1. Anachronic terminology

An often-repeated origin story for the modern career title curator is from the Latin curare: to care.Footnote ¹⁰ No matter the convulses that profoundly reshape the museum field, care—authentically safeguarding historical truth—will always be the core of the job.Footnote ¹¹ As will be seen, Isabella doubtless cared greatly for her objects, in ways that modern curators will innately understand and others that would make them balk.Footnote ¹² As a person living during the Renaissance, a period when the manufacture and distribution of art was the methodical reverse of today’s artmaking process, Isabella may be understood as an avant la letter curator by borrowing philosopher Jean-Paul Martinon’s atemporal notion that “a good curator listens to the zeitgeist of the times, voices particular statements, and expects viewers to hear (or not) the well-founded nature of his or her statements.”Footnote ¹³ Isabella’s collecting habits were tuned to her era, as she gathered antiquities alongside the work of contemporary makers. She emblazoned nec spe nec metu across her curated spaces and the objects within, stoking contemplative debate between visitors. She centered the beautiful meaning.

This essay also uses exhibition in its modern sense to describe Isabella’s work, akin to a permanent art exhibit installed for long-term enjoyment recognizable in 21st-century art museums, wherein the immersive surround is just as crucial to sustaining exhibit narrative as the select objects showcased.Footnote ¹⁴ In the case of modern museums and Isabella’s prototype, exhibition is appropriate as both noun and verb, as effect and effort. In addition to satisfying the commonplace understanding of a museum exhibit, Isabella’s collection spaces were in essence what sociologist Tony Bennett would label exhibitionary, the theoretical notion that bespoke displays of artifacts are inexorable broadcasters of socio-political bent and, predictably, control.Footnote ¹⁵ Born of the noble Este line, married into the Gonzaga marquisate, and eventual dowager marchioness of the Duke of Mantua, Isabella’s collection was acutely colored by royal propaganda.Footnote ¹⁶ Isabella’s work operated on both levels of the doubled term exhibit, though she would not have used that word.

As a Renaissance precursor to contemporary curators, Isabella embodied the Swiss Army Knife nature of the role. Every day in curation brings novel tasks—usually exciting, often irritating, always new. Versatile Isabella was a strident advocate for her own vision who wrote pages of plans to artists, antiquities dealers, and estate managers.Footnote ¹⁷ She pursued beauty across commissions, small and large scale, but she also admired the rare and unusual.Footnote ¹⁸ She had a selective eye for spectacle. She consulted experts, including humanists, a leading new theory at the time.Footnote ¹⁹ She was not above suggesting smuggling artifacts or accepting outright theft to gain desired ends.Footnote ²⁰ She negotiated with her husband for more money to finance her burgeoning collection and was disappointed by budget restrictions that plague every curator.Footnote ²¹ When ordering (at least one) artwork, she premeasured, thinking carefully in dimensional practicality and scale.Footnote ²² She even implemented pest prevention measures, installing tiles to replace the preexisting floorboards in her galleries to block mice from chewing inside.Footnote ²³ Connecting an array of these objects—in particular, her antiquities, painting program, and ceramics—reconstructs her nec spe nec metu curatorial philosophy, a demonstrative balance between optimism and anxiety.

2. Picturing la Marchesa

Isabella d’Este was a paradigmatic Renaissance woman, in both contemporaneous and contemporary parlance. Hailed as “The First Lady of the World,” her many triumphs were matched by several tragedies, all meticulously documented by herself, admirers, and detractors.Footnote ²⁴ Born into the powerful House of Este of Ferrara, at six years old she was engaged to Francesco II Gonzaga (who was 14), future Marquis of Mantua. The royal couple were married by proxy when she was 15, and a year later in 1491, Isabella traveled to her new home.Footnote ²⁵ Like a good Renaissance woman, she produced six Gonzaga heirs who survived infancy, including three coveted sons. Navigating illness, conflicts marital and martial, and labyrinthine court demands, Isabella served as Marchioness of Mantua for decades, continuing after Francesco’s death in 1519. Like all wealthy, prominent historical figures, her impressive feats are marred by uncomfortable scandal and harm.Footnote ²⁶ She died in 1539 at the impressive age of 64.

The modern phrase “Renaissance woman” also describes polymath Isabella. In addition to her museological interests, she was a musician and singer, de facto ambassador and regent, fashionista, and student of Classical languages. She was also a diplomat, circumnavigating the volatile world of court politics while maintaining the acceptable mannered trappings of a noblewoman. History knows so much about Isabella in no small part thanks to Isabella; she was a prolific epistolary writer whose staggering correspondence of approximately 44,000 letters are miraculously extant.Footnote ²⁷ Its survival is a blessing for history, a rare corpus of an early modern woman’s voice, a textual self-portrait. Women of all social strata lived in a world of prescribed gender norms ruled by Catholicism, monarchical precarity in the face of the rising merchant class, and the endlessly shifting Italian geopolitical landscape. For noblewomen of Isabella’s rank, every public (and many private) appearance was a delicate performance of court ritual. Figure 2, one of Isabella’s many portraits, depicts this social-and-self-fashioned image.Footnote ²⁸ A chalk drawing by none other than the Renaissance artist par excellence Leonardo da Vinci, this circa 1499–1500 likeness shows Isabella in strict profile and was probably based on a preexisting medal (Figure 5).Footnote ²⁹ Isabella began to dream about this portrait at least as early as April 26, 1498, when she wrote to a friend seeking samples of the revered artist’s work: “Having seen certain portraits today by the hand of Giovanni Bellini, we started thinking about the works of Leonardo and wanting to compare them to these that we have,” already showcasing her love of artwork comparison, which would go on to become a fundamental theme in her curatorial practice.Footnote ³⁰ Isabella wanted Leonardo to move to Mantua to complete the portrait, but this never manifested, probably to her (understandable) disappointment.Footnote ³¹ Though unfinished, this is perhaps the representation of Isabella she most closely self-fashioned and therefore speaks to her stance as a master of her own image, including her investment in how objects mean. Her hair, styled with a hairband and translucent veil, complements her fashionable, expensive outfit. The profile pose classicizes the sitter, yet another claim by Isabella of her reverence toward the ancient world and its artifacts. Some scholars have argued that the mostly unreadable lower edge was meant to contain a shelf and book.Footnote ³² This is how Isabella saw herself: educated, poised, and inlaid with beautiful things that indicate power and prestige, and, perhaps, ensconced in a library not unlike the one in her studiolo, enjoying a quiet respite with a book. Guided by neither fear nor hope, 17-year-old Isabella began her curatorial foray circa 1491, soon after sitting for da Vinci.

