Unsurprisingly, Paolo and Isabella soon racked up stratospheric expenses. They had vast staffs, but labor was cheap, especially when some of their servants were slaves. However, it cost a small fortune to keep up appearances if you were a Medici. The “spesa d’arme,” or weapons expenses, included those items needed to defend their establishment: swords, crossbows, harquebuses, and lances. The wardrobe expenses, or “spesa di vestire,” included not only the opulent garments and accessories that “His Illustrious Lordship” purchased for his own use, but the household’s extravagant liveries of red and yellow silk and velvet, and red taffeta shot with yellow, as well as the numerous page boys’ blue velvet ensembles. The fancier a servant’s livery, the more prestigious a household would appear to the outside world. Like the sentimental contents of their correspondence, Paolo and Isabella’s domestic sphere presented the outward show of a harmonious and financially healthy marriage.
Isabella used Orsini funds for the custom of almsgiving, the “spese di limosine.” She and Paolo didn’t seem to give too much to charity, but they spent an awful lot on the upkeep of their stables and their hunting expenses. Another costly line item in the Medici-Orsini household was the purchase and upkeep of the fashionable new conveyances that every rich young noble wanted to gad about in—coaches. Paolo and Isabella were the first on their block to obtain one, but the expense was such that Cosimo had to advance his son-in-law 105 scudi just for the upgrade to the red leather upholstery. The cost to gild the frame, adding accents of red trim, was an additional expense, as was Isabella’s perfectly matched quartet of pure white horses.
The maintenance of the old Palazzo Medici, one of the marital properties that had been a wedding gift from Isabella’s father, fell to Paolo. Yet he continued to demonstrate an utter incapability of living within his means. To pay his creditors he shamelessly sold some of his mother’s jewelry, resorted to patronizing Jewish moneylenders, and, without compunction, he even sold off some of his lands. Meanwhile, his servants often went hungry so that he could afford to go hunting or host jousting tournaments. And Paolo continued to purchase horses the way Titian bought paintbrushes.
Isabella was no thriftier. She would borrow money from the Medicis’ own bank, the Monte di Pietà, and could always count on her babbo to discharge her vast debts to the silk and velvet merchants and to the furriers. She also breezed through the allowance Cosimo gave her, frequently requesting a loan against the next installment. When her father agreed to advance her the sum of four thousand scudi, she trilled to Paolo, “I can pay my debts, and then I can live like a queen.”
The primary reason that Cosimo had united his favorite daughter with Paolo Giordano Orsini was to safeguard Medici property in the south. But that plan would go south if, in order to satisfy his myriad creditors, his son-in-law started selling off the territory that was intended to be Cosimo’s buffer zone. So in February 1563, the duke decided to loan Paolo a whopping thirty thousand scudi to pay off his debts in exchange for the rights to the estate’s income. A year later, he bought back two more Orsini fiefdoms from a pair of Paolo’s creditors. Cosimo placed them irreversibly in Isabella’s name so that she could derive an income from the property even if her husband continued down his path toward financial ruin.
And continue Paolo did. Cosimo’s thirty thousand scudi became a drop in the bucket. By 1568, the Duke of Bracciano had his hand out again. The initial loan from the Monte di Pietà was so large that it had to be divided into smaller accounts. The recipient’s name was supposed to be a secret, but the initials on the forty-thousand-scudi loan would have been recognizable to anyone in the know: PGO.
In 1566, Pope Pius V nominated Paolo governor general of the Catholic Church, which meant that he was in charge of papal troops. He wrote to Isabella to inform her that the new job had encouraged him to turn over a new leaf. “. . . every morning I hear Mass, have the table blessed and overall I live like a Christian whereas before I was a dissolute and a wretch.”
At least he admitted it. But Isabella was not convinced that he was capable of such a transformation, replying sarcastically, “So now that you have become a good Christian . . . may God let you persevere, as Our Lord commands that you wish only for one wife, and you do not desire the women of others, and I would be the happiest woman in the world if you were to observe these two things. . . .”
