, 305n518, 368, 408n286; capes, 40, 101, 178, 179, 191, 431, 707; chemises, 539; coats, 374; collars, 425; doublets, 179, 532; gaiters, 179, 291; gowns and dresses, 7, 40, 11n275, 158n59, 161, 178, 180, 308n518, 532; livery, 178, 179, 187, 191, 531; needlework, 180, 425; robes, 180, 531–32; shirts, 185, 250, 269, 374, 389; slippers, 431; stockings, 179–80, 185, 187, 196n182, 532; tunics, 87, 101, 179, 365, 374. See also fashion accessories; textiles clowns and jesters, 122, 125n326, 178, 180, 411, 536, 559. See also dwarfs coats–of–arms, 101, 174, 373 cobblers, 452 code. See encryption coins and medals, 169, 553, 583; ducats (see gold; finances); florins, 305, 583; marchetti, 197, 583; medallions, 6, 145; medals, 17, 271–72, 273–74, 286, 409, 521,

Index 675 525, 526, 532; of Isabella d’Este’s likeness, 7, 273; scudi, 396n240, 408, 517, 523, 530, 532, 539, 544, 556, 567, 572, 573, 583. See also antiquities; finances; gold collecting. See individual collectables Colonna family, 4, 443, 496, 502n163, 511–12n183, 526. See also Sack of Rome combs, 145–46 comedies. See theater composers. See musicians, composers, and singers condolences. See apologies condotta, 22, 64, 75n158, 92n220, 124n322, 136n374, 196n183, 202–3, 201, 232n297, 307, 313, 315n16, 330n51, 333n57, 334n58 condottieri (mercenaries). See soldiers confectioners, 219, 354n112, 364 confiscations, 171n106, 374, 447, 540 congratulations, 114, 363, 468; on births, 62–63, 149, 150, 260–61, 281 contracts. See individual subjects (debts and debt collection, marriage, pawning and pawnbrokers) convents and monasteries: and unrest, 439, 502n163; construction and structure of, 84, 146–47, 536, 545, 556n53, 557, 565n72; entry into, 4, 142, 148, 274, 276, 308, 339, 349n95, 350–51, 358, 3665, 367–69; lodging at, 101, 257, 349, 376, 428; nuns, 230, 262, 274, 349, 351, 358, 364n144, 366, 367, 480, 544, 551–52; priors and prioresses, 349n95, 355, 437n356, 480, 552; refectories, 146; withdrawal to, 367, 64n123, 370n158, 568. See also Christ; religion and religious life coral, 145n5 cord, 448–49, 544 Corneto, 505; letters sent from, 503 Corte Vecchia. See Ducal Palace

cosmetics, 16–17n37, 116n296, 219n254, 372n163, 378n180, 454n36 coup d’état, 142 court, members of: agents, 7, 21, 43n62, 59n105, 97–98, 115, 138, 144n3, 172n108, 175n116, 212, 226n275, 230, 255, 265n404, 269, 276n438, 284, 312n9, 330n52, 337, 369, 408n286, 443, 449, 487, 505, 520, 523, 528–30, 537–39; courtiers, 3, 28–29, 58n93, 85n192, 125n326, 132, 133n360, 179, 191n171, 240n325, 312n10, 338, 348, 353n110, 496n141, 554n49; donzelle, 159, 163, 186n153, 365n147, 366, 369; factors/fattore, 59, 393, 444, 451, 469, 481–83, 501, 559, 574; ladies in waiting, 23, 27n15, 28n16, 82n180, 111n275, 151n31, 157n55, 163n76, 187, 191n171, 251, 261n392, 270, 274n433, 307, 312n10, 362n136, 364n143, 365, 370n157, 372, 425, 467, 480n95, 496n141, 522, 535, 539n9; managers, 59n105, 73n156, 194, 200, 219, 237, 264, 449, 527, 542, 567–68; massaio, 73; pages, 66, 227, 531. See also secretaries and chancellors courtesans, 135, 393n234. See also prostitutes and prostitution Cremona, 55, 419, 457n41, 464–45, 543; letters sent from, 379 crime, 34, 66, 74, 97, 116, 232n296, 274n433, 345n86, 346, 429, 478, 487, 549, 557, 573, 578–79; arson, 22, 93–94; kidnapping, 48–49, 157n55, 367n150, 371n159; rape, 4, 50; thieves and theft, 115, 141, 202, 231, 492, 507–8, 527, 556; treason, 1, 142. See also justice; violence criminals. See clemency; crime; justice cross-dressing. See disguises

676 Index crucifixes. See devotional objects crystal, 7, 90n215, 91, 106, 194, 407, 539. See also glass and glassware curtains and draperies, 33, 124, 159n62, 181, 275n435, 470n70, 567 dance and dancing, 28, 170n101, 184, 185–86, 189, 238, 263, 379–80, 387, 391, 393, 399, 415, 421; and Isabella d’Este, 3, 53n94, 128, 182, 186–87, 191; dancing masters, 3n7, 153 daughters. See births; children and childhood debts and debt collection. See finances decorations. See interior decoration Desenzano, 29 desertion. See soldiers devices. See emblems devotional objects: Agnus dei, 75; crucifixes and crosses, 75, 145n5, 245–46, 290; rosary beads, 167n89; sacred relics, 29, 75, 423, 502n163. See also art dictation, 14, 172n107 disguises, 38, 86, 144n2, 176, 218n250, 252n359, 379, 380. See also incognito; masks dishware, 1–3, 125, 191, 359, 488, 522, 539 doctors, 57, 103, 167, 300, 305, 353, 408, 422, 518; and medical procedures, 150n26, 263, 475; availability of, 122; children and childbirth, 168, 239n322, 251; prescriptions and remedies, 234, 574, 581; professional opinions and advice, 77n164, 97, 106, 230, 250–51, 279, 336, 364, 413n300, 501, 520, 581; requests for, 461, 475, 529. See also health and medicine; illnesses doge, 43, 508; of Genoa, 414n305, 506; of Venice, 56–58, 105, 248,

265n404, 302, 319, 329, 512. See also Venice dolls, 7 Dominicans, 155nn48–49, 350, 358, 388n221, 428 donzelle. See court, members of doors and doorframes: doorframes, 442, 473n75, 476; doors, 135n367, 146, 278–79, 472–73, 476, 504n166, 544; doorways, 6, 451 drawings. See art Ducal Palace (of Mantua), 2, 124n323; Isabella d’Este’s first apartments, 2, 5–6; Isabella’s first apartments, studiolo, 5–6, 7n14, 17–18, 21, 46, 53n94, 107, 114, 141–42, 157n56, 166, 198, 244, 247, 253, 254n368, 260n389, 267n412, 273, 308, 339n68, 404n271; Isabella d’Este’s second apartments, 6, 10, 442, 472n75, 538; Isabella d’Este’s second apartments, grotta, 5, 473n75, 538–39; Isabella d’Este’s second apartments, studiolo, 5–6, 7n14, 17–18, 472, 473n75, 476, 489n121; Camera della capella, 172; Camera della Volta, 233n301; Camera delle Armi, 5, 231; Camera Picta (Camera degli Sposi), 50, 124n323; camerini, 124, 146, 157, 198, 208, 244, 253, 339, 538; Camerino del Sole, 50; Casa della gabella, 173n111; Castello San Giorgio, 5, 50, 87–88; Corte Vecchia, 50, 88n201, 442, 473n75, 479. See also architecture; interior decoration duels, 35–36, 188–89, 482 dungeons, 46–47, 278. See also punishments duties. See taxes dwarfs, 535, 562, 569. See also children and childhood; clowns and jesters

