Murder In The Medici Court
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Listener, never fear, it is I, Dr. Anthony Delaney from the After Dark podcast. And I am possessing your phone or your car radio or whoever it is that you listen to podcasts to ask you to vote for us in the Listener's Choice Award at this year's British Podcast Awards. Ooh, it's that time of year again. You can vote for us while you're folding laundry or learning about mass poisonings, or while you assemble furniture and contemplate mutiny, which I would mutiny if I was assembling furniture, or while you're lost in a graveyard that you thought was going to be a shortcut, but now you find yourself in the bowels of hell. Either way, you can simply go to www.britishpodcastawards.com forward slash voting and search After Dark.
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In 1576, one of the most prominent and respected women of Renaissance Italy died suddenly. Rumours of murder spread like wildfire. Was Isabella de' Medici the victim of an honour killing? How much truth lay behind the accusations of adultery that surrounded her? And what does her story reveal about gender, reputation and power at the height of Medici rule? Today we're investigating the life, death and enduring mystery of a woman whose final days have fascinated historians for centuries. From the heart of Renaissance Florence, this is After Dark.
After Dark
Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony. And I'm Maddy. And today we are discussing a family, well, a specific person within a family, but a family that we've never actually talked about on After Dark before. And I don't know how this is possible. I'm talking about the Medici's and in specific, Isabella de' Medici.
And who better to do this history with us than Professor Estelle Perronc. Estelle is Associate Professor of History at Northeastern University London. She is the author of numerous brilliant books, including, and I love this title, Estelle, Thorns, Lust and Glory, The Betrayal of Anne Boleyn. Estelle, welcome to After Dark. Thank you so much for having me, guys.
Or should I call you Estelle Perroncue? Okay, yeah.
She will not answer that. Oh, gosh. Mispronunciations of Estelle's name aside, which we were laughing about off mic, we are going to be talking about a woman with a slightly easier name to take, Isabella de' Medici. Now, people might have heard of the Medici family. We'll get into who they were. We're in 1576 in Florence. She is Princess Isabella de' Medici. Who is she? How important is she in this world, in this Florentine city, this kingdom? What's going on? Situate us, please. Okay, so first, like, so happy to be here.
And I'm going to get a bit intense, so I apologize in advance. But for me, it's a story that is so important because probably not told enough. And let's find out who are our main characters here, especially with Isabella de' Medici. I really love Isabella de' Medici because she's a patron of the arts, really well-educated. And you know, when we say well-educated for women, of course, babe. At the same time, actually, at the time, it's quite rare. You know, it's not as common as you think. And also, I think this, I don't want to make a bit of a competition, but you have different level of good education, especially at that time. And here, Isabella de' Medici is the daughter of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.
cousin, second cousin of my favorite or one of Catherine de' Medici.
Arguably the more famous de' Medici.
Yeah. Arguably, I would say she is with Mary de' Medici maybe because that's, and we're going to talk about what de' Medici managed to achieve because it's quite incredible. But Catherine de' Medici is definitely, yeah, one of my favorite queens ever. And despite the fact that there's lots of dark legend around her and, you know, supposed to just kill people when she hasn't and things like that.
We don't have her on the show yet. We need to do her at some point.
So now we're going to hook you back on.
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