In December 1565, Joanna of Austria married Francesco de’ Medici, the heir to the duchy of Florence, in one of the most lavish ceremonies of the sixteenth century. The wedding was a triumph of spectacle, a carefully staged display of dynastic alliance between the Habsburgs, who ruled much of Europe, and the Medici, who were rising to the pinnacle of Italian power. But behind the arches and festivities lay a future the celebrations could not disguise. The marriage would prove cold and loveless, defined by cruelty, infidelity, and a chain of deaths that haunted the Medici court for decades.
Joanna was born on January 24, 1547, in Prague, then part of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Her father was Ferdinand I, who would become Holy Roman Emperor in 1556, and her mother was Anna of Bohemia and Hungary. Through her mother’s brother, King Louis II, who died at the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Habsburgs had inherited the crowns of Hungary, Bohemia, and Croatia. Her uncle was Charles V, ruler of the Spanish Empire.
By birth, then, Joanna belonged to a family that governed much of the known world. Her arrival came at a terrible cost. Her mother, already forty-three and weakened by years of childbirth, died three days after Joanna was born. Her father, consumed by the religious wars tearing through Germany and the chaos of the Protestant Reformation, had little time for his surviving children.
Joanna was sent to Innsbruck, where she was raised by nuns in an atmosphere of piety and scholarship. Her future, however, had already been decided. She was being groomed not for independence but for marriage. The political opportunity for that marriage arose after the Italian Wars came to a close with the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559.
Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, was eager to secure his family’s position in the uncertain peace that followed. He proposed a union between his eldest son and heir, Francesco, and Joanna. Negotiations dragged on for years, as was customary, until Joanna’s brother, Maximilian II, ascended the imperial throne in 1564. Unlike his father, Maximilian did not share a close rapport with his Spanish cousin, King Philip II, and sought to strengthen Habsburg influence in Italy.
The match gained momentum, and in 1565 Joanna was sent to Florence to marry Francesco. The wedding was preceded by a formal entry into the city. Joanna traveled with her sister Barbara, who was to marry Duke Alfonso II of Ferrara at the same time. Florence’s citizens were ordered to dress in their finest clothes, and artwork by the celebrated Giorgio Vasari lined the route for hundreds of meters.
Joanna passed beneath twelve triumphal arches before reaching the Basilica di San Lorenzo, where she met Francesco at the altar. He was twenty-four, she was eighteen. The city rejoiced, and festivals filled the streets in her honor. But the warmth of the ceremony did not survive the marriage.
From the start, the union was filled with conflict. Francesco found his wife unattractive. He openly sneered at what he regarded as her deformed appearance. Joanna suffered from severe scoliosis, a spinal deformity that had afflicted her since childhood.
Her posture worsened over time, her gait became uneven, and her movements grew labored. The condition had been discussed during the marriage negotiations themselves, because in the high politics of dynastic unions, a woman’s ability to bear children was everything, and her frailty raised doubts about whether she could fulfill that duty. Despite her ill health, Joanna endured one pregnancy after another. She gave birth to eight children, suffering from a congenital hip disorder and another severe condition that made childbirth excruciatingly dangerous.
Her eldest daughter, Eleonora, was born in February 1567 and would later marry Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. A son named Don Romolo was born in November 1568 and died two weeks later. Another daughter, Anna, born on New Year’s Eve 1569, survived into her teenage years but died in 1584. Two more daughters, Isabella and Lucrezia, both died in infancy, and Joanna’s final two children died in childhood or before being born.
The sole exception was Marie de’ Medici, born on April 26, 1575, who would later marry King Henry IV of France and become the mother of King Louis XIII. Through Marie, Joanna became the ancestor of every French king down to the Revolution. As her health declined, her husband’s cruelty deepened. Francesco was notoriously unfaithful.
His most prominent mistress was Bianca Cappello, a Venetian noblewoman of noted beauty who had arrived at the Florentine court in 1563 after marrying Pietro Bonaventuri, a clerk employed by the Salviati family. Bianca and Francesco began their relationship in the late 1560s, and it became more open in 1572 when Bianca’s husband was killed in the streets of Florence, an incident possibly orchestrated by the lovers. In April 1574, Cosimo I died at fifty-four, and Francesco became Grand Duke of Tuscany. His new position only made things worse.
He used his power to humiliate his wife, installing Bianca in lavish apartments within a palace just steps away from the ducal household. It was common enough for princes of the age to keep mistresses, but they generally observed the courtesies of secrecy. Francesco made no such effort. He and Bianca paraded their affection openly, flaunting their liaison before Florence and before Joanna herself.
For the proud Grand Duchess, it was a public disgrace, a daily reminder of betrayal played out before an entire court. At this point, Francesco still had no legitimate male heir. Bianca bore him a son, Don Antonio, in 1576, but Francesco refused to recognize the boy. Then, against all odds, in 1577 Joanna gave birth to a long-awaited son, Grand Prince Philip.
For a moment, the future of the duchy and Joanna’s own fragile standing appeared secure. Bianca’s hopes of rising beyond mistress seemed crushed. But the reprieve was brief. On the morning of April 10, 1578, Joanna, once again heavy with child, her eighth, fell down a stone staircase in the Palazzo Vecchio.
The fall brought on premature labor, and the infant did not survive. Joanna lingered in agony through the following day before dying, her body broken by a ruptured womb. She was just thirty-one years old. Whispers of foul play followed her death.
With Francesco’s open devotion to Bianca, few believed the fall was an accident. Rumors spread that Joanna had been pushed or poisoned. The truth, stripped of courtly intrigue, may have been more tragic than sinister. Her worsening scoliosis had twisted her spine and weakened her balance, and the affliction may well have caused the fatal fall.
Public outrage did little to restrain Francesco. Only months after Joanna’s death, he secretly married Bianca Cappello, and in 1579 he brazenly proclaimed her the new Grand Duchess of Tuscany. To many, the sequence of events was far too convenient. Bianca’s husband dead, Joanna gone, and now the mistress enthroned.
Their triumph was short-lived. In March 1582, Joanna’s only surviving son, young Prince Philip, died suddenly at age four, extinguishing Francesco’s line of legitimate heirs. Then in 1587, Francesco fell violently ill and died on October 19. Bianca followed him to the grave the very next day.
The double death stunned Europe. It has been shrouded in mystery ever since. They may have been poisoned, perhaps by courtly vengeance, possibly by Francesco’s brother Ferdinando, who succeeded as the new Grand Duke. Or disease, perhaps malaria, may have claimed them both.
No one could say with certainty, but their passing closed a grim cycle of misfortune that had shadowed Joanna, her children, her husband, and his lover for over two decades.