Index 677 ebony, 145, 146, 197; beads, 167; boxes, 126; clocks, 552; musical instruments, 112–13, 115, 125, 147 eclogues. See literature edicts, 92n222, 186, 205n207, 234, 324, 447, 449, 452, 494, 504n166, 527, 568 education: humanist, 13, 111, 214; of Isabella d’Este, 3–4, 7, 16, 49n79, 53n94; of women, 3, 49, 153n37, 163n75, 350n99, 404n275. See also humanism and humanists; Latin; music; teachers (tutors) emblems, 110, 267, 268, 491n129, 530n228; in Isabella d’Este’s apartments, 6, 7, 46–47; on dishware, 2. See also mottos encryption: cipher systems, 15, 229, 433 engagements. See betrothals entries (into cities): into Bologna, 213n234, 530–31; into Ferrara, 59n107, 174; into Lodi, 464; into Lonato, 374; into Mantua, 4, 215, 240, 280, 335, 381n187, 506; into Milan, 139n382, 144n2, 196n183; into Naples, 381; into Novara, 144; into Pavia, 38; into Rome, 232, 495, 501, 512; into Solarolo, 579; into Urbino, 200n194, 235n304; into Verona, 369 epitaphs, 556, 558, 560 eviction, 133 executions. See punishments exercise, 139, 150, 424 exile. See punishments expenses. See finances; and individual items paid for (accounting, food, musical instruments, etc.) fabric. See textiles faith: as a promise, 230, 275, 278, 365n147, 493; as hopefulness, 33, 94, 104, 105, 220, 273, 323, 336, 411, 432, 435, 461, 465, 466, 477, 509; as loyalty and trust, 61, 78, 81,

99, 121, 166, 171, 203, 205, 210, 252, 261, 298, 299, 302, 312, 314, 319, 320, 322, 325, 456, 466, 468, 469, 473, 476, 477, 492, 498, 514; religious, 256, 429, 434, 487n115, 511. See also religion and religious life Faenza, 240 famine, 307, 314, 316–17, 459, 503, 504, 567 farming. See agriculture fashion accessories, 167n89, 336n148, 402n265, 497; capes, 40n50, 101, 178, 179, 431, 191, 499; caps, 187, 192, 261, 341n74, 399, 400, 411n294, 425, 431, 470, 531, 532; fans, 366, 421, 431; furs, 40n50, 169, 180n134, 341, 368; gloves, 7, 186n153, 270, 271, 273n430, 344, 408, 497n146; hair decorations, 7, 471n71, 499; hats, 7, 168, 280, 348, 399, 400, 431, 550; ribbons, 41, 182n141; shoes, 441, 452; veils, 101, 184, 257, 470, 475, 499. See also clothing; gemstones; gold; jewelry fasting, 48n77, 184n149, 258n383, 418 fattore (factor). See court, members of feasts. See banquets festivals and festivities. See banquets; dance and dancing; games and sports; processions; religion and religious life; weddings feudal system, 136–37n374, 326, 410, 433n347 feuds, 549 finances: accounting and accounts, 93, 98, 102, 219, 301, 313, 451, 540; allowances, 109, 194n179, 413, 416; assets, 63n120, 97n234, 194, 195, 287, 311n7, 336n62, 372, 486, 487, 492, 517, 522; banking, 15, 128n339, 134n362, 203, 487, 540, 542; bookkeeping, 102; budgets, 141, 171n103, 194,

678 Index 413, 492; debtors, 40, 537, 540, 556–57, 573n91; debts and debt collection, 66, 98, 155, 265, 301, 397–98, 409–10, 413n301, 444, 523, 525; debts and debt collection, collecting of, 537, 565, 573; debts and debt collection, paying off, 11, 105, 245, 255, 401, 480, 484, 533, 582; gratuities, 62; interest rates, 97–98, 275, 315n17, 487–88; loans, 40, 487n115; pensions, 91, 313, 318, 485n111; rents, 133, 539, 559, 582; salaries, 64, 124n322, 205n207, 214, 313n11, 447, 583; wages, 447. See also coins and medals; inheritances; taxes flirtation, 186n155, 403n267. See also infidelity flooding, 230, 503, 508 Florence, 158–59, 169, 194, 205, 208–210, 216, 229, 248–49, 270, 403n266, 404, 484; goods from, 62, 146, 546; letters received from, 204, 209, 241 flowers, 7; roses, 364, 397n244, 407n283, 446n9, 562 Foligno, 177n125 food —appetite, 27, 347, 435, 473n76, 564 —beans, 221 —bread, 73, 136, 189, 264, 376, 453, 504n166, 505 —butter, 136 —candies and cake, 138, 376, 572 —crabs, 83, 412 —fruits and vegetables: apples, 219, 255n373, 376, 474; artichokes, 407, 435, 436, 441, 453, 558; blackberries, 435; cabbage, 436; cherries, 24, 407n280; chestnuts, 380–81; citrus fruit, 26, 30, 32, 138, 178, 219, 364, 393, 407, 491; currants, 428; fennel, 435;

figs, 48, 71, 308, 358; grapes, 239, 358, 376, 428, 457, 474, 580; lettuce, 292; melons, 76–77; mushrooms, 39, 475; olives, 352, 373, 401; peaches, 219, 380n185; pistachios, 545, 572; pomegranates, 137, 446; pears, 446; squash, 77n166; watercress, 412 —cheese, 48, 107, 134, 136, 252, 314n15, 521 —gelatin, 219n254 —ginger, 106 —grains, 73–74, 189, 235, 264, 297, 307, 314, 324, 392, 449, 503, 508, 509, 528, 558, 559, 567 —honey, 354 —fish, 29, 79, 226n278, 245, 292n477, 375, 376, 412, 441; anchovies, 277; carp, 26, 30, 85, 107, 412, 454; trout, 30, 35, 79, 454; mullet, 37 —lard, 51 —meats, 219n254, 226n278, 292n477, 314, 368, 434; beef, 279; cured, 21, 51, 80, 521; goose, 224; mortadella, 21, 52, 80; pork, 80n175, 224n270 —nuts, 572; almonds, 354, 358 —oil, 408, 401, 436, 454 —recipes, 30, 80n175, 95, 436, 441, 454, 474 —salt, 37, 43, 97, 98, 224n270, 234, 338–39, 454n38 —shellfish, 29, 79, 174, 212 —sugar, 138, 292, 364, 376, 386, 491 —truffles, 79, 407n280 —vinegar, 37, 292n477, 436, 454 —See also agriculture; gardens and gardening; gifts; meals; wine fortresses and fortifications, 70n143, 73n154, 87n200, 206, 215, 226, 332, 368, 373–75

