Isabella d’Este: Renaissance Influencer

Summary

Podcast Summary: Isabella d’Este: Renaissance Influencer

Podcast Information:

• Title: Not Just the Tudors
• Host: Professor Susannah Lipscomb, History Hit
• Episode: Isabella d’Este: Renaissance Influencer
• Release Date: June 12, 2025

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Introduction to Isabella d’Este

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Susannah Lipscomb delves into the life of Isabella d’Este, a towering figure of the Italian Renaissance. Described as "the first lady of the Renaissance," Isabella was a formidable woman whose influence spanned politics, art, and fashion.

Notable Quote:

“Isabella d' Este is sometimes referred to as the first lady of the Renaissance and she can arguably be called one of the most formidable women of all time.”
— Professor Susannah Lipscomb [02:29]

Sarah Dunant's Inspiration and Approach

Professor Lipscomb welcomes guest Sarah Dunant, an award-winning writer and historian, to discuss her fascination with Isabella d’Este. Dunant shares how her extensive research, including Isabella’s personal correspondence, transformed her perception of this historical figure.

Notable Quote:

“She suddenly became irresistible. And I spent a couple of dirty, dark weeks in the archive trying to penetrate her voice through water stained pages.”
— Sarah Dunant [05:57]

Isabella’s Early Life and Education

Isabella was born into the powerful D’Este family in 1474. From a young age, she exhibited remarkable intelligence and education, mastering Latin by six and engaging in cultural activities like composing music by twelve. Her father's unwavering support as a girl in a male-dominated society played a crucial role in shaping her confident and ambitious nature.

Notable Quote:

“When the Duke of Mantua sends an envoy to Ferrara to assess her as a possible wife for his future son, she harangues the envoy with this entire memorized letter in Latin.”
— Sarah Dunant [17:40]

Isabella’s Marriage and Role in Mantua

Isabella's marriage to Francesco II Gonzaga was a strategic alliance aimed at strengthening political ties against Venice. Despite Francesco being a warrior and often absent, Isabella adeptly managed the state’s affairs, maintaining Mantua’s stability and independence during turbulent times, including the Italian Wars.

Notable Quote:

“She takes on the reins of government. She runs the courts. She checks foreign policy. The lesser lords that are speeding out from her daily are basically running a government while he's away on the battlefield.”
— Sarah Dunant [24:10]

Diplomatic Skills and Political Maneuvering

Isabella’s diplomatic acumen was pivotal during her husband's captivity. For three years, she negotiated tirelessly to secure his release, balancing alliances with powerful entities like the Spanish and the Papacy. Her ability to charm and influence key players ensured Mantua’s security amidst the chaos of war.

Notable Quote:

“Her job was always that: to side to a certain extent with the Spanish... and she gets that honor for Mantua, it's a little bit of a Pyrrhic victory.”
— Sarah Dunant [32:17]

Art Patronage and Collection

A patron of the arts, Isabella was instrumental in fostering Renaissance art. She commissioned works from eminent artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, establishing a diverse and influential art collection. Her dedication to collecting not only paintings and sculptures but also coins, musical instruments, and curiosities reflected her broad cultural interests.

Notable Quote:

“Isabella will have learnt that [using charm] at her mother's knee. You know, part of her education would have been that she had a cultured mother and a mother who, after the state, when her father was away.”
— Sarah Dunant [41:21]

Influence on Artistic Tastes

Isabella's patronage had significant, albeit subtle, impacts on artistic trends of her time. While she may not have directly influenced broader artistic movements, her discerning taste and support for emerging artists contributed to the vibrant cultural landscape of the Renaissance.

Notable Quote:

“I think she's a bit taken aback by that change in art.”
— Sarah Dunant [46:47]

Correspondence and Self-Fashioning

Isabella's extensive correspondence, comprising around 13,000 letters, provides invaluable insights into her strategies and personality. Dunant illustrates how Isabella used letters as tools of soft diplomacy, blending charm with assertiveness to maneuver through the complexities of Renaissance politics and society.

Notable Quote:

“Her letter writing is a woman using words as soft diplomacy.”
— Sarah Dunant [48:33]

Isabella’s Legacy and Modern Comparisons

Drawing parallels between Isabella and contemporary figures, Dunant highlights her as a modern woman of her time. Her strategic use of fashion, art, and diplomacy mirrors today's multifaceted approaches to influence and legacy-building.

Notable Quote:

“She designs a headdress which is like a turban because she has a relationship with the Sultan of Turkey... you have to look at their Headdress and what Isabella wears, one year, everybody else is going to be wearing two or three years down the line.”
— Sarah Dunant [53:14]

Conclusion: The Enduring Impact of Isabella d’Este

The episode concludes with reflections on Isabella’s enduring impact and the deep connection Dunant feels with her as a historical figure. Isabella’s ability to balance power, culture, and personal ambition makes her a timeless exemplar of leadership and influence.

Notable Quote:

“She will have been channeling her... it's not so much that I feel lonely. I feel a bit like I'm not quite sure who I am without her.”
— Sarah Dunant [59:06]

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Final Thoughts: Professor Susannah Lipscomb and Sarah Dunant provide a comprehensive and engaging exploration of Isabella d’Este’s life, emphasizing her role as a Renaissance influencer. The episode richly details Isabella’s political savvy, artistic patronage, and enduring legacy, offering listeners a vivid portrayal of one of history’s most remarkable women.

Transcript

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit with a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward/subscribe.

