By the time she reached her mid-teens, Isabella was an acknowledged beauty—tall and slender, with curling reddish-brown hair, dark eyes with arched brows, a high, domed forehead, a patrician, aquiline nose, and a sensual mouth. She was as renowned for her beauty and vivacity as she was for her erudition in philosophy.
Isabella also had a flair for fine fashion that extended beyond representing the Medici in their family colors of red, white, and green. She was painted numerous times, beginning in her girlhood. Each canvas was an advertisement for her desirability, fecundity, and family wealth and connections; the intention was to attract an equally suitable husband. Although the Medici were not related to any royal family by blood, their sons and daughters were considered princes and princesses whose marriages would be negotiated for political gain.
The lucky candidate was chosen when Isabella was only ten. On July 11, 1553, she was formally betrothed to the twelve-year-old scion of an ancient Roman family, Paolo Giordano I Orsini of Bracciano. Paolo’s family tree boasted a dubious distinction: Both of his grandmothers were the illegitimate daughters of popes. Cosimo had no interest in whether his adored daughter liked, let alone could ever love, her future husband. He chose Paolo because the union provided territorial acquisition and consolidation of power for the Medici.
Cosimo stated, “We have chosen to make such a match for these reasons: This Lord has, with his estate, many beautiful and important lands close to our own; the other is the antiquity of the relationship between his house and ours in making other matches.”
On hearing of his good fortune, Paolo expressed his appreciation in a thank-you note that was probably composed by one of his elders, and to which he did nothing but sign his name. “When I learned this morning of the match which has been made between your daughter and myself, I thought a grave mistake had been made, and I am very much in your debt, and these few lines cannot do sufficient reverence to Your Excellency.”
Prophetic words. There would soon come a time when Paolo was literally in Cosimo’s debt—to the tune of hundreds of thousands of scudi.
Because the Orsini family had suffered tremendous losses and damage to their property during the sack of Rome by Charles V’s armies in 1527, in a way, Isabella was marrying down. Paolo’s father, Girolamo Orsini, had also been sentenced to death for murdering his own half brother, and the Medici pope Clement VII had confiscated his lands. Paolo’s mother, Felice, had successfully petitioned for a stay of execution and raised enough money to pay a whopping fine, getting the Orsini estates restored to the family. Nonetheless, the Orsini were not exactly squeaky clean. Very few families in Renaissance Italy were free of violent vendettas, whether the feud was with another powerful family or within their own house.
Cosimo promised Isabella a spectacular dowry—more than generous, at fifty thousand gold scudi, plus five thousand scudi worth of jewels from his purse. The total dowry had a value of approximately twenty million in 2007 dollars, as estimated by Gabrielle Langdon, author of Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal, a comprehensive study of the Medici women through their portraiture.
Paolo was the Renaissance equivalent of a playboy, preferring wild parties, fast horses, and fast women. He was no stranger to brothels and gambling dens. Isabella’s Florentine society was more conservative, but in Rome, as in Venice, prostitution was institutionalized. Paolo grew up in a world where noblemen and clergy routinely mingled with lowlifes—pimps and bawds, cardsharps and thieves. The Eternal City had a more popular sobriquet then: It was nicknamed the “city of whores.” By 1559, Paolo himself would be intimate with a pair of rivals known as Pasqua the courtesan and Camilla the Skinny, a common prostitute.
Although it was customary for the betrothed couple to correspond before they wed so they might get to know each other better, sex seems to have been on Paolo’s mind when he wrote to his fourteen-year-old fiancée: “Every hour, I would give a thousand years to find myself sleeping one night with you. I desire you so much. The first thing I desire is to speak with you of many things, the second, I do not wish to say, but I will leave it with a smile to you, and I kiss both your hands, and your mouth.”
In this era, a letter was rarely a private document. To begin with, it was usually dictated to, and written by, a third party, such as a secretary or a tutor. If Paolo wrote an erotic letter like this to Isabella, it surely would have been read at the Medici court by some adult in a parental or otherwise supervisory capacity who no doubt would have deemed it indecent; consequently, the note probably never reached her.
