#giovanna is married to alessandro

[waveport]

The Cordova's

[gardenofkore]

Anna Maria was born in Messina in 1672 to Paolo Arduino (or Ardoino) Patti, Prince of Polizzi and Marquis of Floresta as well as Grandee of Spain, and Giovanna Furnari (daughter of Duke Antonio of Furnari and belonging to a junior branch of the illustrious Sicilian House of Notarbartolo). She had two younger sibling, Margherita (who would marry Giuseppe Antonio Transo, Prince of Casalito) and Michele (who would inherit his father’s titles).

From a young age, she showed a particular interest and skill in music, dance, poetry and painting. Don Paolo, acknowledging his daughter’s talent, had her educated in literature and liberal arts. Growing up, she was admired both because her beautiful looks and her artistic skills. She was especially considered an accomplished embroiderer and writer (both in Italian and Latin, with Petrarca and Vergil’s styles as her inspiration).

In 1687, at 15 years old,  she wrote and dedicated some Latin poems to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and his wife, Empress Elonore Magdalene (“Rosa Parnassi plaudens triumpho imperiali S.M.C. invictissimi Leopoldi de Austria Romanorum Imperatoris etc., eiusque dignissimae uxoris Eleonorae Magdalenae Palatini Rheni”), which were later printed in Naples and even reported by Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni (one of the founder and leader of the Accademia dell’Arcadia) in his work Istoria della volgar poesia (1698, p. 228).

It’s reported Anna Maria could speak Latin, Greek, French and Spanish. She was also versed in philosophy and would perform in argumentations for which she would get praised by her erudite public. Finally, she appeared to have been a skilled amazon and very good at handling weapons, and this appeared to be the reason (or so essayist, politician and fellow Messinese Giuseppe La Farina reported in his Messina ed i suoi monumenti) Giovan Battista Ludovisi, widower (his first wife – who died in 1694- had been María Moncada de Silva, daughter of Guillén Ramón de Moncada y Castro, IV Marquis of Aytona) and Prince of Piombino, fell in love with her.

Giovan Battista was born in 1647 as the eldest child of Niccolò I Ludovisi and his third wife, Costanza Pamphili, niece of Pope Innocent X and daughter of the infamous Donna Olimpia Maidalchini (by many called la papessa, because of her great influence over her Papal brother-in-law, during whose pontificate she actively ruled over the Papal court and the whole Rome, amassing enormous wealth and many privileges).

Nicolò himself was related to a Pope, being the nephew of Pope Gregory XV (Bologna native born Alessandro Ludovisi), although he had received the title of Prince of Piombino through his second wife (ex uxor), Polissena de Mendoza-Appiani d’Aragona, hereditary Princess of Piombino and of the Isle of Elba. Since his son by Polissena, Filippo Gregorio, had died an infant, (his first wife Isabella Gesualdo had bore him a daughter, Lavinia, who would die in 1634), Nicolò had inherited the title and, when he died in 1664, he passed it to his eldest son Giovan Battista.

Anna Maria and Giovan Battista married in 1697 and moved to Rome. The new Princess of Piombino had been so well-liked by her fellow countrymen, that many Messinese poets dedicated her auspicious verses, wishing her a safe journey and a successful life in Rome.

Finally settled in her new home, she was soon to be noticed and appreciated by the Roman society. That same year, she received the honour of becoming a member of the Accademia dell’Arcadia, assuming the pastoral name of Getilde Faresia, and writing many sonnets and poems both in Latin and Italian.

Her husband had one of her musical dramas, I rivali gelosi, performed in the magnificent garden of his Roman family mansion. Giovan Battista Ludovisi might have been a dedicated partner, but he was mostly known by his contemporaries for being a womanizer and a squanderer, having been forced to sell many of his lands due to his prodigality and incompetence in the management of his family’s property.

One year after the wedding, Anna Maria gave birth to a baby boy Niccolò. Unfortunately (or luckily, given Giovan Battista’s history in administering the Ludovisi’s belongings) marriage life would be cut short as the Prince of Piombino died on August 29th 1699, leaving a young widow and an even more younger heir.

Baby Niccolò became the new Prince of Piombino and his mother assumed the regency of the Principality, although for a very short period. The child died on January 17th, 1700 and Anna Maria (who must have been heartbroken) followed him shortly, dying in Naples on December 29th of the same year. She was 28.

Mother and son were buried in the Church of San Diego all’Ospedaletto. Their graves are ornated with two marbled bas-reliefs sculpted by Giacomo Colombo, with Anna Maria portrayed in half-bust, while Niccolò in full-length.

