DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42861#0009
PREFACE
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 inter-
rupted, 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 dArco, 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 remark-
able 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 Beaune 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.
V
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 inter-
rupted, 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 dArco, 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 remark-
able 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 Beaune 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.
V