Figure 2.

Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Isabella d’Este, ca. 1499–1500, chalk on paper, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Wikimedia Commons.

3. Isabellian Stoicism

Renaissance imprese (mottos, usually in Latin, sometimes accompanied by a symbol or crest) were popular adoptions among moneyed classes and the artists they patronized, showcasing personal erudition and values. Nec spe nec metu is of unknown origins, but most scholars connect it with stoic philosophy.Footnote ³³ It predated Isabella by centuries, but she probably knew it from the Classical writing and rhetoric so pervasive in Italian upper echelons during her era, as well as concurrent usage in Italy and France.Footnote ³⁴ The phrase has long been understood by historians as a stoic call for and strength against the weighty hardships of life, in which Isabella, like many other adopters before and after her, found comfort.

The Latin motto professes her overall obsession with possessing fragments of the ancient world. Though Isabella had some Classical training, she did not consider herself an erudite scholar of the ancient world, especially considering such pursuits were heavily coded as masculine.Footnote ³⁵ It is unclear how Isabella would have first encountered the motto, but researcher Adalberto Genovesi advocates that she would have seen it on a Ferrarese set of tarrochi (tarot cards), which Medievalist Ugo Bazzoti dates to 1460–1470.Footnote ³⁶ So, while the first documented instance of the phrase in Isabella’s hand appears in a letter dating October 5, 1504, she may have been entertaining the notion in her head years prior.Footnote ³⁷ What is certain is that in 1506, in honor of her birthday, the humanist Mario Equicola (ca. 1470–July 26, 1525) wrote a short treatise entitled Nec Spe Nec Metu, nominally to explore its meanings but probably also to flatter her choice of personal guidepost.Footnote ³⁸ It worked: two years later, Equicola moved to Mantua, enjoying the full benefits of a Gonzaga courtier as Isabella’s personal secretary and humanist tutor.Footnote ³⁹

The Nec Spe Nec Metu booklet is odd. It is a jumble of symbolism, imagery, Classical and Christian references, and hypotheses, dreamlike in its interlocutor dialogue format. Further, it is difficult to read, and its rare surviving manuscripts are inconsistent.Footnote ⁴⁰ Intriguingly, Isabella (politely) opposed Equicola’s abstracted reading of her beloved motto, writing to her friend Margherita Cantelma (who had a hand in gifting the book to Isabella) that the author “whose great intelligence will exalt a motto we devised without thinking of so many mysteries as he attributes to it.”Footnote ⁴¹ Kindly rejected, Equicola’s book cannot serve as a useful avenue of inquiry for exploring Isabella’s curatorial philosophy. However, Isabella and her secretary agreed the motto was a wellspring source ripe for interpretation, in itself and secondarily useful in spades for reflecting on artwork. For instance, Equicola went on to write another book, Libro i natura d’amore…, also an exploration of the motto, this time a treatise on the many forms of love.Footnote ⁴² Like his first volume, it is dense and makes for taxing decipherment.Footnote ⁴³

Isabella’s situating of the motto as her worldview, like Equicola’s books, was itself an act of interpretation. Isabella claimed to have invented nec spe nec metu (the word she used was inventrice, the feminine form of inventor).Footnote ⁴⁴ Despite this assertion, Isabella probably was aware of the motto’s murky background, but she was not outright lying to history when she implied its authorship.Footnote ⁴⁵ Instead, as Campbell argues, “the originality of a Renaissance invention can lie in ‘finding’ a new context or application for something familiar or well known.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Indeed, a true Stoic would not aggressively pen thousands of lines in dogged pursuit of pretty things, nor gild a workspace in gold. Isabella recontextualized “No Hope No Fear” to suit her purposes.

But why would “goddess Isabella,” a wealthy noblewoman enmeshed in multiple powerful Italian lineages, adopt a blunt motto about the bleak vicissitudes of life?Footnote ⁴⁷ As a woman, even a rich one, living in the 15th–16th centuries, Isabella endured many punitive twists of fate to steel her resolve. As a wife, she was expected to tolerate her husband’s extramarital affairs (up to a point).Footnote ⁴⁸ As a mother, she gave birth to eight children, but only six lived to adulthood, a sad commonality of early modern parenthood.Footnote ⁴⁹ As a Marchesa, she rallied to serve as head of state when Francesco traveled or was imprisoned.Footnote ⁵⁰ Is it a wonder she suffered? All she overcame informed the motto choice. Aggrieved yet ongoing, she repeatedly turned to the simple, short phrase to boost her stamina.

4. “That motto from us with so many mysteries”

Of its many philosophical dimensions, nec spe nec metu underwrote Isabella’s approach to curating her art galleries, girded by three core virtues: balance, retreat, and fortitude.Footnote ⁵¹ This trifecta provides a useful point of departure for elucidating her stance as a curator, and reinserting Isabella in museum history.

Art historian Frances Ames-Lewis unwinds the original Latin motto at the center of this inquiry as “neither elated by nope nor cast down by fear.”Footnote ⁵² This enfleshed translation highlights the mantra’s core notion of equanimity. Isabella sought evenness: a measured response without succumbing to high or low emotional states, what Campbell refers to as “passions and perturbations.”Footnote ⁵³ This was applicable to the complications she faced in life and her curatorial work. Exhibit development is a series of snuffing fires. Isabella well knew that the procurement and display of art is often an act of uncertainty. Commissions disappoint, artifacts slip away unsecured despite best efforts, and one must pivot with stalwart compromise. So experienced into proficiency, Isabella superintended her many acquisitions and the structures tailored to house them.

