Christina did not live to see the end of the civil war, and the union of Henri Quatre's sister with her own grandson. But the last year of her life was cheered by the marriage of her granddaughter Christina with the Grand-Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany. Several alliances had been proposed for this Princess since she had gone to live at the French Court with her grandmother. Catherine was very anxious to marry her to Charles Emanuel, who in 1580 succeeded his father as Duke of Savoy; but Spanish influences prevailed, and the young Prince took the Infanta Catherine for his wife.[665] In 1583 the Queen-mother planned another marriage for her granddaughter, with her youngest son, the Duke of Alençon, who had left the Netherlands and lost all hope of winning Queen Elizabeth's hand; but, fortunately for Christina, the death of this worthless Prince in the following June put an end to the scheme.[666] When, in October, 1586, the King of Navarre divorced his wife Margot, Catherine proposed that her son-in-law should marry her granddaughter; but this plan fell through, as Henry refused to abjure the Huguenot religion. On the death of the Grand-Duke Francis in 1587, his brother Ferdinand exchanged a Cardinal's hat for the ducal crown, and made proposals of marriage to the Princess of Lorraine. Catherine was overjoyed at the thought of her beloved Christina reigning in Florence, the home of her ancestors, and promised her granddaughter a dowry of 600,000 crowns, with all her rights on the Medici estates in Florence, including the palace of the Via Larga. Orazio Rucellai was sent to France to draw up the contract, which Bassompierre signed on the Duke of Lorraine's part, on the 20th of October, 1588.[667] But the state of the country was so unsettled that the Queen would not allow her granddaughter to travel, and the fleet which sailed to fetch the bride was detained for months in the port of Marseilles. The murder of the Duke of Guise at Blois in December threw the whole Court into confusion, and a fortnight later Catherine herself died, on the 5th of January, 1589. It was not till the 25th of February that the marriage was finally celebrated at Blois. In March the bride set out on her journey, attended by a brilliant company of French and Florentine courtiers. Dorothea of Brunswick came to meet her niece at Lyons, and accompanied her to Marseilles, where Don Pietro de' Medici awaited her with his Tuscan galleys, and on the 23rd of April Christina at length landed at Leghorn. Ferdinand met his bride at the villa of Poggio a Caiano, and conducted her in triumph to Florence.[668] When the prolonged festivities were over, Monsieur de Lenoncourt, whom Charles of Lorraine had sent to escort his daughter to Florence, went on, by his master's orders, to Tortona, "to kiss the hands of the Duke's mother, the Queen of Denmark, and receive her commands."[669]
| CHRISTINA OF DENMARK | CLAUDE OF FRANCE | CHRISTINE OF LORRAINE |
| DUCHESS OF LORRAINE | DUCHESS OF LORRAINE | GRAND DUCHESS OF TUSCANY |
(Madrid)
To face p. [508]
Aug., 1590] DEATH OF CHRISTINA
Unlike her mother and grandmother, the Grand-Duchess Christina enjoyed a long and prosperous married life, and after her husband's death was Regent during the minority of both her son and grandson. There is an interesting triptych in the Prado at Madrid, with portraits of the bride, her mother and grandmother, painted by some Burgundian artist at the time of the wedding. The young Grand-Duchess, a tall, handsome girl of four-and-twenty, wears a high lace ruff, with ropes of pearls round her neck and a jewelled girdle at her waist. She carries a fan in her hand, and the Medici palle are emblazoned on her shield with the lilies of France and the eagles of Lorraine. Her mother, the shortlived Duchess Claude, bears a marked resemblance to Catherine de' Medici, but is smaller and slighter in build, and altogether of a gentler and feebler type. She too holds a fan, and wears a gown of rich brocade with bodice and sleeves thickly sown with pearls. Christina, on the contrary, is clad in mourning robes, and her white frilled cap and veil and plain cambric ruff are without a single jewel. But the fine features and noble presence reveal her high lineage. Instead of a fan, she holds a parchment deed in her hand, and on her shield the arms of Austria and Denmark are quartered with those of Milan and Lorraine, while above we read the proud list of her titles—Queen of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, Duchess of Milan, Lorraine, Bar, and Calabria, and Lady of Tortona.
This was the last portrait of Christina that was ever painted. In the following summer she went as usual to the Rocca of Sparaviera with her daughter Dorothea, to spend the hot days of August in the hills. But she had not been there long before she fell dangerously ill. In her anxiety to return home, she took boat and travelled by water as far as Alessandria. There she became too ill to go any farther, and died on the 10th of August, 1590, in the house of her friend Maddalena Guasco.[670]
The Duchess's corpse was borne by night to Tortona, where a funeral service was held in the new Duomo, after which the body was embalmed and taken by her daughter Dorothea to Nancy. The news was sent to King Philip in Spain, and he and his greedy Ministers lost no time in laying hands on her city and revenues. "We are informed," wrote the Viceroy to the President of the Senate, two days after Christina's death, "that Her Most Serene Highness Madame de Lorraine has passed to a better life, and accordingly we claim the pension of 4,000 crowns assigned to Her late Highness, on the quarter of the Castello, and enclose a list of the revenues of Tortona, which now revert to the Duchy of Milan."[671]