ISABELLA D'ESTE MARCHIONESS OF MANTUA 1474-1539 A STUDY OF THE RENAISSANCE BY JULIA CARTWRIGHT (Mrs. ADY) AUTHOR OF "BEATRICE D'ESTE," "THE PAINTERS OF FLORENCE," "MADAME," ETC. "La prima donna del mondo.” NICCOLO DA CORREGGIO. "D'opere illustri e di bei studi amica, ARIOSTO. VOL. I LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET Univ. Library, UC Santa Cruz 1988 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE First Edition, February 1903 THE life of Isabella d'Este has never yet been written. After four hundred years, the greatest lady of the Renaissance still awaits her biographer. An unkind fate has pursued all the scholars, whether French, German, or Italian, who have hitherto attempted the task. Their labours have been hindered and interrupted, or their lives prematurely cut short by death. More than fifty years ago an interesting study on the famous Marchesa, from the pen of a Mantuan scholar, Carlo d'Arco, was published in the Archivio Storico Italiano (1845), based upon documents preserved in the Gonzaga Archives. In 1867, a distinguished Frenchman, M. Armand Baschet, wrote a remarkable essay on Isabella d'Este's relations with the great Venetian printer, Aldo Manuzio, but died before he could execute his intention of publishing a life of this princess. A mass of documents, which he had copied from the Mantuan Archives, remained in the hands of the late M. Charles Yriarte, who wrote several interesting chapters on Isabella d'Este's relations with the great painters of her age, in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, and was preparing a fuller and more complete work on the subject when he died. M. Firmin Didot, Dr. Janitschek, Dr. Reumont, and Ferdinand Gregorovius have all in turn given us sketches of Isabella in their historical works, while deploring the absence of any biography which should do full justice to so attractive and important a figure. Meanwhile, Italian students have not been idle. Twenty years ago a learned Mantuan ecclesiastic, Canonico Willelmo Braghirolli, made a careful study of Isabella's correspondence with Giovanni Bellini and Perugino, and published many of the letters relating to these artists. But he too died before his time, leaving her life still unwritten. Other wellknown scholars, Ferrato, Bertolotti, Campori, Signor Vittore Cian, and Cavaliere Stefano Davari, the present Director of the Archivio Gonzaga, have turned their attention to different aspects of the theme, and have published studies on the Gonzaga princes, or on the scholars and artists attached to their court. Above all, Dr. Alessandro Luzio, the present Keeper of the State Archives of Mantua, and his former colleague, Signor Rodolfo Renier, have devoted years of patient and untiring labour to the examination of the vast mass of Isabella d'Este's correspondence, amounting to upwards of two thousand letters, which had been fortunately preserved. During the last fifteen years these indefatigable workers have published a whole series of interesting articles and pamphlets containing the results of their researches, as well as one valuable volume, in which the intercourse between the courts of Mantua and Urbino, in the lifetime of Isabella and her sister-in-law, Elisabetta Gonzaga, is fully described. In an essay which Signor Renier contributed to the Italia, fifteen years ago, he informed his readers that he and Dr. Luzio would shortly publish a monograph on the great Marchesa, but these distinguished scholars have as yet been unable to fulfil their promise, and the appearance of this important and long-expected work is still delayed. Meanwhile, the following study, without pretend |