Isabella’s studiolo was an intentionally designed space of harmonious withdrawal, mental and physical, from courtly life and its disruptions.Footnote ⁵⁴ For Isabella (and many curators), esthetics was a kind of scar tissue, healed but still visible, never vanishing. Campbell goes so far as to describe Isabella’s pursuit of the studiolo as “therapeutic.”Footnote ⁵⁵ She understood the power of images as succor and shield.

However, maintaining a balanced approach to life’s trials, mundane and terrible, did not mean that Isabella was in favor of suppressing said emotions, allowing fate to flatten her. Emotions should be managed, but so should problems. Curators are experts at absorbing and overcoming the onslaught of multiple timelines and teams; inevitably, some unforeseen aspect of your beloved exhibit will tumble, but the show must go on. Nec spe nec metu called Isabella to strength and she answered.

The motto is yet another portrait of Isabella. It was, as Classicist Maria Elisa Barraco so aptly puts it, a part of her.Footnote ⁵⁶ Isabella had many emblems, but nec spe nec metu was her favorite.Footnote ⁵⁷ It was her deliberate choice to post nec spe nec metu at the crown of her studiolo, an unmissable presiding sign reminding curators and visitors to pause and reorient. Observe, this is a place of wonder.

5. Curiosity cabinet

Synonymous abound this subheading title, hinting at the term’s ubiquity across early modern Europe: the cabinet of curiosity, aka wonder room, aka Wunderkammer, aka the delightfully expressive Dutch term: rariteitenkabinet. Footnote ⁵⁸ Proto-museums that manifested in the mid-to-late 15th century, cabinets of curiosity were display interiors, usually a case, room, or suite inside manors, flaunting encyclopedic rarities. The objects within were a spectrum of oddities man-made and natural, procured to make the owner seem worldly, learned, and fascinating to lucky visitors. Cabinets of curiosity were built in private homes of wealthy merchants and idolatrous princes and open to invited guests. Museologist Jeffrey Abt and others have identified the cabinet of curiosity as a critical precursor to modern public museums.Footnote ⁵⁹ As with non-Western pre-museums, women’s contribution to museum history is chronically underwritten, including Isabella’s.Footnote ⁶⁰ Her studiolo deserves to be lauded as a key ancestor to the curiosity cabinet and thus art museums today.

Local visitors would have called Isabella’s spaces studiolo (study), or camerino (little room), terms she used interchangeably in correspondence. Ames-Lewis and others have argued that such interiors were generally considered a masculine enterprise, and while Isabella probably saw studioli (the plural of studiolo) made by peerage men, she also would have been inspired by a few but standout women-owned spaces.Footnote ⁶¹ Foremost of these was probably the 1480–1493 studiolo designed by Isabella’s own mother, Eleonora d’Este.Footnote ⁶² Eleonora’s studiolo included garden rooms, artwork, and carefully selected furniture and décor.

Planning for Isabella’s apartments in the Castello di San Giorgio, the Medieval castle incorporated into the Mantua city palace complex, began in 1491, an earlier priority for the new bride who had recently married Francesco Gonzaga in 1490.Footnote ⁶³ The 17-year-old immediately stepped into the role of commander; on November 12, 1491, she wrote painter Giovanni Luca Liombeni: “We wish to have you paint inside the armoires whatever seems best for you. Nothing gauche: we would only make you redo it all your own expense and then send you to the dungeon for the whole winter.”Footnote ⁶⁴ This was not the last time Isabella would threaten an artist with jail time to secure her wishes. She continually curated her quarters for years, until in 1515 when she moved to new apartments (in another part of the palace called the Corte Vecchia) upon her husband Franceso’s death and her son Ferderico’s consequential ascension to the dukedom.Footnote ⁶⁵ Isabella was so dedicated to her exhibition that she installed it again after her move to the new suite where she continued her work there into at least the 1530s.Footnote ⁶⁶

The layout of these spaces shifted over decades, but in general her apartments consisted of at least five multilevel rooms linked by stairwells in the Castello’s upper floors, which Isabella decorated and furnished.Footnote ⁶⁷ Taken together, these rooms served as her private quarters, where she read, wrote, hosted gatherings for distinguished guests, and carried out her daily work as the Marchioness of Mantua. Of this suite, the most museum-like rooms were her studiolo and a small adjoining chamber she affectionately called grotta (grotto).Footnote ⁶⁸ Here was Isabella’s curatorial epicenter, holding her art collection and library. Isabella’s décor lionized the generous splendor and glory of Mantua, certainly, but to dismiss it as mere state propaganda is to diminish her curatorial focus. Crucially, her studiolo is the first documented instance of this type of proto-museum specifically devised from inception to display art.Footnote ⁶⁹

History has left little of Isabella’s original curatorial work. The preserved rooms at the Ducal Palace of Mantua Museum are largely interventions after her lifetime. Fortunately, in 2018, the Ducal Palace Museum in collaboration with an interdisciplinary cohort of digital humanities scholars led by Deanna Shemek resurrected Isabella’s studiolo in virtual reality, painstakingly reassembled from primary sources in vivid 3D.Footnote ⁷⁰ Here modern visitors may see an invaluable semblance of Isabella’s work, as she and her guests saw it.

Even without the benefit of the objects once displayed within, the bare spaces recreate her lavish architectural taste, from the dazzling geometric tiles to the marble-lined portals to the gilt coffered ceiling (Figure 3). Like any good curator, Isabella adored material culture, investing in so-called minor arts and large-scale panel paintings throughout her career.Footnote ⁷¹ A 1542 inventory, three years after her death, lists Isabella’s variety of objects d’arte: medals, intaglios, vases, busts, cameos, gemstones, as well as statuary ancient and contemporary in bronze and marble.Footnote ⁷² While the exact placement of these individual artifacts remains unknown, it is safe to assume each was selected for its visual interest and beautiful meaning. Even the walls were art: marble carvings, intricate intarsia scenes, and a series of murals, all by period masters in their respective media. Although largely focused on ancient and contemporary Italian art, Isabella did own a piece of coral and semiprecious stones, but they may not have been displayed.Footnote ⁷³

Figure 3.

Still of Isabella d’Este’s virtual studio, isabelladestearchive.org, Creative Commons.

