Ippolita Maria Sforza

Ippolita Maria Sforza was born on 18 March (or April) 1445 as the second child of the Duke of Milan, Francesco I Sforza (b. 1401–d. 1466), and his wife, Bianca Maria Visconti (b. 1425–d. 1468), one year after her older brother Galeazzo Maria Sforza (b. 1444–d. 1476), with whom she grew up in close conjunction. Ippolita Sforza’s parents made sure that their children of both sexes enjoyed a thorough education. Her upbringing partly aimed to prepare her for her role in the marriage politics of her family, as she was engaged and eventually married to Alfonso of Naples (b. 1448–d. 1495), the then Duke of Calabria who reigned as King Alfonso II of Naples for about a year (1494–1495), several years after her death. The engagement lasted from 1455, when both were still children, until the marriage finally took place in 1465, when she moved in a pompous procession full of power display from her home in Milan to Naples, linking two rival centers in a precarious balance. The dowry her father procured included, among other things, jewelry and fourteen books, showing her interest in reading and literature. In the early 1460s, before moving to Naples, Ippolita Sforza became interested in ancient Greek, aptly so given her unusual first name of Greek origin. She certainly mastered Latin, her output in which is partly extant, while her knowledge of Greek must have been relatively superficial. In Naples, she set aside her humanist interests in favor of managing familial and diplomatic contacts between the Milanese and Neapolitan courts, as her more than six hundred extant Italian letters indicate. At the same time, she had to care for her three children: Ferdinand (b. 1467; king of Naples in 1495–1496), Isabella (b. 1470), and Pietro (b. 1472). Ippolita Sforza created a studiolo (study room) when she arrived at her new court, and acted as Maecenas for artists and authors at Castel Capuano, where she also welcomed ambassadors and heads of state. Life in Naples proved difficult. Her husband was unfaithful and she had financial troubles due to a conflicted relationship with his father, Ferdinand I (b. 1424–d. 1494), in addition to the difficult relations between her family in Milan and her family-in-law in Naples. She died unexpectedly in Naples on 19 August 1488. Through her love for the arts and her skills as a rhetorically talented diplomat and pious woman, Ippolita Sforza came to embody the ideal Renaissance noblewoman.