DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42861#0014
X
PREFACE
and virtues in their sonnets and canzoni. Castiglione
gave her a high place in his courtly record, Ariosto
paid her a magnificent tribute in his “ Orlando,”
while endless were the songs and lays which minor
bards offered at the shrine of this peerless Marchesa,
whom they justly called the foremost lady in the
world—“ la prima donna del mondo”—“ Isabella
d’Este,” writes Jacopo Caviceo, “ at the sound of
whose name all the Muses rise and do reverence.”
In her aims and aspirations Isabella was a typical
child of the Renaissance, and her thoughts and actions
faithfully reflected the best traditions of the age.
Her own conduct was blameless. As a wife and
mother, as a daughter and sister, she was beyond
reproach. But her judgments conformed to the
standard of her own times, and her diplomacy fol-
lowed the principles of Machiavelli and of Marino
Sanuto. She had a strong sense of family affections,
and would have risked her life for the sake of ad-
vancing the interests of her husband and children
or brothers, but she did not hesitate to ask Caesar
Borgia for the statues of which he had robbed her
brother-in-law, and ‘ danced merrily at the ball given
by Louis XII. while her old friend and kinsman
Duke Lodovico languished in the dungeons of
Loches. Like others of her age, she knew no
regrets and felt no remorse, but lived wholly in the
present, throwing herself with all the might of her
strong vitality into the business or enjoyment of the
hour, forgetful of the past and careless of the future.
Fortunate in the time of her birth and in the cir-
cumstances of her life, Isabella was above all fortunate
in this, that she saw the finest works of the Renais-
sance in the prime of their beauty. She knew
PREFACE
and virtues in their sonnets and canzoni. Castiglione
gave her a high place in his courtly record, Ariosto
paid her a magnificent tribute in his “ Orlando,”
while endless were the songs and lays which minor
bards offered at the shrine of this peerless Marchesa,
whom they justly called the foremost lady in the
world—“ la prima donna del mondo”—“ Isabella
d’Este,” writes Jacopo Caviceo, “ at the sound of
whose name all the Muses rise and do reverence.”
In her aims and aspirations Isabella was a typical
child of the Renaissance, and her thoughts and actions
faithfully reflected the best traditions of the age.
Her own conduct was blameless. As a wife and
mother, as a daughter and sister, she was beyond
reproach. But her judgments conformed to the
standard of her own times, and her diplomacy fol-
lowed the principles of Machiavelli and of Marino
Sanuto. She had a strong sense of family affections,
and would have risked her life for the sake of ad-
vancing the interests of her husband and children
or brothers, but she did not hesitate to ask Caesar
Borgia for the statues of which he had robbed her
brother-in-law, and ‘ danced merrily at the ball given
by Louis XII. while her old friend and kinsman
Duke Lodovico languished in the dungeons of
Loches. Like others of her age, she knew no
regrets and felt no remorse, but lived wholly in the
present, throwing herself with all the might of her
strong vitality into the business or enjoyment of the
hour, forgetful of the past and careless of the future.
Fortunate in the time of her birth and in the cir-
cumstances of her life, Isabella was above all fortunate
in this, that she saw the finest works of the Renais-
sance in the prime of their beauty. She knew