Barbara of Austria – A charitable Duchess

Archduchess Barbara of Austria was born on 30 April 1539 as the daughter of the future Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary. She was their eleventh child and eighth daughter.

She was born in Vienna, but following the death of her mother in 1547, she and her other unmarried sisters were sent to live in a monastery in Innsbruck. Her education had a special focus on religion, which resulted in many charitable activities towards the Jesuits.

In 1560, she was the subject of a marriage negotiation with Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, but he ended up marrying her elder sister, Eleonor. In 1562, several suitors came for the hand of her younger sister Joanna, and Barbara became engaged to one of them – Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. At the time, she was described as, she “cannot be called beautiful, she cannot be called ugly”, and she was “very small, pale and with a long, wrinkled face and that raised lip that almost all those of the house of Austria have.” 1

A marriage did not take place immediately, and in July 1565, Alfonso came to Innsbruck to meet Barbara. She and Joanna moved to Trento in November, where they were to have a double wedding ceremony. Joanna would marry the future Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. However, the ceremony was postponed after a conflict over precedence, and the weddings instead took place in Ferrara and Florence, respectively.

Barbara reached Ferrara on 1 December 1565, and the wedding celebrations lasted from 5 to 9 December. Barbara did not speak the language, but she managed to endear herself to her new subjects with her charitable acts. She remained pious and kept close ties with the Jesuits. Despite their religious differences, she became close to her mother-in-law, Renee of France. After an earthquake in 1570, she took care of orphaned girls.

Barbara had become ill with tuberculosis shortly after her wedding. The disease was exacerbated after she was forced to live in a tent after the earthquake. She died on 19 September 1572. She and her husband had not had any children. Her husband had reportedly become unable to conceive following a fall from a horse.2 Alfonso obtained special permission to have her buried in the Jesuit church of Ferrara.Six years later, her husband remarried Margherita Gonzaga, who was Barbara’s niece.

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