Isabella of Naples

Life

Childhood and Family

Isabella was born in the Kingdom of Naples, during the reign of her paternal grandfather King Ferdinand I of Naples. She was the second child of his heir, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria (who became King in 1494) and his wife, Ippolita Maria Sforza. Named after her paternal grandmother Isabella of Clermont (who died in 1465), the princess was educated at the residence of the Dukes of Calabria in Castel Capuano, and one of her teachers was the poet and humanist Giovanni Pontano. She was interested in music and poetry, and in her spare time she wrote some poems.

The only daughter from her parents' marriage, Isabella had two brothers: the elder was Prince Ferdinand (who would succeed their father to throne in 1495 but died one year later in October 1496) and the younger was Prince Piero (who was Lieutenant General of Apulia and Prince of Rossano, but died young of an infection following leg surgery on 17 February 1491). The siblings were raised alongside their cousins, the children of Eleanor of Naples, who included Isabella d'Este and Beatrice d'Este. Isabella had a particularly close relationship with the latter, developing into something of a sisterhood.

During her childhood, Isabella's parents had a difficult relationship, which was characterised by rivalry and contempt. Alfonso, perhaps threatened by Ippolita Maria's high level of education or disdainful of her pedigree, treated his wife with a lack of respect throughout the marriage. Alfonso preferred the company of his mistress, Trogia Gazzela, by whom he had two illegitimate children during Isabella's childhood. Her grandfather was a courageous ruler, who did not hold back when it came to dealing with his enemies. Being raised at this ruthless court in Naples certainly would have had an effect on Isabella, affecting her character as an adult.

From 1471, Isabella was planned to marry Gian Galeazzo Sforza, heir of the Duchy of Milan, and the preparations were concluded with the contract prepared on 26 September 1472. The bride and groom were first cousins (Isabella's mother and Gian Galeazzo's father were siblings), so a papal dispensation was needed, which was easily obtained from Pope Sixtus IV. On 30 April (or 1 May according to other sources) 1480 the betrothal was celebrated at the Castello di Porta Giova in Milan. In August 1488, the Sforza envoy Agostino Calco came to Naples to discuss the final details and the course of the ceremony. Calco's arrival coincided with the death of Isabella's mother, Ippolita Maria. Despite the period of mourning, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella's father decided not to postpone the wedding.

Marriage

In December 1488, the Milanese legation headed by the groom's brother Ermes, Marquis of Tortona went to Naples, where on 23 December, the marriage per procura took place. On 26 December, Isabella and her numerous entourage set off to meet her future husband. On 18 January 1489 she arrived in Genoa —there she rested before traveling to Tortona, where Gian Galeazzo was waiting for her. The meeting of the future spouses took place on 24 January. On 1 February, Isabella traveled from Vigevano to Milan, where the next day (2 February) the wedding ceremony was finally held in Milan Cathedral.

The ambassador Giacomo Trotti described Isabella on the occasion of the wedding: "the aforementioned new Duchess is a little dark-faced and not very beautiful, but she has a kind and beautiful person". Conversely, "the Duke is beautiful and very good".

Great celebrations followed the marriage. On 13 January 1490, in the Sala Verde of the Castello di Porta Giova, a masque or operetta entitled Il Paradiso, with a libretto by Bernardo Bellincioni was staged on the occasion of the wedding of Isabella with Gian Galeazzo. The scenography and costumes for the operetta were designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Despite the reports of ambassador Trotti, others praised Isabella for her beauty, like the Ferrarese ambassador who commented: "she was so beautiful and radiant that she seemed like the sun". The operetta was written very much with this praise for Isabella in mind. Il Paradiso was the representation of the seven planets orbiting round. A man portrayed each of the planets and all would speak praise of Isabella. Therefore, the operetta depicted Isabella as being at the centre of the universe. In addition to the acknowledgment of her physical appearance, Isabella was also noted for having an energetic personality; Gian Galeazzo, on the other hand, was quite a contrast to his wife; he was pale, studious and melancholy. The differences of personality would affect the marriage as well as in politics during the 1490s.

Soon after the wedding, the spouses moved against their will to Pavia, where Gian Galeazzo's uncle and Regent Ludovico Sforza prepared their seat. Isabella's relationship with her uncle was not going well. The Duchess, on the other hand, had a great liking for Ludovico's lover, Cecilia Gallerani. Isabella's marriage was also unsuccessful at first. After the wedding, Gian Galeazzo did not intend to consummate the union. In April 1490, reports of Isabella's continuing virginity even reached the Hungarian court to her aunt, Queen consort Beatrice of Aragon. After almost thirteen months, Gian Galeazzo began sexual relations with his wife, and Isabella became pregnant in May 1490. On 30 January 1491, during the wedding celebrations of Ludovico Sforza and Beatrice d'Este, Isabella gave birth to a son, named Francesco Maria in honour of both hers and her husband's grandfather Francesco I Sforza. This worried Ludovico, since the birth of the heir could made Gian Galeazzo and Isabella as potential figureheads for opposition to his position as Regent, which he was unwilling to relinquish. In order to weaken any coup attempts made by Isabella and her husband, Ludovico had her Neapolitan retinue returned home and restricted the young Duchess from appointing and rewarding followers.

