ALFONSO I D'ESTE, Duke of Ferrara. - Born in Ferrara on 21 July 1476 to Ercole I and Eleonora of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand, king of Naples; died 31 Oct. 1534.
He inspired his government with a vigilant and shifting balance that manifested itself in alternating friendships and alliances with the Pope, France and the Empire. His marriages to Anna Sforza, daughter of Galeazzo Maria, duke of Milan (1437), and to Lucrezia Borgia (1501) were determined by political aims. The latter allowed him to keep the duchy of Ferrara as a fief of the Church. By Lucrezia he had: Ercole II, Cardinal Ippolito II, Eleonora, a nun of the « Corpus Domini », and Francesco, marquis of Massa Lombarda. In addition, by Laura Eustochia Dianti, he had the natural sons Alfonso, father of Cesare, first duke of Modena, and Alfonsino.
He joined the League of Cambrai and took from the Venetians, who aspired to his domains on the Po, Rovigo, Montagnana and Este, and scattered at Polesella their fleet commanded by Gradenigo (1509). He was gonfalonier of Holy Roman Church, but having then fallen into disagreement with Julius II, who in the peace with Venice did not support his fortune, he went in vain to him in Rome, where he sent Ludovico Ariosto as ambassador. In the dispute he lost Modena and Reggio, later reconfirmed to him by Adrian VI and regranted to him, after he had reconquered Modena during the sack of Rome (6 June 1527), by virtue of an arbitration of Charles V (Cologne, 21 Dec. 1530).
A conspiracy of his brothers Ferrante and Giulio saddened his private life, which was partly devoted to travels (England and Flanders), to commerce, to the arts, to strategy (he was a wood carver, a molder of majolicas, a caster of cannons) and notable for that patronage, characteristic of his dynasty, which he placed at the service of politics. Ludovico Ariosto, his governor in Garfagnana, suggested to him his personal emblem or program: a pomegranate with the motto: Tempore et loco.