Paolo tried to convince Isabella to come down to Rome to live with him, because his new exalted position demanded an attentive wife. But Isabella wasn’t having any of it, and Paolo’s boasting about his new employment opportunity, particularly to the French ambassador, so offended the pontiff that he rescinded the offer.
Writing to Isabella, Paolo revealed that he thought he’d lost the governor generalship because the Spanish ambassador had maligned him, and that he had acted as a servant of Spain only due to the “dependence and relationship” he had with her father. The Orsini had always been supporters of the French, and now he intended to offer his services to them.
Annoyed with her husband’s shortsightedness, Isabella curtly reminded him that the French “will promise you oceans and mountains, and you will get absolutely nothing. . . . In times of peace, King Philip has given more to you than any other Italian cavalier, and if you wait he will give you more. . . . Give caresses to every one, but know the difference between those who are your real friends and those that would do you damage.” Then, larding her letters with wifely subservience, she assured Paolo, “If you wish to be French, then I will be French, if you are Imperial, then I am Imperial. You being much more wise than I, I will leave you to decide for yourself.” Paolo chose Spain.
Isabella did the best she could at managing her husband, but he had ways of gaining the upper hand, physically and psychologically. She was already aware of Paolo’s infidelity, but when she taunted him on one occasion about the House of Orsini’s social inferiority to the Medici, he had slapped her. This episode of abuse had not been unique. In February 1565, Isabella wrote to Paolo “. . . I was, and with reason, of the . . . opinion that first I should tell the duke my lord [Cosimo] of the injuries I have received from you, but I am now resolved that it is better for us if I do not speak of this to anyone as it is so very prejudicial. . . .”
If Paolo, so deeply in debt to his father-in-law, had struck Isabella, it was a spectacularly stupid thing to do. His wife might not have been able to physically defend herself, but she had a more powerful weapon: her babbo.
In the mid-1560s, Isabella and Francesco engaged in a tug-of-war over the Baroncelli, a villa on the outskirts of Tuscany that had been confiscated from a rival family. “Give it to her,” declared Cosimo, and Isabella became the owner of the very first real estate that was entirely hers. At the Baroncelli, as well as at her Florentine residences, occasionally in the company of Paolo, she hosted banquets, parties, and—in her husband’s absence—girls’ nights. There was always plenty of music and dancing, and even though the guest lists boasted the crème de la crème of society, their rowdiness routinely kept the neighborhood awake, because “. . . at around 2 a.m. Signora Isabella would be departing with her four coaches, singing, shouting, carousing because she was young, and without any mind for the scandal she was creating, knowing full well that in her company were some of the most dissolute young men in Florence.”
During her wild soirées, Isabella and her guests enjoyed a variety of parlor games. Some were fairly innocuous, where they had to imitate animal sounds, or the male guests had to extol the beauty of the females, using the language of the popular poets Ariosto and Petrarch. Secrets were revealed in “the game of misfortunes,” where the players related an amorous misadventure.
However, they also enjoyed less wholesome games: participants of both sexes were “sold” into bondage in “the game of slaves” and the “game of servants”; and in “the game of madness” those who claimed to be suffering from unrequited love would be “locked up” in an asylum. Indulging in
gleeful sacrilege, they also would dress up as nuns and monks and enact mock religious rites.
While she might have presided over a rather staid and prestigious salon at Cosimo’s court, left to her own devices Isabella offered the “sweetest temptations,” according to the Ferrarese ambassador, her friend Ridolfo Conegrano. Her party games were designed for hookups; men and women were encouraged to choose the most appealing partner.
Isabella knew full well that Paolo was no stranger to the brothels of Rome as well as the charms of other women. “Would you do me the favour of sending me your portrait engraved on a ring, just the same as you gave that woman?” she wrote to him once, a gentle reminder that she was aware of his infidelities. On another occasion, after Paolo dared to accuse her of being less than true to him by making music with Signor Mario, a gentleman who remains unidentified, Isabella immediately fired back a lengthy salvo regarding her extramarital conduct—and Paolo’s. “I am not that big a fool, having heard of the deeds, that I would believe the words, and I do not believe that you could imagine I would. . . . I am at the Baroncelli because I can better pass my miseries there than in Florence, and I wish to God that the music you claim I am making with Signor Mario would be often enough to distract my imagination from the little love you bear me.”
