Alfonso II d'Este

Alfonso II d'Este was Duke of Ferrara from 1559 to 1597. He was a member of the House of Este.

Biography

Alfonso was the elder son of Ercole II d'Este and Renée de France, the daughter of Louis XII of France and Anne of Brittany and was the fifth and last Duke of Ferrara.
As a young man, Alfonso fought in the service of Henry II of France against the Habsburgs. Soon after his accession, he was forced by Pope Pius IV to send his mother back to France due to her increasingly Calvinist beliefs. The 1570 [Ferrara earthquake] occurred during his reign. In 1583, he allied with Emperor Rudolf II in the war against the Turks in Hungary.
The court of Alfonso was a centre for the development of secular music, both in Italy and Europe at large. He assembled the concerto delle donne, a chorus of women performing for the entertainment of Alfonso and his court.

Marriages

Alfonso married three times:

On 3 July 1558, he married his first wife Lucrezia di Cosimo de' Medici , a daughter of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Eleonora di Toledo. She died two years afterwards, at just 16. Poisoning at the hands of the Duke has been suspected; however, pulmonary tuberculosis is the more widely accepted cause of death.
On 5 December 1565, he married his second wife Barbara of Austria, eighth daughter of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary. She died of tuberculosis in 1572.
On 24 February 1579, he married his third wife, Margherita Gonzaga. She was the eldest daughter of William I, Duke of Mantua and Eleonora of Austria. Margherita was the niece of his second wife, Barbara.

He had no known children, legitimate or otherwise.

Succession

The legitimate line of the House of Este ended in 1597 with him. Emperor Rudolf II recognised as heir his cousin Cesare d'Este, member of a cadet branch, who continued to rule in the imperial duchies and carried on the family name. The succession as duke of Este, however, was recognised only by the emperor but not by the popes. In 1598, Ferrara was therefore incorporated into the Papal States by Pope Clement VIII, on grounds of doubtful legitimacy. As a result of Alfonso's death, Cesare d'Este and his family were "obliged to leave the city", and the power of the government was there after turned over to the cardinal legate.

Patron of the arts and sciences

Alfonso II raised the glory of Ferrara to its highest point, and was the patron of Torquato Tasso, Giovanni Battista Guarini, and Cesare Cremonini—favouring the arts and sciences, as the princes of his house had always done. Besides being fluent in Italian, he was also proficient in Latin and French. Luzzasco Luzzaschi served as his court organist.
In addition, he was the sponsor of the Concerto delle donne, a type of group which was to be copied all over Italy. He also restored the Castello Estense, damaged by an earthquake in 1570.
His expenses, however, caused damage to the public treasury.

In literature

Alfonso II is the duke upon whom Robert Browning based his poem My Last Duchess, and is a major character in the Maggie O'Farrell novel The Marriage Portrait.