ISABELLA OF ARAGON
DUCHESS OF MILAN
1470-1524
Enlarged from a negative, specially made by Alinari through the courtesy of Professor I. B. Supino, of a medal, in the National Museum at Florence, by Giancristoforo Romano (1465?-1512). See Armand’s Les Médailleurs Italiens, ii, 54, no. 1.
Note [398] page 204. Beatrice d’Este, (born 1475; died 1497), married Ludovico Sforza, Duke Regent of Milan, in the same year (1491) in which his niece Anna Sforza married Beatrice’s brother Alfonso, the future husband of Lucrezia Borgia. Younger, apparently less beautiful, and certainly less accomplished than her sister Isabella, Beatrice encouraged her husband’s patronage of art and letters, and took part in his turbid political schemes. It will perhaps never be determined precisely to what extent she was responsible for his treatment of his young nephew and of the latter’s wife (see note [396]), and for the disasters to Italy that ensued, but she is known to have exercised a great ascendency over her husband’s mind, and he is said to have spent at her tomb the last night before his final capture and downfall. After the expulsion of the French from Italy in 1512, her sons Maximilian and Francesco Maria successively held the duchy for a time, until it passed into the hands of Spain in 1535. For an account of her life, the reader is referred to Mrs. Henry Ady’s recently published “Beatrice d’Este, Duchess of Milan; a Study of the Renaissance,” which owes much to the labours of Luzio and Renier.
Note [399] page 205. Eleanora of Aragon, (born 1450; died 1493), was the elder sister of the Beatrice who married Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. A projected union with Ludovico Sforza (who afterwards married her daughter) having been abandoned, she became in 1473 the wife of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara, and bore him two daughters and four sons. Other contemporary accounts confirm the praise bestowed upon her by Castiglione, and show her to have been a woman of rare merit, manly courage and enlightened culture. Fond of music, and herself a player upon the harp, she seems to have been a discriminating patroness of art and letters, and at the same time to have taken an active share in the serious cares of government, especially when her husband was absent or disabled. A pleasant glimpse of her character is gained from a letter written by her to the duke’s treasurer on behalf of a certain Neapolitan engineer, who had rendered important services but had fallen ill and was in want. “You will see what this poor man’s needs are. You know with what devotion he has served us, nor are you ignorant who sent him to us,—a circumstance worthy of consideration. It would ill become us so to treat him in his sickness as to give him cause for complaint against us. You must know what his pay is. See, then, what can be done, and arrange for helping him.” She did not live to witness the downfall of her family in Naples.
Note [400] page 205. Isabella del Balzo, (died 1533), was a daughter of the Prince of Altamura, and the wife of Federico III of Naples (see note [401]). When her husband lost his crown in 1501, she (together with the faithful Sannazaro) accompanied him to France, and shared his exile there until his death in 1504. Being, by the terms of a treaty between Louis XII and Ferdinand the Catholic, compelled to leave France, she and her four children took refuge, first with her sister Antonia at Gazzuolo, and then at Ferrara, where she was kindly treated and maintained by her husband’s nephew Duke Alfonso d’Este. Here she spent the last twenty-five years of her life, but at times in such poverty that when Julius II placed Ferrara under the ban of the Church, she obtained special permission to have religious services performed in her house, on the plea that she had not the means wherewith to leave the city.
Note [401] page 205. Federico III, (born 1452; died 1504), was a son of Ferdinand I of Naples, a younger brother of Alfonso II, and an uncle of his immediate predecessor, Ferdinand II. Having taken part in the weak resistance offered to Charles VIII’s invasion of Naples in 1494, he became king on the early death of his nephew in October 1496, and seems to have tried to keep aloof from the turbulent schemes in which Alexander VI sought to involve him. After another vain attempt to withstand the invasion of Louis XII, and having been shamefully betrayed by the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand the Catholic, to both of whom he had appealed for aid, he retired with his wife and children to the island of Ischia (which furnished refuge at the same time to his widowed sister Beatrice, ex-Queen of Hungary, and to his widowed niece Isabella, ex-Duchess of Milan), ceded his crown to Louis XII in exchange for 30,000 ducats and the Countship of Maine, and spent the last three years of his life in France.
Note [402] page 205. Federico’s eldest son Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, was besieged in Taranto during the Franco-Spanish invasion which resulted in his father’s downfall. On a sworn promise to set him free, he surrendered to the Great Captain (see note [239]), but was treacherously detained and sent as a prisoner to Spain, where he was treated by Ferdinand the Catholic with almost royal honours. He continued to reside in Spain, and on the death of his mother in 1533, he was joined at Valencia by his two sisters.
Note [403] page 205. The reference here is probably to the siege of Pisa by the Florentines in 1499, which was finally abandoned owing in part at least to the bravery of the Pisan women. Castiglione himself was the author of some Latin verses celebrating an incident of the siege.
