Ippolita Maria Sforza (Jesi, 18 April 1445 – Naples, 19 August 1488) was an Italian noblewoman, a member of the Sforza family which ruled the Duchy of Milan from 1450 until 1535. She was the first wife of the Duke of Calabria, who later reigned as King Alfonso II of Naples. Ippolita was described as very intelligent and cultured.
Ippolita was born on 18 April 1445 in Jesi to Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti, the only daughter and heir of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan.
Agnese del Maino who also resided at the ducal court, was a prominent part of Ippolita and her siblings childhood and helped with overseeing the education of her grandchildren.
Since Ippolita was a child she showed precocity of intellect, a love for letters and a certain passion for hunting, which was encouraged by Ippolitas mother who also liked to hunt. Ippolitas father would also gift her greyhounds for use when hunting when visiting their country estates.
Francesco Sforza sometimes asked his young daughter to act as an intermediary between him and his mother, so that she could help him to return to the graces of Bianca Maria, during the times when he and his wife entered into a quarrel for some reason.
Ippolita's father, while having a good relationship with her mother, was not known to be faithful to his wife and fathered 15 illegitimate children during the marriage.
One of these, a daughter named Drusiana the daughter of Francescos long time mistress Giovanna d Acquapendente was in fact brought up alongside Ippolita.
She had four masters Guiniforte Barzizza, by Baldo Martorelli, humanist from the Marche region heir to the humanist pedagogy of Vittorino da Feltre, Doro Luftigo and Constantine Lascaris, who gave her the study of Greek and dedicated a Greek Grammarto her. When she was 14 years old she made a Latin address to pope Pius II at the diet of Mantua, which became well known after it was circulated in manuscript. Domenico Ghirlandaio allegedly painted a portrait of Ippolita.
Giovanni Sabatino degli Arienti describes it as follows:Beautiful, fair, and blonde, she had lovely eyes and a slightly aquiline nose that lent her grace. She had beautiful teeth and a countenance of great majesty. Her height was on the tall side. Her hands were beautiful, like ivory in color, with long fingers. Her appearance was of great majesty, gentle, and graceful. She was fluent and eloquent in her speech. She read very well, with sweet tones and resonance, and had a decent understanding of Latin. [...] She had a gentle temperament. Her moments of ire and indignation and her reconciliations always proceeded with charity, pleasantness, and prudence, such that she was held in singular love, awe, and reverence by the people. Where reason and necessity called for it, she was friendly, most affable, and wise, such that the people said she was a kind mother to them. She had compassion for those unfortunate women who did not preserve their chaste reputation; she admonished them in a holy manner. When she sensed rancor or discord among her people, she would take it away, leading them back to goodwill and peace. She was a devoted woman; she often fasted on bread and water, prayed, contemplated [...] and lived a holy life, like a woman in a holy order [...] she was very charitable [...] she helped, as much as she could with her own resources, to provide dowries for maidens and secretly gave aid to the poor, without being asked, as if she herself had experienced the miseries of poverty [...] The saintly reputation of her illustrious deeds bore witness to the chaste virtue of her heart and the integrity of her mind. [...] She had an anguished abhorrence of vice, especially that of immodest women [...] She knew how to conduct herself with great modesty toward all kinds of people, except flatterers, slanderers, and tale-bearers, whom she avoided like a plague
On 10 October 1465 she married the Duke of Calabria Alfonso of Aragon, son of King Ferrante of Naples. The latter sent his second son Federico with six hundred horses to Milan to marry Ippolita by proxy in the name of his brother and to accompany her to his new home.
The bride had already left Milan with the wedding procession when the marriage was nearly called off due to the sudden death of the condottiero Jacopo Piccinino, son-in-law of Francesco Sforza. Ferrante of Aragon had previously enticed him to come to Naples with the false promise of a military command and then, out of revenge, had him imprisoned, as the condottiero had fought against him during the first baronial revolt. Jacopo Piccinino died shortly after his arrest—said by Ferrante to have fallen from a window following a failed escape attempt, but according to most, he was strangled in prison on the king’s orders. Francesco Sforza was so enraged at his death that he halted his daughter’s wedding procession and threatened to call off the marriage. In the end, the situation was resolved, and Ippolita, after spending two months in Siena and then passing through Rome, arrived in Naples on September 14, where she was received with great magnificence by her husband Alfonso and her father-in-law Ferrante, who organized many festivities and performances to celebrate the wedding.
In the early days, her relations with her husband—three years younger than her—must have been good, since that same year the fifteen-year-old Eleonor of Aragon, who was herself about to marry Ippolita's younger brother, Sforza Maria Sforza, wished for "some of the caresses [she] sometimes saw the Duke of Calabria give the Duchess", and Ippolita herself wrote to her mother that she and Alfonso slept together every night and often enjoyed themselves with hunts and amusements at their country estates. For example, she described her husband in these terms, in one of her many letters: "My most illustrious husband [...] with falcon and kite hunting, playing ball, reading and explaining to me his Spanish book on the governance of the state, and many other moral matters, has kept me and keeps me still in the greatest pleasure".
If that was the case, then relations between the spouses must have deteriorated over time, both due to Alfonso’s constant and brazen infidelities—he eventually found a new and compliant mistress in Trogia Gazzella—and because of his distinctive character. Indeed, just a few weeks after the wedding, there were already indications of Ippolita's first feelings of jealousy toward her husband: Alfonso was said by ladies and ambassadors to be a very handsome young man, "so charming that words could not describe him", but also "so restless that he couldn't stay still for half an hour".
Alfonso, however, also showed jealousy toward his wife: in the summer of 1466, he insisted that Ippolita stop playing with Giovanna da Correggio, wife of Roberto Sanseverino, when Giovanna came to visit her accompanied by her relative Gian Francesco.
Several letters from December 1466 onwards, both from ambassadors and from the lady herself, report an episode of jealousy on the part of Ippolita, when she was pregnant with her firstborn son. She had instructed one of her servants, a certain Donato, to follow her husband wherever he went. Alfonso, realizing he was being tailed, reacted with a very forceful gesture toward Donato, the exact nature of which is unknown (ambassador Pietro Landriani speaks of a beating), but it must have been quite serious, as Ippolita was deeply distressed by it. She wrote to her mother: "This matter with Donato I will never forget [...] not just a wound to my heart—I believe it split it in two, so great was and will remain my pain."
King Ferrante downplayed the incident to her Milanese relatives, saying that "these wars of the day arrive at peace by evening", but the situation did not improve, not even with the announcement of the duchess’s first pregnancy.
Alfonso's violent reaction should not come as a surprise: after all, he was deeply hated by the Neapolitan people for having offended his subjects with "the cruelest insults and abuses", for committing the most heinous crimes—such as "violating virgins, taking other men's wives for his own pleasure", and for engaging in the "detestable and abominable vice of sodomy." In other words, he was simply beginning to reveal to his wife his true character. Nevertheless, Ippolita remained unfailingly faithful to him as a wife; indeed, she "distinguished herself by her great fidelity to her fearsome husband and by her extraordinary modesty". For his part, King Ferrante was extremely pleased with his daughter-in-law for her beauty, intelligence, and virtue—so much so that Sforza's ambassadors wrote that "His Majesty the King has no other pleasure, nor any other paradise does he seem to find, except when he sees her dancing and singing." In her letters to her mother, Ippolita reveals a certain discomfort at her father-in-law’s excessive displays of affection.