Figure 3. Long description

The room is a narrow rectangular chamber with a high ceiling.

* Floor: The ground is covered in small, hexagonal ceramic tiles with blue and white circular patterns, creating a dense geometric mosaic that leads the eye toward the back of the room.

* Walls: The lower half of the walls consists of dark wood wainscoting with carved diamond-shaped relief panels. Above the wood paneling, large horizontal paintings depicting mythological scenes with numerous figures are mounted. On the left wall, a narrow marble-framed doorway leads to another space.

* Far Wall: At the center of the far wall is a single, tall window with four panes, letting in bright light. Below the window is a small stone relief carving set into the wood paneling.

* Ceiling: The ceiling is a dark wood coffered structure with intricate circular carvings and decorative moldings in each square section.

* Lighting: The scene is lit primarily from the central window, casting soft reflections on the polished wood and tiled floor.

Isabella also collected books for content and visual appeal. She wanted her tomes materially luscious, expensive manuscripts and printed volumes.Footnote ⁷⁴ But she also liked engaging plots; when shopping for Venetian books, she requested “books in the vernacular—both in verse and prose—that feature battles, histories, and tales both modern and ancient.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Performance artists were on her payroll as well: poets, singers, composers, and a slate of instrumental musicians, including players of the lute, clavichord, and pipes. She collected instruments too, which she occasionally commissioned for purely esthetic reasons.Footnote ⁷⁶

Who was Isabella’s audience? Likely, her studiolo was open to a chosen circle of friends, relatives, and guests of the Gonzaga court.Footnote ⁷⁷ It is also very possible her pre-museum was accessible to a much wider swath of visitors to Mantua, as San Juan argues Isabella’s exhibitions were “a focal point of social intercourse in the court.”Footnote ⁷⁸ As such, one of the most telling ways Isabella prefigured modern curators was her consistent emphasis on audience engagement, which she accomplished by exercising her motto. Campbell states “the device was valued as a statement of general principle, as well as for a certain kind of laconic ambiguity that, as in the case of the other imprese, was designed to solicit discussion and interpretation.”Footnote ⁷⁹ While it is unclear from surviving evidence if a nec spe nec metu plaque existed in her first set of rooms, Figure 1 certainly hung in the second iteration and another was displayed in the vault of her grotto.Footnote ⁸⁰ In the 3D virtual recreation, small blue nec spe nec metu signs appear directly beneath several paintings, evoking wayfinding labels in a modern museum. The presence of her motto, prominent in the architecture and across objects, imbued her studiolo with an encircling theoretical framework; by encouraging critical interaction with artwork and each other, Isabella submerged visitors into her vision, reflecting Martinon’s summation of curation: “in other words, the visual is entirely dialogical.”Footnote ⁸¹

Another key curatorial principle in Isabella’s studiolo was indoor–outdoor permeability. The plaque in Figure 1 served to immediately prep and continually remind viewers of a garden-like atmosphere as vines twirl around text. If Genovesi’s suspicion that Isabella would have encountered nec spe nec metu on tarot, the card on which the motto appears, boasting a spouting fountain on a grassy lawn flanked by cherubs may provide an inception point for her interest in incorporating nature into her curatorial vision.Footnote ⁸² For her Corte Vecchio apartments, Isabella extended this insistence on nature by directly situating the grotta next to a garden she named the giardino segreto (secret garden), which contained an orchard.Footnote ⁸³ The giardino segreto rendered the implicit explicit, interposing the architectural with the environmental, declaring this meld a space of peaceful solace that lent its owner and guests strength.

Campbell defines the Italian studioli as bearing “a particular closeness to their owner, which can thus stand as a synecdochic representation of the principal occupant.”Footnote ⁸⁴ In her studiolo, Isabella in effect created a world, small and separate from court life, enlivened with her philosophical stance. She thought in layers, in macro and micro at once, to serve an artistic narrative. Above it all, nec spe nec metu reigned, reminding her guests to look and ponder.

6. Collezionismo

Renaissance is French for rebirth, meaning the widespread rejuvenation of interest in Classical antiquity that defines this period. Isabella participated in this sweeping cultural shift by purchasing antiquities (most of which are unfortunately untraceable today) and commissioning early modern artists to create artwork emulating ancient style. An example of the latter may be seen in Figure 4, a late 15th-century bronze Apollo Belvedere sculpture by Antico, which she commissioned as a copy of the circa 120–140 CE marble original now housed in the Vatican Museums.Footnote ⁸⁵ Among his other duties as a Gonzaga court artist, Antico worked as an antiquities advisor to the marchioness.Footnote ⁸⁶ She also employed him as a restorer of ancient sculptures.Footnote ⁸⁷ Between 1510 and 1519, Isabella directed Antico to cast a series of bronze remakes of Classical sculptures to populate her galleries.Footnote ⁸⁸ Guided by her motto, Isabella’s practice of collecting antiquities and commissioning Renaissance copies exhibits the virtue of balance.

Figure 4.

Antico, Apollo Belvedere, late 15th-century bronze with gilding and silver, Galleria Franchetti alla Ca′ d’oro, Venice. Period copy after Isabella’s version, Wikimedia Commons.

A cornerstone of modern curatorial work is enhancing or challenging one’s own sphere of knowledge with the expertise of others, which Isabella leaned into. In addition to seeking guidance from Antico, she worked closely with expert advisors in Venice, Rome, and elsewhere across the peninsula.Footnote ⁸⁹ Ever the pragmatist, when thinking of purchasing a sculpted head of Plato, Isabella wrote to her dealer “if the thing seems to be excellent in its beauty and to be worth its price, we would like you to get it,” guiding his choices from her desk.Footnote ⁹⁰ On August 5, 1506, she wrote to the master metalsmith Gian Cristoforo Romano, “please be on the alert for any beautiful and ancient bronze medals and other excellent things and inform me of their price and quality.”Footnote ⁹¹ Isabella’s letters are full of moments like this. She even talked to Leonardo da Vinci about antiquities.Footnote ⁹² Isabella’s interest in Greco–Roman culture extended to patronizing translations of Classical text into the Tuscan vernacular. Art Historian Clifford Brown argues that Isabella’s zeal for collecting antiquities elevated Mantua “as a major center for antiquarian studies.”Footnote ⁹³

