1483) Bona Sforza d'Aragona

Bona Sforza d'Aragona (1494 – 1557). Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania as the second wife of Sigismund I the Old, and Duchess of Bari and Rossano by her own right.

Smart, energetic and ambitious, Bona became heavily involved in the political and cultural life of Poland–Lithuania. To increase state revenue during the Chicken Rebellion, she implemented various economic and agricultural reforms, including the far-reaching Wallach Reform in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In foreign policy, she was allied with the Ottoman Empire and sometimes opposed the Habsburgs.

She was the third of the four children of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, legal heir to the Duchy of Milan, and Isabella of Naples, daughter of King Alfonso II of Naples from the House of Trastámara. Her paternal great-uncle Ludovico Sforza, known to history as "Il Moro", usurped her father's power and sent the small family to live at the Castello Visconteo in Pavia, where her father died the same year she was born. Rumors spread that he was poisoned by Ludovico.

By April 1502, Bona and her mother settled at the Castello Normanno-Svevo in Bari more permanently, where she started an excellent education. Her teachers included Italian humanists Crisostomo Colonna and Antonio de Ferraris, who taught her mathematics, natural science, geography, history, law, Latin, classical literature, theology, and how to play several musical instruments.

She and King Sigismund had six childern: Sophia Jagiellon, Isabella Jagiellon, Sigismund II Augustus, Anna Jagiellon, Catherine Jagiellon and Albert Jagiellon.

 

Venus and Cupid, by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Portrait of Bona Sforza, by Bernardino Licinio

Judith with the Head of Holofernes, by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Portrait of Bona Sforza and her son as Madonna and Child under an apple tree, by Lucas Cranach the Elder