Isabella d’Este Gonzaga

Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, marchioness of Mantua, was the same age as Ariosto. She was born in Ferrara in 1474 and died in Mantua in 1539. Daughter of Ercole I and Eleonora d'Aragona, she was given a good humanistic education. In February 1490, at the age of sixteen, she married Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. In a short time she transformed the court of Mantua into a brilliant cultural hub, a centre of attraction for artists, men of letters, scientists and philosophers, imposing herself as a refined and sensitive courtly lady. The court at Mantua benefited from a galaxy of high ranking figures such as Mario Equicola, Baldassar Castiglione, Matteo Bandello, Teofilo Folengo, philosophers such as Pomponazzi and scientists like the mathematician Paride Ceresara. Ludovico Ariosto was the interceptor of  Isabella’s biography in the years in which he was at the court of Ippolito d’Este. More precisely, he went to Mantua on an embassy to the Marchioness in February 1507. It was then that he told Isabella Gonzaga his intended to write a romance of chivalry. The Marchioness had an excellent impression from her meeting with Ludovico, as we know from a very flattering letter she wrote to Ippolito. Later on Ariosto gave her a copy of the first edition of the Orlando furioso in 1516 and the third in 1532. The inventory of Isabella d’Este Gonzaga’s library shows her fervour for the classics and chivalrous romance. It is said that the courtiers of the House of Este were obliged to rummage through the bookshops of Ferrara in order to satisfy the Marchioness’s appetite for this type of book. Well known is the controversy between the seventeen year old Isabella and Galeazzo Visconti on the pre-eminence of the two famous paladins, Orlando and Rinaldo. The Marchioness also revealed considerable talent in the handling of matters of State, which she found herself having to deal with because of the dithering of her husband, who also managed to have himself captured by the Venetians between1509 and 1510. Isabella moved with able diplomacy in order to obtain favours and protection, or to resolve dangerous situations, such as the menace represented by the ambitions of Cesare Borgia. Isabella was the mother of Federico II Gonzaga, captain general of the Church and later Duke of Mantua crowned by Charles V in 1530.