Index 679 Fortuna (Fortune, goddess of), 128 fountains, 442, 473n75, 494, 542–43 Franciscans, 293n482, 388n220 French army. See armies French court, 4, 308, 312n9, 316n18, 403n266, 405n277, 407n282, 408, 413n301, 416, 417, 418 frescoes. See art friendship, 3, 13, 16, 18, 31n25, 133n285, 154, 171, 218, 280n448, 350, 472, 483, 510, 519, 539, 541, 558 fruits and vegetables. See food funerals and burials, 100–2, 117n300, 169, 230, 356n119 fur. See fashion accessories furniture, 47, 301n499, 442, 488, 518, 538–39 gambling, 182, 357, 491n129, 530n228. See also games and sports games and sports, 182n141, 233, 263n399, 500, 526; Agoni, 392–93; card games, 4, 28, 263n399; chess, 46, 145n5; dice, 211; horseback riding, 4; jousts, 112, 141, 184, 187–90, 413n301, 424, 430, 555; palio, 33, 34, 91–93, 96, 160, 182, 192, 393, 489. See also gambling gardens and gardening: gardeners, 264, 538; gardens, 18, 87, 92, 286n461, 308, 352, 371, 374, 376, 393, 435, 441–42, 446, 453, 473n75, 500; orchards, 137, 473n75; trees, 219, 308, 353, 371, 376, 446, 454. See also agriculture; food gates (of cities), 74, 88, 135, 231, 304, 335, 352, 373, 374, 458, 464, 465 gemstones, 17, 39, 83n186, 97n234, 178n129, 290n471, 315; amber, 341; collecting of, 17; diamonds, 180, 290, 315n17, 409, 538, 539; emerald, 32, 290; lapis, 207; rubies, 46, 180, 290, 315, 538, 539;

turquoise, 46, 83, 89–90, 311. See also fashion accessories; jewelry Germans, 92, 154n43, 191, 406n278, 453 Gesualdo, 94 gifts, 79n171, 90n211, 90n213, 170n101, 235, 243, 272, 353, 396, 413n301 —receiving: apples, 376; bear fat, 372; books, 268, 287, 353, 377; cherries, 24; coach, 471; dogs, 250; dresses, 161; figs, 48; fish, 376; fishponds, 144; gold, 267; goslings, 160; grapes, 376; Lenten objects, 39; maccheroni, 430; masks, 142; money, 305, 367; necklaces, 361; poetry, 554; pomegranates, 137; racehorses, 356; saddle horses, 500; she-mules, 156; songbooks, 62; unspecified, 30, 190, 358; vases, 430 —sending: black cloth, 90; caps, 261, 470; cheese, 48, 252; child dwarfs, 562; clavichords, 139; daughters, 312; fish, 26; food, 572; gloves, 271; masks, 218; neck chains, 330; paintings, 313, 358; perfumes, 161, 402–3, 405, 483; regalia, 75; rings, 483; rose pillows, 562; ruffs, 470; salted goose, 224; soap, 483; unspecified, 551; veils, 470; velvet dresses, 15 —See also food glass and glassware, 1, 7, 77, 90, 265, 335, 552, 571. See also crystal globes, 255 gloves. See fashion accessories Goito, 35, 85n191, 276, 373–74; letters sent from, 373 gold, 47, 89n207, 182, 247, 267, 348, 502n163, 533; ducats, 40, 64,

680 Index 138, 163, 194, 212, 330, 339, 583; on clothing and accessories, 40, 174, 177, 178–80, 187, 191, 275, 304, 341, 381, 408, 532; on other items, 75, 90, 106, 110, 149, 186, 189, 245–46, 287, 291, 342, 359, 403, 407, 421, 522, 539; scudi, 523, 544, 556, 572. See also coins and medals; fashion accessories; jewelry goldsmiths, 234, 311, 403, 409, 421, 518n196, 523n212, 525, 542 Gonfaloniere. See magistrates Gonzaga (Lombardy), 31, 35; letters sent from, 46, 60 gospels, 101, 204, 343 gourds (as vessels), 372, 397, 545, 550 governesses, 23n2, 59n108, 102, 136n370, 211, 357n123 grazia (as quality), 358 grief. See mourning guards, 65, 144, 233, 263, 451, 495, 531, 568 Gubbio, 6, 177n125, 206, 260n389, 505 Guinea Territory, 22, 41 guns. See weapons hair, 7, 72, 185, 223, 261, 277n440, 388, 364n143, 365, 368, 372, 471n71; animal, 109n268, 138n380 harvests. See agriculture health and medicine: humors (of the body), 77, 150n26, 264, 581; injuries, 34, 66, 94, 115, 151, 157, 175, 176, 188, 199, 277, 297, 303, 325, 420, 478, 490, 496; medicine, 68, 122, 219n254, 391n228, 402n264, 436n354, 454n36, 473n76, 535–36, 581; pills, 45, 279, 374. See also births; doctors; illnesses Hebrew, 360, 402n264 heirs, importance of. See children and childhood Historia. See art

hostages, 108n263, 307, 320n27, 325n41, 328n49, 330n51, 359n129, 363n138, 506n168 humanism and humanists, 131, 152n34, 166n86, 182n143, 214n238, 253, 364n141, 434n351, 436; and letterwriting, 13–15; Battista Guarino, 3, 63, 111; Desiderius Erasmus, 13n29; Juan Luis Vives, 13n29. See also education; Latin; literature; teachers (tutors) humor, 68, 137, 182n140, 206n212, 236n306, 271, 273, 391, 435 humors (of the body). See health and medicine hunger. See famine; food hunting and hunts, 189, 211, 344, 388–92, 433–34; and dogs, 127n337; and falcons, 118n304 hygiene, 72n150, 546; soap, 146, 219n254, 408, 426, 483, 535, 539, 546 illnesses, 25, 50, 66, 68, 95, 103, 114, 122, 143, 151, 167, 201, 218n250, 222, 225, 251, 258, 268, 272, 286, 305, 336, 354n111, 359n129, 382n191, 388, 422, 475, 482, 485, 501, 529, 543, 580; asthma, 402n264; cancer, 475; diarrhea, 250; fever, 24, 24n5, 34, 35, 45n67, 82, 97, 100, 152, 153, 197, 200, 222n265, 232, 251–52, 261, 279–80, 287, 303, 351, 413, 482, 501, 529, 535, 574, 577, 581; gout, 206, 303, 531; headaches, 82, 83, 529, 535; insomnia, 167; malaria, 35n34, 45n67, 77n168, 222n265, 351n102; plague, 55, 113, 142, 227, 229–30, 233, 251, 263–64, 266–67, 272, 275, 33–36, 375, 442, 474, 482, 498–500, 503n164, 509, 520; scabies, 408n286; stomach pains, 35, 418, 535, 546, 569, 574–75, 581; syphilis, 9, 10, 45n67, 66, 77n168,

