Isabella de’ Medici, learned and slandered. Women in history

«CMay I truly recognize, Most Illustrious and Excellent Lady, that these firsts of mine, due to their weakness, cannot give birth to the effect that I would like, which would be, in addition to giving some testimony to Your Excellency of my devotion, to show the world (as much as granted to me in this profession of music) the vain error of men who believe they are the patrons of other gifts of the intellect so much that it seems to them that they cannot be equally common to women.”

This is the dedication that Maddalena Mezari, known as Casulana, considered the first woman in history to have published her own musical compositions, wrote in 1568 to accompany her work The first book of four-voice madrigals.

These are words with which he underlines not only the prejudice according to which men unfairly considered female ingenuity inferior compared to the male one, but they are also a thank you to his patron, who firmly believed in the talent of women: Isabella de’ Medici.

Isabella’s father was the ruler of Florence, Cosimo I de’ Medici, the man who consolidated the power of the house; her mother was Eleonora of Toledo, one of the most influential women of the time, defined as “the Grand Lady of the sixteenth century”, for her exceptional organizational skills and her key role in the construction of the Medici court.

Isabella inherited her mother’s extraordinary political intelligence, maintaining correspondence throughout her life with figures of the caliber of Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France, Henry III or Catherine of Habsburg, Queen of Poland.

Among the most important Italian gentlewomen of the Renaissance era, she was also one of the brightest stars for culture and knowledge. But for a long time and wrongly, her name has often been remembered only in reference to some black legends, such as the one linked to the red room of the Orsini Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano which paints Isabella as an unscrupulous woman and unfaithful wife of Paolo Giordano Orsini, owner of the manor.

There, in the room, she was said to receive her lovers and, after having conversed with them, she would deceive them towards a door and then, beyond a short dark corridor ending in a well filled with quicklime into which the unfortunates fell. It is true that Isabella married Paolo Orsini, lord of Bracciano. However, it is certainly false that she committed atrocious crimes by killing supposed lovers. Perhaps this and other legends, which flourished especially after her death, attempted to erase the fact that she was one of the most cultured women of her time? An exhibition set up in one of her former residences, the Medici villa of Cerreto Guidi where she died in 1576, commemorates her profound erudition and role as a promoter of the arts and knowledge. Rare books by Isabella de’ Medici , which can be visited until 3 December, displays a selection of precious seventeenth-century printed editions edited by Giulia Coco, Marco Mozzo and Paolo Tiezzi Maestri, the result of the collaboration between the Villa of Cerreto Guidi and the Tuscan Bibliographical Society, promoted by the Municipality of Cerreto Guidi and the Association of Friends of the Medici Villa. A journey into Isabella and her court’s passion for books so that we can better understand a dimension that remained unpublished for a long time.

Cosimo I’s favorite daughter

Isabella, as a member of one of the most important families of her time, had a privileged upbringing and received an education on par with that of her male brothers.

She was Cosimo I’s favorite daughter. Like her father, she loved life in the open air, she liked hunting, fishing and swimming, plus she had a keen intelligence that allowed her to learn quickly. At just nine years old, Isabella was already composing long verses in Latin and trying to excel in her studies. She could sing and play the lute, she was an avid reader of ancient and modern texts. At 11 she was betrothed to Paolo Orsini, chosen for her by her father Cosimo to cement the alliance with papal Rome. A union desired by reason of state, as happened to all high-born girls of the time, which for Isabella also intertwined the motives of her heart. She fell in love with that young man, but never abandoned the Medici court, not even after her marriage.

When Paolo moves away from Florence several times to try to build a career as a leader loyal to the Pope, she, even if she suffers from his absence, will not follow him, she will always stay close to her father Cosimo. Starting from 1562, when her mother Eleonora and her brothers Garzia and Giovanni died within a short time, it was Isabella, the only woman in the family who remained alive (her sisters Maria and Lucrezia had died prematurely), who took on the important and onerous task of representing the feminine greatness of the Medici family. Isabella took on the role of her mother in the government of her house and as advisor and custodian of political secrets in a reality that could vary and was not without risks, made up of diplomatic, economic and family relationships.

Witty and ironic, with a strong personality, she was also the center of an important cultural circle in which philosophy, religion, science and literature were discussed freely. “Mortal goddess” “eternal muse” “worthy of a royal crown and of empire” are just some of the words that writers such as Stefano Rossetti or Benedetto Varchi dedicated to her for having granted them her protection. Isabella, in particular, encouraged women’s professional careers and protected them, even intervening in some cases of domestic violence.

A bad reputation

He died in 1576, two years after his beloved father. He was 34 years old and left two young children, Virginio, two years old, and Eleonora Francesca, three. He debated for a long time about his end, which engulfed his entire existence. According to traditional historiography she was killed by strangulation by her husband Paolo who did not accept Isabella’s alleged relationship with her cousin Troilo Orsini. A tragic end, among the founding myths of the Italian sixteenth century, capable of inspiring the pens of writers such as Alexandre Dumas over time, through the image of an Isabella who was actually incestuous with her father Cosimo, or Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi: for him Isabella was instead the prototype of the femme fatale. But it was the historical archivist Elisabetta Mori with her work The lost honor of Isabella de’ Medici, published by Garzanti, who proposed, by analyzing the correspondence of the Orsini archive, a new historical reconstruction according to which the gentlewoman, victim of slander propagated for centuries, she would not have died murdered by her husband, but from an illness that had afflicted her for a long time. From the papers a deep love would also emerge that would have linked Isabella and Paolo, according to the documents found, not at all grim and violent as the “classic” version would have it, but fervently in love with his wife throughout his life. Regardless of how she actually died and the attempts to obfuscate her, she continues to speak to us. She does it too through the pages of the novel The Most Beloved Daughter. History of the Medici sisters by Carla Maria Russo, published by Piemme, which seeks to give a voice back to Isabella and her sisters. «Isabella», says Russo, «she is a very modern woman, for many reasons. It is true that the freedom she enjoyed was the consequence of the privileges that were reserved for her but she understood the limits of that freedom and grasped how for a woman, “true” freedom is always a few steps beyond the limit we have reached.” © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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