[Hannah]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Born into the powerful D' Este family in 1474, the eldest child of Erclay I Duke of Ferrara and Eleanor of Naples. Isabella d' Este was related by blood or marriage to nearly every major Italian family of the Renaissance, from the Borgias to the Sforzas. As Marquessa of Mantua, Isabella deftly navigated political strategy, diplomacy and compromise as regent during her husband's prolonged absences, successfully maintaining Mantua's stability and independence through the turbulent Italian wars. Isabella was highly educated and her intelligence, wit and cunning was wielded to lasting influence, not least as a remarkable patron of the arts. Fiercely independent, Isabella navigated and subverted the expected roles of an Italian noblewoman without ever compromising her own identity. Isabella d' Este is sometimes referred to as the first lady of the Renaissance and she can arguably be called one of the most formidable women of all time. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Sarah Dunant, an award winning writer, historian and broadcaster. She presented the wonderful historical podcast When Greeks Flew Kites for a long time, regularly contributed to BBC Radio 4's Point of View, and you can look out for her new series Unearthing the Past on BBC Sounds. Sarah Dunant is a best selling novelist. Her work has been translated into over 30 languages and she's explored the Italian Renaissance in books such as Blood and Beauty and in the Name of the Family. She returns with a sparkling new novel, the Marchesa, taking us through the complex and challenging politics of Renaissance Italy and inside the compelling life of the remarkable Isabella d' Este. Sarah, welcome to the podcast.

[Sarah Dunant]

Thank you very much. Lovely to be here.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

How did you first come to Isabella d' Este as a subject? What inspired you about her?

[Sarah Dunant]

I actually think I've spent 25 years ignoring her deliberately because she's probably, as you say, the most famous single woman in the Italian Renaissance. And when I set out writing 20 years ago, I was looking to try and add more female names to the very small roll call of women that we consider important in the Italian Renaissance. So I was looking instead at nuns who had painted or written plays, or courtesans who had composed poetry and protected themselves against witchcraft trials. I was actually ignoring, in a sense, the two most famous women of this period, one of which was Lucretia Borgia, of course, and Isabella d' Este. And when I took on the Borgia families, I bumped straight into Isabella because she is Lucretia's third sister in law and a huge snob who doesn't like her new sister in law and behaves appallingly. So I came to her kicking and screaming because I thought I wasn't gonna like her and I thought we already knew about her already. I think what convinced me is the realization that she had left some 13,000 letters written in her own hand and a set of correspondence back to her in the archives of Mantua, which not only gave you a voice singing out of the past, but also gave you a history of the consumption of the Renaissance, a history of what it was like to try and be an art patron, a history of what it was like to try and dominate fashion, to be an early photoshopper. And so she suddenly became irresistible. And I spent a couple of dirty, dark weeks in the archive trying to penetrate her voice through water stained pages.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

That's fascinating. I've come across the fact that you've described her elsewhere, or at least living with her, as a love affair of sorts, and you've given a sense of her character there. What was she like to live with? And was it possible, in wrestling with those stained pages, to get at a sense of her feeling, her interiority?

[Sarah Dunant]

Look, I maybe have to come clean here, which is I'm not able to read deep little Renaissance scripts. So I had a lot of help with historians who translated a bulk of the letters that I could only imagine myself. I think what you get, and history does this continually to you, it throws up an extraordinary person who is not necessarily always likable, because otherwise they wouldn't be the tall poppy that gets their head above the parapet. And that is particularly true for women of this age. So she's apparently confident, she's clearly intelligent, she's very opinionated. She grows up surrounded by great art because the Ferrarese Renaissance is in operation in the d' Este household in Ferrara. And she goes as a young woman ready to make her own court and to make her own collection. Now she's vying against popes and cardinals and people with a great deal more money and a great deal more power in the art world. And so what she has to do, which women so often have to do in history, is she has to navigate a way of using one level flowery charm with which you can read in the kind of flowery language of the letters, and in the other sense, a steely will underneath, in order to get what she really wants. And what that means, of course, is the likes of you and I spending an afternoon with her would probably find her absolutely outrageous and unbearable. But the reality of living with her in the 1500s is that she manages to achieve stuff that other women don't, partly because I think she has quite a thick skin.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And what is it about the Italian Renaissance? Generally, that keeps you returning to the period.

[Sarah Dunant]

I don't know why anybody would leave it, ever. I mean, I've just been thinking about the moment when, and this is very relevant to the Tudors, when Isabella dies. And just before she dies, she's given a horse by Henry viii, who wants her to intervene with the Pope in order to get his marriage annulled. Right. So Tudor history bangs into the Renaissance at this very key moment, and for me, the Tudors are the losers, because the Renaissance is firing on all cylinders artistically, be it in philosophy, be it in religion, even with the Reformation, be it in political thinking, absolutely everything about it is dynamic. And as I say, for me, having been an art historian as well as a historian myself, the only question I wanted was, who? Where are the women? Where are the women? So much of the history we've done over the last 50 years has been like the pointillist painting, to add more dots in the past, which are the dots of another gender, another sex. And Isabella is, if you like, the final goal of that, because having done the ones you don't know about, I now want to introduce you to the ones you've maybe heard about, because she's famous in Italy but not that famous in Britain. I think I would be right in.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Saying I think that's fair. And actually, I'm really struck. And we'll come back, hopefully, to talk a bit more about this later, but your book is sitting open on a page here for me, where you talk precisely about the way that the archive has changed, that history has been about men looking for men and now women are looking for women. But we'll come back to that, because what I want to ask you about more generally is this approach. As a novelist, you're a historian, you're an art historian as well. But when you're writing a novel, you might start with that, that extraordinary cache of letters, and you're delving into her correspondence and getting her voice, but you have to go beyond that. So how do you go about filling in those gaps of a life lived 500 years ago?

