Eleonora Gonzaga

This article deals with the wife of Ferdinand II. On the wife of Ferdinand III. see Eleonora Magdalena Gonzaga of Mantua-Nevers ; on the Duchess of Urbino see Eleonora Gonzaga della Rovere .

Eleonora Gonzaga

Princess Eleonora Gonzaga (born September 23, 1598 in Mantua , † June 27, 1655 in Vienna ) was the youngest daughter of Vincenzo I Gonzaga , Duke of Mantua and Montferrat and Eleonore de 'Medici, Princess of Tuscany .

biography

Eleonora spent her childhood at the court in Mantua. On February 2, 1622, she married Emperor Ferdinand II in Innsbruck , whose first wife Maria Anna of Bavaria had died in 1616. But the Gonzaga family did not benefit as hoped from their association with the emperor. Because this marriage was not welcomed by some of his advisors. This was reported by the ambassador of the Gonzagas shortly after the wedding. Imperial armies even conquered and ravaged the Mantua residence in the Mantuan War of Succession in 1630 .

Eleonora was described by the papal nuncio Carafa as very beautiful and pious. Eleonora founded the Carmelite Convents in Graz and Vienna . She also had the heart crypt built in the Augustinian Church in Vienna. Her marriage to the emperor remained childless, but Eleonora was the stepmother of Ferdinand's four surviving children from his previous marriage.

Eleonora first found her final resting place in the Carmelite convent in Vienna, until she was transferred to the ducal crypt under St. Stephen's Cathedral in 1782 .

gallery

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  As a two year old child (portrait possibly a work by Peter Paul Rubens )

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  as a widow

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  Coffin in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna

Frans Pourbus the Younger painted the Princess of Mantua as a child (see there)

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Habsburg, Anna Eleonora of Mantua and Gonzaga . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 6th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1860, p. 154 ( digitized version ).
• Eleonora. In: Brigitte Hamann (Ed.): The Habsburgs. 1988, p. 78 f.
• Linda Maria Koldau : Women - Music - Culture. A manual on the German-speaking area of ​​the early modern period. Cologne, Weimar 2005, ISBN 3-412-24505-4 , pp. 82-90.

Web links

Commons : Eleonor Gonzaga (1598–1655)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Illustration from 1627: Eleonora, Imperatrix Germaniae ( digitized version )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Magdalena Hawlik-van de Water, The Capuchin Crypt. Burial place of the Habsburgs in Vienna , 2nd edition Vienna 1993, p. 71.

predecessor	Office	Successor
Anna of Austria-Tyrol	Holy Roman Empress February 2, 1622 to February 15, 1637	Maria Anna of Spain (1606–1646)