PREFACE
The life of Isabella d'Este has never yet been written. After four hundred years, the greatest lady of the Renaissance still awaits her biographer. An unkind fate has pursued all the scholars, whether French, German, or Italian, who have hitherto attempted the task. Their labours have been hindered and interrupted, or their lives prematurely cut short by death. More than fifty years ago an interesting study on the famous Marchesa, from the pen of a Mantuan scholar, Carlo d'Arco, was published in the Archivio Storico Italiano (1845), based upon documents preserved in the Gonzaga Archives. In 1867, a distinguished Frenchman, M. Armand Baschet, wrote a remarkable essay on Isabella d'Este's relations with the great Venetian printer, Aldo Manuzio, but died before he could execute his intention of publishing a life of this princess. A mass of documents, which he had copied from the Mantuan Archives, remained in the hands of the late M. Charles Yriarte, who wrote several interesting chapters on Isabella d'Este's relations with the great painters of her age, in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, and was preparing a fuller and more complete work on the subject when he died. M. Firmin Didot, Dr. Janitschek, Dr. Reumont, and Ferdinand Gregorovius have all in turn given us sketches of Isabella in their historical works, while deploring the absence of any biography which should do full justice to so attractive and important a figure.
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