Index 681 177n300, 122n315, 218n250, 292n478, 308, 357n122, 362n137, 543n22; typhoid, 77n168; ulcers, 402n264; worms, 167–68. See also doctors; health and medicine Imola, 10, 177n125 incognito, 10, 38, 86, 176n121, 251, 512. See also disguises; masks indulgences (religious). See religion and religious life infantry, 157n55, 183, 297, 301, 305, 333, 370, 373, 375, 464–65, 531, 533. See also armies; soldiers infidelity, 132, 186n155. See also flirtation; mistresses infidels, 201n223, 327, 509, 516 inheritances, 96n232, 99, 109, 225n274, 239n323, 288, 517, 557. See also finances injuries. See health and medicine inkwells, 229, 231, 234 inns, 92, 133, 227, 230, 292 inscriptions, 131, 267n412 intaglio, 84 intarsia, 6, 473n75 interdicts, 283 interest, charging of. See finances inventions. See art inventories, 8n17, 46n70, 287n466, 316, 360n133, 432n344 invitations, 31n26, 155, 162, 254, 373, 391, 434, 442 iron, 183, 355, 451 irony, 126n334, 192n175, 215n240, 236n306, 496n142, 512n183 Italian Wars —battles and leagues: Battle of Agnadello, 143, 324n37; Battle of Bicocca, 463; Battle of Fornovo, 22, 33n30, 75– 76nn158–59, 77n168, 88n202, 92n220, 95n227, 96n230, 99nn237–38, 188n164; Battle of Marignano, 388n219, 463n54; Battle of Novara,

144–45, 223, 368n153; League of Cambrai, 143, 281n449, 307, 324n36, 327n45, 331n55; League of Cognac, 304, 442; League of Venice (Holy League), 65n133, 75n158, 92n220, 105n255, 304, 307, 359n131, 368n153 —capture and imprisonment of Francesco II Gonzaga, 9, 297–302, 310, 316, 318–19, 325–327, 329–30 —letters spanning dates of, 64–579 —overview of important events, 21–22, 143, 307–9, 441–43, 535–36 —See also armies; Sack of Rome; soldiers; weapons; and individual cities interior decoration, 5–6, 17, 57, 96, 107, 144, 127, 149, 176, 181, 198, 233n301, 238, 267n412, 385, 470n70; wall hangings, 125, 149. See also Ducal Palace ivory, 46, 115, 145–46, 442, 448 jealousy, 1, 21, 27–28, 74, 320 jewelry, 1, 7, 58, 97–98, 118, 190, 290, 304, 351, 538–39; belt charms, 402n265, 403n270; chains, 40, 43, 174, 177, 179–80; crowns, 246, 190n471, 538–39; gugolo, 290; lockets, 403; necklaces, 180, 235, 331, 361; pearls, 178, 180, 186, 290; pendants, 178, 180, 290; rings, 28, 315n17. See also fashion accessories; gemstones; gold Jews, 30, 133–34, 182, 360, 482, 484, 486–87, 540–42 jokes and tricks. See humor jousting. See games and sports Jubilee, 155 justice, 9, 16, 18, 22, 44, 45, 109, 115, 199, 202, 234, 238, 277, 321, 409, 439–40, 446, 448, 466, 468, 478,

682 Index 484, 490, 528, 549, 560, 570, 582; advocacy, 9, 11, 26, 33, 36–37, 45, 66, 170, 195n180, 265n404, 299, 310, 327n44, 361n135, 443, 468, 487, 490n124, 524n214; attorneys, 396; detentions, 38, 44, 49, 234, 478, 528, 540, 541; investigating allegations, 50, 240; lawyers, 436n354, 489; litigation, 26, 34, 486, 489, 570; pardons, 9, 22, 47–48, 70n145, 120, 204n207, 209, 215, 223, 234, 255, 261, 274n433, 321–22, 450; property disputes, 141, 195, 490; trials, 33, 215, 234, 322, 345n86; tribunals, 44n64, 490, 531–32. See also crime; magistrates; violence ladies in waiting. See court, members of lakes, 87n200, 230, 293, 359n131, 431; Lago di Mezzo, 58n104, 352n105; Lago di Perugia, 214; Lake Garda, 10, 26, 29–30, 85, 115n294, 374n168, 37–77, 401n259 lances. See soldiers; weapons lapis. See gemstones; jewelry Latin, 4, 166, 208n220, 271n425; as language for sermons, 49, 101n245; authors writing in, 8, 13, 43, 258–59, 356n119, 404, 422n321, 468, 530n228; Isabella d’Este’s abilities in, 4, 49n79, 101n245; translations into, 360; translations from, 43, 183n143. See also authors; books; education; humanism and humanists; literature lawyers. See justice lead (metal), 374, 448–49, 451 leather, 149, 179, 197, 291, 438, 452, 565 legal disputes. See justice legal help. See justice Lent, 39, 48n77, 155, 258, 392, 462, 493, 567

libraries, 7–8, 13, 166, 255, 287n466, 430n339. See also books lighting, 11, 221, 264n403, 432n344, 510; sconces, 432n344; torches, 101, 183–84, 192, 221, 264n403. See also candles literature, 5, 14, 141, 346, 364n141, 455–56, 462, 498n150; chivalric literature, 4, 8, 45, 314n13; eclogues, 43, 53n93, 60; histories, 45; letters as, 13–15; novelle, 393n294, 400n255, 428n333; pastoral romance, 53, 378n179; philosophy, 8, 359n129; poetry, 4, 14, 44n63, 53, 60, 123, 137, 224, 254, 260n389, 287n466, 354, 356n119, 377, 398, 404, 459, 535, 554, 563. See also authors; books; humanism and humanists; Latin; vernacular litigation. See justice litters (for transportation), 35, 131, 156, 420 livery. See clothing loans. See finances Lonato, 315n16, 373, 401, 527; letters sent from, 373 looting, 506n168, 510. See also soldiers Magi, Three, 221 magic, 28, 63n122 magistrates: gonfaloniere, 210, 220, 266, 331; podestà, 56–57, 66, 80, 93–94, 109, 133, 200, 220, 233, 245, 299, 318, 332n56, 333, 341, 409, 419, 437, 439, 444, 447–51, 468, 484, 487, 489, 490, 491, 494, 540–42, 555, 580, 582. See also justice mail. See postal systems and networks manuscripts. See books maps. See cartography marble, 43, 131, 142, 242, 286, 357, 473n75, 525. See also art Marcaria, 45, 245, 331–32, 489

