The Duchess So Beautiful She Was Almost Kidnapped
By: Laura, L.E. Van Altfeldt
Tags: Culture, Religion, Women, Beauty, History

The Duchess So Beautiful She Was Almost Kidnapped

Giulia Gonzaga had been marked out as a prize for the harem of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and Hayreddin Barbarossa would stop at nothing to claim her for his master.

On the night of 7–8 August 1534, the young widow Giulia Gonzaga escaped in the company of a single knight while the Ottoman corsair Barbarossa besieged her city in search of her. He had been ordered to do so after the Grand Visier of the empire had heard of her beauty and sought to capture her to be taken to the sultan in Istanbul, though Giulia herself was much more than a simple object to satisfy a man’s desire. Married at fourteen, her husband had died three years into their marriage, and Giulia refused to be tied to another man for as long as her life endured.

Arts

Giulia Gonzaga had been born in 1513 to Ludovico Gonzaga, who was a condottiero (mercenary captain) and prominent nobleman of the Sabionetta branch of his house. A true woman of Renaissance Italy, Giulia had a deep interest in the cultured and refined aspects of her country and her era. After her husband’s death left her without his company as well as of any children which might have been born to them, she transformed her palace into a centre of culture. People were attracted to it for this fact as well as for Giulia’s famed good looks, and she would inspire many a poet to write verse in her honour.

Ludovico Ariosto (died 1533), the man responsible for coining the term ‘humanism’, wrote this of Giulia:

«Iulia Gonzaga, che dovunque il piede

volge, e dovunque i sereni occhi gira,

non pur ogni altra di beltà le cede,

ma, come scesa dal ciel dea, l’ammira»

Which translates to:

‘Giulia Gonzaga, wherever the foot / falls, and wherever serene eyes turn, / not every other beauty yields them, / but, as the goddess comes down from heaven, she admires [her]’

Though my translation does not do this piece justice, it is safe to say that word of Giulia’s beauty was widespread and well-understood. Poet Bernardo Tasso also wrote of Giulia’s ‘infinite beauty’ and her ‘divine grace’ in one of his poems.

Liason with Cardinal Ippolito de Medici

Ippolito de Medici was the illegitimate Medici child who hadn’t been favoured as heir by Pope Clement VII. Instead, he had to take a backseat to his cousin Alessandro who was married off to the natural daughter of Emperor Charles V to cement the alliance between pope and emperor. Though he was close to the future queen consort (and later queen mother) of France Catherine de Medici, and might have even entertained thoughts of marrying her, her being promised to the second son of the king of France put a halt to his familial ambitions.

Much against his probable displeasure, Pope Clement VII had made him a cardinal when he was still in his teens. Ippolito would attempt to renounce his clerical position and worked against his cousin Alessandro to become ruler of Florence instead, but it was to be unfruitful. While his cousin Alessandro — said to be a half-brother to Catherine de Medici but probably a bastard son of the pope instead — was considered ugly, Ippolito was in many ways his opposite. The pope favoured Alessandro as ruler of Florence. It is this fact that gives rise to the idea that Alessandro was actually Clement VII’s son, and would explain why Ippolito, in spite of his earlier rule of Florence for several years following the pope’s election, was put in the cloth instead.

Ippolito had helped Giulia in her escape from Barbarossa as he tried to kidnap her. Asdrubale de Medici was said to be born to Giulia with Ippolito as his father. Though Ippolito’s fatherhood of this illegitimate child isn’t really disputed, Giulia’s motherhood of him would have understandably been covered up. The countess of Fondi, a title she owed to her late husband, was protective of her reputation to such an extent that the knight who had helped her escape during Barbarossa’s siege later saw his execution on her orders because she had been nearly naked, and in order to preserve her honour, the man who had seen too much had to be put down.