[Sarah Dunant]

Oh, God. The answer is, I can't remember because it's all awful during the journey of it. But I can often pinpoint a beginning. And in that, this particular novel, I can pinpoint it really clearly, which is, I had a sense of what it would be like to be sitting in that old archive because it's in an unused convent and deconsecrated church long before I went there, and imagining that as Isabella's letters arrived on a scholar's desk. So Isabella lifted herself up into the room and looked over the scholar's shoulders that she was released by the opening of the folders of her archive. And what that allowed me to do with her, which is, if you like, the bigger question of the historian as opposed to the novelist, was say, this is an extraordinary life, but what has history made of this life during the last five centuries since Isabella died? Why for so long did we not know about her? Why then did everybody suddenly want to know about her? Because we were interested in women. And then why suddenly when we discovered, oh, she was a woman of her time and that she meant she didn't behave well. And we brought another set of judgments in. So I'm trying to have my cake and eat it, Susannah. I'm trying to write a novel where you think fantastically interesting woman in her own voice. God, I would have loved to have lived her life. And also suggests that history is what we make of it as well as what it was. And we have to be quite careful about taking our own judgments into the past. We need to listen to their voices back to us.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Absolutely. And it's so interesting this way that you parallel the experience of looking into the past and the stories that emerge from the more distant past. And you mentioned there, that was before you went to Mantua. But Richard Holmes talks a lot about footprint research. Did you get your feet dirty, as it were? Did you go and tread the same streets that Isabella would have done?

[Sarah Dunant]

Well, I went and treaded the same streets. I must say, the archive was an amazing disappointment there. I had these romantic fantasies of wood paneled rooms with the voices of decaying monks, habits coming out of them, and they built a whole new kind of modern municipal, cold, bare little reading room. So that was awful. When I finally got myself behind the door which says state of the Archive, then the state of the archive is pretty terrible. It's a bit like a scene from Hogwarts, actually, because it's so disintegrating. But it is true about Mantua. You know, we all know Venice, we all know Florence, we all know Milan. In a sense, we know them too well. The thing about these little city states like Verona or Ferrara or Mantua is that they got swallowed up by history and we didn't hear about them for a long time. So when you go back, you are still actually walking through a great deal of what Mantua would have looked like for her. And the ducal palace there, which was enormous. Now it doesn't have a lot of its original features because her collection got snaffled up by Cardinal Richelieu or by Charles I, who also bought a lot of it. But it does have a sense of walking back into a palimpsest of over the centuries what has happened to Italy and what has happened to this thing called the Renaissance. And it's a very romantic city. And the most wonderful thing about it, and I hope I'm not screwing it up for the Mantuins, is there's not a lot of tourism. And whoever hears this podcast, please don't go, because it's a really fantastic city. But if we all go immediately, it will no longer have its charm.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Okay, so you may go, but spread out your visits over the next 20 years.

[Sarah Dunant]

Perfect.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So let's talk about Isabella Herstaff, then. She has been called, as I said, the first lady of the Renaissance. How connected was she to those ruling families of Italy? Can you paint a picture of those, that network that she's in?

[Sarah Dunant]

The thing about the Italian Renaissance, and of course this is why the Renaissance happens in Italy, is because Italy's not a unified country till the 19th century. So what it is is a series of little city states, all run by different families. Now, many of them got to where they are by basically stabbing and clubbing their way into power. But when they get there, what they need to show is how cultured and civilized they are, because they're in the middle of the Renaissance. So what you have is lots of little city states vying to show off their own cultural importance. And Isabella is trying to do that. Now, within Mantua, she's already got a great court painter in Andreas Mantegna, who is brother in law to Bellini. And if you know your art history, these are two giants of the 15th century. And then what she does is she sets out to have her own collection, which no woman has done. She builds a particular little studiola, which is a word used to describe a man's study, where he will sit with the classics and think about humanism and imagine himself to be a Greek philosopher. Sot that she has her own. She's the first woman to do it. And in it she decides she will have five different paintings, and she knows their subject matter will be virtue and vice and mythology. And so she goes out to get great painters to paint. Now, nobody has had this kind of chutzpah before. She doesn't really have the budget to compete with Julius II or some of the big cardinals. You know, she can't give Michelangelo a job for life, but she can scheme her way into getting at Least some of what she wants. And so what the book also is, is a realization that the art market, which we see as rather new and vicious, actually started five, six centuries ago in something like the Renaissance. And we watch her trying to become a player in an already established field. And because all of those families know each other, the family trees are like the roots of a big tree. They all go underneath the ground. So she's got a sister in law here, she's got a brother in law here, she's got a cardinal in Rome, she's related to this. She knows everybody. And she pumps and uses her contacts all the time in order to get what she wants. I wouldn't like to live with her, but I'm very glad she existed.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Tell me about her early life. How did it prepare her?

[Sarah Dunant]

You know, I think the central, most powerful point about Isabella's early life is that not only was she the first child, but she was a girl. And that was not a problem for her father. So much in this period of history, as we will know very well from the Tudors, is the girl, particularly the first one, is the problem. You need the boy. And yet her father seems to have adored her from a very early age. And boy did she play to it. She was clearly smart, she was clearly fast. There's the most wonderful story about how the age of six, she is learning Latin well enough to have memorized a letter by Cicero. And when the Duke of Mantua sends an envoy to Ferrara to assess her as a possible wife for his future son, she harangues the envoy with this entire memorized letter in Latin. And I think what you've got there is a young girl who doesn't realize that she ought to be a boy, right? She is a girl and she's adored and she's clever and she's playing to it. And somehow she never loses that innate sense of confidence. And when I think about, for instance, the present, I think about the fact that if the first man in your life, that is your father, doesn't see you as inferior, indeed semi worships you, then you have a step up when it comes to handling all kinds of things. When it comes to being a woman in the world, and Isabella had that.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

It sounds like she was probably very well educated as well. I mean, that she had access to a letter by Cicero that she could learn in Latin at the age of six is probably quite unusual for women at the time.

