of Ferdinand and Isabella, as an aspect of his policy to try to shut in France. It was never intended as a dynastic checkmate, however – Philip was made Duke of Burgundy and positioned to replace Maximilian in due course with the existing Habsburg lands and, with luck and management, as Holy Roman Emperor. But a rapid sequence of surprise deaths between 1497 and 1500 revolutionized Philip’s fortunes. Castile and Aragon were still separate kingdoms and after Isabella’s death in childbirth, shortly followed by the death of the male child she had given birth to, the clear heir to Castile became Juana (under laws that, unlike those followed by the Habsburgs, did not prevent female inheritance). Ferdinand looked on in horror from his own kingdom of Aragon, realizing that through this bleak sequence a Habsburg would now take not only Castile but, if he did not himself have a son, Aragon too. The last part of Ferdinand’s life was grim. Spare a thought for the teenager Germaine de Foix, who was rushed to Barcelona as the new wife and had to spend ten years in the arms of the hard-breathing old dynast trying to conceive a son who could shut the Habsburgs out of Aragon. For a few hours in May 1509 a son, Juan, existed and the entire course of history could have been changed. Juan’s survival would have split Spain permanently between an eastern, Mediterranean kingdom based on Barcelona and a western, Atlantic kingdom based on Toledo and Granada. But the baby died and in 1516 a despairing Ferdinand also died.
Ferdinand’s only satisfaction must have been that at least by then Philip ‘the Handsome’ had died too, apparently of typhoid although there were persistent rumours that Ferdinand had poisoned him. Philip had been much admired as the acme of Burgundian chivalry but, as far as we can tell, he was no great loss as an individual or a political actor. Juana seems to have suffered from bouts of gloomy mental incapacity of a kind that later genetically leapt up and ravaged a random sequence of her descendants. Just how unable to rule she really was is tangled up in the motives of Philip, Ferdinand and then her own children for finding reasons for sidelining her. As Juana ‘the Mad’ she stalked the first half of the sixteenth century, refusing to part with her husband’s coffin, praying obsessively and eventually confined for decades in a convent, both the most dynastically important figure in Europe and a melancholy cipher.
Philip and Juana had six children. Their four daughters were variously married to kings of Portugal and France, Denmark, Hungary and Bohemia, and a further King of Portugal. One of these daughters, Mary, had an extraordinarily varied and surprising life, and after early Hungarian adventures became a great patron of the arts and the regent of the Netherlands. The two sons scooped the pool: Charles and Ferdinand.
In the gnarled, Escher-like and chaotic old prince-bishop’s palace in Trento, Buonconsiglio Castle, there is, among many other wonders, a room with a ceiling fresco by Dosso Dossi. I have always been frustrated by the stiff grandeur of the official paintings of Charles V, most obviously the ones by Titian which may be bravura displays but make Charles seem trapped beneath the costumes. But to my total surprise, here, commissioned by Prince-Bishop Bernardo III Clesio, are paintings of Bernardo himself – looking every inch the sort of tough, Cardinal Wolsey-style operator who had quite brief openings in his crowded calendar set aside for prayer – and of the young Charles and Ferdinand. The two young men are in beautiful armour and have been painted with astonishing informality, having just taken off their helmets, sitting on a bench with Charles caught in mid-sentence. As character portraits they seem absolutely convincing – Charles, with his cripplingly swollen jaw and his air of ill-focused and over-eager earnestness, Ferdinand more conventionally beefy and military, like a rugby
Ferdinand’s only satisfaction must have been that at least by then Philip ‘the Handsome’ had died too, apparently of typhoid although there were persistent rumours that Ferdinand had poisoned him. Philip had been much admired as the acme of Burgundian chivalry but, as far as we can tell, he was no great loss as an individual or a political actor. Juana seems to have suffered from bouts of gloomy mental incapacity of a kind that later genetically leapt up and ravaged a random sequence of her descendants. Just how unable to rule she really was is tangled up in the motives of Philip, Ferdinand and then her own children for finding reasons for sidelining her. As Juana ‘the Mad’ she stalked the first half of the sixteenth century, refusing to part with her husband’s coffin, praying obsessively and eventually confined for decades in a convent, both the most dynastically important figure in Europe and a melancholy cipher.
Philip and Juana had six children. Their four daughters were variously married to kings of Portugal and France, Denmark, Hungary and Bohemia, and a further King of Portugal. One of these daughters, Mary, had an extraordinarily varied and surprising life, and after early Hungarian adventures became a great patron of the arts and the regent of the Netherlands. The two sons scooped the pool: Charles and Ferdinand.
In the gnarled, Escher-like and chaotic old prince-bishop’s palace in Trento, Buonconsiglio Castle, there is, among many other wonders, a room with a ceiling fresco by Dosso Dossi. I have always been frustrated by the stiff grandeur of the official paintings of Charles V, most obviously the ones by Titian which may be bravura displays but make Charles seem trapped beneath the costumes. But to my total surprise, here, commissioned by Prince-Bishop Bernardo III Clesio, are paintings of Bernardo himself – looking every inch the sort of tough, Cardinal Wolsey-style operator who had quite brief openings in his crowded calendar set aside for prayer – and of the young Charles and Ferdinand. The two young men are in beautiful armour and have been painted with astonishing informality, having just taken off their helmets, sitting on a bench with Charles caught in mid-sentence. As character portraits they seem absolutely convincing – Charles, with his cripplingly swollen jaw and his air of ill-focused and over-eager earnestness, Ferdinand more conventionally beefy and military, like a rugby
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