Index 683 marital disputes. See marriage markets, 78n170, 146n8, 226n278, 230, 488 Marmirolo, 49, 102n247, 188n304; letters sent from, 25, 26, 102 marriage, 16, 22; alimony, 134, 136; annulments, 156n51, 214n236; arrangement of, 159, 163, 194, 205, 212, 253n363, 257, 307, 309, 365, 381n187, 384n209, 416, 485–86, 517, 522; as distraction, 444n5; consummation of, 181, 362n137, 548; contracts, 305, 366; dowries, 33, 34, 63n120, 80, 97–99, 163, 212, 217, 253, 274–75, 304, 311n7, 341, 441, 444, 467, 515, 517, 522, 524, 568; marital disputes, 32–33, 34, 36–37, 45, 47, 66, 74, 80–81, 99–100, 126n334, 129, 132n357, 441, 447, 448; of Alfonso I d’Este and Anna Sforza, 43n61; of Beatrice Brogna de’ Lardis and Ercole Compagni, 31n23; of Beatrice d’Este and Ludovico Sforza, 38n44, 43n61; of Eleonora Gonzaga and Francesco Maria della Rovere, 4, 293–94, 300, 306n521; of Federico II Gonzaga and Maria Paleologa, 4, 416–18, 421, 442, 535, 545n49; of Ferrante Gonzaga and Isabella di Capua, 4, 484, 569n79; of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga, 1, 3, 4, 21, 24n5, 160; of Lucrezia Borgia and Alfonso I, 141, 170–92; of Margherita d’Este and Phebus Gonzaga, 33n30. See also betrothals; brides; weddings Marseille, 422–23; letters sent from, 422 masks, 101, 142, 218, 391, 545. See also disguises; incognito matchmaking. See betrothals; marriages meals, 279, 359, 386–87, 391, 421, 536; breakfast, 182, 370; lunch, 225, 373, 393–94, 464; dinner,

29, 56, 57, 92, 111n275, 120, 173, 174, 176, 185–86, 190–92, 238, 250, 263, 383, 386, 391, 419, 495, 496–97, 528, 543. See also banquets; food medallions. See coins and medals medals. See coins and medals medicine. See health and medicine menstruation, 281–82 mercenaries. See soldiers merchants, 15, 39, 55, 74–75, 78, 84, 109, 128, 210, 213, 219, 230, 323, 335, 413, 451, 527, 541 midwives. See births Milan: letters sent from, 67–70, 380–81 mills, 15, 45, 99n238, 449, 541, 545, 559, 568 miracles, 374–75, 385, 504–5n166 mirrors, 106, 187 mistresses, 111n275, 122n313, 158n59, 180n136. See also infidelity Modena, 233, 468n64, 556; letters sent from, 25 monasteries. See convents and monasteries money. See finances monopolies, 226n278, 441, 444 Monzambano, 332–33, 335 Moors. See Africans motherhood, mothers, and maternity, 16, 158n57, 206n212, 250n356, 345n86, 418, 466, 469, 481, 484, 577. See also births; children and childhood; pregnancy mottos, 6, 142, 267–68, 314n14, 491n129, 530n228. See also emblems mourning, 79–80, 124, 157, 171, 257, 287, 355, 445 murder and murderers. See violence muses, 459 music, 1, 5, 18, 53–54, 224, 308; books of, 8, 62, 419; motifs, 53n94, 83, 267n412; performances, 128, 183, 383, 497; songs, 54, 76n159, 221,

684 Index 128, 130, 177, 182n140, 191, 221, 224n271, 398, 427, 433, 459. See also education musical instruments: cithara, 60–61; clavichord, 84–86, 139; drums, 183, 189n167, 376 420; fifes, 183, 387, 420; flutes, 113, 419; horns, 189, 191; keyboard, 8, 53n94, 85n189, 130n349; lutes, 53n94, 112–13, 115, 125, 128, 130, 145–47, 186, 425; organs, 73, 221; stringed, 8, 60, 72n152, 130n349; trumpets, 178–79, 186, 188, 376, 387, 420; viola, 60n111, 72, 85, 97n242, 112, 130, 132–33, 189n166, 191, 390, 397 musicians, composers, and singers: Bartolomeo Tromboncino, 9, 130, 132–33, 137, 189, 191; composers, 9, 37n42, 132n358, 427; Isabella d’Este as, 8–9, 53–54, 60n111, 130n349, 260n389; Lorenzo da Pavia, 8–9, 84–85, 112, 115, 125–26, 139n382, 145–47, 165–66, 168, 197, 207, 247–48, 265, 266, 268–69, 336, 355–56, 397; Marchetto Cara, 9, 398, 427, 433; musicians, 3, 85n192, 112n281, 125n326, 128, 179, 419, 433, 485n111; Ottaviano Petrucci, 9; singers, 37, 51–52 myth: Apollo, 434; satyrs, 412, 565. See also under art Naples: letters sent from, 384, 386–87 natural resources. See agriculture Neapolitans, 70, 100, 296, 354n112, 378n179, 425 New World. See Americas, discovery of; Guinea Territory notaries, 15, 75, 99n237, 100n239, 202, 468 Novara, 77, 144, 223, 368n153 novelle. See literature nuns. See convents and monasteries

nursing (babies). See wet nurses nutrition. See food; health and medicine orchards. See agriculture orphans. See children and childhood Orsini family, 108, 141, 180, 200, 204–6, 209, 232, 496 Ottoman Empire. See Turks Padua, 31, 166n86, 293n483, 297n491 pageants. See theater paintings. See art; and also under devotional objects palaces, 6, 149n19, 157, 503, 520, 531–32; Colonna, 443, 496n141, 502n163, 511–12n183, 513n186, 514n188; Ferrara, 173–74, 353n110; Gonzaga (Lombardy), 230n289; Marmirolo, 102, 188n304; Naples, 384; Palazzo del Borgo, 50; Palazzo della Ragione, 173n112, 188, 277n442; Palazzo di Porto, 58, 352n105, 353n108, 399, 496, 563; Palazzo Librari, 202; Palazzo Pubblico (Bologna), 531; Palazzo San Sebastiano, 309; Palazzo Vecchio, 253n365; Revere, 71; Rome, 498; Urbino, 496; Venice, 536. See also Porto Palio. See games and sports Papal conclave, 142, 222–23 Papal court, 1, 16n37, 154, 182n140, 210, 260n389, 276, 308, 311n7, 318n21, 320n29, 346, 357n123, 388n221, 397n237, 422, 455n39, 458, 485n110 Papal interdict. See interdicts Papal nuncio, 293, 443, 449n94 paper, 15, 54, 165n85, 166, 404, 530 pardons. See justice parenting. See births; children and childhood; pregnancy