Widowhood

Isabella, who was pregnant at that time, was very much affected by her husband's demise and the takeover of power by Ludovico. For almost six weeks, she retired with her two children to the Castello Visconteo in Pavia, Lombardy, where she avoided visitors. On 6 December 1494, Ludovico persuaded Isabella to move with her children to the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. Sforza then moved to La Roccheta with his family. During her stay in Milan, Isabella was under guard that prevented her from contacting the world. Despite her isolation, the Dowager Duchess lived a very lavish life. In February 1495 she gave birth to her youngest daughter, Bianca Maria (named after Isabella and Gian Galeazzo's grandmother Bianca Maria Visconti); ten months later, on 18 December, Isabella's father, King Alfonso II of Naples (who already abdicated in favor of his son on 23 January), died, and on 7 September 1496 her brother and new King Ferdinand II of Naples followed their father to the grave. Soon after, Isabella's eighteen-month-old daughter, Bianca Maria, also died. In 1496, Ludovico's two children also died: Leone and Bianca Giovanna, and the presence of Isabella and her children began to irritate the ruler of Milan. The Dowager Duchess then moved to the former Sforza Palace near Milan Cathedral, leaving her son Francesco at Ludovico's court. In 1497, Beatrice d'Este, Isabella's one-time friend and rival died in childbirth, aged twenty-one.

For Ludovico, the death of his wife was only the beginning of his misfortunes: in 1499, after an armed expedition of King Louis XII of France, Ludovico went into exile. However, any satisfaction that Isabella could have gained from witnessing the downfall of her rival was minimised; the Dowager Duchess petitioned Louis XII to name her son Duke of Bari, a title that belonged to the Sforza family. The French King, after seeing the popularity of Isabella's son was growing among the inhabitants of Milan, responded by taking the young boy to France, assuring Isabella that he planned to marry him with his daughter. In reality, Louis XII deceived Isabella by placing Francesco Maria in a monastery. She refused to give up hope for her son's return and petitioned the King of Romans Maximilian I to liberate him from France. However, this effort proved fruitless: she never saw her son again. This, along with the dethronement of her family in Naples, led to Isabella developing a deep hatred for the French.

The Dowager Duchess received a modest income from Louis XII and went to Naples with her two daughters. On the way to her hometown, she visited relatives and relatives in Mantua and Bologna. In mid-February 1500, she stayed in Rome with her illegitimate half-brother Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Bisceglie, husband of Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI. Soon she and her daughters arrived to Naples, where they were greeted by her uncle, King Frederick.

Death

During her last years, Isabella saw her daughter become a mother to four of her six children: Isabella (born 18 January 1519; by marriage Queen of Hungary and Croatia), Sigismund Augustus (born 1 August 1520; later King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania as last male monarch from the Jagiellonian dynasty), Sophia (born 13 July 1522; by marriage Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg) and Anna (born 18 October 1523; later Queen regnant of Poland and Grand Duchess regnant of Lithuania, and by marriage Princess of Transylvania). Not giving up on uniting the rival branches of the Sforza family, Isabella sent envoys to Poland to propose marriage of her eldest granddaughter, the younger Isabella, to Francesco II Sforza, newly installed Duke of Milan. However, Sigismund I refused as Milan was contested and Francesco II's hold was tenuous.

Isabella didn't live long enough to see the resolution of her aunt's inheritance. At the beginning of October 1523 she fell seriously ill. In early February 1524, the disease worsened and the Duchess died a few days later, on 11 February, aged 53. Initially buried in Bari, her remains were returned to Naples and buried in San Domenico Maggiore. On the sarcophagus of Isabella there is a quatrain wrote by certain Hieronymus Sforza, which called her a descendant of a hundred kings. The inscription alluded to the antiquity of the Duchess' family, which on the distaff side descended from Charlemagne.

In 2012, anthropologists excavated the body of Isabella, and concluded that she had syphilis. Her teeth had a high level of mercury, which was used (ineffectively) to treat syphilis, and had given a black color to the tooth enamel, most of which had been removed by abrading. They concluded that she was poisoned by her own medicine.

Issue

By her marriage, Isabella had four children:

Francesco Maria Sforza (1491–1512), earl of Pavia; died in France at aged 21, falling from a horse.

Ippolita Maria Sforza (1493–1501); died aged 8, in Ischia.

Bona Maria Sforza (1494–1557). Only surviving child, she married Polish king Sigismund I the Old, with issue of eight children.

Bianca Maria Sforza (1495–1496), died at aged 2.