[Sarah Dunant]

Well, yes and no, actually, because of course, Renaissance humanism, and by now it's very well established in Italy. Does sort of understand that education is important for everybody and girls are starting to be included within that. And one of the bits that historical research has given us over the last 50 years is an expanding list of women who were well educated and had opinions and wrote them down, but the opinions got lost over the years. I think what she has is both the confidence to go with it and the position to use it. She's also a very good musician. At the age of 12, she's given the responsibility of composing and arranging all the music for a play her father puts on. So she's cultured. She's incredibly cultured, but also she's passionate about it. You know, you can wear culture as a badge of fashion or you can wear it as something that you passionately believe in. And I think Isabella was a collector. I think when we kind of, you know, we know a lot about the history of female artists now, we. We know much less about the history of female collectors. And it's always easy to sort of damn them as eccentrics. Oh, Gertrude Stein or whatever. But the thing about Isabella and the thing about a good collector is, as she herself says, you occasionally have to be ruthless. You have to know what it takes to get what you want. And that does not always make you charming. So in one particular case, she wants a work of art that her sister in law owns. And when her sister in law's state is invaded by Cesare Borgia and he is packing up all this art to finance his next military campaign, she writes a sneaky letter to her cardinal brother in Rome asking him to intercede. So she gets the little sculpture from Michelangelo, but she has to keep it secret from her in laws because when they see it in her collection, they'll realise she's done the dirty on them. And I think at that moment you have to just both take your hat off to her and go, I'm so glad I wasn't related to you.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So let's talk about her marriage. How was it a strategic alliance? And what do we know of the relationship?

[Sarah Dunant]

Oh, Susanna, it's so fascinating because like every marriage in this period of time, it was not a love match. It was a dynastic construction of unions. It fitted everybody very well to have Mantua and Ferrara together because then they were a bulwark against the aggression of Venice. So there was your big politics of it. Her husband is eight years older than her. He is almost by design what many of the men in this period are, which is they're quite fond of womanizing with women who aren't their wives, because they don't need to worry about that. And he is a warrior. He earns his money by being a mercenary soldier. So it's never gonna be a love match. But I think very early on, what he realizes is he has a woman who has the ability to look after the state while he's away. And that's exactly what she does. She takes on the reins of government. She runs the courts. She checks foreign policy. The lessors that are speeding out from her daily are basically running a government while he's away on the battlefield. And then something very interesting happens in their marriage, which remains such an area of historical mystery, which is he contracts syphilis, which is a new disease, as you will know, just arrived out of the New World and is running amok in Italy. And we know that he has it. We have proof of that. We know he dies of it. What we really don't know very well is how it affected the world, wives of these men who had it. Because we didn't like to think about the idea that these virtuous women might be living with men who were sexually contagious. So one of the big questions of the book for me is, does Isabella know her husband has syphilis? And if so, where do I find the evidence that tells me that? And what does she do in that case in order to avoid. Because she must know that this is a sexually contagious disease which could destroy her as much as him. So there, if you like, is the big mystery in the book, which the letters alone couldn't give me the answer for. I had to go foraging elsewhere.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And as his consort, she's certainly not passive, is she? How do we see her exerting power in, for example, the events of the Italian Wars?

[Sarah Dunant]

I think her main role in that is, first of all, to keep everybody on side. And there are a lot of sides all the time. Until you decide which side you're gonna side with, basically. I mean, it's being a really classy diplomat. And one of the problems that she has with her husband is he's a great warrior, but he's not a good diplomat. So he kind of says what he thinks to whoever he thinks should listen to it. While she's having to mop up the diplomatic damage that he's done by sending a charming letter to say, no, he didn't really mean that. We're still really good friends with you, et cetera, et cetera. She's very good at it. Of course. It infuriates him at some Point, I think, through the ages, if you like. And this is a phrase he uses himself in one of his letters. Women wearing the trousers at a certain moment can be quite hard to live with. So she's having to negotiate a marriage which needs to work for her, while doing the one thing that she's clearly really enjoying, which is ruling and being a patron and yet somehow still making it all work together.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And how did she manage Mantua and its stability, its defense during the three year period when her husband was a hostage?

[Sarah Dunant]

Well, quite a lot of that three year period is about her trying to negotiate, getting him out of prison. And what that means is making sure that all of the people who are offering her their troops to protect her borders, that is invading to take over Mantua, she has to both charm and hold at arm's length. She then has to try and negotiate with the King of France to see if they can do a swap of captive prisoners, but France won't play ball. So she then has to go to the Pope to try and see how he can negotiate with Venice. So it's a bit like, do you remember those hostage crises we used to have, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, when a great deal of behind the scenes diplomacy was always going on with the people who held the hostages, but we never saw all of it. Well, that's partly what Isabella is doing for those three years, at the same time as trying to make the city itself still feel secure. You know, I came across a wonderful description of what happens when she's ruling and a new instance of the bubonic plague takes place, which, as you know, is happening regularly in this period. And as I read how Mantua put into effect its protection, I was like reading the memo that Boris Johnson should have got at the beginning of January in 2020, because it was like, first of all, we closed the city gates so anybody coming from an infected city is not allowed in. And then we have a quarantine hospital and anyone who has suspected bubonic plague will be put in the hospital. And then if there's a lot in one area, we'll cordon off the area and we'll send in food and medicine, but you can't get in or kill out. And at the very end, when it finally leaves, we'll give money to all the people who are surviving because we need economic stimulus to get ourselves back on track. And I just read this and I thought, sometimes we think the past is an unsophisticated society compared to our own. And you have just written a Blueprint for how one should deal with a pandemic. Wonderful, eh?

