Duchess Isabella d’Orsini was hailed as “La Nuova Saffo” by those who gathered round her. She was by nature an arrant flirt—as most pretty women are—for she inherited her father’s amorous disposition; and she was impulsive,—an added charm where beauty reigns,—worldly-minded, and dreadfully extravagant; moreover, she dressed to perfection.
The Duke of Bracciano paid rare visits to Florence, but the Duchess, in compliance with her marriage-contract, spent a portion of each year with her husband in Rome. These visits were not occasions of happiness and satisfaction. The two had scarcely any interests in common, and the infrequency of intercourse entailed unfamiliarity and embarrassment. The good-byes were never unwelcome on either side!
The Duke took up, once more, his military duties, following in the footsteps of his father as commander, in 1566, of a division of the Imperial army against the Turks. For his bravery at the battle of Lepanto, he was made Field-Marshal of the Emperor and a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. In other respects he had his consolations for his enforced separation from his wife—and Isabella, naturally, had hers too!
It was said that every man fell in love with her, and she, on her part, did not restrain her passion. There was no one to advise, no one to check, no one to help her to keep in the path of wifely fidelity. Reports of liaisons were made to the Duke by his Chamberlain from time to time, but these were couched in words which concealed his own part therein. He and the Duchess were accustomed to be much alone together. He was a musician and a linguist, a scholar and an artist like herself, and a most attractive companion. She helped him in his great literary work—Lezione della Lingua Toscana—perhaps the only serious occupation she ever undertook.
An intimacy, with such a similarity of tastes, ripened naturally into a romantic attachment—certainly quite in accord with the tenets of Platonic humanism, and perhaps something more! That Duke Paolo was conversant with the relations of his wife with his cousin was well known, but he made no complaint, and took no action to check them. Likely enough he had that “easy-going contempt of everything and everybody” which Niccolo Macchiavelli has stigmatised as the prevailing tone of Italian society.
Probably the sad deaths of Princess Maria and Duchess Lucrezia d’Este, and the tragic events in the Maremma of 1562, affected Isabella greatly, but they only tended to increase her husband’s detestation for everything Florentine. No doubt he judged that Cosimo’s hand slew both Maria and Garzia—might it not strike Isabella or himself! When a man, in an autocratic position such as that made by Cosimo I., yields to unguarded passion, reason and right alike are at a discount. Isabella’s husband had taken the measure of her father—alas, that he was destined to follow his example!
For Isabella a new interest was created when, in 1564, Bianca Buonaventuri became “La cosa di Francesco,”—her brother. She, so to speak, clasped the lovely young Venetian to her bosom. She entered into the romance of the elopement, and of her brother’s infatuation, with all her heart. Isabella de’ Medici and Bianca Cappello-Buonaventuri became inseparable friends.
During Duchess Eleanora’s life the gaieties and the follies of the court had been kept within something like bounds, but she had hardly been laid in her tomb within San Lorenzo than Duke Cosimo gave reins to his passions, and the Palazzo Pitti and the various Medicean villas became the scenes of unbridled lust and depravity. In 1564 the Duke deputed most of his sovereign power to his son Francesco, who became Regent and virtual ruler of Tuscany.
The grave scandals which distracted Florentine society began to raise up in the minds of the people violent antipathy for a Sovereign whose private example was so abominable, and whose discharge of public duties was so basely marked by turpitude. A revolution of a drastic description seemed to be inevitable, and, really, Cosimo had no other course than abdication.
The Florentine rendering and observance of Platonism favoured illicit connections between the sexes. The palaces of the nobles and of the wealthy merchants were nothing more or less than harems. The manners and traditions of the Orient took root, not only in Florence, but in all the other Italian States, and the normal strictness and restrictions of lawful married life had everywhere all but disappeared. Every household, not only of the noble but also of the middle class, had among its number a cicisbeo, or two or more,—“unofficial wives”—we may call them, possessed of almost equal rights and position as the lawful spouses.