Isabella d'Este

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The only secured portrait of Isabella d'Este: Portrait medal by Gian Cristoforo Romano 1495 (here as a splendid version from 1505)

Isabella d'Este (born May 18, 1474 in Ferrara ; † February 13, 1539 there ) was a margravine of Mantua . She was also an important patroness and art collector and is considered to be one of the most influential women of the Italian Renaissance (“La prima donna del mondo”).

Life

origin

Isabella d'Este was the daughter of Ercole I d'Este , Duke of Ferrara , and Leonora of Naples , daughter of King Ferdinand I of Naples. Antonio Tebaldeo was their tutor.

Her younger sister was Beatrice d'Este , later the wife of Ludovico Sforza, Duchess of Milan . Her younger brothers were Alfonso I d'Este , Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio nell'Emilia , and the Cardinal Ippolito I d'Este .

education

Isabella d'Este received - as her extensive correspondence from Mantua shows - a very good education. Her educated mother took care of that. She could not only play the harp and collected the pictures of the most famous painters with great passion, but also owned a small library. Like her siblings, Isabella was taught Latin, music (she could play the lute and flute and is said to have had a beautiful singing voice), dance, Greek and Roman history and classical literature. She studied maps with particular interest and dealt with astrology. She was also known as a passionate chess and card player.

Her contemporaries described Isabella as very eloquent, intelligent and well-read, as quick-witted and spirited. Isabella was fluent in Latin. She became a passionate, almost greedy collector of Roman sculptures and commissioner for modern sculptures in the ancient style.

Marriage and children

Portrait of Isabella by Leonardo da Vinci (1499)

At the age of 16, on February 12, 1490, Isabella d'Este was married to Gianfrancesco II Gonzaga , the Marquis of Mantua . The marriage had eight children:

  • Eleonora (December 31, 1493 - February 13, 1550), named after Isabella's mother, who died shortly before the birth
  • Margherita (July 13th - September 22nd, 1496)
  • Federico II Gonzaga (May 17, 1500 - June 28, 1540), named after his grandfather
  • Livia (1501 - January 1508)
  • Ippolita (November 13, 1503 - March 16, 1570) became a nun
  • Ercole (November 23, 1505 - March 2, 1563), cardinal from 1527
  • Ferrante I. Gonzaga (January 28, 1507 - November 15, 1557), general under Emperor Charles V and founder of the Dukes of Guastalla
  • Livia (August 1508 - 1569), named after her sister who died in January 1508, became a nun and abbess

Isabella got on very well with her husband's family, but not so well with her suspicious husband, who from 1512 suffered severe syphilis . She loved her sons more than anything, but scoffers claimed that her dogs came before her daughters. Her disappointment with the first-born of a daughter was great. The relationship with Eleonora, later the father's darling, always remained cool. She also found no emotional access to her other daughters. Eleonora had to marry Francesco Maria I della Rovere for political reasons , the nephew of Pope Julius II Ippolita and the youngest daughter Livia became nuns. Isabella was reconciled with her daughters only in old age and also considered them in her will. Especially the unhappy life of her eldest daughter affected her very much.

Acting as a politician and regent

During the absence of her husband as military commander in the service of the Republic of Venice (1489 to 1498), Isabella Mantua ruled for him, also during his Venetian captivity (1509/1510), which she successfully ended by diplomatic means, and after his death on March 29th 1519 for her son Federico II Gonzaga . Even during the presence of the margrave, she pursued her goal, Mantuas endangered position in the time of Popes Alexander VI. and Julius II in the force field between the French kings, the German emperors , the popes and the Republic of Venice to maintain this, sometimes in conflict with her husband. After the death of Gianfrancesco II Gonzaga , she could openly play an important role in Italian politics, in which she constantly improved Mantua's position. It is also thanks to her skills that Mantua was elevated to duchy in 1530 and her younger son Ercole was made cardinal in 1527 . She showed great diplomatic skill in her negotiations with Cesare Borgia , who had expropriated the husband of her friend and sister-in-law Elisabetta Gonzaga , Guidobaldo da Montefeltro , the Duke of Urbino , in 1502.

One of her most important goals has always been to support members of the family, especially her own sons, in their careers. While the eldest son Federico still had to be given to the court of Julius II in Rome in 1510 due to the external circumstances as a hostage for the father captured in Venice , but this developed positively for Federico's upbringing and the establishment of connections from this the pattern of sending the sons to the most important European courts for education. Federico was later sent to the court of the French king, the third son Ferrante went to the court of Charles V in 1524 at the age of 17 in order to prepare what Isabella hoped was a successful career. The side effect of this approach was the networking of the Gonzaga family with the most important centers of power.

The "Isabella in Red" by Rubens (approx. 1605), copy of a lost portrait by Titian that was created around 1529

In 1525 she traveled to Rome with a smaller entourage to campaign with Pope Clement VII in favor of a cardinal title for her son Ercole. Since the Pope from the Medici family acted extremely hesitantly, the matter dragged on until 1527. There were other reasons for the trip, however. Isabella was looking for a distance from her son Federico, who was now acting independently as a margrave, who was also under the influence of his lover Isabella Boschetti for many years , who at times successfully tried to push Isabella to the side at court.

Although the cardinal title Ercoles had been secretly conferred on him beforehand, Isabella, against the urgent advice of her son Federigo, stayed in Rome in the spring of 1527, where she enjoyed the cultural and social life and shied away from the long journey, at a time when after the Agreement concluded too late between Clement VII and Charles V moved Charles V's mercenary troops, which had run out of control, from Lombardy towards Rome. When the Romans realized that these marauding troops could not be stopped by the usual negotiations, Isabella reorganized the Palazzo Colonna into a defensive bastion and took in a total of over 2000 nobles and their servants in the walls of the palace, relying on their son Ferrante, who had risen as a courtier to Charles V in the meantime, was supposed to protect them together with other, partly related military leaders. When, on May 6, 1527, the soldiers hoping for booty stood in front of the city and had overcome the defensive lines in the evening, an unimaginably cruel chaos broke out. The mercenaries from various countries, who had remained without pay for months, finally refused to let their superiors speak to them and plundered and murdered the city for weeks in the Sacco di Roma .

During the first week of the Sacco di Roma, Isabella managed, among other things, with the help of two "Capitani" from the runaway imperial army to keep the palace free from looters and to save the lives of the refugees. The price had to be paid, among other things, several ten thousand gold ducats as a ransom, which was one of the intentions of the two Capitani when entering the palace. With the help of her then twenty-year-old son Ferrante , a large number of the aristocratic prisoners finally managed to escape on May 14th over a number of barges that were waiting on the banks of the Tiber. After a forced stay in Ostia due to storms, Admiral Andrea Doria brought the refugee group to Genoa on Genoese ships . Isabella finally arrived in Mantua in late May or early June (unknown). Among the refugees was the ambassador of Venice to Rome, Domenico Vernier, who was hated by the soldiers, who disguised as a porter and was able to leave the palace with the announcement of a high ransom. According to general opinion, this escape should not have come two days later, since the two Capitani could no longer keep the mercenaries seeking loot from this untouched palace. The Palazzo Colonna remained the only palace in Rome that was not looted.

Act as a patron

The "Isabella in Black", painted rejuvenatingly by Titian (1536)

Isabella d'Este is considered to be the most important art patron of the Renaissance ; their work is documented by the correspondence received in Mantua (approx. 28,000 letters to Isabella and copies of approx. 12,000 letters that Isabella wrote).

She was also considered a model of her time in fashion . Her headgear (capigliari) and deep necklines, which were copied in Italy and even at the French court, are famous .

Portraits

Hardly any other personality of her time was portrayed as often, because Isabella d'Este had a strong need for self-expression. She was described as extremely beautiful, but, like her mother, tended to be obese.

Question of identification

Isabella d'Este in portraits (excerpts):
• Medal by Gian Cristoforo Romano 1495
• Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci 1499
• Portrait of Titian, approx. 1529 (preserved as a copy by Rubens)
• Portrait of Titian, rejuvenating, 1536 - including La Bella
• Ambras miniature (date and artist unknown)

Very few depictions of Isabella are identified as depicting herself. These few are considered to be inhomogeneous (for example different colors of the hair, the eyebrows and the eyes in the two Tizian portraits) and there are no depictions of people between the ages of 26 and 54 (see comparison of images on the right). The only currently absolutely certain identification is the inscribed medal 1495 by Gian Cristoforo Romano (see picture above), of which several copies are available.