The Principality of Piombino was then inherited by the child’s aunt, Olimpia Ludovisi, Niccolò I’s eldest daughter. Unlike her younger sisters, she had chosen to become a nun (taking the name of Suor Anna) and so she ruled her lands from her Roman nunnery of Tor de’ Specchi. The religious Princess wouldn’t govern for long as she outlived her nephew for less than a year (she died on November 27th 1700). She was succeeded by her younger living sister, Ippolita (Lavinia, Niccolò I’s second daughter, had died in 1682). With Ippolita I the Ludovisi branch of the Principality of Piombino became extinct. With her daughter and heir, Maria Eleonora, started the line of the Boncompagni Ludovisi who would rule over Piombino (with only the short Napoleonic interval) until the Congress of Vienna after which the Principality would be annexed to the Gran Duchy of Tuscany.

Sources

Anna Maria Ardoino Ludovisi in Donne in Arcadia

Anna Maria Arduino. La “Getilde Faresia” dell’Accademia romana dell’Arcadia

Arduino Anna Maria, Prologo da rappresentarsi nell'opera intitolata Li riuali generosi. Dramma per musica da recitarsi nel giardino Ludouisio. Composto da donna Anna Maria Ardoino Ludouisi principessa di Piombino, frà gl'Arcadi Getilde Faresia

Brunelli Giampiero, LUDOVISI, Niccolò, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol 66

Calabrese Maria Concetta, La ricomposizione del ceto dirigente messinese dopo la rivolta, tra guerra di successione e restaurazione borbonica: Francesco Avarna

Cicciù Consolato, Personaggi storici messinesi, la storia di Anna Maria Arduino: dalla passione per pittura e poesia in gioventù alla prematura morte

Crescimbeni Giovanni Mario, Istoria della volgar poesia, p. 228

Ferri Leopoldo, Biblioteca Femminile Italiana, p. 23-24

Fumia Alessandro, Le grandi donne messinesi: Anna Maria Arduino

Gaetani Francesco Maria Emanuele, Della Sicilia nobile, II, p. 386-387

Giannoni Luciano, Un testone inedito di Giovan Battista Ludovisi

Grosso Cacopardi Giuseppe, Memorie de' pittori messinesi e degli esteri che in Messina fiorirono dal secolo XII. sino al secolo XIX. ornate di ritratti, p. 205-206

La Farina Giuseppe, Messina ed i suoi monumenti, p. 7

Mongitore Antonino, Bibliotheca Sicula sive De scriptoribus Siculis: qui tum vetera, tum recentiora saecula illustrarunt, I, p. 37

New from 1701-1714: Royal letters (including from Louis XIV of France) to Ippolita Ludovisi, Princess of Piombino

[thetudorslovers]

"You will learn, my dear, as women we control so little of our destiny. Men do. The outcome is we hate each other, but we should not."

•Daughter of Pier Luigi Farnese and Giovanna Caetani, and sister of Alessandro (the future Pope Paul III), Giulia Farnese (1475-1524) was born in 1475, in Canino, in a territory around lake Bolsena, North of Rome. She had a sister and three brothers. One of the brothers, Alessandro, later became a Pope by the name Paolo III.

•Since birth Giulia had been promise to Orsino Orsini. When they married, in 1489, she was 15 years old and Orsino 16. In 1492 she had a daughter by name Laura, and the gossip was that Laura wasn't Orsino's daughter •Historians describe Giulia as a very beautiful woman, and in fact she was called Giulia "la Bella"—the Beautiful. And yet no images, paintings, miniatures, sculptures of her have come down to us.

•"Attractive, however, fascinating, she must have been, truly, greatly; as she must have been very beautiful. […]But Giulia is not, like Vannozza, a humble lover. She does not exist in the shadows, like her predecessor. She had another birth, another education. She is related to the noblest and most powerful families in the city. She therefore wants to play a part in papal Rome. And she does it. She is the most admired, most respected woman; she flaunts her love;  shows it off in public, in solemnity, in receptions, at the church. And she will flaunt even more so in the same apostolic palace, when Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia ascends the papal throne. Then she will celebrate great triumphs at the court of Alexander VI, and will laugh victorious when the satire of the poets of the people and ambassadors irreverently calls her “the bride of Christ.”

