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Genealogy of the House of Este
The Este featured among the most ancient Italian dynastic Signorie and - especially after the fall of the Scaligeri, the Carraresi and the Visconti - did not take pains to hide a profound awareness of their position.
This was the reason that prompted a wealth of commissions concerning genealogical treatises, whose propagandistic contents were aimed at giving evidence of the oldest - and thereby noblest - origins of the Este dynasty compared to other houses over the Italian peninsula.
Since the close of the XV century such literates as Pellegrino Prisciani would be devoting accurate studies to the ancient blood ties connecting the Este to the most illustrious European families, last but not least the Imperial house.
In the following century those studies would have contributed to one of the major encomiastic literary production elicited by the “dispute over precedence” engaged with the Medici, with whom the Este rivalled as regarded the right to come first in the hierarchy established among the reigning dynasties. Both Italian Houses boasted a special right of precedence in having obtained the ducal title, and this very querelle would have occasioned several Este commissions of family trees to Gaspare Sardi, Girolamo Falletti, Giambattista Pigna and others.
The Castle was particularly involved in these ostentatious initiatives: in 1577 the walls of the courtyard were decorated all over with a gigantic painted genealogy portraying the forefathers of the House of Este, devised and partly invented by Pirro Ligorio, soon left to decline after the devolution of the city to the Holy See in 1598.
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