It is said that the aged, vain art patron preferred idealizations and in some cases refrained from model meetings. It is unclear to what extent features in the portrait correspond to reality; In various letters Isabella asked for hair and eye colors to be painted over. Due to suspicion of blocking misidentifications, several museums have withdrawn their identifications in recent years.

The remaining three colored portraits ( Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien) are still inhomogeneous:

  • "Isabella in Red" by Titian, approx. 1529 (handed down as a copy by Peter Paul Rubens , approx. 1605)
  • "Isabella in Black" by Titian, 1536
  • "Ambras miniature", 16th century (from the collection at Ambras Castle , now in Vienna)

In 1536, when Isabella was already 62 years old, she asked Titian for a picture of her youth. A portrait of Francesco Francia was to serve as the model , which he had already made in 1511 on a third-party preliminary drawing (probably by Lorenzo Costa or Leonardo's famous profile drawing) and according to an oral description of her half-sister - without a model session. The light gray eye color differs from the brown eye color in the other portraits; the identification is doubted by some Tizian experts. Titian's portrait from 1536 could also be the painting La Bella in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. In this portrait, the eye color, hair color, eyebrows and the attractive appearance match better with the other portraits and compensate for their inhomogeneity.

Left: Isabella d'Este, drawing by Leonardo da Vinci (1499)
Middle: Mona Lisa in the Prado (probably a copy)
Right: Mona Lisa in the Louvre (1502-06)

Isabella d'Este and Mona Lisa

The great patron of the arts is also considered a plausible candidate when asked who Leonardo da Vinci's most famous picture, the Mona Lisa (1502-06), represents. The model for the Mona Lisa is usually Lisa del Giocondo , the wife of a businessman in Florence . According to Giorgio Vasari , Leonardo portrayed this woman. However, it is unclear whether the portrait of Lisa del Giocondo is identical to the Mona Lisa.

For Isabella d'Este as the model of the Mona Lisa, the resemblance to Leonardo's profile drawing from 1499 in the Louvre (a preliminary study for a portrait painting) and Isabella's letters 1501-06 requesting that the promised portrait be carried out speak for itself. Further arguments are the mountains in the background, which are more reminiscent of the landscape on Lake Garda north of Mantua than Tuscany , and the armrest typical of a ruler in the Renaissance .

literature

  • Alessandro Luzio: La Galleria dei Gonzaga - Appendice B: I ritratti d'Isabella d'Este . Milan 1913 (documentation of the most important art-related letters)
  • Jan Lauts : Isabella d'Este. Princess of the Renaissance. 1474-1539 . Marion von Schröder Verlag, Hamburg 1952.
  • Gli studioli d'Isabelle d'Este . Paris 1975 (exhibition catalog).
  • George R. Marek: The Bed and the Throne: The Life of Isabella d'Este . Harper and Row, New York 1976, ISBN 0-06-012810-0 , pp. Ix.
  • Valentino Brosio: La rosa e la spada. Isabella d'Este e Francesco Gonzaga . Turin 1980.
  • Sylvia Ferino-Pagden: "La prima donna del mondo" Isabella d'Este. Princess and Maezenatin of the Renaissance. Exhibition catalog. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 1994.
  • Mauda Bregoli-Russo: Teatro dei Gonzaga al tempo di Isabella d'Este . Bern / Frankfurt am Main et al. 1997, ISBN 0-8204-3124-9 .
  • Raffaele Tamalio:  Isabella d'Este, marchesa di Mantova. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 62:  Iacobiti-Labriola. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2004.
  • Clifford M. Brown: 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 2005, ISBN 88-8319-998-7 .
  • Francis Ames-Lewis: Isabella and Leonardo: the Artistic Relationship Between Isabella d'Este and Leonardo da Vinci, 1500–1506 . New Haven (Conn.) 2012, ISBN 978-0-300-12124-7 .
  • Sally Anne Hickson: Women, Art, and Architectural Patronage in Renaissance Mantua. Matrons, Mystics, and Monasteries . Farnham 2012, ISBN 978-1-4094-2752-0 .
  • Sarah DP Cockram: Isabella d'Este and Francesco Gonzaga. Power Sharing at the Italian Renaissance Court . Ashgate, Farnham 2013, ISBN 978-1-4094-4831-0 .
  • Tim Shephard: Echoing Helicon. Music, Art and Identity in the Este Studioli, 1440-1530 . New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-993613-7 .

