THE RENAISSANCE WOMAN

Aged just 16, Isabella d'Este set out to become Europe's first female art collector. And being a remarkable mix of traits that would come to define Anna Wintour, Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, she succeeded

- By Sarah Dunant

IN 1491 a newly married young woman with a taste for fashion and art threw herself into the business of interior decorating.

The castle she had moved into - she happened to be marrying the marquis of Mantua, a thriving city state in northern Italy - hadn’t had a woman’s touch for some time. And she had clear ideas as to what she wanted.

These included a special studio of her own and a set of rooms where she could show off the paintings, statues, Roman coins and various antiquities she was going to buy. This was the Renaissance after all, and famous names and fabulous creativity were all around her.

The fact that up until now all serious collectors had been men did not put her off.

Aged just 16, Isabella d’Este set out to become the first female art collector and patron of her time. Her name may not be familiar to us in Britain. But she is known in Italy as The First Lady of the Renaissance.

Certainly she earned it. Breaking into a male art market was not easy. Popes, cardinals, bankers, dukes, kings, all had the biggest purses. What impact could a teenage girl have against that kind of muscle? The answer is quite a lot.

There are some characters in history who take off like a rocket from birth. Isabella is one of those. Born in the nearby state of Ferrara, into the noble Este family (as well as the fortress in town they owned at least a dozen brilliantly decorated country palaces), her father, Ercole, lavished a fine humanist education on her.

At the age of six she astonished the envoy sent to assess her for marriage by reciting an entire memorised letter in Latin by Cicero. By 12 she was producing music for the court plays her father put on.