[Sources : www.gicas.net & Gustavo Sacerdote,

Cesare Borgia: La sua vita, La sua famiglia, I suoi tempi. ]

[thisislakewood]

→ IN CHARACTER INFORMATION

Character Name: Alessandro Leone

Character Age: 46

Faceclaim Choice: David Tennant

Gender and Pronouns: Cis male, he/him

Birthplace: Messina, Italy

Birthday: April 11th, 1972

Occupation: Consultant of the Rinaldi Cartel

Family: Rinaldi

→ BIOGRAPHY

Wicked grin, fluorescent suits, snarky remarks, wasted potential. The genius who amounted to nothing. There’s no description that does Alessandro Leone, the Consultant to the Rinaldi Cartel and the husband to Ravenna Rinaldi, more justice than that. Perfectly satisfied to live in one shadow or the other, he operates from the wine-scented pile of papers and body bags of his office, constantly exasperated by the stupidity of people around him, but fiercely devoted to the family he serves: on his own blood and dreams, he has long ago given up.  

The half-Sicilian, half-Sardinian Leone family was one of the famous jewelers from Messina: equally ambitious and traditional as the Rinaldis, but nowhere as powerful, which made them the perfect allies. Fifty years ago, their pride and joy Frederico Leone married a distant Rinaldi cousin, and together they had three children: Giovanna, Ottavio, and Alessandro, the middle of the three, who was branded the black sheep of the family ever since he was old enough (which, in his case, was unusually early) to speak and think on his own. Underweight, with his mousy hair, plain face, and knobby knees, he looked nothing like his handsome younger brother and stunning, raven-haired older sister, but even that wasn't his main flaw. While Giovanna and Ottavio did everything in their power to impress their strict, demanding (but, in Alessandro's eyes, not particularly clever) father, attended social gatherings and learned the ways of the family business, Alessandro preferred the company of books. Comics, novels, science books, you name it, he devoured it. In school, however, he was bored and never hesitated to show it: the lessons were laughable for the boy with an IQ of 170, who had already taught himself several languages and solved math equations way past the college level. But when his teachers suggested he moved into the program for gifted children, or even looked into scholarships outside of Italy, his father barked that his son was not a freak, and made him stay right there where he was. In hell, Alessandro would say, stuck with the rich dumbasses whose peak sense of humor was giving him wedgies, or, alternatively, slamming his head into the locker on their way to the cafeteria.

His son wasn't a freak, his father had said. Well, tough luck, old man, cause that's exactly what he became to him. In his father's eyes, the adult Alessandro was even more useless than the child version: too weak, too nerdy, too feminized (whatever the hell that meant) too unlike the heir Fredo Leone had dreamed of. It wasn't long before he put all his trust into Giovanna instead, and officially left the family business and wealth in her hands, leaving Alessandro a nuisance he always was. But knowing his father was too proud and stuck up to disown him for real, he decided to use the situation to the maximum. As in, to spend the fuck out of his money while giving nothing in return. Not like he was dying to be the head of the family, anyway. This way, instead of the ordeals of becoming the true Leone heir, Alessandro’s younger days were filled with goalless travels, casinos, parties, and brief, drunken affairs with countless women and just as many men. Granted, he wasn't Apollo, but he had money, intelligence, and that crude, clever charm they couldn’t resist. Sadly, only a few of them he actually cared about, and even that could never last longer than a week.

There was only one woman who managed to hold his attention: Ravenna Rinaldi. Reckless, rich, beautiful, and equally fucked up. Way out of his league, though. So Alessandro settled (as he always did) for a snark-filled friendship and drunken nights with nameless individuals until, after a few years, Ravenna finally turned to him. He couldn't believe his luck, and neither could their families: at last, God had granted them a way to salvage what could be salvaged of their misbegotten children. Both the Rinaldis and the Leones blessed the marriage, and soon enough, the pair was wed in a traditional Sicilian ceremony in Messina.

The circus and his family’s hypocrisy aside, to Alessandro, this was the turning point: his ever-growing love for Ravenna made him give up gambling, reduce the drinking, and stop with all the wild partying, unless it involved her, and it often did. They then got involved in the Rinaldi family business, and lived happily ever after in their functional dysfunctionality. Or so the story would go, had they not followed Ravenna’s brother and sister-in-law to the Land of Hamburgers.

It happened soon after the birth of their only daughter Bianca, their little miracle: Alessandro and Ravenna left their families and relocated to Lakewood, Texas, where they live, work, and terrorize to this day. Upon their arrival, Alessandro was given the Consultant position by his brother-in-law, the new President. Which, in any normal cartel, is a position of respect and importance, but in the Rinaldi Cartel, one of a glorified valet: it’s the voice of the President’s wife that had come miles before his even before she had any official title, let alone now. In the meantime, Alessandro spends most of his days in his office, buried in paperwork and running errands, as if it's the Rinaldis’ way of reminding him just how much he owes them. But he doesn’t mind. Not that much, anyway. He has no ambitions left other than protecting his family. And for Ravenna and Bianca, there's nothing he won't do.