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Isn't that extraordinary?

[Sarah Dunant]

Yeah.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And you know, so forward thinking to be able to anticipate all of those outcomes and all of the people who are going to need help and how it needs to be managed. And I suppose it really testifies to the way in which she's this extraordinary power, you know. And I suppose actually one thing I really want to ask is given that she's doing so well whilst her husband's not there, however did they navigate a return to the status quo when he returned because she's done so well ruling his stead?

[Sarah Dunant]

Yes. I don't think they do negotiate a personal way to do it because I think by then the cat's out of the bag and it's very clear that he's very ill. And so as he moves further into syphilis, she actually goes traveling, which suits her very well because she has a good reputation and what she can effectively become is the overseas envoy for the state of Mantua, which she does very well. She goes to Naples, she goes to Rome, she goes to Milan, she takes her diplomatic skills abroad. I think life gets more challenging for her after his death when he puts his 18 year old son in her guidance for the next few years. And the son wants his independence and he doesn't like the fact that his mother's semi ruling for him. So she hits the kind of mother problem of an ambitious younger son. So her life is, I must tell you Susan, her life is never boring. There is always a new challenge being thrown up right the way through. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us we brought in a reverse auctioneer which is apparently a thing Mint Mobile Unlimited premium wireless. Everybody get 30, 30. Better get 30. Better to get 20, 20, 20. Better to get 20, 20. Everybody get 15, 15, 15, 15. Just 15 bucks a month. Sold. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of 45 dollars for a 3 month plan equivalent to 15 dollars per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed SL after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra C mint.

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And you've mentioned her diplomatic skills a few times now. I mean, one of the sort of extraordinary that happens on her watch is that Mantua becomes a duchy. How fundamental is she to that now?

[Sarah Dunant]

Well, that's just in the background of Renaissance history and it's so complicated that it becomes exquisitely boring if you try and explain it is the Italian Wars, I. E. There are all these rich little city states in Italy and suddenly the other countries as they're coming together are starting to think I'd like a piece of that action. So I'd like to own Naples or I'd like to and what you get is the Spanish and the French both coming in in order to try and pick off bits of it. And so her job is to protect Mantua and yet also stay friends with whoever happens to be top dog. It is not unlike what it is like for most of the rest of the world to be dealing with Donald Trump at the moment. You know, you get a new kid on the block with a lot of power and very angry and brash. And you have to find a way to negotiate it so you don't get crushed in it. And so Isabella's job was always that. So what she did is she did side to a certain extent with the Spanish. And the Spanish at a certain point not only become King of Spain, Charles V, but also Holy Roman Emperor, a title that means virtually nothing except it's a lovely title. And suddenly Spain is the great power. And the Holy Roman Emperor has the ability to move up a little state from being just marquesas and marquesses into being a duchy. And because she plays with the right side, actually she gets that honor for Mantua, it's a little bit of a Pyrrhic victory because all of these little city states are not going to last very long. You know, that war of attrition from Europe is going to carry on. And you only have to go two or three generations down the line in the d' Este family to discover that in Mantua they are so badly in debt that they're selling off Isabella and larger collections to the likes of Charles I in Buckingham, who want to create a British art scene, or Cardinal Richelieu in France, who's got the money to snap it up. So it's as if you're looking at, I don't know, fireflies in the summer when they burn. They burn so brightly, these little Italian states. They punch so much more powerfully above their weight. They're so involved in creating great art and great thinking and running great courts and yet it dribbles away from them over the next 50 or 60 years and then gets lost in history until you try and refind it.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Gosh, there's so much to respond to there. I mean, I'm aware that people in this country who want to go and see something of her collection to can go to Hampton Court and see the incredible Mantegna there, for example, that Charles I exactly brought back to this country. But I was thinking about that this early period of her negotiation with somebody like Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, people getting confused by all the Charles's here. But you know, she knows what has happened in the Sack of Rome. Although yes, your novel talks about how there are things that she doesn't know that her scholar will find out. But you know, the atrocities, the horrors of the sack of Rome. And so she is doing everything she can to protect her state from suffering something at the hands of Charles V's troops in a similar way, I guess.

[Sarah Dunant]

Yes, absolutely. And what's so fascinating about the Sack of Rome? I mean we say it. And when you say those words, I think most people think, oh, it's the Goths and the Vandals, isn't it? Who takes out rome in the 4th century? We know much less about this incredible moment when a Spanish army, including Lutheran heretic troops, come in and sack Rome because the Pope has played politics badly. And there is massive slaughter. A third of the population is killed. People are tortured for their money because they hate Rome as they the cesspit of the old Catholic religion. Nuns are raped, relics are thrown into the ground. They keep horses in the Sistine Chapel. It's such an extraordinary moment in European history. And of course, it has a direct impact on Britain because as a result of that sacking, Charles V has the Pope in his pocket. And Charles V's aunt is Catherine of Aragon. And Catherine of Aragon does not want to be divorced. So when Henry comes to the Pope asking for a divorce, the Pope is actually controlled by Charles V because of the sack of Rome. And Charles V says, no way. On my watch, this is family business. And it is that moment that triggers the beginnings of Britain having to take on her own journey when it comes to the Reformation. So the ways in which Little Italy and the spread of Europe and Britain connects through kind of tendrils running under the ground during this period of history is so rich and so interesting.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Let's talk then about how Isabella becomes this extraordinary, perhaps the greatest female art collector and patron of her time, at least, if not of all time.

