Page:Isabella d'Este, marchioness of Mantua, 1474-1539 volume 1 (1905).djvu/14

viii and the tortuous policy of Leo X., and to preserve his duchy in the face of the most prolonged and determined opposition. Isabella lived to see the fulfilment of her fondest wish, when, in 1531, the newly-crowned Emperor, Charles V., visited Mantua and raised her eldest son to the rank of Duke, while Pope Clement VII. bestowed a Cardinal's hat on her second son Ercole.

But it is above all as a patron of art and letters that Isabella d'Este will be remembered. In this respect she deserves a place with the most enlightened princes of the Renaissance, with Lorenzo dei Medici and Lodovico Sforza. A true child of her age, Isabella combined a passionate love of beauty and the most profound reverence for antiquity with the finest critical taste. Her studios and villas were adorned with the best paintings and statues by the first masters of the day, and with the rarest antiques from the Eternal City and the Isles of Greece. Her book-shelves contained the daintiest editions of classical works printed at the Aldine Press, and the newest poems and romances by living writers. Viols and organs of exquisite shape and tone, lutes of inlaid ivory and ebony, the richest brocades and rarest gems, the finest gold and silver work, the choicest majolica and most delicately tinted Murano glass found a place in her camerini. But everything that she possessed must be of the best, and she was satisfied with nothing short of perfection. Even Mantegna and Perugino sometimes failed to please her, and Aldo's books were returned to be more carefully revised and printed. To attain these objects Isabella spared neither time nor trouble. She wrote endless letters, and gave the