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COPYRIGHT 2004 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.
Byline: AMY REEVES
The Italian Renaissance is known for its flowering of great art and culture. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Titian and many others created some of the world's most beautiful and enduring art during the period.
Yet under the lovely surface lay a treacherous world. Italy was then divided into a collection of petty principalities and kingdoms, each taking turns helping and betraying each other. And few navigated these waters more successfully than Isabella d'Este Gonzaga (1474-1539).
Isabella was noted for her intelligence even as a child. As the daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, ruler of a small state in northern Italy, she was one of the few women of her day to receive a proper education.
Unlike some girls, who expected never to use their learning but simply to become housewives, Isabella became genuinely interested in subjects like Latin literature. When she was just 6, a visiting diplomat wrote, "I and some others asked her questions on different...
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