Isabella of Portugal

Isabella was born in Lisbon, Portugal on 24 October 1503 and named after her maternal grandmother and aunt, who had been her father's first wife. She was the second child and first daughter of King Manuel I of Portugal and his second wife, Maria of Aragon. Isabella was second-in-line to the throne until the birth of her brother Luis in 1506.

During her childhood, Isabella seemed to be close with her siblings. Their mother punished them "when they deserved it, without pardoning any of them." The Queen inculcated ambition and religious piety in Isabella and her sisters. At the age of 14, Isabella lost her mother and inherited her properties plus the income from Viseu and Torres Vedras.

Isabella was educated under the supervision of her governess Elvira de Mendoza. Her studies presumably included politics, mathematics, the languages of Latin, Spanish and French besides her native Portuguese, Renaissance classics, and the Christian doctrine. She had access to a vast library composed of works for prayer and more mundane works which were of her taste, especially on cavalry. The Infanta progressively became an intelligent young woman of regal dignity and strong character.

As the oldest daughter of Manuel I of Portugal, Isabella was a rather attractive candidate for marriage. Her mother left in her will and in a clear message to her husband, the desire that Isabella and her sisters should marry only a king or the legitimate son of kings. If not, they should become nuns. Isabella herself was determined to marry only the greatest king of Christian Europe.

The ideal candidate for Isabella's husband was her first cousin Charles, son of Maria's sister, Joanna of Castile, and Philip I of Castile. A marriage would bring a strong alliance between the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal in accordance with the wishes of their grandparents Isabella and Ferdinand: It would facilitate to continue the exploration of the oceans without incurring clashes, as Portugal was the only naval power that could question Spain's supremacy in the Atlantic ocean. As Charles was sovereign of multiple kingdoms, Spain needed allies and it was necessary that Portugal (Christendom's richest kingdom) fall under its orbit and not of France, which had happened in the War of Castilian Succession. Moreover, because Charles had been raised in Burgundy, the nobles and his Spanish subjects insisted that he marry someone from the Iberian peninsula, just like Isabella.

However, the 18-year-old King was in no hurry to marry and ignored the nobles' advice, instead sending his sister Eleanor to marry Isabella's widowed father in 1518. Charles's Flemish advisors, especially William de Croÿ, later convinced him to relegate the Portuguese alliance to the background and replace it with an alliance with England. In 1521, Charles became engaged to his other first cousin Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, who was sixteen years younger than Charles and still a child. Their engagement sought to undo an alliance between England and France, articulated by the ambitious Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Many in Portugal took the Infanta's rejection as an offence, but Isabella remained determined and hopeful that she would marry her powerful cousin. The choice was that she would marry only Charles or she would enter a convent.

By 1525, Charles was no longer interested in an alliance with England and could wait no longer for Mary Tudor to get older because he was determined to have legitimate children. His engagement was called off, the alliance with England was abandoned, and he finally sought to marry Isabella. There were many more advantages - she was closer to him in age (she was only three years his junior), fluent in Spanish, and offered a dowry of 900,000 Portuguese cruzados or Castilian folds, which was more than enough to solve many of his economic and financial problems brought on by the Italian War of 1521-26.[2] The only further delay in the engagement stemmed from the size of the dowry that the groom demanded, but the King of Portugal agreed to provide 900,000 ducats. Charles wasted no time in securing a papal dispensation for first cousins and the marriage contract for an alliance with Portugal were made - Isabella would marry him and her brother, King John III of Portugal, would marry his youngest sister, Catherine of Austria. The young Emperor intended to wed and then leave his future wife as regent to govern Spain while he went to Central Europe to deal with political and religious troubles there.

The city of Toledo served as the main revenue of the Imperial court of Charles V in Castile.[5][6]

Isabella was a profound connoisseur of the problems of the peninsular kingdoms, defending intransigently the good common to particular interests. At the external level, her sensible actions were decisive in the defence of the coasts of the peninsula and of North Africa, those infested by piracy. This allowed the flow of precious metals. Spain became one of the chief sources of the Imperial treasury.

Through her regencies, Isabella ensured that Spain remained independent of imperial policies and thus relatively prosperous during her lifetime. However, Castile became integrated into Charles's empire and suffered from high inflation after her death. The enormous budget deficit accumulated during her husband's reign, along with the inflation that affected the kingdom, resulted in declaring bankruptcy during the reign of Philip II.

During her time as regent, Isabella effectively defended the royal power and the monarch's supreme authority, something essential because of the previous rebellions against her the Emperor. She traveled regularly in the autumn between Toledo, Valladolid, Seville, Barcelona and Majorca. To deal with important matters of the empire, the royal couple wrote to each other more regularly.

Isabella actively participated in the negotiations of marital alliances between the French and Spanish royal families, concerned that her own young children wouldn't be forced to wed the much older offspring of King Francis I.

Titian's La Gloria, one of the several paintings commissioned by Charles V in memory of his wife Isabella

In memory of Isabella, Charles commissioned several tributes through art and music, beginning in 1540 when he commissioned the Flemish composer Thomas Crecquillon to compose new music in honour of the Empress. Crecquillon composed his Missa Mort m'a privé as a memorial to Isabella, which expresses the Emperor's grief and great wish for a heavenly reunion with his wife.[9] Another musical tribute to Isabella is Carole cur defles Isabellam that was composed in 1545 by the Franco-Flemish composer Nicolas Payen.

In 1543, Charles commissioned his favourite painter Titian to paint posthumous portraits of Isabella by using earlier ones of her as his model. Titian painted several portraits of the Empress, which included his Portrait of The Empress Isabel of Portugal and La Gloria.[10] He also painted a double portrait of the royal couple together, of which there is a copy by Peter Paul Rubens. Charles kept these portraits with him whenever he travelled and after he retired to the Monastery of Yuste in 1555.[11]