Eleonora d'Este (4 July 1515 – 1575) was a Ferrarese noblewoman. She was the first daughter of

Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara Alfonso d'Este (21 July 1476 – 31 October 1534) was Duke of Ferrara from 1504 to 1534, during the time of the War of the League of Cambrai. Biography He was the son of Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara and Eleanor of Naples and became du ...

and his second wife

Lucrezia Borgia Lucrezia Borgia (18 April 1480 – 24 June 1519) was an Italian noblewoman of the House of Borgia who was the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattanei. She was a former governor of Spoleto. Her family arranged ...

– as his first daughter, Alfonso named her after his mother Eleanor of Naples.

Life

She was brought up in

Ferrara Ferrara (; ; ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, capital of the province of Ferrara. it had 132,009 inhabitants. It is situated northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main ...

and her mother died when she was four – her father had two more children with Laura Dianti. Eleonora was the only one of Alfonso and Lucrezia's daughters to survive both their parents. She became a nun at the Corpus Domini Monastery and was buried there alongside her mother and other members of her family.

''Musica quinque vocum motetta materna lingua vocata''

In 1543,

Girolamo Scotto Girolamo Scotto (Hieronymus Scotus; also Gerolamo) (c.1505 – 3 September 1572) was an Italian printer, composer, businessman and bookseller of the Renaissance, active mainly in Venice. He was the most influential member of the firm of Venetian ...

of Venice published a collection of 43 religious motets under the title ''Musica quinque vocum motetta materna lingua vocata''. There is no indication in that publication as to who the composer might have been.

Laurie Stras Laurie Stras is a musicologist and musician, whose research interests range from the 16th century to modern popular music. She is professor emerita of the University of Southampton and has been a research professor at the University of Huddersfi ...

, professor of music at

Southampton University The University of Southampton (abbreviated as ''Soton'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university in Southampton, England. Southampton is a founding member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities in the United K ...

, has argued that Leonora may have been the composer. Leonora was triply disqualified from being named in those days: being a woman, and a princess, and a nun.

References

Sources

*http://viaf.org/viaf/95313383 *Sarah Bradford: ''Lucrezia Borgia.'' Mondadori Editore, Milan (2005), ()

External links

* – which wrongly assigns the vocal parts as "cantus, altus, tenor, bassus" only, even though it correctly says that the motets are for ''five'' unaccompanied voices; "quinque" in the title is unambiguous * {{DEFAULTSORT:Deste, Eleonora 1515 births 1575 deaths 16th-century Italian nobility 16th-century Italian Roman Catholic religious sisters and nuns Eleonora People from Ferrara Daughters of dukes Children of Lucrezia Borgia