Let us be clear: shameless Isabella’s self-proclaimed “insatiable desire for all things ancient” grew her antiquities collection, at times, by startlingly unethical means.Footnote ⁹⁴ Just one instance is a 1515 reply from her in-law Giovanni Gonzaga, who gently but pointedly informed Isabella: “I have to tell you Signor Galeazzo is still alive, and although he is extremely unwell, we have not lost all hope that he may recover.”Footnote ⁹⁵ Apparently Isabella had written to the man, assuming one Signor Galeazzo Sforza was already in the grave and his stuff up for grabs. Barraco has argued nec spe nec metu carries within a rally to carpe diem, which Isabella took to heart, for better or worse.Footnote ⁹⁶

Noteworthy is the invisible boundary Isabella stealthily walked to collect ancient artifacts. Though many early modern women of Isabella’s stature patronized art, it was mostly men who collected antiquities.Footnote ⁹⁷ Other studioli headed by women were typically decorated with religious art or family portraits (as Ippolita Maria Sforza did in the 1460s).Footnote ⁹⁸ As San Juan argues, the dilemma of existing as a Renaissance court lady colored every aspect of Isabella’s lived experience, including her approach to art patronage and commissions.Footnote ⁹⁹ It was a tightrope Isabella walked several times, ever fearless and determined.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Isabella’s collections balanced ancient with contemporary art, a major thesis of her exhibition. According to period accounts, she displayed a now-lost Sleeping Cupid by Michelangelo opposite its ancient prototype.Footnote ¹⁰¹ She also apparently showed an ancient cameo next to a contemporary medal she commissioned from Gian Cristoforo Romano, possibly this example in the Metropolitan Museum (Figure 5).Footnote ¹⁰² On it, Isabella herself is cast in profile, encircled by her illustrious title: ISABELLA ESTEN MARCH. MANTVAE (Isabella d’Este Marchioness of Mantua). Throughout her career, she collected a few images of her friends and family, but Isabella’s favorite subject was Isabella. On the reverse, another imprese: this one bearing the phrase “Because of the those who favored me” in Latin, showing a draped, winged female allegory of astrology flanked by a leaping serpent and the Sagittarius symbol; a moment of humble pause for the marchioness, thanking her lucky stars. By pairing her visage near an ancient cameo, Isabella decisively inserts herself into the continuum from Classical antiquity to rebirthed present; she is the dream of the Renaissance.

Figure 5.

Gian Cristoforo Romano, Isabella d’Este medal, L: Obverse, R: Reverse, 1498, bronze, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Public Domain.

This series of antiquity plus copy was purposefully developed so that guests might compare and contrast, employing a key art historical tool still used in art museums today, but which Isabella would have called paragone, the Renaissance notion of “comparison,” dynamic artistic debate that pitted media such as painting against sculpture, or ancient versus contemporary work. Looking at Isabella’s bronze Apollo Belvedere, visitors perhaps compared its contrapposto stance with its prototype, debating who struck the better pose, ergonomically imbalanced as the young god steps one foot forward. Genovesi translates Isabella’s motto as “when the pacified soul reveals the eternal present without past and without future.”Footnote ¹⁰³ A paragone between Renaissance and Greco–Roman artworks collapses time, situates the beholder in the exhilarating now. “No Hope No Fear” resonated throughout her curatorial practice, connecting the ancient world to her unstoppable ego as a curator.

7. Inventrice

One of Isabella’s boldest studiolo artworks was a series of paintings depicting Classical mythology. In addition to their ancient istoria (history: considered the highest, most difficult iconography during the Renaissance) subject matter, this cycle was daring because Isabella grouped multiple artists to tell one cohesive story, an undertaking that required years of negotiation and coordination.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Pietro Perugino, Lorenzo Costa, Andrea Mantegna, and later Antonio Allegri da Correggio each created their own painted chapter in the saga narrating the stories of Greco–Roman gods, dialoguing in situ across gallery walls.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ So careful was Isabella about their placement that she apparently considered the direction of the illusory light in each painting so that it correctly matched the slant of the actual light emanating from the studiolo windows.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Overall, the program is a pictorial meditation on virtue triumphing over vice, slotting perfectly with Isabella’s motto.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ While these paintings have garnered much art historical analysis, they also speak to Isabella’s curatorial imagination, specifically that of retreat.

Out of the circle of artists Isabella employed for this exhibit, the two entries by Mantegna best showcase her curatorial philosophy. As a Gonzaga court artist on retainer, Mantegna would have known Isabella better than the others. Both scenes evoke the permeable inside–outside setting of Isabella’s secret garden and grotta and reflect the atmosphere of her studiolo, active with dancing, lively chatter, music-making, as well as the more serious pursuit of extolling virtue over vice. Figure 6, a scene of Mars and Venus overseeing a pastoral heavenly fete, was executed in 1497, making it the first painting to be completed for the series. So-called Parnassus, the lush, distributed colors beneath rich light celebrate the glory of outdoor respite, and the stunning possibilities of pleasure unencumbered with guilt or suppression. Mantegna’s scene blossoms with naturalistic details including a trickling waterfall, dangling vines, fruited trees, peeking rabbits, and a bristled squirrel, enchantments guests perhaps could encounter in the nearby giardino segreto. These indoor–outdoor scenes existed in an intertextual paragone with the actual garden visible and visitable from the studiolo. Nature here thrives because it is tamed; note the gate and couch draped in the Gonzaga colors. Animated figures dance, play, and sing. The broken broom, cold anvil, and still hammer provide semiotics signaling blissful abandonment of work. In the corner, impoverished and nude beneath his shock of red cloak, the Roman god Vulcan (Venus’ spurned husband) cringes, largely ignored by the revelers save for receiving Cupid’s dart, as if only love can renew him. Mercury, holding aloft his serpentine staff, posed contrapposto beside his winged, bejeweled horse, prescribes retreat as a health remedy. The dancers turning in their figure-eight formation are the nine muses of the liberal arts, another declaration of interest in the ancient world and artistic pursuit. During her lifetime, Isabella adopted muses as one of her many personal symbols, and the artists she patronized (as well as Equicola) called her “the tenth muse,” so the muses here may figure Isabella.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Figure 6.

Andrea Mantegna, Mars and Venus (Parnassus), 1497, tempera on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 6. Long description

At the top center, Mars and Venus stand together on a high rocky platform in front of a bed and a lush orange grove. Mars is in armor with a spear, while Venus is nude with a golden sash. To their left, a small Cupid aims a blowpipe toward Vulcan, who is visible in a cave on the far left. Below the central arch, nine Muses in colorful classical robes are dancing in a circle in a grassy meadow. To the left of the dancers, Apollo sits playing a lyre. On the far right, Mercury stands beside the winged horse Pegasus, who is adorned with pearls. The background features a rolling landscape with distant mountains, a winding river, and a town under a pale blue sky. The composition is balanced with rocky outcrops on both the left and right edges, framing the central activity.

The entire myth schema speaks to Isabella’s curatorial career working closely with artists. She sometimes wrote to artists with instructions, or invited potential collaborators to follow their own artistic convictions or invenzione. Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Together, Isabella and Mantegna devised the subject matter of his two paintings.Footnote ¹¹⁰

As a curator, Isabella had to think both practically and poetically. Her corpus of letters does not iterate her collaborative process with Mantegna, perhaps because they had such conversations in person. However, we do know she favored the proportions of Mantegna’s lifelike figures because on January 12, 1504 she wrote directly to Perugino, essentially requiring the figures in his painting to measure up, quite literally by sending him threads cut to the precise heights in her court artist’s work:

The theme of retreat is continued in Figure 7 Pallas Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue, also by Mantegna, completed a few years later in 1502. This painting is harder to read, but as a result is perhaps more interesting. Red-plume helmet blazing, divine Pallas hurdles a bizarre infestation of monsters and humanoids, allegories for human shortcomings (some of which certainly could be said to rely on ableist visual stereotypes) from a paradisical garden, banishing their sinful influence evermore.Footnote ¹¹² In case visitors needed a hint accessing the complex subject matter, the vices are helpfully labeled in Latin with headbands, and the scene overall is bolstered with explanatory text. A parade of butterfly-winged and owl-headed putti further demonstrates the painter’s close observation of nature. The celebration of maintained tailored nature untroubled by strange and intense vices resounds Isabella’s focus on mindfulness. Bazzotti, following Equicola, interprets nec spe nec metu as chiefly pertaining to freedom, that no man (or, in Isabella’s case, woman) may be a fully autonomous being if they are not cleansed of the terrible pulls of hope and fear.Footnote ¹¹³ Freed from heavy emotions and desires, these figures in both paintings and the myth program overall fête, enlightened by Mantegna’s artistic freedom and Isabella’s inventrice.

Figure 7.

Andrea Mantegna, Pallas Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue, 1502, tempera on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 7. Long description

The scene is set in a garden enclosed by high, arched hedges. On the far left, a tree with a human face and arms is wrapped in scrolls. Moving right, Pallas Athena, wearing a helmet and carrying a broken lance and shield, strides forward to expel the Vices.

In the center and right foreground, various Vices are depicted as grotesque figures. These include a satyr carrying a child, a woman being carried by a centaur, and several figures wading in a dark pool of water at the bottom. Small winged putti with butterfly wings fly above the crowd, some carrying bows.

In the upper right, three female figures representing the Cardinal Virtues—Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance—appear within a luminous cloud in the sky. The background features a rocky, orange-hued mountain on the left and a serene landscape with a river and distant hills visible through the hedge arches on the right. The sky is filled with soft, white clouds.

Remarkable is Isabella and Mantegna’s dual wield of the nympha. A visual trope flitting across Renaissance art, the nympha is a beguiling female figure striding forward in billowing drapery, first identified by foundational Renaissance art historian Aby Warburg, endeared as “miss hurryburg.”Footnote ¹¹⁴ Warburg discovered the frequency of the young maenad within Greco–Roman art resurrected in the Renaissance, for example in the work of the Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Figures 8 and 9 are Mantegna’s nymphas, whipping across the studiolo walls, causing a stir. Both figures are Isabellian in their temperance, breaking with the trope by embodying equilibrium. Figure 8, a muse as nympha, opens her mouth not to keen in Bacchic frenzy but to sing in harmony with her sisters. Her hair floats, her belt snaps in the wind, but she is not a sight of derangement. She lifts one leg as if to leap but does not break the choreographed dance. Figure 9 introduces (to this author’s knowledge) a wholly Isabellian twist on the trope, an armed goddess in the guise of the nympha. The nympha trope is always mid-step in the midst of windswept action, but here Pallas-nympha is a figure of wisdom and might, who will not succumb to overwhelming passion and chases bad habits away with spear and shield. As Isabella inserted herself into these two Mantegnas through the muses and possibly Venus, she certainly could also have seen herself as the nympha, but in her conception one who is blissfully disciplined.Footnote ¹¹⁵

Figure 8.

Andrea Mantegna, Mars and Venus (Parnassus), detail of muse, 1497, on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 9.

Andrea Mantegna, Pallas Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue, detail of Pallas, 1502, on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 9. Long description

Pallas is depicted in mid-stride, moving from left to right across a dark, wooded garden. She wears a golden helmet topped with a tall red plume and a detailed bronze breastplate featuring a central Medusa head. Her layered garments consist of a yellow tunic over a flowing pink and green skirt that billows behind her, revealing dark blue leggings and sandals. She holds a long, thin orange spear diagonally across her body with her right hand, while her left arm is extended forward, holding a large circular shield.

To the left, a white scroll with Latin text winds around a tree trunk. In the upper right corner, the lower half of a flying cherub is visible, aiming an arrow. In the lower right, a centaur-like figure with striped legs and a human torso looks back in alarm. The background is composed of tall, vertical hedges or trees forming a dense wall of greenery. On the ground in the bottom left, a broken piece of a spear lies near Pallas’s feet.