Index 685 Parma, 55, 84, 144, 168, 226–29, 232, 314, 332, 371n159, 403n266, 453, 458n44, 465, 487–88, 494, 517 pastoral romance. See literature patronage. See individual entries (art, artists, authors, musicians, etc.) Pavia, 32, 84, 136n374, 419, 465–66, 495n138; letters sent from, 38 pawning and pawnbrokers, 21, 95, 97–98, 305, 315n17, 480 payments. See finances; and also individual items paid for (food, musical instruments, etc.) peasants, 189, 295, 297, 318 penalties. See punishments pens and quills, 11, 145n5, 355 pensions. See finances perfume, 7, 116, 145, 161, 219n254, 378, 386, 397n244, 402–3, 407–8, 426, 497n146, 535; ingredients in, 126, 141, 151, 197, 406, 471n72; perfumed objects, 403, 405, 483, 550 Pesaro, 177, 442, 478, 495, 499n151, 560 Peschiera del Garda, 305, 315n16, 335, 370, 375, 377 Piacenza 38, 175, 403n266, 463; letters sent from, 38, 361 piazzas, 73, 88n201, 131n351, 173, 181, 202, 213, 230n290, 245, 292, 393, 412, 475, 584 Piemonte, 36 pilgrimage. See religion and religious life pillows, 562 piracy and pirates, 443, 506n168, 508, 512n184, 518, 535 plague. See illnesses plants. See agriculture; food podestà. See magistrates poetry. See literature poison, 176, 216n244, 384n206, 536 Poor Clares (Sisters of Saint Clare), 358 porphyry, 473 portents, 374

Porto, 52, 58, 335, 352, 401n359; country villa in, 8, 58n104, 195, 308, 424, 428n333, 435, 520; letters sent from, 42, 43, 44, 45, 59, 60, 61, 62, 401, 411, 424, 429, 430, 431, 432, 439, 444, 521. See also palaces portraits. See art ports, 57, 332–33, 419, 420, 423, 495 postal systems and networks, 15, 228, 237, 277, 335, 459n47; mail, 12, 14, 21, 104n250, 125, 156n53, 206, 209, 232, 456, 460, 491 postscripts, 30, 70, 84, 90, 102, 103, 108, 126, 130, 185, 187, 197, 212, 220, 231, 244, 246, 251, 274, 280, 304, 311, 315, 321, 332, 333, 351, 364, 365, 368, 379, 396, 398, 408, 438, 447, 462, 473, 488, 524, 539, 547, 559, 568, 570 potions, 28 pots, 189, 430 practical jokes. See humor prayers. See religion and religious life pregnancy, 47, 59, 61, 143, 152n34, 261n392, 279, 281, 345–46, 550–51, 566; announcements of, 62; congratulating on, 135, 470, 576; and health, 63n121/122, 83n183, 93n223, 94–95; of Isabella d’Este, 22, 59, 61, 63n120, 77n168, 83, 93n223, 95, 113n285, 135, 136n370, 197, 142, 217n177, 233n301, 238, 239n323, 252n260, 280n448. See also births; children and childhood; motherhood, mothers, and maternity printing, 9, 14, 141, 165n85, 166, 168, 207, 258–59, 314, 404, 479, 530. See also art; books prioresses and priors. See convents and monasteries prison and prisoners, 48, 490, 514, 519; breaking out of, 66, 292–93; death in, 144n2; during French invasion of Mantua, 337; female

686 Index prisoners, 195, 225n274, 551; Ferrante Gonzaga in, 1; Francesco II Gonzaga in, 9, 143, 297, 300–2, 307–8, 310, 319, 320n29, 325–26, 328–29, 363n138; Guidobaldo da Montefeltro in, 108n263; illness in, 333; life imprisonment, 277 Ludovico Sforza in, 121n312, 144n2; opening prisons, 260; prison conditions, 277–78; prisoner exchanges, 108; taken prisoner, 70, 73, 108n263, 121n312, 183, 190, 215–16, 261n392, 389, 440, 450, 463, 483, 495n138, 502n163, 504n166, 512– 13, 540–42; threats to imprison, 46. See also punishments processions: celebratory, 69; Corpus Christi, 88, 379–80; into cities, 4, 87, 175, 179, 181, 531–33; religious, 95, 96. See also religion and religious life pronouns, 27n15, 68n140, 394n215, 411n293, 451n24 property, 37, 441, 540; and domestic disputes, 34, 200n196; and widows, 134n364; and women, 195, 372n162, 445, 555–56; destruction of, 93, 504n166; disputes, 44, 141; inheritance of, 253; loss of, 99–100, 487, 526; mismanagement, 45; theft of, 333, 374, 411, 506; viewing, 45, 305 prophets, 84n188, 221 prostitutes and prostitution, 123n317, 168, 184n148; public prostitutes, 92n222, 110, 123, 267; repentant prostitutes, 109, 110n271. See also courtesans proverbs, 27, 223 punishments, 47, 50, 66n135, 71, 73n175, 94, 116, 120, 171, 227, 245, 273, 449, 471, 478, 494, 509n179, 551, 557, 567, 573; executions, 120, 202, 216,

277n442, 293n482; exile, 141–42, 199n193, 204n207, 216n241, 222–23, 235n304, 355n115, 359, 377n177, 378, 179, 403n266, 441, 547n32; hanging, 202; penalties, 36, 47, 66, 85, 255, 527. See also dungeons; prison and prisoners; torture; violence quills. See pens rape. See crime Ravenna, 215, 217, 223, 240, 344, 345n86, 532; letters sent from, 64 reading, 5, 7, 14–15, 82, 101n245, 106n259, 196, 221, 310, 360n133, 468, 515, 563 rebellion, 204n207, 215, 281n449, 447; unrest, 143, 325, 439, 549 recipes. See food refectories. See convents and monasteries regent, 9, 22 Reggio, 44, 333, 354, 468n64, 544 regret, 99, 105, 415 442, 510; as apology, 39, 271, 511, 541, 546, 578; as disappointment, 79, 80, 81, 106, 111, 184, 196, 237, 246, 276, 315, 368, 389–90, 515; as threat, 34, 169; expressing sympathy, 25, 59, 241, 259, 273–74, 279, 311, 467, 482, 579 religion and religious life, 84n188, 380n183, 532–33; Christmas, 51–52, 115, 133, 186, 206, 412, 413n301, 489; Corpus Christi, 88, 262, 287n463, 365, 379, 380n183, 437; mass, 48, 57, 93, 96, 101, 119, 135, 186, 214, 282, 283, 285, 579; pilgrimage, 10, 64n126, 95, 113, 155n47, 252, 419, 422n321; prayers, 64n123, 143, 148, 159, 167n89, 186, 193, 232, 262, 321, 358, 369, 422–23, 480n529, 575; vows, 64n123, 95, 113, 155,

