Ferdinando III de' Medici

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ferdinando III de' Medici (August 9, 1663 – October 31, 1713) was Grand Prince of Tuscany. He was the heir to the Tuscan throne, but never ruled, as he was outlived by his father, Grand Duke Cosimo III.

[edit] Life

Ferdinando was born to Cosimo and his wife Marguerite Louise d'Orléans in 1663. He had a stifling upbringing due to his father's religious conservatism. In contrast to his father, Ferdinando was pleasure-loving. He cultivated the arts and music, and was himself a skilled musician.

His other favored form of pleasure was sexual, and he had a great number of liaisons. This was his eventual undoing: during a visit to the Venice Carnival in 1696, Ferdinando contracted syphilis, which eventually led to insanity, then his death in 1713.

Ferdinando was married, unwillingly, to Violante of Bavaria, who was daughter of the elector of Bavaria Ferdinand and Adelaide of Savoy. The marriage was an unhappy one and produced no children. The childlessness of the marriage was in fact of some significance, since the lack of an heir to the Tuscan throne upon the death of Ferdinando's brother Gian Gastone was a factor that led the European powers to assign their own Grand Duke, effectively ending the independence of the Tuscan state.

[edit] Legacy

Ferdinando's contemporary reputation rests on his role as patron of the arts. He kept a villa in Pratolino (now called the Villa Demidoff after a later owner, Anatole Demidov) which was home to many musical (and apparently, sexual) activities. At this villa, he had built an indoor theater, designed by Antonio Ferri. Among the musicians that Ferdinando brought to the Tuscan court were Alessandro Scarlatti and the young Georg Frideric Handel.

Probably the most important contribution of Ferdinando was in providing a home, salary, and supporting environment for the inventor Bartolomeo Cristofori, whom Ferdinando hired as his keeper of instruments in 1688 while passing through Padua on his way home from the Venice carnival. It was in Ferdinando's employment that Cristofori invented the piano.

[edit] Reference

• Cesati, Franco (2005). “The twillight of the dynasty”, Monica Fintoni, Andrea Paoletti: The Medici: Story of a European Dynasty. La Mandragora s.r.l., 131-132.