#isabella of parma

[thediamondarcher]

"queer people didn't exist in the 18th century, and especially not in the royal families" ...

Isabella of Bourbon-Parma

married to Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor in 1760 to 1763 while simultaneously being in an affair with his sister until her own death in '63 Maria Christina, Duchess of Teschen. quotes of various letters she dedicated to her lover:

“I am told that the day begins with God. I, however, begin the day by thinking of the object of my love, for I think of her incessantly.”

“My consolation, I am madly in love with you, virtuously or diabolically, I love you and I will love you to the grave.”

[cesareeborgia]

↳ Historical Ladies Name: Isabella/Isabelle

[queenfredegund]

Women in History Month (insp) | Week 3: Consorts and concubines

[tiny-librarian]

Louise Elisabeth of France with her eldest daughter, Isabella of Parma.

[juanatrastamara]

get to know me meme - historical edition

[isabellaofparma]

Isabella of Parma and Maria Christina of Austria in episode 5 of Maria Theresia (2017-2021)

[thatpoorfraulein]

I JUST FOUND OUT ABT THESE TWO TODAY AND IM OBSESSED. SOMEONE PLS TALK ABT THEM WITH ME 😭😭😭🙏🙏🙏🙏

[dottedmelonart]

Chère Eurydice

J'aurais pleuré autant qu'Orphée dans l'idée seule que vous êtes mortelle.

(I would have cried as much as Orpheus just thinking that you are mortal.)

Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria (1742 - 1798) and Princess Isabella of Parma (1741 - 1763)

[archduchessofnowhere]

[Isabella of Parma] was a talented observer of others, and she made it her overriding ambition from early on to win over every member of the imperial family. We know just how assiduously and intelligently she practiced this art from the roughly two hundred letters to Archduchess Maria Christina that have come down to us.

These letters betray an almost obsessive concern with gaining the undivided love and attention of Maria Christina, the same age as Isabella and the object of her consuming passion. She had already started writing to her future sister-in-law before they met, doing all she could to create a climate of friendly intimacy. She called her ma soeur fidèle, my faithful sister, and declared her tender admiration for the empress and her love of Germany. Following her arrival in Vienna, the correspondence gradually intensified into ever more effusive expressions of attachment and devotion. The stream of letters did not abate even when the two women were seeing each other almost every day at court. Letters were considered the “mirror of the soul”; they provided an outlet for what could not be said in the strictly ceremonialized everyday life of the court. “My adorable sister,” Isabella writes repeatedly, “my goddess! my heart! my angel! Venus! I am mad with love for you; I love you to distraction; I worship you!” She then speaks of her lover’s “devilish” character, her cruelty and disloyalty. Much remains incomprehensible to later readers, as when Isabella refers to shared experiences and secrets (“yesterday’s adventure”), makes ironic allusions, or uses cover names. Time and again she declares herself deeply wounded, “soaked in tears,” because Maria Christina has paid her insufficient attention, and demands proofs of her love; she then begs her to forgive her jealousy. She tries to arrange secret rendezvous for the two of them, refers to their joint “marriage” and a mysterious “wedding present,” calls herself Maria’s amant, lover, or mari, husband, and refers to the two of them—alluding to operas they had attended—as Orpheus and Eurydice, Zerbin and Laurette, or Linon and Lisette. She airs the greatest intimacies without any sense of shame, drastically showing today’s readers just how low the threshold of embarrassment was in such matters. At any rate, what is invoked in these letters is far more than Platonic infatuation: “I cover you all over with my kisses,” she exclaims, “I kiss everything you let me kiss,” or even—in German in the original rather than the usual French—“I kiss your archangelic ass.” Maria Christina’s reactions have not survived, but they appear to have been more reserved, since Isabella calls her a saint and writes: “Despite your saintliness, I kiss you with all my soul, so that they may be said to be pious kisses, for what comes from the soul is purely spiritual and not of this earth, although I love all that is down-to-earth.” On the rare occasions when Isabella mentions her husband, then it is as an unwelcome intrusion, the “rival” of her beloved. Among the essays composed by Isabella there is a short, sarcastic “Treatise on Men”: the most useless creatures in all the world, good for nothing other than selfishness, more irrational than animals, elevated by God above women only so that male flaws would cause female virtues to shine all the more brightly. If girls had not been persuaded that they were useless, they would cope very well without their menfolk. The devil had a hand in play when men were created, women had no choice but to make the best of a bad lot.

Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara (2020). Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in her Time (translation by Robert Savage)

[fillejondrette]

i think it’s really insulting when people assume that historical women had no objections to their situations. people know when they’re being treated unjustly

[brittaperry]

“I love thee like a madwoman, in a holy way or diabolically, I love you and will love you to the grave.” if anyone said this to me, I would simply stop functioning.

[onheirpodcast]

Some of the historical royals who have been described as being LGBTQ+ over the centuries: Queen Anne, Frederick the Great,  King Edward II, Isabella of Bourbon-Parma, Queen Christina of Sweden, and King James VI of Scotland and I of England.

In our most recent episode we touch on some of these examples and discuss the challenges of aligning modern understandings of gender and sexuality with the social norms of the past. You can listen here. 

[tiny-librarian]

Royal Birthdays for today, December 31st:

Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, 1493

Beatrice of Portugal, Duchess of Savoy, 1504

Go-Yozei, Emperor of Japan, 1572

Charles Edward Stuart, The Young Pretender, 1720

Isabella of Parma, wife of Joseph II of Austria, 1741

Kapiʻolani, Queen of the Hawaiian Islands, 1834

Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, 1885

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

florence + the machine lyrics x colors x textiles in art — yellow/gold

Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) – Lungs // Portrait of Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska – William Mosman 👑 Only If For a Night – Ceremonials // Isabelle de Bourbon, Infanta of Parma – Jean-Marc Nattier 👑 Over the Love – Over the Love // Portrait of Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria – Frans Pourbus the Younger 👑 Over the Love – Over the Love // Portrait of Isabella Charlotte of Nassau-Dietz as Flora – Lancelot Volders 👑 King – Dance Fever // Portrait of Konstancja Krystyna Wielopolska – Pierre Mignard I 👑 Girls Against God – Dance Fever // Portrait of Barbara of Portugal, Queen of Spain – Jean Ranc 👑 Heaven Is Here – Dance Fever // Princess Louisa Maria Teresa Stuart – Alexis Simon Belle

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

can you name all 59 women

1. Anne Bonny: a lesbian

2. Mary Read: a lesbian

3. Mary Read again: an abusive, cheating wife

4. Mary, Queen of Scots: a lesbian. (But also not a lesbian because Hester Mary MacKenzie was also her concubine.)

5. Isabella 'Bella' Baldwin: a lesbian

6. Queen Elizabeth of Parma, also known as Isabelle d'Este, was the Empress of Modena. She's one of several queens whose non-biological children were legitimized by the church.

7. Mary, Queen of France (before and during her marriage to Henry III).

8. Charlotte of Savoy: a lesbian

9. Elizabeth of York, also Elizabeth Stuart: a lesbian

10. Anna Ivanovna Demushkin: a lesbian (Ivan the Terrible's wife, as well as Mary Queen of Scots')

11. Mary, Duchess of Orleans: a lesbian

12. Mary, Duchess of Orleans again: a lesbian

13. Isabella of France: a lesbian

14. Margaret of Anjou, wife of Francis Plantagenet: a lesbian.

15. Mary 'Mary of Guise', daughter of Margaret of Anjou and Francis Plantagenet: a lesbian

16. Queen of Denmark: a lesbian (Anne's daughter, Sophie of Poland and Denmark)

17. Catherine Howard: a lesbian

18. Katherine Howard: a lesbian

19. Mary, Queen of England: a lesbian (Mary Tudor)

20. Eleanor of Austria, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella: a lesbian (Mary Tudor's daughter, also Queen of England)

