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Camilla Faà di Bruno


Camilla Faà di Bruno, also da Casale, also Camilla Faà Gonzaga (c. 1599 – 14 July 1662) was an Italian noble who was married secretly, briefly and morganatically to Ferdinando the Gonzaga Duke of Mantua and Duke of Montferrat. Repudiated by her husband she became a nun and the sixteen page memoir which she wrote in 1622 at the behest of her Mother Superior has been described as the first prose autobiography written by an Italian woman. Her story was the subject of Paolo Giacometti’s historical drama Camilla Faa da Casale, first performed at the Teatro Nuovo, Florence on 29 October 1846.

She was born to Margherita Fassati and Ardizzino Faà, Count of Bruno, a military man and diplomat. The young Camilla became one of the many companions of the duchess Margherita di Savoia at the Gonzaga court of Casale: capital of the Duchy of Montferrat of which Margherita’s husband Francesco Gonzaga was governor. In February 1612 Francesco’s father Vincenzo died. Francesco succeeded him as Duke of Mantua and of Montferrat and the court transferred from Casale to Mantua where, on 22 December of the same year Francesco himself died during an outbreak of smallpox.

His successor as Duke was Ferdinando, until then a cardinal at Rome with a reputation as a womaniser. The 16-year-old Camilla, now a great beauty and known to all as La bella Ardizzina, became the object of his attention: attentions which she resisted, however, to the point that he was first obliged to promise marriage in writing and then actually to marry her. The nuptials took place in secret on 19 February 1616 in the chapel of the Palazzo Ducale and Camilla became pregnant shortly afterwards.


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