Index 687 252n360, 308, 349–51, 367, 375, 391n228, 495. See also banquets; Christ; convents and monasteries; faith; processions Renaissance Man ideal, 3 rents. See finances reprimands, 134, 143, 345n86, 444 resins, 126n333, 402n264, 454n36 revenge, 65, 100, 181n139, 204 rewards, 62, 99n238, 121, 158, 234, 249, 330, 388, 414, 469n67, 484, 516 Ridolfi, 532 Rimini, 206, 330n51, 330n53 rites, 101, 283, 305n118 rivers, 26, 507; Adige, 297n491; Mincio, 85, 87n200, 131n351, 335, 373; Po, 50n84, 87n200, 156, 202, 229, 478n91, 503, 529n225; Taro, 96n230; Te, 135 roads, 44, 59, 61, 76, 176, 235, 257, 286, 311, 317, 323, 462, 464, 474; conditions of, 147, 231, 334, 385, 495; safety of, 113, 232, 238, 295, 355, 504n166, 518, 556 Rome: letters sent from, 381, 383, 388, 389, 390, 392, 394, 494, 496–501 Roverbella, 50, 92, 337 rumors, 55, 73, 230, 237, 261n392, 326, 331n239, 334, 406, 442, 461, 471, 500, 502n163, 509; false, 59, 61, 506 Sacchetta, 37, 53, 87, 136, 195, 245, 288, 371; letters sent from, 263–69, 271–77 Sack of Rome, 4, 442n1, 501, 505–10, 511n183, 513n185, 523–26, 535. See also Colonna family; Italian Wars saddles, 151, 420, 451, 477, 500–1 safe-conduct, 411, 458 saints, 8, 207, 288; Saint Barnabas, 132; Saint Baume, 423; Saint Cedonio, 423; Saint Clare, 358; Saint Elizabeth and Joseph, 221; Saint

Francis, 350; Saint George, 28, 160; Saint Ippolito da Faenza, 528; Saint Jerome, 202; Saint John, 112, 343; Saint John the Baptist, 198, 202, 207, 245–47; Saint Lazarus, 23; Saint Mary Magdalene, 84, 419n314, 422–23, 431; Saint Maximin, 423; Saint Maximus of Aix, 423n323; Saint Michael, 567; Saint Peter, 91n219, 101, 237; Saint Peter in Chains, 216n241, 236; Saint Praxedes, 118n306; Saint Stephen, 272; Saint Teresa of Avila, 84n188 Salò, 115nn294–95, 375; letters sent from, 376, 377 satyrs. See myth Scaldasole, 419–20 scandal, 73, 233, 267, 334, 347, 362, 437, 452, 487, 551–52; domestic, 235; monastic, 146–47 scissors, 355, 365 sculpture. See art seals, 11, 110, 228, 392, 394, 444, 514 seamstresses, 425n327, 429 secretaries and chancellors, 11, 15, 39; chancellors, 15, 39, 41, 70, 108, 119, 157, 209; Antonio Tridapali, 11n26, 239; Benedetto Capilupi, 11n26, 39, 47, 108n263, 124, 156, 157n54, 171, 229, 234, 242, 245, 252n413, 278–79, 309, 354, 362n137, 365–66, 371, 374, 380, 383–84, 386, 387, 390, 392, 394, 422; Mario Equicola, 8, 11n26, 18, 142, 268n413, 339, 363, 404, 422n321, 430, 438–39 (see also under authors); Matteo Sacchetti, 47n73, 87n196; secretaries, 11, 12, 15, 104n250, 109–10, 193, 201, 226, 230, 257, 262, 300, 309, 319, 329, 354, 365, 408, 429, 438n360, 439, 513, 520, 572, 578. See also court, members of seneschals, 245, 261–62, 264, 269

688 Index sepulchers. See tombs Sermide, letters sent from, 37, 143; travel to/from, 51, 233, 371, 383 sermons and orations, 8, 49, 96, 101, 120, 487 serpentine stone, 207, 473, 376 servants: accompaniment of, 413, 458; aiding with illnesses, 122, 300; bad examples for, 347; desire to work in the courts, 111n275; liveried, 414; making direct requests of, 328, 347, 395, 425; marriages, 194, 280; mistakes made by, 279, 299, 347–48; news delivered via, 59, 296, 344, 356, 395, 457; pleased with, 330, 456, 476; provisions and aid for, 62, 194, 256, 298, 299, 371, 395, 446, 458, 467; reporting on, 351; sending goods via, 32, 156, 161, 237, 330, 426, 454; unavailability of, 278, 305, 323, 329, 334, 336, 375. See also other employees (court, members of, secretaries, wet nurses, etc.) sewing, 425 sex, 31n26, 66n137, 123n317, 185n151, 193n199, 267n403 sexual assault. See violence ships. See boats shoemakers. See cobblers shopping. See individual items (books, antiquities, art, clothing, flowers, etc.) silk. See textiles silver, 234, 496, 510; basins, 215n239; beaten, 180; brocade, 187, 304; cups, 539; foil, 187; inkwells, 229, 231; medals, 286; money, 301, 553, 583; ornaments, 502n163; plates, 301n499, 359; vases, 191; wigs, 184n148 singers. See musicians, composers, and singers Sirmione, 30, 374–76; letters sent from, 374

slander, 16n37, 270, 510–11, 570 Solarolo, 528, 541, 545, 549, 557–59, 560–61, 567–73, 577–79; Isabella d’Este’s purchase of, 10, 443, 528, 536; letters sent from, 527, 528 soldiers, 4, 70, 106, 132, 157n55, 183, 187n160, 190, 292, 317–18, 340, 375, 441, 446–47, 451–52, 464–65, 501, 504n166, 510, 526, 564; cavalry, 64, 65, 86, 216, 232, 317, 326, 328n49, 337, 464–65, 531; condottieri (mercenaries), 9, 65, 92, 99n238, 157n55, 205n207, 297n491, 324n37, 378n178, 593; desertion, 441; foot, 187, 217, 232; French, 302, 305, 316, 332; German, 453; men at arms, 36, 64–65, 70n153, 121n311, 210, 216–17, 323, 464–65; mercenaries, 65, 322, 406n278, 451–52n28, 463n53, 513n185, 519n210; Milanese, 36; Swiss, 231, 240, 451n28. See also armies; infantry; Italian Wars; looting songs. See music Soriano, 108 Spaniards, 179, 184, 186, 296, 375, 376, 451, 475, 504, 512 Spanish army. See armies spanking. See children and childhood sparvieri. See beds spies and spying, 464 Spoleto, 88n204, 177n125 stablemasters, 94, 374, 473, 492 stepchildren. See children and childhood stigmata, 155nn48–49 stucco, 489 studiolo. See Ducal Palace subventions, 115, 314, 508 suicide. See death sundials. See clocks and timepieces syphilis. See illnesses

