cover of book
 

Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations
by Ippolita Maria Sforza
edited by Diana Robin and Lynn Lara Westwater
translated by Diana Robin and Lynn Lara Westwater
Iter Press, 2017
eISBN: 978-0-86698-734-9 | Paper: 978-0-86698-574-1
Library of Congress Classification DG848.112.S48A4 2017
Dewey Decimal Classification 945.706092

ABOUT THIS BOOK | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
This volume presents in translation 100 previously unknown letters of Ippolita Maria Sforza (1445–1488), daughter of the Duke of Milan, who was sent at age twenty to marry the son of the infamously brutal King Ferrante of Naples. Sforza’s letters display the adroit diplomacy she used to strengthen the alliance between Milan and Naples, then the two most powerful states in Italy, amid such grave crises as her brother’s assassination in Milan and the Turkish invasion of Otranto. Still, Ippolita lived as a hostage at the Neapolitan court, subject not only to the threat of foreign invasion but also to her husband’s well-known sexual adventures and her father-in-law’s ruthlessness. Soon after Ippolita’s mysterious death in 1488, the fraught Naples-Milan alliance collapsed.

See other books on: Court and courtiers | Duchess | Italian | Robin, Diana | Westwater, Lynn Lara
See other titles from Iter Press
Nearby on shelf for History of Italy / Southern Italy / Naples. Kingdom of the Two Sicilies: