#princess isabella of parma

[juanatrastamara]

get to know me meme - historical edition

[royalty-nobility]

Portrait of Princess Isabella of Parma

Artist: Jean-Marc Nattier (French, 1685 – 1766)

Genre: Portrait

Style: Rococo

Date: 1758

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Isabella of Bourbon-Parma (Spanish: Isabel María Luisa Antonieta, German: Isabella Maria Ludovica Antonia, French: Isabelle-Marie-Louise-Antoine; 31 December 1741 – 27 November 1763) was a princess of Parma and infanta of Spain from the House of Bourbon-Parma as the daughter of Philip, Duke of Parma and Louise-Élisabeth of France. She became an archduchess of Austria and crown princess of Bohemia and Hungary in 1760 by her marriage to Archduke Joseph of Austria, the future Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor.

An Enlightenment thinker, She was a prolific writer, and nineteen separate works (some of them unfinished) have been preserved from the three years of her marriage. In them, she discussed philosophy, religion, ethics, politics, diplomacy, military theory, world trade, education and childrearing, human culture and societies, and the position of women. In her writings (which she kept secret), she argued for the intellectual equality of women. None of her writings were published in her life; her Méditations chrétiennes ('Christian Meditations') were published in 1764, a year after her death. Some of her personal correspondence and other works have been published by biographers and historians.

[fillejondrette]

i think it’s really insulting when people assume that historical women had no objections to their situations. people know when they’re being treated unjustly

[brittaperry]

“I love thee like a madwoman, in a holy way or diabolically, I love you and will love you to the grave.” if anyone said this to me, I would simply stop functioning.

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

florence + the machine lyrics x colors x textiles in art — yellow/gold

Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) – Lungs // Portrait of Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska – William Mosman 👑 Only If For a Night – Ceremonials // Isabelle de Bourbon, Infanta of Parma – Jean-Marc Nattier 👑 Over the Love – Over the Love // Portrait of Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria – Frans Pourbus the Younger 👑 Over the Love – Over the Love // Portrait of Isabella Charlotte of Nassau-Dietz as Flora – Lancelot Volders 👑 King – Dance Fever // Portrait of Konstancja Krystyna Wielopolska – Pierre Mignard I 👑 Girls Against God – Dance Fever // Portrait of Barbara of Portugal, Queen of Spain – Jean Ranc 👑 Heaven Is Here – Dance Fever // Princess Louisa Maria Teresa Stuart – Alexis Simon Belle

[bakerstreetdoctor]

Btw, if anyone is looking for a tragic historical blorbina with potentially woolawoo qualities, today I learned of:

Apparently she had quite revolutionary thoughts for her time

[rmelster]

Someone should truly speak bout the “later wife effect” that seems to have haunted historical figures since times long forgotten.

To break it down to you, what I call the “later wife effect” occurs when a male historical figure suddenly looses his beloved wife (most of the times, his first one) in an untimely and tragic manner -either by a childbirth gone wrong, an accident or a sudden illness-, turning the once mirthful husband into a grief-stricken widower. Perhaps because he lacks succession from said wife, because he has to provide spares to his heir, or even because an alliance is needed, he is forced to marry again; but the love never arises fully, their marriage turns into a bound of duty, and no matter what she does, or how loved she is outside their marriage: the later wife will forever be under the shadow of the first, a perfect idol, immortalised by her early death.

The “later wife effect” knows various levels:

In 1673, Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, lost his beloved Margaret Theresa when she was yet to turn twenty two and with child. Their seven years of union had produced four children, but only a daughter lived when Margaret Theresa died, and he went on to marry twice again; and even though he would sorrowfully remark that neither Claudia Felicitas of Austria or Eleonore Magdalene of Neuburg, his following brides, were “not like my only Margaretha”, his marriages were remarkably happy and so was he. This could be one of the mildest examples.

The middle ground would be when the marriage with the later wife is dutiful and polite, but loveless. Frederick William II of Hesse married Alexandra Nikolaevna, but soon lost her due to complications of childbirth. He would remarry nine years later to the beautiful and lively Anna of Prussia, and even though they eventually had six children, their marriage was notably cold and unhappy. Leopold I of Belgium widowed of his wife, Charlotte of Wales, soon after she gave birth to a dead son; fifteen years later, know king of Belgium, he took Louise-Marie of Orléans hand in marriage; she was shy, delicate, witty and partook in many charitable causes, earning the love of the Belgians, and the respect of her husband, with whom she had a fruitful and tranquil union; but Leopold would not be faithful to her, committing adultery with a much younger Arcadie Claret, who was said to resemble the long gone princess Charlotte. She perished a year after he had a son with Claret, and her dead did not stop the relationship between the two of them.

