User:Aabn2424/Barbara Torelli

Barbara Torelli (around 1475, Montechiarugolo - after November 7, 1533, Bologna) was a member of a noble family from Emilia-Romagna, who married a mercenary captain, Ercole Bentivoglio, and frequented the Renaissance courts at Mantua and Ferrara, where she knew, among others, Isabella d'Este, Lucrezia Borgia, and the writer and courtier Ercole Strozzi, who became her second husband. Strozzi was mysteriously killed a few months after their marriage. Although Torelli had never been known for poetry, a sonnet written in memory of her husband is attributed to her and has become well-known for the elegance of its verses.

Early life
Barbara Torelli was the daughter of Marsilio Torelli and Paola Secco. Paola Secco was the daughter of Francesco Secco (1423, Caravaggio - 1496, Vicopisano), a mercenary who, in 1451, had married Caterina Gonzaga, the illegitimate daughter of the marquis of Mantua, Ludovico III Gonzaga, thus marrying into the Mantuan family. Torelli's father Marsilio abandoned his religious career in 1462, after the death of his older brother Marcantonio, entering into service as the captain of the Milanese Sforza family and taking charge of the estate of Montechiarugolo in Emilia-Romagna.

Marsilio Torelli and Paola Secco had three children in addition to Barbara: Cristoforo, Francesco, and Orsina. Orsina commissioned the fresco "Madonna dell Misericordia," which shows the Virgin Mary protecting the four kneeling Torelli children with her cloak. An unknown painter painted it in 1483 in the San Quintino Church in Montechiarugolo. The inscription beneath it reads: "Hoc opus fecit fieri Ursina MCCCCLXXXIII."

Barbara Torelli was possibly born at her father's estate, around 1475, and she lived there for sixteen years. An inscription is still legible on the cliff loggia, reading, "October 1491: the magnificent lady Barbara Torella, wife of sir Ercule Bentivolio, left here to go with her husband to Pisa."

Marriage to Ercole Bentivoglio
Torelli married Ercole Bentivoglio (1459-1507), who was the son of Sante Bentivoglio, the lord of Bologna, and Ginevra Sforza, the illegitimate daughter of Alessandro Sforza, lord of Pesaro. He was also the nephew of Torelli's maternal grandfather, Francesco Secco. After serving as a mercenary for the Florentines in their war against Genoa, he lived in Pisa.

The couple lived together in Pisa from the end of 1491 to the beginning of 1494. During those years, their two daughters, Costanza and Ginevra, were born. In 1494, Bentivoglio left again for a war against the Pisans. In the summer of 1500, Torelli went to live in Fermo, in an estate obtained by her husband, who was at that time working for the papal state.

After Bentivoglio discovered that one of their servants had been stealing from them, the servant, hoping to be pardoned, told him a false story that Torelli was trying to poison him because she was having an affair with one of his fellow soldiers. Bentivoglio killed the servant and briefly imprisoned Torelli. Fearing for her life, in June 1501, Torelli fled to Urbino, seeking refuge with her mother.

Bentivoglio, who was leaving to fight the Florentines, requested that Torelli follow him to Tuscany. Instead she went to Mantua. From Ferrara, she tried to recover her dowry of 10,000 gold florins from Bentivoglio, who had no intention of giving up such a large sum. He had also promised their daughter Costanza in marriage to Alessandro Gonzaga, son of Giovanni and grandson of the marquis Francesco, and demanded that Costanza, at that time a guest at the Mantuan court, join him to marry Gonzaga.

Torelli had joined Costanza in Mantua, and in February 1504, she brought her daughter to Ferrara, where they both entered into the Corpus Domini convent, for both a spiritual retreat and for safety from Bentivoglio. From the convent, Torelli, with the support of Lucrezia Borgia, prepared for her daughter's marriage to Lorenzo Strozzi, son of Tito Vespasiano and brother of Ercole Strozzi, court poet for the Estensi who was also interested in Torelli.

The relationship between Strozzi and Torelli probably started in 1504. Ercole already had two children, Tirinzia and Romano. Torelli and Strozzi had their son, Cesare, in 1505, the same year in which Costanza married Lorenzo Strozzi without being able to bring her dowry, which her father refused to give her. Shortly thereafter, Torelli's other daughter, Ginevra, married Galeazzo Sforza, brother of Giovanni, lord of Pesaro.

Marriage and death of Ercole Strozzi
Ercole Bentivoglio died in June 1507, leaving Torelli free to marry Ercole Strozzi that September. With their marriage, Strozzi became the brother-in-law of his own stepdaughter. On May 24, 1508, Torelli gave birth to their daughter Giulia, and thirteen days later, on June 6, Strozzi was brutally killed. His dead body, stabbed twenty-two times, was found in the street.