Web links

Commons : Isabella d'Este  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jan Lauts: Isabella d'Este, Princess of the Renaissance. Hamburg 1952, p. 320, as well as various other text passages. The honorary title was first awarded to her by admirers in 1494, then distributed in writing by Giangiorgio Trissimo in his Ritratti in 1514 .
  2. ^ Lauts (1952), p. 274, as well as various other passages in the text
  3. ↑ Lauts (1952), p. 364.
  4. ↑ Lauts (1952), p. 356.
  5. ↑ Lauts (1952), p. 391 ff.
  6. ↑ Alessandro Luzio: La Galleria dei Gonzaga - Appendice B: I ritratti d'Isabella d'Este . Milan 1913 (documentation of the most important art-related letters).
  7. ↑ Deanna Shemek: Phaethon's Children: The Este Court and Its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara . Arizona 2005, p. 277.
  8. ↑ Ferino (1994), pp. 86-425.
  9. ↑ Ferino (1994), pp. 106, 315, 321; Cartwright (1907), index
  10. ↑ Ferino (1994), p. 18.
  11. ^ Cartwright (1907), Index
  12. ↑ Ferino (1994), pp. 429-432.
  13. ^ Marek (1976), p. 159.
  14. ↑ Ferino (1994), p. 86.
  15. ↑ Ferino (1994), p. 86.
  16. ↑ KHM Vienna, Inv 6.272bß and Ferino (1994) pp. 373-378.
  17. ↑ Ferino (1994), p. 94.
  18. ↑ Alessandro Luzio: Federico Gonzaga ostaggio alla corte di Giulio II . Rome 1887, p. 59: “… pregandolo tuttavia a ritoccare il ritratto ne 'capelli, che il pittore aveva fatti troppo biondi”; Luzio (1913), p. 213: “… a commutar gli occhij de nigri in bianchi”.
  19. ↑ See:
    • Royal Collection , London (RCIN 405762): Lorenzo Costa, Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog (approx. 1500–05)
    • Royal Collection, London (RCIN 405777): Giulio Romano, Margherita Paleologa (1531)
    • Currier Museum of Art , Manchester (inv. 1947.4): Lorenzo Costa ' Portrait of a Woman (1506-10)
    • Louvre, Paris (inv. 894): Giovanni Francesco Caroto, Portrait de femme (c. 1505-10)
  20. ^ KHM Vienna: Inv. 83, Inv 1534, Inv 5081
  21. ↑ Sally Hickson, GF Zaninello of Ferrara and the portrait of Isabella d'Este by Francesco Francia. In: Renaissance Studies. 2009 Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 288-310.
  22. ^ Corrado Cagli: Titian. Rizzoli Editore, Milan 1969.
  23. ↑ Leandro Ozzola: Isabella d'Este e Tiziano. In: Bolletino d'Arte del Ministero della pubblica istruzione. No. 11, Rome 1931, pp. 491-494. (PDF)
  24. ^ Frank Zöllner: Leonardo da Vinci - Complete Works . Cologne 2007, p. 241 (current catalog raisonné)
  25. ^ Giorgio Vasari: CVs of the most famous painters, sculptors and architects . 1550 / Zurich 2005, p. 330.
  26. ^ Francis-Ames-Lewis: Isabella and Leonardo . New Haven 2012, Appendix Letters, pp. 223-240.
personal data
SURNAME Isabella d'Este
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Margravine of Mantua, art collector of the Italian Renaissance
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1474
PLACE OF BIRTH Ferrara
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1539
Place of death Ferrara