Isabella must have been satisfied with Mantegna’s enactment of her curatorial vision because she wrote to Perugino on June 30, 1505 that his painting “if it had been finished with greater care, it would have done you greater honor and contented us more, since it must hang next to the very refined ones by Mantegna.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ Harsh! When Mantegna died in 1506, Isabella continued undaunted, securing the replacement court painter Lorenzo Costa to finish his predecessor’s commissions.Footnote ¹¹⁷ The range of artists displayed in the space invited analytic meditation. As Campbell says, “part of the emotional therapy offered by the paintings, which are themselves about the passions, is that they encourage their beholders to engage in poetic, imaginative acts of reading: they require an act of ‘connection’ or empathy, through contemplation.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ Visitors might have enjoyed comparing the exploration of balanced passions between Mantegna’s work and Perugino’s contribution, Battle of Chastity and Lasciviousness (1530). Correggio’s diptych Allegory of Philosophy and Allegory of the Passions were both completed between 1525 and 1521, the 20-year gap between Mantegna’s prototypically Renaissance style and Correggio’s early Mannerism results in a visual departure.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Isabella, then, was more invested in keeping current with trends than visual sameness. It is possible she even delighted in the stylistic contrast as a source for sparking paragone conversations. Inventrice, for Isabella, was curation. The myth series is peak Renaissance naturalism and humanism. Isabella wanted her allegories mysterious and complex to foster discussion, her motto acting as a participatory call.Footnote ¹²⁰

8. Emotional eating

Isabella’s imprese also peppers a suite of decorative plates created by the famed ceramicist Nicola da Urbino. A piece within a larger dining set, these prized maiolica earthenware were popular in the Gonzaga court and similar noble households, celebrated for their bright, dynamic colors. This set was designed for Isabella as a gift from her daughter, Eleonora Gonzaga.Footnote ¹²¹ Instead of being kept in her studiolo, the plates were used in Isabella’s suburban villa, the Palazzo di Porto.Footnote ¹²² They might have been displayed for viewing there, but this is unclear.Footnote ¹²³ While these plates are a slight departure from the objects previously explored, they helpfully adumbrate Isabella’s nec spe nec metu value of fortitude.

Art historian Lisa Boutin argues that the set was designed by Eleonora, perhaps to please her mother.Footnote ¹²⁴ As with mothers and daughters since time immemorial, their relationship was complicated.Footnote ¹²⁵ It is no stretch to assume what would best please Isabella would be correctly presenting la Marchesa with her own self-fashioned image. These plates demonstrate that Isabella successfully projected her self-styled nec spe nec metu persona, so much so that an immediate family member who knew her very well deeply intertwined the characteristics of mother with motto.Footnote ¹²⁶

Figure 10 is one example from this set. A Classical scene, this time an Ovidian reference, is depicted in vivid realism, complete with correct linear perspective rendered by the colonnade and arcade on the upper right. It is a sad story, and likely one Isabella and her visitors would have known: Phaedra, the Queen of Athens (gowned in orange), falls in erroneous love with her stepson, Hippolytus, who wholeheartedly rebukes her advances, pausing to glance backward at her only to threateningly draw his sword. Phaedra, afraid and humiliated, lies to her husband Theseus that Hippolytus tried to seduce her. In the plate, Theseus pursues the innocent hero with sword ready and back turned to the viewer, perhaps symbolic of his misguided hunt. Above, Hippolytus drives his pegasus-drawn chariot through the sunset in the moment before Poseidon, induced to mistaken retribution by Theseus, rips him from the sky. Tragedy reigns; everyone dies. Isabella’s hand here is evident, from the Gonzaga crest interrupting the action, in addition to one of Isabella’s more enigmatic devices below: a musical scale called the imprese delle Pause. Unmissable in the foreground is nec spe nec metu carved into the balustrade.

Figure 10.

Nicola da Urbino, Plate, ca. 1524, maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware), painted, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Public Domain.

Figure 10. Long description

The plate is organized into two main zones.

* At the center is a recessed well containing a large heraldic shield divided into four quadrants. The left side features black eagles on a white ground, while the right side shows blue and gold patterns with fleur-de-lis and birds. Two winged putti stand on either side of the shield, supporting its ornate scrollwork.

* The outer rim depicts a continuous narrative landscape.

* At the top left, a figure drives a chariot pulled by four white horses through the sky above blue mountains.

* Moving down the left side, a man in classical blue and yellow attire walks through a wooded area with green rolling hills.

* At the bottom, a stone balustrade with geometric carvings separates the landscape from the foreground.

* On the right side, a man in a blue cloak and a woman in a yellow dress stand before a classical building with columns and an arched doorway.

* The entire scene is framed by a thin gold band at the very edge of the plate.

Nec spe nec metu appears across several plates in this earthenware set by Nicola da Urbino, all speaking to womanly resilience and courage. Figure 11, The Justice of Emperor Trajan, is a scene Boutin argues Isabella would have related to (and another story she likely knew), showing a mother confronting the emperor for justice for her murdered son, pictured bloodied beneath the horse’s advancing hooves.Footnote ¹²⁷ Despite how the army’s warhorses tower over her, the mother stands her ground. Figure 12, Dish with Diana and the Revival of Hippolytus, further showcases the strength of Isabella’s persona, as Diana was one of her favored subjects. Campbell has pointed out that Diana, the virginal Roman goddess of the moon and hunt, resonated with Isabella.Footnote ¹²⁸ Chastity was the paramount virtue for women, but it is quite possible Isabella, who served as state head in several capacities, would have also identified with the more militaristic aspects of Diana. This scene feels particularly curatorial, with Isabella’s many symbols installed across the trees.

Figure 11.

Nicola da Urbino, Plate, ca. 1524, The Justice of Emperor Trajan, maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware), painted, British Museum, London, Creative Commons.

Figure 11. Long description

The foreground features Emperor Trajan mounted on a white horse at the center, wearing a crown, green armor, and a flowing blue cape. He looks toward a woman in a long blue dress who kneels on the right, gesturing toward a dead child lying on the ground between them. To the left of Trajan, several soldiers on white and brown horses carry long spears and banners. One soldier in the middle ground wears an orange and blue tunic, seen from behind.