[Sarah Dunant]

How does she do it? Well, I have to have one proviso here, which is I don't think that she has the most brilliant of tastes.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Always. Okay.

[Sarah Dunant]

Like all collectors, she will have some blind spots. What she does know is who are the up and coming superstars? And so she will try and play for works by them. So she will come across Leonardo da Vinci when he is a fugitive from the fall of Milan back to the Italian wars. And he stays for a while in Mantua and he does a few sketches of her, kind of. They're very careless. They're just, oh, hello, Isabella. Just stay still for a second. I'll catch you there. And she is desperate for a proper portrait from him, which she never delivers. Cause of course, Leonardo always never delivers what he's supposed to deliver. And so she goes after the Michelangelo, which, as I've said, she manages to get through Naftali nefarious means. She's also trying to woo Mantegna, who by this age in Mantua is 60 and doesn't like her and doesn't want to be pressured. And she's got tendrils out to Bellini in Venice, so she's after everybody. And she's a mixture of charming them. How wonderful. You can do me anything you like, but I really would like a Nativity, actually, so could you do me the Nativity first? Or. She's really pissing them off, basically, because what she does is to say, I know exactly what I want. And when I mean exactly, I do mean exactly. So this is Minerva and Mars on a hill together. And she gives them such explicit instructions that quite a lot of them go, sorry, lady copper, I don't do art like this. Right. I don't do it to creative. Yes. I'm not the decorative artist, I'm the artist. And you do see, I think, a hint in there. When you go in, looking at a woman's figure in history, you're always looking for how she's being treated and whether or not she's being treated as an equal and at what point they play the female card. And there is a certain key moment when you can say these. You can think of these artists behind their back going, christ, that Isabella d' Este, what a woman, eh? Doesn't she take liberties? And possibly not taking her seriously enough. But on the other hand, she does something very smart, which is, as a child of her time, clearly, she wants antiques, she wants stuff that's coming out of the ground of this with this new discovery of classicism of Greece and Rome. She doesn't have the money to bid when they find the liar Coon in Rome in 1506, because Julius II will snuffle it up. So she's got agents around the Mediterranean, where there were other places where there were Roman civilizations and cultures at work. And she's got letters saying, somebody in Cyprus has just dug up a head. They're saying, it's Homer. It looks a bit like Homer. Yes. It's got a bit of a chipped nose, so it's quite cheap. Would you like me to get that for you? And so you see this wonderful mix in her of. I'd like to call it the sort of Margaret Thatcher of the economics of collecting. The housewife who always wants a good bargain, who wants her money's worth. So you get both that moment in her and the real artistic vision to say, let's go to Rhodes, let's go to Cyprus, let's go to southern Turkey. These are places where we know there's stuff to be found. Let's see if we can find it.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

There, thinking of her taste and her acquisitions, do you feel that she is a woman of her time? Is she typical of an Italian noblewoman or is she unusual in her tastes?

[Sarah Dunant]

I think she's unusual in having the confidence and the education and living at the moment that she did when so many of the great artists were playing at the head of their game in order to make a dent on it. If I look for other female collectors or female patrons, I could maybe take you into a few rich nunneries where the Abbess had some money as a result of all the dowries. And we'll call upon the Florentine painter Aldrea de Sarto to paint something for our refectory. I could show you women who are writing books of poetry or discussing new religion. What I can't show you is all of the things that come together in Isabella, which is that chutzpah, that vision, that refusal to take no for an answer, that wonderful mix of charm with a hint of the stiletto blade inside it and energy and appetite. And maybe that's the way you do it in history. Maybe you have to come on like a flamethrower, a force of nature, because the things coming back at you will be so strong. She gets pushed back a number of times, but you never see a fall. She always gets up and comes back again. And that's really impressive.

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And she's getting a real range of artwork from what you're saying. So I mean paintings and sculpture, but other, other forms of art. She's collecting commission.

[Sarah Dunant]

Oh, she'll, she'll collect anything. God, you know, she's, she's the inveterate shopper. So if she gets some Roman medallions, she'll get them. Or she'll get coins or she'll get musical instruments or she'll get curiosities, you know. Is that a unicorn's horn? I mean, it's a bit like the cabinet of curiosities that will take over culture a century later. And she'll also get first editions. You know, the printing press in Venice now is turning out fantastic books. It's, you know, one level we've got a printing press which is fueling the Reformation, but at another level you've got a printing press that's rediscovering the works of Plato and Aristotle and putting out new versions of great poems. So she's pulling in further editions from all of that. So it's a very varied collection. And if you were visiting Mount Tour as a dignitary during that period of time, and it was a big enough city state for you to keep it online, you would invariably have had Isabella wanting to show you around her collection. And I often try and imagine myself being one of those guests. And at what point my eyes would glaze over because I'd seen enough Roman coins. But of course, Isabella had got this one cheap from such and such, so you have to look at it. So maybe the picture I'm painting is always the same, which is, I admire her terrifically. I've been in her company for a long time. If you spoke to my partner, he'd say that I've been channeling her. And that hasn't always made for an easy relationship, actually. But among the admiration, I can also see that she would have been a difficult woman to live with. But history isn't made by people who are always easy to live with. And when history is against you, as it was for so many women at this time. What you need is the ability to put your shoulder to the door and push and push until you manage to crash it open. And that she does.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And do you think, Sarah, that she, as well as creating this wonderful collection, influences artistic tastes? I mean, what are the broader ramifications of her patronage?

