San Domenico Maggiore. On the sarcophagus of Isabella there is a quatrain wrote by certain Hieronymus Sforza, which called her a descendant of a hundred kings. The inscription alluded to the antiquity of the Duchess' family, which on the distaff side came from Charlemagne. In 2012, anthropologists excavated the body of Isabella, and concluded that she had syphilis. Her teeth had a high level of mercury, which was used (ineffectively) to treat syphilis, and had given a black color to the tooth enamel, most of which had been removed by abrading. They concluded that she was poisoned by her own medicine. Appearance and personality Many historians, especially nineteenth-century, spoke of a phantom beauty of Isabella, facilitated in this by the scarcity of her certain portraits and by the undoubted beauty of those who, although traditionally attributed, clearly do not depict her. Among these there were those who even went so far as to attribute to envy for her beauty the heated hostility of Beatrice d'Este towards her cousin: "Beatrice could not suffer that the beauty of Isabella was praised in her presence, imagining thus reproaching her for her ugliness". Indeed, if Beatrice was always described by her contemporaries as pretty, although not of exceptional beauty, contemporary sources agree in defining Isabella as unpleasant. Ambassador Giacomo Trotti, always frank in his judgments, in describing Isabella on the occasion of her wedding, turns the concept around with a polite euphemism, writing to Duke Ercole d'Este that "this new Duchess is dark-faced and not very beautiful" , but immediately states that, beyond the physical aspect, she is beautiful inside: "she has a kind and beautiful personality". Conversely, "el Duca [Gian Galeazzo] is beautiful and delicious". Ambrogio da Corte, one of the courtiers charged with leading her from Naples to Milan, even describes her as "ugly, black, cross-eyed, too much made up, and her breath stinks": probably exaggerates, but Isabella did indeed have a dark complexion, a thick and slightly hooked nose, the swollen cheeks typical of the Aragonese, and it is also possible that she had inherited a certain degree ofstrabismusfrom her father, sinceAlfonso IIwas called il Guercio. Ludovico Sforza considered her of a very bad nature: proud, envious, malignant and ungrateful, capable of all sorts of evil and cruelty towards those she hated. No doubt Isabella inherited from her Aragonese relatives the indomitable pride and combativeness, and was not afraid to resort