More unhappy cases of this effect would be those of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and his descendant, Joseph II. When still an archduke, Maximilian married Mary of Burgundy and loved her much, a love so legendary it lived through generations in the art commissioned by their descendants. But the fairytale would come to an abrupt end when, after five years of marriage, Mary would find her untimely dead while pregnant with their fourth child, after her horse threw her off the saddle. Maximilian was most heartbroken and, after a failed marriage attempt with the young duchess Anne of Brittany, he would wed Bianca Maria Sforza. The empress from Milan was deemed “more beautiful than Mary” by Maximilian, but neither her beauty not her many charms of her would soften his callous attitude towards his wife. Having endured a miscarriage during the first months of their union, Bianca Maria, the once most sought after princess in Europe, had become a ghost in her own court, severely neglected by her husband, who refused to attend to her own funeral nor dedicate a gravestone for her. Similarly, after the traumatic passing of his wife, Isabella of Parma, Joseph II was forced to remarry to Maria Josepha of Bavaria, who he did not found as attractive as the late archduchess. He grew so disgusted of her that the same devoted husband that has been by Isabella’s bedside now commanded to put a wall between his balcony and hers, so that he could not see her, distressing old servants in the palace so much with his cold attitude that some left. When, after two years of marriage, her life was robbed by smallpox -the same ailment that had taken Isabella’s life four years before-, Joseph declared she had been worthy of respect and that he repented his coldness. However, he refused to visit her bedside and did not appear during her burial.

This should not be confused with what I call “the younger wife effect”, which takes place when a widowed historical figure, who had long remained unwed by choice, suddenly takes marriage to a beautiful and much younger person that is described to bring happiness to his once lonely and dull life. This would perfectly be exemplified with prince Maximilian of Saxony’s marriage with princess Maria Luisa Carlota of Parma, almost twenty one years since the passing of his wife (princess Carolina of Parma) or Edward I’s marriage to Marguerite of France.

[tiny-librarian]

Royal Birthdays for today, December 31st:

Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, 1493

Beatrice of Portugal, Duchess of Savoy, 1504

Go-Yozei, Emperor of Japan, 1572

Charles Edward Stuart, The Young Pretender, 1720

Isabella of Parma, wife of Joseph II of Austria, 1741

Kapiʻolani, Queen of the Hawaiian Islands, 1834

Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, 1885

[best-habsburg-monarch]

Franz Stephan, Holy Roman Emperor (1708-1765): He has several titles of his own, but he was mainly Maria Theresa's consort.

Charlotte of Belgium, Empress of Mexico (1840-1927): Archduchess of Austria and Empress of Mexico by marriage to Maximilian.

Princess Isabella of Parma (1741-1763): First wife of Joseph II, daughter of the Duke of Parma. She also may have possibly had a romantic affair with her sister in law.

Maria Josepha of Bavaria (1739-1767): Second wife of Joseph II, their marriage was cold. After her death, Joseph swore off marriage.

Also, Rudolph II did not marry and thus did not have a consort. But I do encourage you to Google his mistress Kateřina Stradová.

[thehistoryprincesse]

𝒫𝓇𝒾𝓃𝒸𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝐼𝓈𝒶𝒷𝑒𝓁 𝑜𝒻 𝒫𝒶𝓇𝓂𝒶 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑀𝒶𝓇𝒾𝒶 𝒞𝒽𝓇𝒾𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓃𝒶, 𝒟𝓊𝒸𝒽𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒯𝑒𝓈𝒸𝒽𝑒𝓃

Happy pride month everyone!! This month I will be trying to touch on some of my favorite queer icons in history. :)

Maria Christina Johanna Josepha Antonia was born on 13 May, 1742, the fifth daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria and Francis I, Holy Roman Empire, and elder sister to Marie Antoinette. Maria was deemed to be her mothers favorite child, which shows obvious in the letters between the two. This favoritism sparked much jealousy in her siblings, teasing and critizing her heavily, this favoritism, of course came with many upsides. She received a stupendous education and was regarded as perfectly speaking french, italian, and english, aswell as being an exceptional painter. But as a mothers favoritism often does, it isolated Maria greatly, which although having fell in love with multiple men in her life, none of the matches were quite supported by her mother.

