Daria Malaguzzi Valeri

Ludovico Ariosto’s mother, was born in Reggio Emilia on 1 April 1453, of Gabriele Malaguzzi, doctor in philosophy and medicine, a discreetly famous poet, and Taddea Valeri, daughter of Valerio Valeri. She came from an ancient and noble house  from Reggio the origins of which date back to at least the XII Century. She had four sons: Mattia and Ludovico, who died without leaving offspring, Gabriele and Alessandro who both held public posts in Reggio. Documents relate that she married Niccolò Ariosto on 13 October 1473. Her dowry, which was the conspicuous sum of one thousand gold ducats, her husband only received in 1579. After her marriage she received many expressions of affection from other members of her family: her mother left her two hundred gold ducats and an income of twenty-five ducats a year in her testament,  her grandmother  Giovanna assigned her ten ducats, her brother Ludovico ten ducats. The betrothed had an age difference of twenty years but this does not seem to have in any way marred their marriage. If anything it was their difference in character that caused problems: Daria is described as a woman of absolute virtue, modest and honest, troubled by having to try to fend off the discredit her husband procured upon the family, a man of doubtful morals, by all considered a thief. She probably gave birth to her first son Ludovico in the commander’s palace at the citadel of Reggio Emilia on 8 September 1474. She gave birth to a further 9 children, five girls (Laura, Taddea, Virginia, Dorotea, Maddalena) and four boys (Gabriele, Carlo, Galasso, Alessandro). Her last child, Taddea, was born in 1493. She presumably died before February 1522, that is before Ludovico left  for Garfagnana. She was buried in the same sarcophagus in which her husband had been buried, in the church of San Francesco at Ferrara.