Index 689 Tallard, France, 422–23; letters sent from, 421, 422 tapestries, 57, 149n19, 281, 506n168, 519. See also beds; interior decorations tariffs. See taxes taxes, 73, 76, 173, 188n163, 195, duti226n278, 322, 444n5, 490n124; duties, 530, 559; tariffs, 188, 195, 530. See also finances teachers (tutors), 3–4, 13, 18, 25n8, 37n42, 96n232, 111n275, 166, 193n177 462, 571. See also education; humanism and humanists tears, 66, 76, 99–101, 148, 256, 365, 445, 470, 513–14, 528, 529 teeth, 16n37, 154, 168, 227, 329, 386 Terni, 177n125, 495 textiles, 7, 194, 199n192; cloth, 109, 138, 170n101, 269, 276, 278, 475, 499, 531, 544; cloth, black, 40, 90; cloth, Cambrai, 40; cloth, gold, 180, 304, 532; cloth, Mantuan, 78; cloth, oiled, 285n408; cloth, tawny, 40; cloth, white, 179; linen, 40, 87, 169, 195, 368, 567; lion tabby, 39; ribbon, 41; satin, 78 178, 179, 180, 276, 532; silk, 39n48, 146, 178, 180, 183n144, 191, 251, 257, 275, 342, 546; taffeta, 41–42; wool, 55, 168, 183, 342, 531. See also clothing theater, 1, 18, 106n259, 141–42, 173, 182, 243n332, 350n356; actors, 182n143, 353n110, 434, 349, 482; comedies, 8, 176n80, 106, 119–20, 128, 137, 173–74, 182–83, 187, 189–91, 226n278, 243, 281, 482, 545, 546, 555; pageants, 431; performances, 128, 182n143, 184, 187n158, 189, 191n171; tragedies, 137n375, 377n177 thieves and theft. See crime

threats, 279n455, 307, 321, 325, 347, 349, 365, 367, 468, 481 toilets, 172 tombs, 155n48, 356n119, 556, 558, 560 torture, 66n135, 93, 176, 409. See also punishments trade, 9, 15, 42n57, 78, 141, 235, 303n512, 436m354 translations. See Hebrew; Latin; vernacular transportation. See individual modes of transportation (boats, carriages, horses, etc.) treaties, 335, 442n1, 531n229 trees. See gardens and gardening Trezzo, 69, 70 trials. See justice trousseaus. See dowries Turks, 64, 96n228, 188, 302n503, 381–83, 451, 516, 576; invasions and attacks by, 157n55, 382n194, 441, 471, 547n32 tutors. See teachers (tutors); humanism and humanists unrest. See rebellion usury. See finances valor, notions of, 190, 253, 389 vases, 194; agate, 264, 265, 266, 268–69, 273; earthenware, 430, 525, 547; glass, 571; silver, 191 Venice: and Francesco II Gonzaga, 22, 75n158, 78–79, 81n178, 136n374, 228, 297, 300, 307, 319, 323, 325–30, 334, 430n337; letters and news arriving via, 96, 100, 104, 213, 232, 313, 456, 509; letters sent from, 56, 538, 539, 563, 579; ordering books from, 45, 165n85; ordering fabrics from, 7, 109, 499; ordering other goods from, 42, 97, 145, 247, 264, 269, 356, 457, 488, 499, 521, 522, 545, 550, 552, 571, 572; ordering musical

690 Index instruments from, 60, 85–86, 112; political news regarding, 64, 79, 109, 124n325, 139n382, 143, 158n60, 199–200, 204n207, 215n239, 216n247, 222n263, 223, 231, 235n304, 249n353, 260n389, 281n449, 302n503, 322, 323, 331n249, 446n10, 495n138. See also under ambassadors; doge; Italian Wars vernacular: as language for sermons, 49; rise of, 15, 404n273; translations into, 43, 243, 360; writings in, 8, 45, 141, 166, 354, 554. See also authors; books; literature Verona, 13, 105, 115, 192, 411; and military campaigns, 293, 295n487, 297n491, 305, 315, 317, 324, 326, 337, 369; and the plague, 55, 335–36; palio of, 192; rectors of, 93, 112, 199. See also under Italian Wars Viadana, 38, 39, 44, 220, 332–35, 451, 555 vicars, 44n64, 71, 85, 86, 146, 245, 360, 428, 437, 539, 449, 486, 491, 494; and cases involving children, 43, 50; and issues of women’s rights and abuse, 34, 116, 169, 195, 267, 339, 429, 444, 468; and political matters, 299, 335, 447, 451, 452, 453; and the plague, 227, 230, 489; thanking of, 30, 160; vicariates, 34, 115, 195 Vicenza, 377n177, 378; letters sent from, 58 views and vistas, 374n168, 376, 473n75 Villimpenta, 48 vineyards, 374, 496, 498 violence, 346; assault, 115, 135, 199, 323, 331n249, 508, 510, 556, 576; domestic, 31, 34, 45, 350n100; murder and murderers, 4, 9, 22, 34, 47–48, 74–75, 141, 199,

308, 338n65, 477, 478, 526, 535, 556–57, 577–80; military, 146, 143, 179n132, 337, 441, 45, 451, 536, 577, 580. See also crime; justice; punishments Virgin Mary, 96, 376n175, 84n188, 221 virtue, 37, 149, 165, 271, 297, 417, 424, 479; and fame, 131; and women, 55, 127, 191n171, 356n119, 473, 524, 553; humanist, 214n238; of Isabella d’Este, 7, 17; of people and objects, 259–60, 265, 266, 273, 340, 343, 356, 493, 389, 428, 485–86, 530, 540; princely, 215n240 wagers, 363n139 wages. See finances wagons, 332–33 wall hangings. See interior decoration war. See armies; Italian Wars; Sack of Rome; soldiers; weapons warnings, 347, 407, 552 weapons, 132, 303–4, 317, 441, 448; arms, 36, 66n135, 73, 96, 211n227, 303n512, 317, 328n49, 369, 389, 436n354, 448, 568, 577–78; cannons, 160, 448–49; guns, 58, 70n143, 178, 303n512, 374, 448, 461, 533; knives, 191; lances, 35–36, 188, 190, 305n520, 464, 531; swords, 35, 69, 186, 213, 451n25, 532. See also armies; artillery; Italian Wars weddings: 22, 31n25, 43, 57, 141, 196n183, 203, 237–38, 296, 300, 340; of Lucrezia Borgia and Alfonso I d’Este, 170–92. See also banquets; betrothals; brides; marriage wet nurses, 23, 231, 238; health of, 152–53, 197; hiring and firing of, 135, 136n370, 211 wharfs, 387 whitewash, 278

Index 691 widows and widowhood, 134n364, 148, 180, 307, 309, 341n76, 429, 437, 522 wills (i.e. last testaments), 55n52, 555, 556n53 wine, 76, 77, 279, 292n477, 454n36; opinions on, 438; Malvasia, 239, 341, 457; requests about, 124, 264, 453, 567, 571n84; sending, 76, 103, 240. See also food wood, 134, 136, 147, 335, 444–45, 567; objects made of, 75, 113, 125, 145, 146, 531; paintings on, 207, 538; platforms and stages made of, 174, 220, 431 wounds, 132, 135, 144, 188, 191, 326, 337, 402n264, 431, 438, 454n36, 478, 482, 527