Not only did the tone of Paolo’s letters to his virginal bride-to-be raise a red flag regarding his uncouthness, but the Medici already had issues with their future son-in-law over financial matters. The teenage Orsini was a profligate, spending scudi like acqua on horses, coaches, and costly equestrian trappings, and hunting and hawking paraphernalia, including the falcons—not only for himself, but for his entire entourage. By the time Paolo was sixteen years old, he was up to his armpits in debt, indiscreetly boasting that he was leveraging the enormous dowry he’d eventually receive from his fiancée against his expenses—sums he intended to repay after his marriage, just as soon as he got his hands on the money.
Cosimo had already made his bed as far as arranging Isabella’s match with Paolo. But he didn’t have to lie in it. He sent the youth a raft of stern warnings, cautioning him that if he continued to be a spendthrift, he should not expect Isabella’s dowry as a matter of course.
“You are a ship blown about on the winds, on the brink of being broken on the rocks, and the winds are those unloving servants of yours, who are consuming you little by little, the rocks are your creditors, who will break you up with the interest they are charging you.” Cosimo instructed Paolo to downsize his entourage. “You do not need more than four gentlemen companions, of which one should be a cavalier, four gentlemen of the bed chamber, four or six pages, and four footmen.” But the duke was just warming up. Finally he delivered his coup de grâce: “I have heard that you have promised my daughter’s dowry to the merchants. . . . Do not think that you will be able to take care of your affairs and escape debt in such a way. I do not want to consign my daughter’s dowry to you, because spending and frittering away everything, you will then condemn Donna Isabella to bartering with merchants. . . . When I see that you do not wish to ruin yourself, and wish to attend to your well-being, I will not fail to help you in any way that I can that is not damaging to my daughter. You are of an age to know right from wrong, and truth from falsehood.”
Paolo himself was a putz, but the Orsini family had its merits. Cosimo wanted to ensure the security of his southern boundaries and therefore needed the connection to a venerated Roman family. Additionally, the Medici needed a man inside the Vatican, and Paolo’s uncle, Cardinal Sforza, had become their go-to guy whenever Cosimo needed a favor from the Holy See.
Isabella’s father made it clear to Paolo that although he was tall and well built, Cosimo knew he was no prize, and was perfectly aware of his weaknesses. Cosimo was also fully prepared to exploit Paolo’s flaws, when necessary, for Medici ends. He was in no haste to rush his daughter to the altar. Not only was Isabella his favorite girl, but her betrothal had been negotiated when she was still a child.
Additionally, Cosimo didn’t feel that it was necessary to make a grand demonstration of Medici excess by pulling out all the stops to throw Isabella a lavish wedding. But he did commission poems and songs in her honor. In June 1558, Filippo di Monte, a Flemish émigré, composed a madrigal in honor of the bridal couple. Chock-full of hyperbole, between the lines the verse really pays homage to the powerful houses of Medici and Orsini. Di Monte, a composer who was patronized by the younger Medici family members as well as the courts of London and Vienna, wanted to keep his clients happy and his palm greased for future commissions.
The strongest of Rome
Flora’s wisest and most beautiful
<
br /> [Are] Paolo and Isabella.
Cosimo also made sure his favorite daughter would look spectacular on her wedding day, authorizing the purchase of nearly thirteen meters of white damask, satin, taffeta, and velvet. A few months before the ceremony, Isabella posed for the celebrated painter Bronzino, who did her wedding portrait; draped over her arm was the bejeweled pelt of a zibellino, a type of weasel that was considered a fertility talisman.
Isabella and Paolo finally celebrated their nuptials in a semiprivate ceremony at the Villa Medici in Poggio a Caiano on September 3, 1558, four days after Isabella turned sixteen. Music composed specially for the occasion welcomed the Orsinis into the Medici family—a reversal of tradition, because the bride was customarily welcomed into the groom’s house. The famed Florentine goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini designed the wedding jewelry for the stepmother of the groom, employing eight people working around the clock to create priceless bracelets, buttons, belts, and rings.
