Word: isabella
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...fair Queen, Isabella, deserted to France...
...been Madonna Lisa, third wife of a Neapolitan named Francesco di Bartolommeo di Zanobi del Giocondo. Of Lisa little is known. Last week Dr. Raymond S. Stites, professor of art and esthetics at Antioch College, ended a twelve-year job of checking Vasari, announced that the woman was Isabella d'Este, wife of Francesco Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua. Of Isabella d'Este, "first lady of her time," a great deal is known...
...Estensi were one of the proudest and most ancient reigning houses in Italy. In Leonardo's time, besides the heir Alphonso, whom Lucrezia Borgia married after she had had her third husband murdered, there were two d'Este daughters, Isabella and Beatrice. Leonardo was working at the splendid court of Ludovico Sforza, later duke of Milan, when his patron married Beatrice, younger and more beautiful of the two. Between her marriage at 16 and her death in childbirth at 22, Leonardo saw much of her and painted two of her husband's mistresses. Two years after...
Professor Stites found that Vasari had credited his choice of Lisa to a manuscript by an anonymous Florentine who, in fact, does not mention a Leonardo portrait of Lisa. On the other hand, he found a profile study of Isabella by Leonardo in Vienna's Imperial Museum and another in Leonardo's signet ring in the royal archives in Mantua. His difficulty was that the Mona Lisa is nearly full-face, but he thought he saw similarities. Probing on, he found a Leonardo statue in Berlin whose profile strongly resembles the known Isabella profiles. Seen full-face, this...
Whether Leonardo had loved Isabella, he could not say. But he felt he could say that Leonardo, usually rated an isolated, loveless psychotic whose appearance of amiable charm was false, had loved Sforza's mistress, Cecilia Gallerani, Countess Bergamo. Leonardo might also have loved Isabella...