The crime, which, given the style of execution, was probably carried out by multiple people, on commission, went unsolved. There were several theories. Strozzi was not popular in Ferrara. He had taken on the role of the "judge of the twelve Savi," the magistrate responsible for executing the decisions of the government of Ferrara, which had levied heavy taxes on its citizens in those years.

Other more popular hypotheses included that it was an act of jealous revenge, particularly by the duke Alfonso, because of the friendship between Strozzi and Lucrezia Borgia. Others thought that Strozzi was the intermediary between Pietro Bembo and Borgia, or between duke Francesco Gonzaga and Borgia. Historians also suspected Borgia of ordering Strozzi's death to get her revenge on him for marrying Torelli. It is also thought that a Bentivoglio could have ordered the killing, with suspicions centering around the lord of Sassuolo, Alessandro Pio, son of Eleonora Bentivoglio, and married to Lucrezia Borgia's cousin, Angela Borgia. The last theory, which was probably the closest to reality, was formulated by Torelli, who suspected her son-in-law Galeazzo Sforza. Strozzo was interred in the church of Santa Maria in Vado in Ferrara, and Torelli bought for herself an adjacent tomb, in exchange for two of her houses.

Fearing for her life, she went to Venice with her daughter Giulia, where she stayed until 1513.

Her final years
Torelli spent the last twenty years of her life in anonymity. In 1518, she lived in Reggio, where her daughter Giulia married Alberto Gazolo, the son of a notable figure there. Then, she returned to Ferrara for several years, and from 1524 to 1529, she lived with her son Cesare in Pisa.

Torelli outlived her children. After the death of Galeazzo Sforza, Ginevra remarried to another mercenary, Manfredo Pallavicino, who was killed by the French in 1521. They had a son, Sforza Pallavicino. Ginevra died around 1524 and was interred in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, next to the tombs of her husbands. After the death of Lorenzo Strozzi, Costanza remarried to another mercenary captain, Filippo Torniello, and died around 1530. Cesare and Giulia died before 1533, since they were not mentioned in Torelli's will.

On November 7, 1533, in Bologna, Torelli made her will, in which she named as her heirs Ginevra's son Sforza Pallavicino, Costanza's daughter Livia Torniello, and her stepdaughter Tirinzia. She also granted bequests to her nieces Ginevra and Camilla Strozzi, sisters in the Bolognese convent Corpo di Cristo, and some servants, and expressed her desire to be interred in Pisa, in her chapel located in the church of San Nicola, where Costanza and Giulia were interred.

Torelli probably died shortly thereafter. No trace has been found of a Torelli family chapel in the church of San Nicola in Pisa.

Attributed Sonnet
A sonnet composed in remembrance of the tragic death of Ercole Strozzi is attributed to Torelli.

In 1713, Girolamo Baruffaldi, published the sonnet in a collection of verses by poets from Ferrara and attributed it to Barbara Torelli, with a brief note that stated that, according to Celio Calcagnini, she had read the sonnet at her husband's funeral.

In 1804, Luigi Ughi repeated Baruffaldi's note in substance, claiming that Calcagnini published the sonnet in 1509 with the description of the funeral. Oratio tumultuario habita a Coelio Calcagnino in funere Herculis Strozae was actually published in Venice in 1513 and did not include any sonnet by Torelli.

The sonnet was praised by Giosue Carducci, but was attributed to Ludovico Ariosto by the philologist Giulio Bertoni and by Michele Catalano , who later attributed it to Torelli. The fact remains that the sonnet was unknown to Torelli's contemporaries, who never talked of her fame as a poet. In consideration of the fact that the sonnet became known only through the publication of Baruffaldi's collection, it is not considered to be part of the Ferraran canon. The philologist Angelo Monteverdi considers that Baruffaldi's collection contains a series of falsifications attributed to various people from Ferrara, since even the celebrated vernacular description that Baruffaldi maintained to exist in the cathedral in Ferrara is a fake: «Li mille cento trentacinque nato / fo questo Tempio a Zorzi donato / fo Nicolao Scolptore / e Glielmo fo l'Autore».

Cinema
In the 1940 film Lucrezia Borgia, directed by Hans Hinrich, Barbara Torelli was played by Pina De Angelis.

In the documentary Lucrezia Borgia: pretty poison (1997), Torelli's sonnet is recited and incorrectly judged a "gift" that the poet would have sent to her friend Borgia when her husband Alfonso I d'Este was killed. In fact, Alfonso d'Este survived Borgia.