[Sarah Dunant]

No, I don't think she does. And actually I think that's because the art is changing dramatically at this period. I think what you're looking at, for want of a better word, in this great sweep of the Renaissance is it starts as religious. It moves from religion into the representation of all human beings and all human life. It is then taken into mythology, which allows it to become more sensual and sexual. And as you get the kind of naked body emerging, either it moves to Michelangelo where it is rippling muscles on the Sistine Chapel, or it moves to the like of Raphael and others, which is beautiful women naked. And I don't think Isabella is interested in beautiful women naked. I think in her is a little bit of a prude. I think in her she is more interested in what was classically beautiful than that. And she has quite a troubled relationship with Raphael's great apprentice, Giulio Romano, who we don't know very well now, but is a wonderful architect and artist in the 1530s. And she obviously doesn't always like the stuff he paints because he paints quite erotic stuff. If you go to Mantua and you walk through the Palazzo Tei, as you look up, you will see a picture of Apollo driving the chariots of the sun across the sky with no underwear on underneath. So there's a series of erotic jokes that are being taken place, which of course cardinals and patrons love, but is a little dodgy when it comes to being the woman in it. And so I think she's a bit taken aback by that change in art.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Can we talk a bit more about her correspondence? Because, you know, you've talked about the encounter with them, but also the translations you've been able to read and all the work that scholars have done on them. And I wonder if you have a sense of, from looking at them that you can see her using letters as a way of, I don't know, I guess what Stephen Greenblatt described as self fashioning an identity in the Renaissance, I.

[Sarah Dunant]

Think they're clearly soft diplomacy. And I think her letter writing is a woman using words as soft diplomacy. Right. So there's always a level of charm in there, even when there's a bitter taste underneath it. I think that's something that women were trained to very early, which is to, if they're going to express dissidents or difficulties, to do so, coated in charm, which will allow them not to appear threatening. And Isabella will have learnt that at her mother's knee. You know, part of her education would have been that she had a cultured mother and a mother who, after the state, when her father was away. So she would have been taught this as really good female behavior. And so it's the balance of how you stick to the decorum and you stick to the charm and how you therefore use it to get what you want. She writes so many letters, really, I barely know that she has time to get dressed in the morning. I mean, obviously she's not writing them physically herself, although some of them she is. She's dictating them, but they just stream out of her like a river. So a couple of it's to family, check the daughter's okay. What's going on in Naples, what's going on in Spain, what's going on in France. She has her tentacles out over so many big areas. She's like a civil servant who is also a ruler, who is also an art patron. And because, let's get down to it, she's also a fashionista. Right. She's also controlling her own image in all of this. She's not a particularly beautiful woman. She clearly tends to become very large because she has an incredibly sweet tooth. She's always talking in the letters about, oh, I really shouldn't order any more marzipans from Naples, but I think I'll just have another box of them. And then she has to deal with what artists are gonna make of her. And that is. That's a whole other. Not the Tudors in itself. How women manipulate artists during the time in order to get images of themselves that have both some level of beauty and charm and a level of power. I mean, you think about all those portraits that you will see of Elizabeth I over the next 50 years or so, and you are always looking at propaganda, propaganda in art. But she is also trying to push out power as well as beauty. Now, Isabella is operating at a time when actually the women need to look good. And we've not talked about it at all. But one of the things that I don't know what people will make in the book, but it was central to how I conceived of it, was that there would be images in the book. Because this is such a rich period that why couldn't you see some of the stuff that I'm trying to describe to you, and the very last half of the book is about how she deals with her own image. How basically when she gets a portrait she doesn't like, she just gives it away to somebody else and it gets lost in history. And how right towards the end of her life, she commissions Titian to do the most stunning portrait of a beautiful, perfectly turned out fashionista, Renaissance humanist princess. And she's 64 years old, so it doesn't actually look anything like her, but it is her calling card to history. And I think that shows what a fantastically savvy woman she was. How many times when we have pictures taken of ourselves do we say, well, could you just get rid of that one, please? Because I don't think it sums up what I'd like to be seen as well. She just did this on a professional basis, is just getting rid of all the ones she didn't like.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And you're suggesting there's a stage before that as well, which is that she's curating her wardrobe, of course, as we all do, but in her case, on a totally different scale and doing that almost as a political tool.

[Sarah Dunant]

