Eleonora d'Este (1515–1575)

Eleonora d'Este (4 July 1515 – 1575) was a Ferrarese noblewoman. She was the first daughter of Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara and his second wife Lucrezia Borgia – as his first daughter, Alfonso named her after his mother Eleanor of Naples.

Life

She was brought up in Ferrara and her mother died when she was four – her father had two more children with Laura Dianti. Eleonora was the only one of Alfonso and Lucrezia's daughters to survive both their parents. She became a nun at the Corpus Domini Monastery and became abbess when she was eighteen. Upon her death, she was buried there alongside her mother and other members of her family.^[1]

Musica quinque vocum motetta materna lingua vocata

In 1543, Girolamo Scotto of Venice published a collection of 43 religious motets under the title Musica quinque vocum motetta materna lingua vocata. There is no indication in that publication as to who the composer might have been.^[2]

Laurie Stras, professor of music at Southampton University, has argued that Leonora may have been the composer.^[3] Leonora was triply disqualified from being named in those days: being a woman, and a princess, and a nun.