Education
She was educated with her brothers and was among the brightest of the children.
She was educated with her brothers and was among the brightest of the children.
She was engaged to Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, but died at the age of seventeen, before the marriage could take place. She grew into an elegant, highly educated, and decorous young woman. According to one unreliable legend, recounted in Edgcumbe Staley"s The Tragedies of the Medici, Maria was lovely and kept closely guarded from men, but managed to meet a young lover, Malatesta de" Malatesti, in secret.
According to the story, she was stabbed in the heart by her father after he caught the young lovers together.
Cosimo then supposedly put out the story that she had died of a spotted fever and threw her young lover in prison. Other more accurate accounts indicate that Maria"s cause of death was probably malaria.
She died in Livorno. "She was of the same disposition as myself," said Cosimo, "and she was deprived of fresh air." Her sister Lucrezia di Cosimo de Medici later married Alfonso.
Maike Vogt-Lüerssen argued in an article in Medicea – Rivista interdisciplinare di studi medicei that portraits of Maria have been misidentified by art historians during the past 500 years. She identified the girl as Maria because of the similarity in facial features between the subjects of each of the latter two portraits.
Quotations: "She was of the same disposition as myself," said Cosimo, "and she was deprived of fresh air.".
She was a member of the famous Medici family.