Yes, absolutely. I mean, if you look at the art of the 16th century and you particularly, for instance, look at the art of Venice, this very powerful city, what do you start to see? Sumptuous materials, sumptuous clothing, wonderful color portrait painters like Titian or Tintoretto, who can just create a luxurious world for you. And part of that is the wealth of women's dress. Right. And she is very early on in using that as part of a statement of being a perfectly cultured woman. And we know that she designed quite a lot of her own outfits, which was a smart thing to do. If you're spreading and you need to make sure the fashion suits you, then design your own outfits. She designs a headdress which, if you just Google Venetian art in the 16th century, you'll suddenly discover everyone's wearing. And I think she designs this headdress because she starts to get a lot of double chins, which run in the Estee family. And she needs to look good, so she needs people not to look at her chins. So she constructs a headdress which is like a turban because she has a relationship with the Sultan of Turkey, and it has fake material and material, fake jewels and fake hair embedded in it, and it rises up off your head and looks absolutely magnificent. So when somebody meets you, you're not looking at their face, you're looking up at their Headdress and what Isabella wears one year, everybody else is going to be wearing two or three years down the line. And she will be doing this by sending bolts of cloth to the Queen of France, sending her designs. She's understood that. How often do we have this conversation about what is the history of fashion? If women talk about it, are they being flippant? Well, actually, the answer is within history. Oh my God, they're not being flippant. It is one of a number of limited tools by which they place themselves in the world. And if you weren't necessarily a really good looking woman, then you had to find a way to make your mark with presence. And I think that's what Isabella does, using materials and using fabric and using fashions. She's so modern, Susannah. She's so of her time and she's so modern at the same time.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Well, that is what's so extraordinary about her. Exactly that, that you're in all so many ways you've described a modern woman. And yet, of course, we're talking out of a woman born in the late 15th century. And so I was wondering actually, because you've got this wonderful unusual approach in the novel, which we've talked about a little bit already, but you have a scholar in the archives and you have that the creation of the story, rising sort of ghost like Isabella comes from that research and so kind of meta, I suppose we could say. But it's a way into the story that is so clever and sustained throughout the novel. Is that a way of helping you navigate these contradictions in Isabella Odeste, that she is modern and yet fundamentally Renaissance?

[Sarah Dunant]

You know, I hadn't thought about it like that, but I'm sure you're right. I mean, when I was writing it. I've now written five historical novels set within the Renaissance and the tension within all of them, if you want to write historical novels and be accurate to the period, is at what point do you give up on the facts in order to create a entertaining fiction? And that's always the great tension. And so I wanted somehow to show what that tension was like if you were thinking about writing a historical novel. So here you've got me in the archives reading these letters and thinking, what, what a fantastic figure. Here's her voice. Let me listen to this voice. And then at a certain point, this voice will throw at you something you don't expect. For instance, there is a letter in which she writes after she's given birth to a second baby girl, no boys as yet, and she basically talks about how angry and upset she is, and she can't bear the fact that she's just had another girl. And suddenly the modern scholar goes, whoa, right. Wait a minute. You may look like me at some levels, but in another level, you've grown up a very different cultural soil. I don't like this. So what do I do with it? What do I do with it? Yeah. If I go into the history, I know you're in trouble if you don't produce a boy child. So how far do I have to dig underneath what I thought? Oh, all women feel that about children, don't they? They love their children. Well, no, not all women did at certain points in the history. And I wanted to show, if you like, I wanted to dramatize that moment that takes place when you're hoping to write and create an entertaining, incredible character. And you come across moments where you get shaken. Buy it. The trick, of course, is I want my cake and eat it. I want you to read a really entertaining history about an extraordinary woman. And then I want you to think a little more about the process of what we're doing with history. But if it makes you think too much, you won't enjoy the novel. And if you enjoy the novel too much, you won't think enough. So it's a terrible tension. You know what it's like from trying to teach history.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Well, you pull it off with a poem. It's wonderfully immersive as well as making one think. So let me ask you finally, then, you've spent all this time living with Isabella d' Este, with all her many flaws, but do you find yourself missing her? Are you happy to close her chapter and move on to the next? Or is she calling you back?

[Sarah Dunant]

Oh, dear. You see, this is the kind of question where the novelist feels that they should say, I do miss all my characters. But actually, it's worse. I feel a bit possessed. I've been with her for four years, right? She was with me during COVID Very tough time to be in lockdown with somebody like Isabella d' Este. And I sometimes wonder if a little bit of me hasn't become a bit more didactic and disapproving and manipulative because I've spent so much time in her company and the process of withdrawing from her, which is what happens when a book is published, because she doesn't. She's not mine anymore. She becomes everybody else's. Is that. It's not so much that I feel lonely. I feel a bit like I'm not quite sure who I am without her. I don't know quite how nice I'm capable of being if I don't have Isabella's motor of ambition behind me. But luckily I now live in the country so there's nobody to hear this neuroses going on except the sheep and the cows in the fields behind me.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Well, that is a fascinating insight into how deeply one goes as a historical novelist into the characters of the past. And it is something that you share with your readers when they read this novel. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on to introduce this character to us and to give us a flavor of how compelling she is. Thank you Susanna.

[Sarah Dunant]

Thank you very much indeed. I really enjoyed it.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Me too.

[Sarah Dunant]

Isabella would have liked it too.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hopefully we did her proud.

[Sarah Dunant]

We certainly, certainly did. Thank you.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Thanks for listening to Not Just the Tudors and to my researcher Alice Smith and my producer Rob Weinberg. And do join me, Professor Susanna Lipscomb next time for another episode of Not Just the Tudors from History Hit.

[Hannah]

Hi guys, it's Hannah from Giggly Squad with some around the corner. I wanted to tell you guys how I'm staying comfy and stylish. Lululemon is my secret weapon. There are plenty of copycats out there, but nothing compares to the Lululemon fabrics and fit. I've literally had my pair of Lululemon leggings since college and I'm out of college. I know I don't look it, but I am. The quality is next level. I especially love the Lululemon Align collection. It's made with this weightless buttery soft nulou fabric that feels like next to nothing. It's so soft. Whether you're in Align pants, shorts, a bra, tank, skirt, a dress, you get non stop flexibility in every direction so you can stretch the summer limits align even wick sweat and as a sweaty girl. I love this. You know it's going to be my best friend when I play tennis this summer. Shop the Aligned collection [e-mail] or your nearest Lululemon store.

[Sarah Dunant]

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