Appearance and personality

Many historians, especially nineteenth-century, spoke of a phantom beauty of Isabella, facilitated in this by the scarcity of her certain portraits and by the undoubted beauty of those who, although traditionally attributed, clearly do not depict her. Among these there were those who even went so far as to attribute to envy for her beauty the heated hostility of Beatrice d'Este towards her cousin: "Beatrice could not suffer that the beauty of Isabella was praised in her presence, imagining thus reproaching her for her ugliness". Indeed, if Beatrice was always described by her contemporaries as pretty, although not of exceptional beauty, contemporary sources agree in defining Isabella as unpleasant.

Ambassador Giacomo Trotti, always frank in his judgments, in describing Isabella on the occasion of her wedding, turns the concept around with a polite euphemism, writing to Duke Ercole d'Este that "this new Duchess is dark-faced and not very beautiful", but immediately states that, beyond the physical aspect, she is beautiful inside: "she has a kind and beautiful personality". Conversely, "el Duca [Gian Galeazzo] is beautiful and delicious". Ambrogio da Corte, one of the courtiers charged with leading her from Naples to Milan, even describes her as "ugly, black, cross-eyed, too much made up, and her breath stinks": probably exaggerates, but Isabella did indeed have a dark complexion, a thick and slightly hooked nose, the swollen cheeks typical of the Aragonese, and it is also possible that she had inherited a certain degree of strabismusfrom her father, since Alfonso II was called il Guercio.Ludovico Sforza considered her of a very bad nature: proud, envious, malignant and ungrateful, capable of all sorts of evil and cruelty towards those she hated. No doubt Isabella inherited from her Aragonese relatives the indomitable pride and combativeness, and was not afraid to resort to unfair means - such as poison - to achieve her goals, but her biographers agree in attributing to her a certain will for justice and a certain capacity for good governance during the years of maturity in Bari, Although not separated from some abuse of power against citizens: some of these accused her of "terribilitate et potentia" because she used to use "violentie et fraude".

Loves

Although already at the time of the wedding, in 1492, there was talk of a certain understanding between Isabella and a beautiful young Milanese, there is no news of her lovers except during her widowhood. The story appears unclear: a courtier, Moroleto (or Morello) Ponzone, told the Duchess of Ferrara that, meeting one evening the Dukes of Bari and those of Milan with the Marquise of Mantua and other friends playing cards, Isabella found herself sitting in front of "a beautiful corsiero", in such a way that "she always looked at him" and "she had no mind in the game except that courser", so that Moroleto, moved with compassion, took "a little presumption" and "with honesty and good words" took him away, keeping him engaged in chatter until the game ended and everyone went to sleep.

Achille Dina, Isabella's biographer, on the basis of the metaphors present, interpreted the letter in question as if Moroleto were talking about a horse (corsiero is in fact the term commonly used for battle horses) and commented: "it must have been a steed of great value of Beatrice", consequently interpreted Isabella's insistent gaze as envy, as a "trouble in seeing herself surpassed by Beatrice even in the mounts". However, the term is sometimes used metaphorically to indicate not the beast, but the one who rides it; moreover, Achille Dina strangely omits the final part of the letter, that is, the one from which it is understood to be a man, and not an animal, since otherwise it would not be possible to understand why Moroleto had to spend the rest of the evening conversing with a horse.

Retired to live in the kingdom of Naples, Isabella had as her lover the leader Prospero Colonna, to whom "she gave herself in prey, enjoying and tickling lovingly almost every night". So, "having Isabella broken the brake on lasciviousness and, of modesty that she was before, became immodest", she also took as a lover the young Giosuè de Ruggiero, a man of the low nobility born in the farmhouse of Marigliano, who had been amasio of the same Prospero Colonna. The latter, having learned of the tresca and jealous of his lover, had Giosuè seriously injured in an ambush by some of his soldiers.

For this event Isabella deprived Prospero Colonna of her favours and continued to entertain herself with Giosuè. Then, having retired to Bari, and having Giosuè remain in Naples, Isabella, although she was past forty, took as a lover the thirty-year-old Alessandro Pignatelli, lord of Toritto, who with his wife Laura della Marra already had many children. Among these was the eldest son Ettore Pignatelli, who several years later became the lover of Bona, daughter of Isabella herself.

Legacy

Isabella was first suggested as the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa in 1979. This presupposes that the painting took place in the 1490s, during da Vinci's Milanese period. However, the painting has officially been dated as later, likely ruling Isabella out as the subject. Additionally, Isabella was never recognised during her lifetime as the subject of the painting. Those who viewed the Mona Lisa and were acquainted with Isabella such as Luigi d'Aragona and his secretary, Antonio de Beatis, did not make a connection.

She appears in Hella Haasse's 1952 novel The Scarlet City, depicted during her time as Duchess of Bari with mention of her difficult early life.