Lucrezia Borgia

Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519) was the illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, later Pope Alexander VI. Given a humanist education, she could read Latin and Greek.

In 1493 her father married her to Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro, a marriage annulled in 1497. Her second husband, Alfonso of Aragon, was murdered in 1500, reputedly on her brother Cesare's orders. In 1499 she had been appointed governor of Spoleto, the Papal States' first female governor.

Her third marriage, to Alfonso I d'Este, took her to Ferrara, where she ran the duchy twice as regent, patronized the poet Ariosto, and died after childbirth in 1519.