But even though she often signed her letters, “Your wife, who sleeps alone in her bed,” did she indulge in those “sweetest temptations” available at her own entertainments? By this time Paolo would hardly have been an alluring bedfellow. He had grown nearly as wide as he was tall, too heavy to sit on a normal-size horse, and was patronizing thermal baths in an effort to lose weight. Isabella affectionately nicknamed him “il mio grassotto”—my big fat one—and, punning on his surname, “il mio orso”—my bear.
Despite their mutual distaste, the ducal couple nonetheless understood their dynastic duty. Although they lived apart for most of their marriage, Paolo and Isabella reunited often enough for her to become pregnant, which she did with some regularity, although only two of their children survived to adulthood. A daughter born in 1564 died in childhood, as did one possibly named Francesca, born in 1568. The couple would also lose a girl born around 1576. Because they had been married for so many years without conceiving a son, by 1569 Paolo had begun to grow concerned about his lack of an heir, especially when Isabella perpetually made excuses not to join him in Rome. Another daughter, Francesca Eleonora, named for both their mothers, but nicknamed Nora, was born in 1571. Their son Virginio, conceived while Paolo was home in Florence on furlough after the Battle of Lepanto, was born on September 13, 1572.
But it was in 1564 that Isabella, then twenty-three, unhappily wed, and possessed of too blithe and passionate a nature to remain unfulfilled, is presumed to have taken a lover. The man was Paolo’s dashing cousin, Troilo Orsini de Monterotondo.
Due in large part to Cosimo I de Medici’s largesse, Paolo Giordano Orsini was the most privileged member of his house, the man with the most estates, pensions, and benefits. But his other family members had to distinguish themselves through their actions.
Troilo was a genuine Renaissance man, a lover and a soldier who, in addition to his horse and dog, brought his violin on military campaigns so that his comrades wouldn’t lack for a little cultural entertainment. A portrait of him in three-quarter profile bowing before Catherine de Medici depicts a dashing cavalier with dark curly hair and a trim beard who dresses like a fashion plate. This heartthrob was described by one of his contemporaries as “. . . a man who was elegant in all his endeavours, extremely handsome, a great entertainer, a true courtier, [and] the friend of all the ladies and gentlemen.”
Whereas Paolo had had everything handed to him, the charismatic Troilo was determined to succeed on his own merits. As his looks alone would not cover his expenses, he made a name for himself as a soldier, but in peacetime there was no work. So he became a hanger-on in the Orsini household, with a foot in the Medici camp as well, ever on the alert for an opportunity from Cosimo.
Troilo knew perfectly well that his cousin’s wife should have been sexually off-limits to him—intoccabile, or untouchable. But their extramarital affair lasted for a dozen years, creating an immense public scandal that would finally become too much for the respective Medici and Orsini family honor to bear.
Isabella and Troilo were passionately in love. They both enjoyed practical jokes and would roam the streets of Florence together in the wee hours of the morning, Isabella aping the manner of Venetian courtesans by cross-dressing as a man—shocking behavior for a Medici princess. Troilo was her most trusted confidant, and if anyone desired a favor from Isabella de Medici, they soon learned that first they had to persuade Troilo Orsini of its merits.
The poetry that Isabella commissioned at this time contained coded messages of love for Troilo. Even if some members of their inner circle were aware of their romantic liaison, she could acknowledge nothing publicly, nor sign her name to anything that would incriminate either of them.
Nonetheless, their correspondence, although not florid, certainly reflects their ardor. Often, the duchess would sign her letters, “Schiava in perpetuo”—“Your Lordship’s slave forever.” The notes also disparage Paolo, referring to her husband in one of them as “that animal,” and Isabella reveals plenty of ill will for her brother Francesco, who was acting as Cosimo’s regent in Florence. “I feel as if I’ve been knocked over into kneeling at the feet of the prince . . . it is so evident that everybody sees his miserable ways from morning ’til night.”