Isabel of Parma on the other hand, did not have much love with her mother, Isabella of Bourbon-Parma was born on 31 December, 1741, to Philip, Duke of Parma, and Louise Elisabeth of France, the eldest daughter of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska. At a young age Isabel was recorded to have threw violent tantrums frequently, which in turn her mother Elisabeth disciplined the girl so severely that isabel’s paternal grandmother Queen Elisabeth Farnese of Spain (de facto), compared the discipline to a military drill, (although Queen Elisabeth was recorded as to promoting this discipline.), soon enough their relationship grew so stressed that Isabel’s mother regarded the young girl as stubborn and unbearable to raise. Isabel after being dropped into the hands of her governess and forgotten about by her mother, quickly turned to mischief and curiousity, being recorded to play all day and night with no break, isabel writing, 'My head was always in the clouds, occupying itself with a hundred thousand ideas at once'.

Due to the influences of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV and Maria Theresa of Austria came together to strengthen and ally the houses of bourbon, and that of the habsburg. In this alliance resulted many marriages, one of them being of Isabel of Parma, (a bourbon princesse) and Joseph II, Archduke of Austria, and the elder brother to Maria Christina. Her marriage with Joseph seemed to be impartial, he was recorded to have been taken by love (although he wasn’t really sure how to show it) with his new bourbon wife, but it seemed this love was awfully one sided, Isabel having had no opinion on her new husband.

During this period of time, Isabel was said to have grown majorly depressed and borderline suicidal. In a letter to Marie Christine saying; ‘What should the daughter of a great prince expect? Her fate is unquestionably most unhappy. Born the slave of the people’s prejudices, she finds herself subjected to this weight of honours, these innumerable etiquettes attached to greatness… In the end the effort is made to establish her. There she is condemned to abandon everything, her family, her country–and for whom? For an unknown person, whose character and manner of thinking she does not know… sacrifice to a supposed public good, but in fact rather to the wretched policy of a minister who can find no other way for the two dynasties to form an alliance which he pronounces indissoluble–and which, immediately it seems advantageous, is broken off…’

By the Isabel reached the age of twenty she was extremely successful in most everything she did, she continued her education, helped her husbands military strategies, and was said to have painted and decorated many rooms in the schobrunn palace, many of which are still on display today.

In the midst of her life in Vienna, it was obvious that Isabel and Maria had grown awfully close, many letters survive today of their close bond with eachother, clearly showing how Isabel had taken a liking to her husbands sister, instead of him.

“The confusion which reigns in a certain drawer which lives in my room, where are to be found together and without rhyme or reason a political tract, a pile of letters, a comic opera, a vaudeville, a treatise on education, a clavier part, some moral reflections. A sermon jostles a treatise on all types of foolishness, prayers are mixed up in a paper devoted to declaring my love to you, letters from the emperor muddle up with letters of a hundred persons who are indifferent to me, and with those letters which are so dear to me and constitute the sweetness of my life.”

Unfortunately, apart from one responding letter to Isabel, none of Maria’s correspondence to her sister-in-law survived. But it is clear that at some point, Maria had either fallen out with Isabel, or confessed to her that they could no longer continue their rendezvous, this is made clear in a very passionate letter Isabel had written.

“I am writing you again, cruel sister, though I have only just left you. I cannot bear waiting to know my fate, and to learn whether you consider me a person worthy of your love, or whether you would like to throw me into the river…. I can think of nothing but that I am deeply in love. If I only knew why this is so, for you are so without mercy that one should not love you, but I cannot help myself.”

Sadly, shortly after making this letter, Isabel passed away at the age of 21 due to smallpox, aware that she was bound to pass soon, Isabel wrote one last letter to her dear Maria. Advising her on how to navigate and survive the court of Vienna, and how to convince her mother on a marriage.

Clearly, Maria took his letter with utmost sincerity, as after after mourning for much much longer then required, Maria had convinced her mother on a marriage, ending up being the only daughter of Maria Theresa to marry for love, instead of convenience. That suitor being the Prince Albert of Saxony, a man with no fortune or inheritance.

[flordemurta]

What would be the point of us having loved each other in this world if we were to be separated for all eternity?

— Letter nº 189 of Princess Isabella of Parma to Maria Christina, Duchess of Teschen.

