A Sentimental Education by Letter: Isabella d’Este (1490-1493)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/1593-2214/81Keywords:
Middle Ages, Renaissance, Italy, Mantova, Ferrara, Culture and Society, Princesses, Education, Epistolary CommunicationAbstract
Several biographies and historical novels are devoted to the Italian Renaissance princesses, and the building of their identity as ladies and women of power. Still less common is the attention to the education and the more or less explicite pedagogical strategies elaborated to train them: the analysis of the Renaissance courts’ educational practices nevertheless is crucial to understand these women’ trajectory from childhood to princely power. This essay aims to analyse some aspects of the correspondence between Eleonora of Aragon and her daughter Isabella, young spouse of the marquis of Mantua Francesco Gonzaga during the first years of marriage until Eleonora’s death (1490-1493). Eleonora’s letters, now preserved in the Mantua State Archives, help us in the reconstruction of the mother’s ambitious pedagogical project to train gently her daughter as the perfect lady of a new court.Downloads
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