Isabella d'Este

Italian noblewoman

• Born: May 18, 1474
• Birthplace: Ferrara (now in Italy)
• Died: February 13, 1539
• Place of death: Mantua, Lombardy (now in Italy)

Isabella d’Este’s collecting career is the best-documented of the Renaissance, and her extensive archive has provided much of what is known about the discovery, acquisition, export, and display of antiquities and other collectibles in private collections for this period.

Early Life

Isabella d’Este (ee-zah-BEHL-lah dih-ehs-TAY) was the daughter of Duke Ercole I d’Este and Eleanora of Aragon, a daughter of King Ferrante I of Naples. Isabella received a classical education at the court of Ferrara under the tutelage of Battista Guarini, son of the Greek scholar Guarino of Verona.

In 1490, she married the marquis Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua. In the same year, her younger sister, Beatrice d’Este, married Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan. (A third, illegitimate daughter, Lucrezia d’Este, daughter of Ercole before his marriage to Eleanora, also enhanced the Este family’s dynastic ties by marrying Annibale II Bentivoglio, lord of Bologna, in 1487.) Their brother, Alfonso II d’Este, inherited the title of duke of Ferrara on his father’s death in 1505.

Life’s Work

When she arrived in Mantua in 1490, Isabella immediately set to work renovating rooms in a tower of the medieval castle San Giorgio, the original building at the heart of the expanded Gonzaga Ducal Palace in Mantua. Her suite on the piano nobile (second story) of the castle included one of the corner circular towers and its attached, smaller tower called the Torretta di San Nicolò.

Two of the rooms in this smaller tower had formerly been used as a study and a treasury by Ludovico II Gonzaga, the previous marquis of Mantua. Starting in about 1493, Isabella turned the former study of the marquis into her own studiolo with the addition of intarsia wainscoting and painted decoration. The small room below this, accessible only through the studiolo and formerly used as a treasury, was modified to accommodate her growing collection of cameos, engraved gems, coins and medallions, miniature bronze sculptures, and various antique fragments. Probably because of its somewhat cavelike character, Isabella called this room, one of the first modern museum rooms, the Grotta (cave).

In about 1494, Isabella began to commission a series of painted allegorical scenes, on canvas, for the decoration of her studiolo space. Once again, her archive provides numerous letters regarding the commissioning, completion, and display of these paintings. The first of the allegories to be completed was Parnassus by Andrea Mantegna (1495-1497), followed by his Pallas Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue (1499-1502). She then obtained two allegories from the Ferrarese artist Lorenzo Costa, one being The Reign of Comus (1506), which was based on a composition that was begun by Mantegna but left unfinished at his death in 1506. A fifth painting was completed by Pietro Perugino in 1505. As a group, the paintings allude to the war between virtue and vice, or the subjugation of the passions to reason. The program conveys the idea that the arts and intellectual pursuits, under the aegis of learned reason, flourished in Isabella’s private study. Although united thematically, each painting was drawn by court Humanists from a variety of allegorical and mythological sources. They then devised written programs that were presented to the individual painters. Given this chain of transmission, the allegorical allusions are complex and occasionally baffling. Efforts to obtain a sixth allegory from such diverse artists as Giovanni Bellini, Francesco Francia, and Raphael were inconclusive. Her archive also makes references to negotiations with Leonardo da Vinci.

In the meantime, she also furnished her antiquities room, the Grotta, with a statue of cupid, attributed to the fourth century b.c.e. Athenian sculptor Praxiteles, and its modern counterpart fashioned by Michelangelo. In the true spirit of the Renaissance, the chief paradigm of the Grotta collection was this admixture of genuine antiquities with their modern counterparts. Several pieces that Isabella owned, including a celebrated antique cameo depicting a double profile portrait of Augustus and Livia (perhaps now in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum) survive in modern collections.

Isabella spent two brief periods as de facto regent of Mantua: first when her husband was captured and held by the Venetians in 1509-1510 and again briefly after his death in 1519, when her eldest son and heir to the Mantuan Dynasty, Federigo II Gonzaga, was absent on military duty with the imperial forces.