The madrigal performers sang in Latin, “Oh, Paolo, pinnacle and glory of the Orsini Family, favourite and son-in-law of the magnanimous Cosimo [who had hired the singers]. You who practise with unbeatable strength, and retain in your mind the arts of both powerful Mars and chaste Pallas [Athena]. Rejoice immensely now that a bride is given to you, for nowhere is there anyone more beautiful or better than she. And promptly beget numerous offspring like yourself to rule over Latium and the land of the Tiber.”
Like any royal marriage, the pair’s primary duty was to produce an heir. And, because of their exalted stature, nothing they did in private could be expected to remain a secret. Although the wedding was held a few miles from Florence, soon the entire city knew that on “Saturday evening, Lord Paolo Orsini, son-in-law to Duke Cosimo, consummated his marriage with the Lady Isabella. The next day he rode back to Rome, and they say that he will go . . . to the court of Philip II, the King of Spain.”
So much for setting up house together as man and wife. But right from the start, Isabella’s marriage to Paolo was unorthodox. Because he departed for Rome immediately after consummating their union, there was no honeymoon. And the couple remained apart—to the delight of all concerned. By dispatching Paolo to Spain, Cosimo was not only shoring up Medici allegiance to Philip, but letting Philip foot the bill for Paolo’s sojourn at the Spanish court, rather than paying Paolo’s expenses out of his own pocket. In this way, Cosimo was able to hold on to both Isabella’s dowry for the time being, and Isabella—who was elated to remain in Florence at her father’s side. The duke had decreed that Paolo would live by himself in Rome, and if he wanted to see his wife, he could travel north to Florence. If Isabella went to Rome, her dowry went with her, and Cosimo did not trust Paolo to be a prudent financial manager. Paolo could register no objections to Cosimo’s directives, because he was dependent upon his father-in-law’s largesse. Given Paolo’s predilection for prostitutes, he probably preferred to be left to his own devices anyway.
Cosimo bestowed numerous gifts of real estate upon the young couple, including the Antinori Palace, the old Medici Palace, Villa Baroncelli (also known as Poggio Imperiale), and a property at Pisa. Paolo and Isabella established opulent households in each location, in which they perpetually lived beyond their means and relied upon the duke to bail them out after every shortfall, but most of the time the pair lived apart. Paolo was made the first duke of Bracciano in 1560, and dwelled either at his castle there or at home in Rome with the Orsini family, and Isabella’s father had accorded her the exceptionally rare permission to remain in his household after her marriage. Isabella’s greatest wedding present of all was her independence. The freedom from her husband’s authority and dominance was worth more than all the gold in the Medici bank.
In December 1560, eighteen-year-old Isabella saw her husband’s castle at Bracciano for the first time; the gloomy, urban, high-walled fortress was the antithesis of the Medicis’ Tuscan villas surrounded by olive groves and cultivated, rolling hills. Her sojourn at Bracciano also marked the first time in their marriage that the couple was together on Paolo’s turf. Isabella was miserable. Bracciano was cold and damp; everyone spoke the unfamiliar Lazio dialect. Isabella had been in Rome for less than two months when she realized how her husband spent the better part of his time: giving free rein to his other sexual pursuits. Her parents’ loving marriage had been a touchstone; her own was a joke. Paolo saw her only as a conduit to her father’s bankbook. He was not even terribly upset when she suffered a miscarriage; there would surely be more pregnancies and the opportunity to beget an Orsini heir.
Despite their antipathy for each other, and the fact that Isabella always considered herself a Medici by birth before she thought of herself as an Orsini by marriage, it was necessary to maintain the outward appearance of a happy couple. Nothing they did was totally private. Even their correspondence was read by others. Consequently, it was written for public consumption—filled with loving thoughts and expressions of longing during their lengthy absences. There were too many enemies, including other powerful families, and members of anti-Medici factions who had received refuge from the French, who would be delighted to make use of the knowledge that things were less than perfect between the Duke and Duchess of Bracciano.
By the middle of January 1561, Isabella and Paolo were on their way back to Florence. Isabella hoped that she would never have to set foot in Bracciano again. Surely her father would require her presence at his court while he focused his attentions on his latest project, and the one that would define Cosimo’s reign: the costly construction of the Palazzo degli Uffizi Magistratura, the palace of the office of the magistrates, or as everyone called it then and since—the Uffizi.
