Vespasiano I Gonzaga, Duke of Sabbioneta (6 December 1531 – 26 February 1591) was an Italian nobleman, diplomat, writer, military engineer and condottiero. He is remembered as a patron of the arts and the founder of Sabbioneta, a town in Lombardy designed according to the Renaissance principles of the "ideal city".
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Early life
He was born in Fondi, a Colonna fief in the southern Latium, the son of Isabella Colonna and the condottiero Louis "Rodomonte" Gonzaga, Lord of Palazzolo, a member of a cadet branch of the House of Gonzaga, Dukes of Mantua. Soon orphaned, he was educated under his aunt Giulia Gonzaga, who had moved to Naples to escape attempts from other members of the Colonna family to kill Vespasiano in order to obtain the fiefs he had inherited from his mother.
From his mother's second marriage in 1534 to Philip de Lannoy, 2nd Prince of Sulmona, he was the elder half-brother of Maria de Lannoy (who became nun in the monastery of Santa Maria Donna Regina in Naples), Charles de Lannoy, 3rd Prince of Sulmona (who married Costanza Doria del Carretto), Beatrice de Lannoy (who married Alfonso de Guevara, 5th Count of Potenza, and Alberto Acquaviva d'Aragona, 12th Duke of Atri), Horace de Lannoy, 4th Prince of Sulmona (who married Antonia d'Avalos), and Vittoria de Lannoy (who married Giulio Antonio Acquaviva d'Aragona, 1st Prince of Caserta).
Career
At the age of eleven he was sent to the Spanish royal court to complete his education under King Philip II of Spain, to whom he was distantly related through mutual descent from Kings of Aragon. The latter found in Vespasiano one of his most faithful advisers, and made him a Grandee of Spain and then Viceroy of Navarre and Valencia.