From the acclaimed author of The Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan comes a vibrant exploration of the Italian Renaissance through the eyes of Isabella d’Este, the leading female art collector and patron of her time.
Born in 1474, she ran a famed court, was a fashion icon and a cunning political operator. She left behind a magnificent collection of paintings, sculptures, books, instruments and curiosities. Long since lost or dispersed, all that remains is her correspondence - thousands of letters preserved in a deconsecrated church and convent, which make up the state archive of the city of Mantua.
Inside this cavernous space, the ghost of Isabella is searching for the right scholar to give voice to her story. When she finds her, together through the letters, they resurrect a remarkable life: from a precocious daughter of a Duke and the painfully young wife of the Marquis of Mantua to a formidable court consort, collector, patron and political operator, guiding the state through the vicissitudes of war. A woman who unapologetically refuses to be bound by convention.

The Marchesa is Renaissance history at its most vivid, an immersive, multi-layered experience that mixes historical fiction with biography, scholarship and art, images of both the people and the time. It is also a meditation on our attitude to history itself, challenging how far we can set aside our own values and moral certainties when it comes to understanding those in the past who grew out of very different cultural soil.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Dunant studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge from where she went on to become a writer, broadcaster, teacher and critic. She has written thirteen novels, four of which have been shortlisted for awards, and edited two books of essays. She worked for many years for the BBC in radio and television including BBC 2 TV’s arts programme The Late Show and Radio 3’s Nightwaves.
More recently she wrote and presented a monthly history show for Radio 4 -When Greeks Flew Kites - and was a regular contributor to A Point of View. She also featured as an expert in the BBC2 Renaissance: the Blood and the Beauty drama-documentary series which broadcast in December 2024.
She is an accredited lecturer with The Arts Society, lecturing on Italian history and Renaissance art, has taught Renaissance studies at Washington University, St. Louis and creative writing at University of Oxford Brookes, from where she was awarded an honorary doctorate for her services to higher education and literature.
Her most recent six novels, set within the Italian Renaissance and weaving cutting-edge historical scholarship into fiction, have become international bestsellers, translated into thirty languages.

“What distinguishes and elevates to the first order Sarah Dunant’s series of five novels set in Renaissance Italy is that she combines flawless historical scholarship with beguiling storytelling.’”
— Observer