After her mother died of tuberculosis and malarial fever in 1562, nineteen-year-old Isabella became the de facto first lady of Florence, assuming Eleonora’s duties as her father’s hostess. Dressing in phenomenally costly garments to throw opulent parties and stage extravagant events in the furtherance of her family’s interests was right up Isabella’s alley; as the new doyenne of court society, she also assumed the responsibility of arranging good marriages for the daughters of Medici courtiers.
In addition to her own sparkle, she brought a cultural luster to Cosimo’s court. His goal was to promote Florence, the birthplace of Dante, as Italy’s cultural capital. With Isabella herself as its leading intellectual light, under her aegis her father’s court became a grand salon where the great minds of the day met and were lavishly entertained. Isabella’s salon attracted philosophers and statesmen, architects and artists, musicians and poets. Clerics, ambassadors, rhetoricians, and magistrates came from as near as the northern Italian courts of Urbino and Ferrara, and from as far as the court of Spain.
After the death of Eleonora, although Isabella had no interest in becoming a surrogate mother to her younger siblings, she remained close to those who had been her playfellows, but the dynamics of their relationship changed. The Medici children grew up quickly; by their mid-teens, engaging in very adult behavior, they were one another’s confidants and erstwhile partners in crime. Isabella had always been closest to her brother Giovanni, two years younger, who, because he was a Medici, had been made a cardinal by Pope Pius IV in 1560 at the tender age of seventeen. Apart from Isabella’s enormous devotion to her father, Giovanni was her one great love. Many people believed that Giovanni acted as a system of checks and balances for his older sister’s wild ways, and that if he had not died of malarial fever less than a month before their mother passed away, Isabella might not have acted so promiscuously. She had never loved Paolo, but when Giovanni was alive, there was room for no one else in her heart.
Isabella had never been close to their oldest brother Francesco. They didn’t understand each other’s temperaments. Francesco cheated on his wife, the sister of the Holy Roman Emperor, and in general behaved like a nasty, conniving, contrariwise, melancholy jerk to everyone except his lover, Bianca Cappello. In 1562, when Cosimo sent Francesc
o to the Spanish court as the Medici family’s representative, instead of considering it an honor, Francesco deemed it a punishment, intimating that his father had banished him.
The exceptionally close relationship between Cosimo and Isabella, and her clear preference for her father’s companionship over her husband’s, sparked plenty of rumors, especially after the death of Isabella’s favorite brother, Giovanni, on November 20, 1562. Father and daughter began to enjoy private hunting excursions, inviting a good deal of catty speculation regarding what the two of them were doing all alone. A rumor spread that Isabella was “loved by the Duke Cosimo in a way that some voices say is carnal.” Another story circulated that the painter Giorgio Vasari had witnessed them in a compromising embrace, while he was painting the hall of the ducal palace. Titillating though it was, it was nonetheless a complete fiction that was repeated through the centuries, even making its way into English guidebooks for aristocrats on the Grand Tour. The intimation that Isabella and Cosimo were incestuous is found in the eighteenth-century curate Mark Noble’s Memoirs of the Illustrious House of Medici, and Alexandre Dumas also added more than a whiff of sex in his history of the Medici.
During her lifetime, this closeness to Cosimo raised eyebrows. Why should he want to keep Isabella in Florence, away from her husband? Why did she lack the desire to join Paolo and properly fulfill her marital obligations? Parallels were drawn to the sinister relationship between Lucrezia Borgia and her father, Roderigo, Pope Alexander VI. To the tongue-wagging gossips, Isabella was clearly just as unnatural. “This is what happens when a woman goes about without her husband,” they concluded.
In 1563, Isabella and Paolo began to maintain separate residences in Florence, although Paolo usually remained in Rome or Bracciano. Superintended by Isabella, the Palazzo Medici underwent substantial and costly renovations, including an aquatic system, whereby water was brought in from the Arno for her daily baths.
Inglorious Royal Marriages Page 16
