Camilla Faà

Repudiated by her husband she became a nun and the sixteen page[1] memoir which she wrote in 1622 at the behest of her Mother Superior[2] has been described as the first prose autobiography written by an Italian woman.

[3] 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.

It appears that initially, Ferdinand wanted to maintain the marriage: in August he granted her the marquisate of Mombaruzzo and the income from various territories in Montferrat and in the area of Acqui.

Either out of fear that she would flee to the enemy or for her own protection from them, she was moved from Bruno to the Castle of the Paleologi at Casale, one of the most heavily fortified cities in Italy.

Camilla Faà di Bruno died on 14 July 1662 at the age of 63 in the convent of Corpus Domini where she was buried next to an earlier beauty of Ferrara, Lucrezia Borgia.