Alfonso II (4 November 1448 – 18 December 1495) was Duke of Calabria and ruled as King of Naples from 25 January 1494 to 23 January 1495. He was a soldier and a patron of Renaissance architecture and the arts.

Heir to his father Ferdinand I's Kingdom of Naples, Alfonso held the dukedom of Calabria for most of his life. Instigated by Lodovico Sforza, who wished to stir up trouble to allow him to seize power in Milan, and with papal support, Charles decided to reassert the Angevin claim to Naples. He invaded Italy in September 1494 and was able to move swiftly south along the peninsula. Alfonso managed to regain the support of Pope Alexander VI, who invited Charles to devote his effort against the Turks instead. Alfonso was crowned on 8 May 1494 by the papal legate Juan de Borja Lanzol de Romaní, el mayor.

Charles, however, did not relent; by early 1495 Charles was approaching Naples, after having defeated Florence and the Neapolitan fleet under Alfonso's brother Frederick at Porto Venere. Alfonso, terrified by a series of portents, as well as unusual dreams and despised by Neapolitans, he abdicated in favor of his son, Ferdinand II. He then fled to a Sicilian monastery. He died in Messina later that year.

Appearance and personality

At a young age he was described by ladies and ambassadors as a very handsome young man, "So pretty you couldn't say", but "so alive that he couldn't sit still for half an hour". Doctors and ambassadors were surprised by his physical endurance, as he was able to keep himself healthy while eating and drinking very little and often in a hurry, being continuously busy in different activities during the day and resting a few hours at night, which he spent continuously with his wife.

He was nicknamed "the Guercio" by the people because he had his left eye marked, but it is not known whether from illness, from injury or from birth. According to other historians, this was instead because of his grim look and the habit of looking crooked. Francesco Pansa judges instead that he was squinting.

He had exceptional military skills and spent most of his life on the battlefields, leading a soldier's life. Andrea Bernardi says that, following the death of the famous leader Roberto Sanseverino, Alfonso remained the first armigero of Italy.

However, he was greatly feared and hated by the Neapolitan people for his "most cruel insults and offenses", for the most heinous crimes, such as "violating virgins, taking other women for his pleasure", and practicing the "detestable and abominable vice of sodomy."

For example, the anonymous author of the Chronicum venetum – but it should be remembered that the Venetians were sworn enemies of the Neapolitans and of the Aragonese in particular – wrote that "wanting to narrate the tyranny, cruelty, lustful and dishonest appetites, betrayals, assassinations, and murders of King Ferrante and of Alfonso d'Aragona, his eldest son, Duke of Calabria, father of betrayals, conservative of rebels, a great book would not be enough for me: I believe that Nero was a saint among these tyrants." His wife Ippolita Maria Sforza herself experienced his cruelty. When newly married, jealous of her husband, she sent her own trusted servant, Donato, to keep an eye on Alfonso in his travels. Alfonso's reaction towards Donato was of such recklessness that Ippolita wrote to her mother: "This thing about Donato that I will never forget [...] not a wound to the heart, but I think it opened in the middle, so much was my pain and it will be".

It was no coincidence that, when the situation of the kingdom became desperate, Alfonso decided to abdicate in favor of his son, since he was so hated for his vices and cruelty as Ferrandino loved for his virtues and justice.

Mistresses

The Successi tragici et amorosi, by Silvio Ascanio Corona, is a seventeenth-century collection of novels revealing the purported secrets of the Aragonese court of Naples. It states that Alfonso had many mistresses, like his father Ferrante.

His first mistress was Isabella Stanza, bridesmaid of his mother Isabella of Chiaramonte; the relationship, however, did not last long. As soon as his mother – a very chaste and very religious woman – had a hint of the relationship, she married Isabella to Giovan Battista Rota, a nobleman very fond of the Aragonese faction, and thus separated her from Alfonso.

thumb|240px|Arms of Alfonso II, King of Naples, [[Knight of the Garter|KG|alt=]]

Poggio Reale, which Giorgio Vasari said was designed by Giuliano da Maiano and was laid out in the 1480s, has utterly disappeared and no extensive description has survived. Decades later, Vasari reported, "At Poggio Reale [Giuliano da Maiano] laid out the architecture of that palazzo, always considered a most beautiful thing; and to fresco it he brought there Pietro del Donzello, a Florentine, and Polito his brother who was considered in that time a good master, who painted the whole palazzo, inside and out, with the history of the said king." There are no archives to connect Giuliano or his brother Benedetto with the project; for documentation only a section and plan, reproduced with apologies for its inaccuracy, by Sebastiano Serlio. Serlio's reproduction seems to show an idealized plan, identical on all four sides, ranged around a court with a double arcading.

It is clear that the Aragonese court at Naples introduced the Moorish garden traditions of Valencia, with its shaded avenues and baths, sophisticated hydraulics that powered splendid waterworks, formal tanks, fishponds and fountains, as a luxurious and secluded setting for court life, and combined them with Roman features: Alfonso's Poggio Reale was built around three sides of an arcaded courtyard with tiers of seating round a sunken centre that could be flooded for water spectacles; on the fourth side it opened onto a garden that framed a spectacular view of Vesuvius.

It was all unlike anything experienced by the French king, who retreated from Italy, loaded with tapestries and works of art, and filled with building and gardening ambitions, but he would die young only three years later.

Marriage and children

Alfonso's spouse was Princess of Milan, Ippolita Maria Sforza, whom he married on 10 October 1465 in Milan. His mistress, by whom he also had children, was Trogia Gazzella.

He had three children with Ippolita Maria Sforza:

  • King Ferdinand II of Naples (26 August 1469 – October 1496), married Joanna of Naples
  • Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan and of Bari, Princess of Rossano (2 October 1470 – 11 February 1524), married her first cousin Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, January 1490.
  • Piero, Prince of Rossano (31 March 1472 – 17 February 1491), Lieutenant General of Apulia, died of an infection following leg surgery.

And two with Trogia Gazzella:

  • Sancia of Aragon, Princess of Squillace (1478–1506), married Gioffre Borgia in 1494.
  • Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglie and Prince of Salerno (1481 – 18 August 1500), married Lucrezia Borgia in 1498.

By Maria d'Avellanedo he had two sons, Francesco and Carlo, both of whom died at a young age.

Notes

References

  • Brief description of Poggio Reale