Isabella’s liaison with Troilo was even riskier because they spoke different languages, and their letters were either composed by a third party or written with Isabella’s limited knowledge of the southern Lazio dialect and Troilo’s scant abilities to communicate in Toscano.
More than their correspondence required the utmost discretion. Isabella may have borne Troilo two children who were housed as orphans or abandoned children in the Ospedale degli Innocenti. Given her fecundity, it would hardly be surprising if she hadn’t become pregnant and carried to term over the course of a twelve-year love affair, but the subject is never comprehensively discussed by her biographers.
Cosimo was aware of his daughter’s relationship with Troilo, and, being a sexual libertine himself, he took full advantage of his authority as a concerned, if indulgent parent to mitigate any damages to the family honor, without ever demanding that Isabella terminate her extramarital romance. However, to remove Troilo from temptation, he dispatched him on protracted, though prestigious assignments abroad. Troilo became the Medicis’ representative in Germany, Mantua, and France, where he was made welcome at the court of Cosimo’s widowed cousin, Catherine de Medici.
But after Cosimo’s death in April 1574, Isabella no longer had a champion and protector and could not go running to her babbo every time she needed a favor. Cosimo’s successor, his oldest son, Francesco, was an adulterer as well, but he was more discreet about it. Besides, the rules were different for girls. A sexually voracious man was a stud; a woman, a slut, and Isabella’s activities had become the target of public gossip. She had done more than admit a man (or more than one) to her bedchamber; she had invited a male outsider—Troilo Orsini—regardless of his family connection, into her circle of power and trust. It was not merely her own honor she was impugning by her actions, but that of the entire House of Medici.
Cosimo’s corpse was barely cold when Francesco sent Troilo on a pair of international assignments, first to Poland and then to France. Isabella’s brother further betrayed her by reneging on an agreement she had made with Cosimo to provide for her children. Knowing that Paolo would fritter away their funds, leaving little for Nora and Virginio’s inheritance, she had intended to secure their future before her father passed on, a plan in which “Signor Paolo donates to his son all of his possessions before he destroys them completely.” However, documents in the Florentine archive reveal that after Isabella signed her nam
e below this agreement, Francesco had the text altered.
Isabella’s lifestyle changed dramatically after Cosimo’s death. No longer required to play hostess at his court, she had run out of excuses for not permanently joining her husband in Rome and inventing delays for visiting him or welcoming him to Florence. Her days of freedom were over. She despaired of ending up a housewife stuck at home with the kids, while Paolo continued to patronize the bordellos and consort with his low-life friends in the Eternal City, embracing the popular expression “In Roma vale più la puttana che la moglie”—“In Rome, the whore is worth more than the wife.”
In July of 1574, Isabella wrote to Paolo telling him she’d lost her looks, perhaps in an effort to convince him that he wouldn’t want her to come to Rome after all. “The beauty that caused you to fall in love with me is no more because it has gone with the years. [She was about to turn thirty-two.] However, I congratulate myself that you love me with that love that exists between husband and wife.”
Yet Isabella was still breaking hearts. That December, Troilo killed one of her brother Pietro de Medici’s gentlemen of the bedchamber, twenty-year-old Torello de’ Nobili da Fermo, “because of the Lady Isabella de’ Medici, with whom both men were in love,” according to the contemporary diarist Giuliano de’ Ricci. Troilo’s hotheaded murder of a pup who was scarcely a rival drew attention to his affair with Isabella at a time when they needed to be discreet. Rather than arrest him right away, Francesco bided his time and continued to send Troilo on international assignments as a Medici envoy.
Meanwhile, Isabella continued to avoid Paolo, side-skirting his requests to come to Rome. On September 3, 1575, he wrote, “I have sent you six letters and not had a response to one. I’ve heard about Nora’s illness and that she has been quarantined, and it displeases me that I should have to learn that my daughter has been at death’s door from others. Madam, I beg you to remember that I am your husband, and if myself or my letters bother you I will write no more.”
Inglorious Royal Marriages Page 17