La Marchesa, Isabella D’Este

Charming online lecture from ARTscapades looking at the life of Isabella D’Este, the Renaissance patron of the arts.

Sarah Dunant, introduced her new novel on Isabella, based on her extensive research in the archives in Mantua which holdover 30,000 of her letters. She took us thorough Isabella’s life with readings from her book.

Given her audience, Dunant, concentrated on Isabella’s art collecting and building projects including her studiolo. She explained how she liked a bargain and would look further afield that Rome to buy ancient artefacts.

Since listening to the talk I have read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d been looking for a good biography of Isabella for a while and this format felt accurate and a novel format made it more approachable to read. I loved the way she gave Isabella a voice, both from using the real text of her letters and making her a ghostly voice in the archive. This gave Dunant the chance to also look at changing approaches to history and to Isabella as the ghost comments on other historians who have used the archive.