DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42861#0113
ISABELLA’S VERSES
81
authors, and her correspondence in these early years
is as much concerned with sonnets and cauzoni as
with jewels and fine clothes. Antonio Tebaldeo, the
young poet who had already acquired considerable
reputation at the courts of Ferrara and Bologna, was
constantly sending her his strambotti and capitoli, and
the insatiable Marchesa was always begging for more.
“ Find out Messer Tebaldeo,” she writes in
December 1491, to Giacomo Trotti, her father’s
envoy at Milan, “and beg him to send twenty or
twenty-five of the finest sonnets as well as two or
three capitoli which would give us the greatest possible
pleasure.” Sometimes she herself tried to express her
thoughts in verse, and in one of his letters Tebaldeo
speaks with high praise of a certain strambotto of her
composition on the autumn trees which have lost their
leaves, and thanks heaven that one of his disciples
has attained an excellence to which he could never
aspire, prophesying that she will go far in this direc-
tion, and achieve miracles in poetry, Isabella, however,
took these flattering words for what they were worth,
and although she occasionally wrote verses in private,
steadily refused to allow her productions to be
handed round among her courtiers, saying that such
attempts were more likely to bring her ridicule than
fame.1
But among all courtly poets of her circle the one
whom she admired the most was her kinsman
Niccolo da Correggio. From her earliest childhood
she remembered him as the handsomest and most
accomplished cavalier at the court of Ferrara, dis-
tinguished alike by his prowess in war and tourna-
1 S. Davari, La Musica in Mantova, in Riv. St. Mant., i. 54; and
A. Luzio, I Precettori d’Isabella d’ Este, p. 53.
VOL. I. F
81
authors, and her correspondence in these early years
is as much concerned with sonnets and cauzoni as
with jewels and fine clothes. Antonio Tebaldeo, the
young poet who had already acquired considerable
reputation at the courts of Ferrara and Bologna, was
constantly sending her his strambotti and capitoli, and
the insatiable Marchesa was always begging for more.
“ Find out Messer Tebaldeo,” she writes in
December 1491, to Giacomo Trotti, her father’s
envoy at Milan, “and beg him to send twenty or
twenty-five of the finest sonnets as well as two or
three capitoli which would give us the greatest possible
pleasure.” Sometimes she herself tried to express her
thoughts in verse, and in one of his letters Tebaldeo
speaks with high praise of a certain strambotto of her
composition on the autumn trees which have lost their
leaves, and thanks heaven that one of his disciples
has attained an excellence to which he could never
aspire, prophesying that she will go far in this direc-
tion, and achieve miracles in poetry, Isabella, however,
took these flattering words for what they were worth,
and although she occasionally wrote verses in private,
steadily refused to allow her productions to be
handed round among her courtiers, saying that such
attempts were more likely to bring her ridicule than
fame.1
But among all courtly poets of her circle the one
whom she admired the most was her kinsman
Niccolo da Correggio. From her earliest childhood
she remembered him as the handsomest and most
accomplished cavalier at the court of Ferrara, dis-
tinguished alike by his prowess in war and tourna-
1 S. Davari, La Musica in Mantova, in Riv. St. Mant., i. 54; and
A. Luzio, I Precettori d’Isabella d’ Este, p. 53.
VOL. I. F