→ PERSONALITY SUMMARY

+ rational, loyal, intelligent -  manipulative, vain, obnoxious

[isadomna]

Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara (1490 -1547)

She is one of the most popular female poets of sixteenth-century Italy. Although she was an advocate of religious reform, there is no reason to believe that her religious convictions were irreconcilable with those of the Catholic church and that she herself became a Protestant. Though it was long believed that Colonna's poetry fell out of fashion after the sixteenth century, her poetry has been republished every century since, often in multiple editions. 

The daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, grand constable of the kingdom of Naples, and of Agnese da Montefeltro, Vittoria Colonna was born at Marinoa fief of the Colonna family in the Alban Hills near Rome. She was engaged at the age of 3 years old to Ferrante Francesco d’Ávalos, son of the marquis of Pescara, at the insistence of King Ferdinand of Naples. The d'Ávalos family was of Aragonese origin. In 1501, the Colonna family's possessions and land were confiscated by Pope Alessandro VI, and the Colonna family moved to Ischia, home of Colonna's betrothed. In Ischia, Colonna received a typical humanist education in literature and the arts from Costanza d'Ávalos, the aunt of her betrothed and gave early proof of a love of letters. Her hand was sought by many suitors, including the dukes of Savoy and Braganza, but at 17, of her own choice, she married d'Ávalos on the island of Ischia.

The couple resided together in Ischia until 1511, when her husband offered his sword to the League against the French. He was taken captive at the Battle of Ravenna and was conveyed to France. During the months of detention and the long years of campaigning which followed, Colonna and d'Avalos corresponded in the most passionate terms both in prose and verse, but only one poetic 'Epistle' to her husband has survived. Also, it is known that Ferrante was not the most faithful husband, having had an affair with one of Isabella d'Este's ladies in waiting.

Vittoria and Ferrante seldom saw each other during their marriage, for he was one of the most active and brilliant captains of Emperor Charles V.  However, Colonna's influence was sufficient to keep her husband from joining the projected league against the Emperor after the battle of Pavia, and to make him refuse the crown of Naples offered to him as the price of his treason. On 3 December 1525, Ferrante died at Milan from the wounds he had sustained at the Battle of Pavia. Vittoria, who was hastening to tend him, received the news of his death at Viterbo; she halted and retreated to the church of San Silvestro in Capite in Rome where there was a convent in the order of Santa Chiara. Her request to take her vows and enter the convent was refused by Pope Clement VII and her brother Ascanio, after which she returned to Ischia, where she remained for several years. She refused several suitors, and dedicated herself to writing poetry. 

The Sack of Rome in 1527 gave the Colonna family the opportunity to improve the relationship between them and the Medici pope Clement VII by offering help to the Roman population. However, when the French army attacked Naples, the whole house of Ávalos took refuge on the island of Ischia. In 1529, Vittoria Colonna returned to Rome, and spent the next few years between that city, Orvieto, Ischia and other places. Moreover, she tried to correct the wrongs of her late husband by asking the house of Ávalos to return to the abbey of Montecassino some wrongfully seized land. In 1535, her sister-in-law Giovanna d'Aragona separated from Ascanio Colonna and came to Ischia. Vittoria tried to reconcile them, but even though Giovanna refused, the two women became close. They both supported Juan de Valdés and tried to intercede for Ascanio when he refused to pay salt tax to Pope Paul III.

At the age of 46, in 1536, she was back in Rome, where, besides winning the esteem of Cardinals Reginald Pole and Contarini, she became the object of a passionate friendship on the part of 61-year-old Michelangelo. The great artist addressed some of his finest sonnets to her, made drawings for her, and spent long hours in her company. She created a gift manuscript of spiritual poetry for him. Her removal to Orvieto and Viterbo in 1541, on the occasion of her brother Ascanio Colonna's revolt against Paul III, produced no change in their relations, and they continued to visit and correspond as before.

On 8 May 1537, Vittoria arrived in Ferrara with some other women, with the intention of continuing to travel to Venice and then to the Holy Land. It has been suggested that her aim in Ferrara was to establish a Capuchin monastery for the reforming monk Bernardino Ochino, who afterwards became a Protestant. Given her health, Vittoria stayed in Ferrara until February the next year. Her friends dissuaded her from travelling to the Holy Land, after which she returned to Rome. Vittoria Colonna died at the convent of San Silvestro in Rome on 25 February 1547. Pietro Bembo, Luigi Alamanni, Baldassare Castiglione and Marguerite de Navarre were among her literary friends. She was also on intimate terms with many of the members of the Italian reform movement, such as Pietro Carnesecchi and Ochino, but she died before the church crisis in Italy became acute.  (x)