20/07/2024
Historical facts and biographies of people who really existed, about whom everything should be known, are often shrouded in mystery, with dark areas that surpass the actual knowledge of events, places and people in the story. And so, only after centuries, broadening the view and knowledge, also thanks to the research of archives and libraries, is it possible to return the appropriate dimension and location to poorly understood or little-known events and personalities. This is the case of a vicereine of Naples and her wonderful image, which has only aroused the interest of historians in recent decades, which finally allowed us to attribute the face sublimated by Raphael to the noble lady originally from Catalonia, but who lived great part of his life in Naples, where he also died; Unfortunately, the disappearance of her valuable tomb due to a fire in the middle of the 18th century contributed to relegating the aforementioned character to oblivion. In the following pages a story set in the first decades of the 16th century is highlighted and reference is made specifically to Isabel de Requesens, who was vicereine in the Neapolitan capital; In fact, she was the wife of Ramón Folc de Cardona, a Catalan of modest nobility but closely linked to the Catholic King Ferdinand II of Aragon and for this reason called to govern Naples from 1509 to 1522.
Isabel de Requesens y Enríquez was one of the most prominent women in Naples at that time, when the transition from the Aragonese to the Habsburgs of Spain occurred; The prestigious lady could associate with her extraordinary beauty a first-class noble family network: on the one hand, on the side of her father, an admiral in the service of the Neapolitan sovereigns of the House of Aragon, she was countess of Palamós in Catalonia and mistress of several fiefs in the kingdom of Naples (Trivento and Avellino); On her mother's side, the Castilian Beatriz Enríquez de Velasco, she was closely related to the Aragonese royal family.
Beyond the historical reconstruction of the period and the most relevant events, such as the Italian Campaigns, the Holy League against the French, the role of the papacy and the Gonzaghesque court of Isabella d'Este, which have also been outlined, the discussion is It has focused mainly on the vicereine as a figure idealized by poets and painters; So much so that she was immortalized in a painting by Raphael and his assistants around 1518, when the young woman was 22 years old. We are talking about a portrait about which for centuries various interpretations have been fueled about the model represented there, the author and his commission, which undoubtedly goes back to the subtle diplomatic game of Cardinal Bibbiena.
It must be taken into account that only at the end of the 20th century, despite the fact that Vasari had pointed out this portrait of the vicereine of Naples from the beginning, was the exact identity of the character represented revealed, when before it had always been thought of as the youngest Joan of Aragon.
The misunderstanding of attributing the face of the painting to the wife of Prince Ascanio Colonna was fueled for a long time by the fact that the Neapolitan noblewoman, raised in the Ischitan court of Costanza de Avalos, was at that time excessively famous and celebrated for her grace. and beauty by a large number of writers and poets. The portrait is of great interest both because it represents a milestone in Renaissance female portrait painting, and because of the obvious similarities with Leonardo's Mona Lisa; In fact, he has followed the steps of the portrait of Monna Lisa, from its arrival in France at the Fontainebleau Castle, some years after Vinci's masterpiece, to the subsequent transfer of both portraits to the Louvre museum, where they have remained until today.
In honor of the truth, it should be noted that in recent years the management of the French museum has decided to exclusively value Leonardo's masterpiece and transfer the portrait of Isabel de Requesens to a kind of Louvre 2 in the city. from Lens, in the north of France.
