Isabella d'Este
Isabella d'Este ran Mantua, collected the best art in Italy, and was called the first lady of the world by a contemporary diplomat. Born in Ferrara in 1474, the eldest child of Duke Ercole d'Este, she was given a full humanist education, read Latin and Greek, and could recite Virgil at a court that expected it of her. She was betrothed at six and married Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, in 1490 at sixteen. She governed the state whenever he was away on campaign, which was most of the time, and outright when he was captured by Venice in 1509 and held for three years — negotiating his release, holding the city against Venetian and later imperial pressure, and, by his own resentful account, running it better than he had. Her studiolo and grotta in the ducal palace were among the most famous private collections in Europe. She commissioned Mantegna, Perugino, Costa and Correggio, wrote precise and demanding instructions about what the pictures were to contain, and pursued Leonardo for years without ever getting more than a chalk drawing. She employed Bartolomeo Tromboncino and made the frottola fashionable, set fashions in dress that were copied in France, and left some 28,000 letters. She secured a cardinal's hat for her son Ercole and negotiated with popes and emperors on Mantua's behalf, obtaining its elevation to a duchy in 1530. She protected refugees from the sack of Rome in 1527 in her own house. She died in 1539. Titian and Rubens both painted her, the latter from Titian, decades after her death.
- Lived: 1474 CE – 1539 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: marchioness, patron_of_arts, diplomat