21. Mary, Queen of Bohemia: a lesbian

22. Catherine Parr: a lesbian

23. Eleanor of Austria, again: a lesbian (Mary Tudor's daughter, also queen of England)

24. Mary Tudor: a lesbian

25. Queen of Scots: a lesbian

26. Catherine Parr again: a lesbian

27. Christine de Bourgogne: a lesbian, as well as a queen of France.

28. Jane Seymour, wife of Thomas Seymour and mother of Edward Seymour. Also a lesbian.

29. Mary Stuart: a lesbian

30. Isabella of Castile: a lesbian

31. Mary Stuart again, daughter of Mary I of England: a lesbian

32. Jane Seymour again: lesbian (Edward Seymour's mom)

33. Anne Fitzwilliam, Duchess of Norfolk: a lesbian

34. Barbara Tacy, Countess of Pembroke: a lesbian

35. Mary Tudor again: a lesbian. (Mary Stuart's daughter again)

36. Jane Buckley: a lesbian

37. Catherine Parr: Elizabeth Howard, Parr's daughter, was Queen of England after her mother's death and died without an heir.

38. Margaret Cecil: a lesbian

39. Anna of Cleves: Anne Beaton, wife of Frederick V, Elector of Saxony and of James I and Mary, Queen of Scots; and her granddaughter, Lady Jane Grey, daughter of King Henry VIII and Edward Seymour.

40. Henrietta Maria Stuart: lesbian

41. Anne of Cleves: lesbian

42. Mary Queen of France: lesbian

43. Mary Queen of France again: a lesbian

44. Margaret, Countess of Lennox: lesbian

45. Elizabeth Howard: another lesbian

46.

Anne Stafford: a lesbian

47.

Jane Stafford: a lesbian

48. Jane Seymour again: a lesbian

49. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots: lesbian

50. Princess Margaret: a lesbian

51. Anne of Cleves again, this time as a mother: Mary Tudor's daughter; Queen of England for less than a month in 1553

52.

Jane Stafford again: lesbian

53. Margaret Howard, Countess of Stafford: lesbian

54. Lady Jane Grey again: a lesbian

55. Princess Anne: a lesbian. (Princess of Portugal and the two Marianas, of Portugal and England.)

56. Elizabeth Howard again: lesbian

57. Margaret of Anjou, Lady of Woodville, wife of Ralph Neville, son of the Duke of Northumberland (Henry Tudor).

58.

[moontos]

In this painting, we're transported to the wedding supper that celebrated the marriage of the heir to the Austrian throne, Joseph, to Isabella of Parma on 5 October 1760. Set in the Redoute Hall of the Vienna Hofburg, the table is elegantly prepared for dessert, adorned with fine porcelain. Martin van Meytens was a Swedish-Austrian portrait and miniature painter who was famous for his level of detail. In this large painting (300 x 400 cm), there must be at least 100 people and, I guess from looking at the second picture, he seems to have grown tired of painting faces as many of the wedding guests have disproportionate features. This lovely painting hangs in Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. Martin van Meytens, Sweden/Austria (1695-1770)

Wedding Supper (1763)

———————————————————————————————

Bu tabloda, Avusturya tahtının varislerinden Joseph'in 5 Ekim 1760 tarihinde Isabella of Parma ile yaptığı evliliği kutlayan düğün ziyafetine taşınıyoruz. Viyana Hofburg'un Redoute Salonu'nda geçen bu sahnede, masanın üzerinde ince porselenlerle süslenmiş bir tatlı hazırlanmış şekilde görülüyor. Martin van Meytens, detay seviyesiyle ünlü olan İsveç-Avusturya portre ve minyatür ressamıdır. Bu büyük tabloda (300 x 400 cm), en az 100 kişi olmalı ve ikinci resme bakarak tahminimce yüzleri boyamaktan sıkılmış gibi görünüyor, çünkü düğün konuklarının birçoğunun orantısız özellikleri var. Bu güzel tablo, Viyana'daki Schönbrunn Sarayı'nda asılı duruyor.

Martin van Meytens, İsveç/Avusturya (1695-1770)

Düğün Ziyafeti (1763)