Catherine Cornaro

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For the opera by Donizetti, see Caterina Cornaro (opera).
Catherine Cornaro
Gentile Bellini 002.jpg
Portrait by Gentile Bellini, c. 1500
Queen of Cyprus
Reign 26 August 1474 – 26 February 1489
Predecessor James III
Queen consort of Cyprus
Reign November 1472 - 10 July 1473
Born 25 November 1454
Venice, Republic of Venice
Died 10 July 1510 (aged 55)
Venice
Spouse James II of Cyprus
Issue James III of Cyprus
House Cornaro
Father Marco Cornaro
Mother Fiorenza Crispo

Catherine Cornaro (Greek: Αικατερίνη Κορνάρο, Venetian: Catarina Corner) (25 November 1454 – 10 July 1510) was the last monarch of the Kingdom of Cyprus. She was queen consort of Cyprus by marriage to James II of Cyprus, regent of Cyprus during the minority of her son James III of Cyprus in 1473–1474, and finally queen regnant of Cyprus. She reigned from 26 August 1474 to 26 February 1489 and was declared a "Daughter of Saint Mark" in order that the Republic of Venice could claim control of Cyprus after the death of her husband, James II.[1]

Life

Catherine was a daughter of Venetian Marco Cornaro, Cavaliere del Sacro Romano Impero (Knight of the Holy Roman Empire) and Fiorenza Crispo. She was the younger sister of the Nobil Huomo Giorgio Cornaro (1452 – 31 July 1527), "Padre della Patria" and Knight of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Cornaro family had produced four Doges.[2] Her family had long associations with Cyprus, especially with regard to trade and commerce.[2] In the Episkopi area, in the Limassol District, the Cornaro family administered various sugar mills and exported Cypriot products to Venice.[3]

Catherine was painted by Dürer, Titian, Bellini and Giorgione.[4]

Queen consort

In 1468, James II, otherwise known as James the Bastard, became king of Cyprus.[5] In 1468 Caterina, through negotiations by her father and uncle, was offered to James as his wife.[5] The marriage was extremely advantageous to the Republic of Venice as it could henceforth secure the commercial rights and other privileges of Venice in Cyprus. They married in Venice on 30 July 1468 by proxy when she was 14 years old. She finally set sail to Cyprus in November 1472 and married James in person at Famagusta.[6]

Reign

James died soon after the wedding due to a sudden illness and, according to his will, Caterina, who at the time was pregnant, acted as regent. She became monarch when their infant son James III died in August 1474 before his first birthday, probably from illness even if it was rumored that he had been poisoned by Venice or Charlotte's partisans.[7]

The kingdom had long since declined, and had been a tributary state of the Mameluks since 1426. Under Caterina, who ruled Cyprus from 1474 to 1489, the island was controlled by Venetian merchants, and on 14 March 1489 she was forced to abdicate and sell the administration of the country to the Republic of Venice.[8]

According to George Boustronios:

"on 15 February 1489 the queen exited from Nicosia in order to go to Famagusta, to leave [Cyprus]. And when she went on horseback wearing a black silken cloak, with all the ladies and the knights in her company [...] Her eyes, moreover did not cease to shed tears throughout the procession. The people likewise shed many tears."[9]

In February 1489, the Venetian government persuaded Catherine to cede her rights as ruler of Cyprus to the doge of Venice—and by extension the Venetian government as a whole—as she had no heir.[10]

File:Tiziano, ritratto postumo di caterina corner come santa caterina d'alessandria, 1542 (cropped).jpg
1542 portrait by Titian

Later life

The last Crusader state became a colony of Venice, and as compensation, Catherine was allowed to retain the title of queen and was made lady of Asolo, a county on the Terraferma[11] of the Republic of Venice in the Veneto region, in 1489. Asolo soon gained a reputation as a court of literary and artistic distinction, mainly as a result of it being the fictitious setting for Pietro Bembo's platonic dialogues on love, Gli Asolani. Caterina died in Venice in 1510.[12]

  • San Salvador Interno - Tomb of Caterina Cornaro.jpg

    Her grave

  • San Salvador Interno - Monument to Catherine Cornaro.jpg

    Her funeral monument

Legacy

A libretto based on her life by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges formed the basis of the operas Catharina Cornaro (1841) by Franz Lachner,[13] La reine de Chypre (1841) by Fromental Halévy,[14] and Caterina Cornaro (1844) by Gaetano Donizetti.[15]

The Cornaro Institute, a charitable organisation founded by the artist Stass Paraskos in the city of Larnaca, for the promotion of art and other culture,[16] memorialised her name in Cyprus, prior to its closure by Larnaca Municipality in 2017.

Also in Cyprus, in October 2011, the Cyprus Antiquities Department announced Caterina Cornaro's partially ruined summer palace in Potamia would be renovated in a one million euro restoration project, becoming a cultural centre.[17][18] Work is on going in Potamia by craftsmen from the Department of Antiquities to renovate Caterina Cornaro's Summer Palace with about half now completed.

References

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Sources

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Further reading

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  • Hadjikyriakos, Iosif. Caterina Depicted. Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 9. Ed: A. V. Zakharova, S. V. Maltseva, E. Iu. Staniukovich-Denisova. Lomonosov Moscow State University / St. Petersburg, NP-Print, 2019, pp. 686–691. ISSN 2312-2129.
Royal titles
Preceded by Queen consort of Cyprus
1472–1473		 Kingdom dissolved
Regnal titles
Preceded by Queen regnant of Cyprus
1474–1489		 Kingdom dissolved

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  1. ↑ Wills, Garry. Venice, Lion City (New York, Simon and Schuster, 2001), 136.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 De Girolami Cheney 2013, p. 11.
  3. ↑ McNeill 1974, p. 76.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 De Girolami Cheney 2013, p. 16.
  6. ↑ Luke 1975, p. 388.
  7. ↑ Luke 1975, p. 389.
  8. ↑ Mellersh & Williams 1999, p. 569.
  9. ↑ Philippe Trélat, "Urbanization and urban identity in Nicosia 13th-16th. Centuries", in "Proceedings of the 10th Annual Meeting of Young Researchers in Cypriot Archaeology", Venice, 2010, p.152
  10. ↑ "CORNARO, CATERINA", "Women in the Middle Ages" Greendwoods Press 2004, p. 221
  11. ↑ The mainland territories of the Republic of Venice were referred to as the Terraferma in the Veneto dialect. Source:Logan, Oliver Culture and Society in Venice, 1470-1790; the Renaissance and its heritage, Batsford 1972
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Demetra Molyva, 'Palace of Cyprus’s last queen to be restored' in The Cyprus Weekly (Cyprus newspaper), 7 October 2011
  18. ↑ Di Cesnola, L. P. Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples, 2015.
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