Isabella D'este Quotes

Although women participate in literary social life from the very beginning, they are not the centre of the courtly salons of the Renaissance; and later on, the age of the middle-class salon, they become the centre in quite a different sense than in the age of chivalry. Incidentally, the cultural importance of women is only another expression of the rationalism of the Renaissance. They are regarded as the intellectuals equals of men, but not as their superiors. "Everything that men can understand, can also be understood by women," to quote from the Cortegiano; but the gallantry which Castiglione demands of the courtier has no longer much in common with the woman-worship of the knights. The Renaissance is a masculine age; women like Lucrezia Borgia, who kept court in Nepi, or even Isabella dEste, who was the centre fo the court in Ferrara and Mantua and who not only had a stimulating influence on the poets of her entourage but also seems to have been a connoisseur of the plastic arts, are exceptions. Nearly everywhere the leading patrons and friends of art are men.

Isabella had spent her whole life chasing the capricious goddess Fortuna: what we call Chance or Luck. She held the Humanist belief that the vicissitudes of Chance could be managed-if not entirely, then to a greater extent than if she succeeded them, the result would be Virtú. In some senses this encapsulated the meaning of the Renaissance.

Tradesmen rarely pursued their rulers for payment, particularly one who could be as vicious in acquisition as Isabella D’Este.

The fact that Isabella had failed her friend in the hour of her greatest need and effectively stolen her possessions was forgotten in her touching display of grief.