Francesco II Gonzaga
Francesco II Gonzaga was Marquis of Mantua, a professional soldier in an age of mercenary captains, and the husband of Isabella d'Este. Born in 1466, he succeeded his father in 1484 at eighteen and ruled a small, wealthy and militarily useful state wedged between Milan, Venice and the Papacy. Mantua's principal export was its ruler's services, and Francesco sold them to all three in turn. He commanded the Italian league's army at Fornovo in July 1495, intercepting Charles VIII of France as he withdrew from Naples through the Apennines. The engagement lasted about an hour in heavy rain, both sides claimed victory, and the French got through — but Francesco captured the baggage train, had a votive church built by Mantegna to commemorate it, and was for a time the most celebrated soldier in Italy. He then served Venice, France and the Papacy in succession, and was distrusted by each of them. Venice arrested him in 1509 during the War of the League of Cambrai and held him in Venice for three years. Isabella governed Mantua and negotiated throughout, and he was released only after his eight-year-old son was sent to Rome as a hostage. He bred horses on a scale that made the Gonzaga stud famous across Europe, and kept a household of artists and dwarfs. He contracted syphilis, probably in the 1490s, and it disfigured and eventually killed him in 1519. Mantua's greatest period came under his son Federico, who brought Giulio Romano there and built the Palazzo Te. His true legacy is the wife who outlived him by twenty years and the collection she assembled.
- Lived: 1466 CE – 1519 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: marquis, condottiere