At the bottom center, a small white scroll is pinned to the ground with the Latin inscription N E C S P E N E C M E T U.

The background is filled with a detailed cityscape featuring tan stone buildings, a large circular tower, and a fortified wall. At the top center, a heraldic coat of arms is enclosed in a green wreath, set against the stone tower. The sky above the city is a gradient of light to dark blue. The entire scene is painted in a vibrant palette of blues, yellows, greens, and oranges, characteristic of tin-glazed earthenware.

Figure 12.

Nicola da Urbino, Plate, ca. 1524, Dish with Diana and the Revival of Hippolytus, maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware), painted, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Public Domain.

Figure 13, Abduction of Helen, from the set encircles the motto. Notice how Helen, despite being spellbound by Aphrodite, resists Paris’ capture, howling for escape. This seascape plate is also chock-full of things: weapons, ships, buildings, patterns, and natural elements in their indifferent vastness. In this instance, nec spe nec metu is scribbled across a fictive piece of paper directly beneath the Gonzaga coat of arms, as if supporting it.

Figure 13.

Nicola da Urbino, Plate, ca. 1524, Abduction of Helen, maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware), painted, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 13. Long description

The plate is organized into three concentric zones.

At the center is a circular medallion containing a complex coat of arms supported by two winged putti. The shield is quartered with eagles and fleur-de-lis motifs. Below the shield, a ribbon scroll bears the Latin inscription N E C S P E N E C M E T U.

The next layer outward is the cavetto, or the sloping well of the plate, which is decorated with a subtle white-on-white foliate pattern known as bianchetto.

The outermost layer is the wide rim, which contains a continuous narrative landscape.

* At the top, a distant landscape features blue mountains and a walled city under a streaked sky.

* Moving clockwise to the right, a classical building with columns stands near a scene of chaotic struggle where soldiers on horseback and on foot are engaged in combat.

* At the bottom, a group of figures, including Helen in a yellow and orange robe, are being forced into a small boat by muscular men.

* On the left, the narrative continues into the sea, showing several large galleys with multiple oars and white sails navigating blue water near a rocky coastline.

These Greek stories go beyond supporting Isabella’s engagement with Classical culture; they uphold her motto in writing and meaning. Equicola, Campbell explains, discussed how the mastery of volatile human emotions through virtues, the crux of nec spe nec metu, recognizes that mortal passions are base.Footnote ¹²⁹ Could there be an erudite joke hidden in the dinnerware, functionally designed for eating but celebrating the suppression or sublimation of human appetites? Even if these plates were not actually used for food, the witticism stands. Equicola, ruminating on the motto, argued that humans must “dominate the stars,” that free will trumps prewritten fate.Footnote ¹³⁰ Isabella’s life brimmed with scandal, court drama, and social intrigue. How fitting, then, this set of mythic subjects is for Isabella, dishing stories of prophecy, meddling gods, and deux ex machina in brilliant color, with which she could both identify and refuse? Despite all, her conviction remains foundational, painted then fired into immortality. Connected to her motto’s insistence on inner strength against tumultuous times, the plates are literally emblematic of her worldview.

9. Every curator exhibits the self

“Exhibitions, whether of objects or people…” curator Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett wrote in her landmark study on the intersection between ethnography and museum practice, “Display the artifacts of our disciplines. They are also exhibits of those who make them.”Footnote ¹³¹ Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s modern perspective applies to Isabella d’Este’s 16th-century work.Footnote ¹³² Kirshenblatt-Gimblett here uses discipline to mean academic field, which interdisciplinarian Isabella could certainly lay claim to. Bolstered by years of collecting, she eventually became so expert others would occasionally seek her advice on “the quality and authenticity of works of art.”Footnote ¹³³ However, the connotation of discipline to mean emotional management works for Isabella too, cleaving to nec spe nec metu as she labored. Her curatorial work was about the solace found in the study and enjoyment of art, and it was also about Isabella. The purposefully enigmatic motto invites multiple interpretations, now and in the period, but the three most informative for situating Isabella’s curatorial work—balance, retreat, and fortitude—provide a throughline threaded across her spaces and objects. These simultaneously represent Isabella’s construction of the self and her curatorial ethics, adding a nuance to the centuries-long force majeure prism that was Isabella d’Este, that of curator managing collections, exhibits, collaborators, audience, and commissions.

The term “curator” in its modern, museum-focused connotation is first documented in the mid-to-late 17th century.Footnote ¹³⁴ Isabella was ahead of her time. As a tastemaker and gatherer, she was an inspiration. Her daughter Eleonora followed in her mother’s footsteps to become an art patroness in her own right.Footnote ¹³⁵ Isabella boasted in her letters that her husband Francesco learned collection best practices from her and improved on her style when designing his own palatial apartments.Footnote ¹³⁶ Her son Ercole assumed his mother’s motto.Footnote ¹³⁷ Tenth Muse Isabella would not have been aware of the etymological root of museum from muses but, because of her proto-curatorial expertise, the parallel withstands. Curators working in our concurrent museum fourth age, successors to Isabella, would benefit from resurrecting “No Hope No Fear” in their contemporary exhibit work as a rallying cry during a tumultuous period.Footnote ¹³⁸

Isabella’s collections are now dispersed in museums across the world, at the Louvre, Victoria & Albert, and Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, just to name a few, seeding major art institutions.Footnote ¹³⁹ Her curatorial focus is now the focus of curators globally. Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, the First Lady of the World, in addition to her many accolades within scholarly consensus, also helped to build modern museum practice. She cared deeply about her studiolo and probably would be glad her history is elided with exhibition history.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ As a woman—legally and culturally a possession herself—it is remarkable that she was able to curate objects of beauty and spectacle; it is a miracle we know so much about her curation. To quote Mario Equicola’s treatise praising Isabella’s motto, “Let the heavenly powers watch over you, Isabella…Let your prayers be answered, Isabella…Let nec spe nec metu be eternal and immortal.”Footnote ¹⁴¹ Let Isabella d’Este Gonzaga be enshrined in museum history.