Isabella had six children. Her eldest child, Eleanora, married Francesco Maria della Rovere and became duchess of Urbino. Other daughters Ippolita and Livia became nuns. There were three sons: Federigo, Ercole Gonzaga, who became a cardinal, and Ferrante Gonzaga, who became prince of Guastalla.

When Isabella became a widow in 1519, she moved out of the main palace at the center of the ducal complex to a new apartment on the ground floor of the Corte Vecchia wing. There she re-created her studiolo and Grotta, moving not only the collections but probably most of the fittings and fixtures to rooms that had been modified to the same dimensions as the originals. In the early 1530’s, two more allegories by Antonio Allegri, better known as Correggio were added to the paintings in the studiolo.

In her later years, Isabella also continued to collect antiquities. She visited Rome for the first time in 1514 and again in 1527. Her 1527 trip coincided with the sack of the city by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s troops, and she spent several days trapped in the palace of her son, Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga. Although she traveled to Mantua safely, many prized antiquities that she collected during this trip were lost in a disaster at sea.

Federigo was made the first duke of Mantua in 1530, and the next year he married Margherita Palaeologus (a princess of the last surviving branch of the final imperial family of Byzantium). Federigo died in 1540, leaving his widow in charge of three underage sons and one daughter. Isabella died in 1539. An inventory compiled of the Isabellalian collections in 1542 provides a detailed record of her extensive holdings and was probably drawn up because the deaths of Isabella and Federigo, occurring so close together, left the estate in the hands of guardians until Isabella’s eldest grandson (Francesco) was ready to assume the role of duke.

As marquise of Mantua, Isabella was both the subject and the object of many literary dedications and literary portraits, most notably a tract called I Ritratti (1528), written by the Humanist Gian Giorgio Trissino, in which he celebrated her as one of the exemplars of female beauty and deportment in Italy. She was also the subject of several portraits: a celebrated medallic profile by Gian Cristoforo Romano, a pencil sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, and paintings by Lorenzo Costa, Francesco Francia (now lost), and the most famous by Titian (now in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches). Although not particularly famed for her physical beauty, contemporaries agreed that Isabella was a formidable cultural and social force, and she has become known as the first lady of the Renaissance.

Significance

Isabella d’Este was a noted art patron and collector whose surviving archive has given scholars valuable insights into patronage and collecting patterns of this period. Her surviving letters, in which there are references to many other contemporary collectors, provide a history of collecting practices and insights into the display of art and collectibles. Her letters demonstrate also how art objects and antique fragments were translated into valuable cultural commodities. Isabella’s life also is significant for studies on the cultural role that aristocratic women played at the northern Italian courts of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Bibliography

Brown, Clifford M. “A Ferrarese Lady and A Mantuan Marchesa: The Art and Antiquities Collections of Isabella d’Este Gonzaga.” In Women and Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors, and Connoisseurs, edited by Cynthia Lawrence. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. A brief but comprehensive overview of Isabella’s career as patron and collector and a summary of her key cultural accomplishments.

Brown, Clifford M.“Per dare qualche splendore a la gloriosa cità di Mantova”: Documents for the Antiquarian Collection of Isabella d’Este. Rome: Bulzoni, 2002. Brings together the complete file of documents pertaining to Isabella’s antiquarian collections, with analysis in English. A second volume (forthcoming) will detail the physical fabric of Isabella’s museum rooms.

Cartwright, Julia. Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474-1539: A Study of the Renaissance. 1903. Reprint. 2 vols. London: J. Murray, 1923. This is the first biography in English and the most complete, presenting in vivid detail Isabella’s social, political, cultural, and family life with some complete documents and many excerpts from her letters translated into English.

Verheyen, Egon. The Paintings in the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este at Mantua. New York: College Art Association of America, 1971. A complete analysis and interpretation, in English, of the paintings completed by various artists for the decoration of Isabella’s studiolo.