ABSTRACT
Letters Isabella d’Este exchanged with and regarding various court functionaries open a window onto some of the practical operations of early modern courts as contexts for labor of many kinds. Bernardino Prosperi was Isabella’s assiduous reporter of news from Ferrara and a key figure in the network of informants that kept her apprised of events throughout Italy. A perennial favorite among art historians are peremptory posts Isabella sent from Ferrara about two years into her marriage to Francesco II Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua, to the painter Giovanni Luca Liombeni in Mantua: she orders him to finish, on schedule, the decorative motifs in her newly conceived studiolo, unless he prefers to be thrown into a dungeon. Isabella d’Este was served by hundreds of workers, some of whom emerge in her letters only once or twice. Isabella worked tirelessly to get back her stolen belongings, but also her people.