[fitzrove]

irl lesbian rudolf,,,,, filing this away in my head

[fillejondrette]

im not sure if any of princess isabella of parma’s work has been translated into english…..apparently a lot of it hasn’t been published at all and only exists in manuscript form in a hungarian archive. i might translate some of her published stuff and post it here, just for funsies. you guys would like her, she wrote about the oppression of women and wanting to die and she was in love with her sister in law

[dottedmelonart]

Chère Eurydice

J'aurais pleuré autant qu'Orphée dans l'idée seule que vous êtes mortelle.

(I would have cried as much as Orpheus just thinking that you are mortal.)

Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria (1742 - 1798) and Princess Isabella of Parma (1741 - 1763)

[its-yesterdays-story]

Joseph was married twice, but left no children. He first married, at age nineteen, Isabella Infanta of Parma; who was eighteen, and of whom he was dotingly fond. Her father was Don Philip, Duke of Parma, her mother a daughter of Louis XV of France; thus she was descended from the Bourbons on both sides. Isabella, although pleasing, had no claims to be called a beauty. She had the dark olive of the Spanish ladies, which Vienna unfavorably contrasted with their fair delicate complexion of the archduchesses her sisters-in-law, some of whom were among the handsomest young ladies of Europe. Her mouth was pretty, her teeth were fine, and her eyes full of animation; but when she was silent or pensive her face was devoid of attraction.

She was said to have had a prior attachment, which made her insensible to all the affectionate love which Joseph entertained for her, and which he showed her on every occasion. Moreover, there is a strange story of her having always entertained a foreboding of an early death. She bore to Joseph, in 1761, a daughter, who was called after her grandmother, Theresa, and whom she loved with all the glowing affection of her impassioned nature. When remonstrated with, that for the sake of her daughter she should not indulge in such gloomy fancies, she answered: “Do you believe that I should leave my child behind? I shall certainly not do so; so you will have her only about six or seven years.” the speech was the more extraordinary as the young princess actually died at the age of seven.

As for the gloomy Empress Isabella, whilst she was pregnant the second time, she was seized with smallpox, of which she died on the 27th of November, 1763; after having borne, on the 22nd of that month, a second daughter, who received the name of Christina, but died on the day of her birth.

Joseph scarcely ever left the bedside of his tenderly beloved wife to her vary last moment. As he was nearly sinking under the burden of his grief and from exhaustion, he had to be removed by force from the scene of his sorrow. Whilst he thus gave way to his passionate grief, his sister Christina, who had been the confidant of Isabella, told him – with the best intentions but with very ill-judged candor – that Isabella had never returned his affectionate love; and that her tenderness towards him had only been assumed from a feeling of duty. This cut terribly deep into Josephs heart, and filled him with a bitterness which he never got over.

[monkeyssalad-blog]

1758 Princess Isabella von Parma by Annemiek Via Flickr: Marc Nattier Princess Isabella Maria Luisa Antonietta Ferdinanda Giuseppina Saveria Dominica Giovanna of Parma, Archduchess of Austria (31 December 1741 – 27 November 1763), was the daughter of Infante Felipe of Spain, Duke of Parma and his wife Louise Elisabeth, eldest daughter of Louis XV of France and Maria Leszczyńska. Her paternal grandparents were Philip V of Spain (in turn a grandson of Louis XIV) and his second wife, Elisabeth of Parma. Born at Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid, she was an Infanta of Spain and grew up at the court of her grandfather, Philip V of Spain. As she was an Infanta she was allowed the style of Royal Highness. One of three children, she had 2 younger siblings. Her sister was Maria Louisa of Parma. In 1759 Isabella lost her mother, who at the time was in France, living at the Palace of Versailles and plotting to get a better realm to rule. Her mother had been the Duchess of Parma for a mere 10 years and was only 32. The relationship between mother and daughter had not been good, since the Duchess was cold towards Isabella and showed a clear favouritism towards her youngest daughter, Maria Luisa. Isabella learned to play the violin, and also read books by philosophers and theologians like Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet or John Law. She sometimes became melancholic and, after her mother's death in 1759, was often preoccupied with thoughts about death. On 6 October 1760, at the age of 18, she was married to Archduke Joseph of Austria, heir of the Habsburg Monarchy. Due to her marriage to an Imperial house, she became Her Imperial and Royal Highness - the "Royal" signifying her status as a Princess of Hungary and Bohemia. She quickly charmed the court in Vienna with her beauty and intelligence; apparently Isabella could solve difficult mathematical problems. She died at Schönbrunn Palace and was buried in Maria Theresa's vault in the Imperial Crypt Vaults in Vienna, Austria.