Filippa Duci (french: Philippe Desducs; 1520,

Moncalieri Moncalieri (; pms, Moncalé ) is a town and ''comune'' of 56,134 inhabitants (31 January 2022) about directly south of downtown Turin (to whose Metropolitan City it belongs), in Piedmont, Italy. It is the most populous suburb of Turin and it is ...

, Piedmont – before October 1586, near

Tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the prefecture of the department of Indre-et-Loire. The commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabitants as of 2018 while the population of the whole metr ...

), dame de Couy, was a French (originally Italian) courtesan. She was the mother of

Diane de France Diane de France, ''suo jure'' Duchess of Angoulême (25 July 1538 – 11 January 1619) was the natural (illegitimate) daughter of Henry II of France. She played an important political role during the French Wars of Religion and built the H� ...

Life

Her father was Gian Antonio Duci. During the

Italian Wars The Italian Wars, also known as the Habsburg–Valois Wars, were a series of conflicts covering the period 1494 to 1559, fought mostly in the Italian peninsula, but later expanding into Flanders, the Rhineland and the Mediterranean Sea. The pr ...

in 1537, the French dauphin Henry (later

Henry II of France Henry II (french: Henri II; 31 March 1519 – 10 July 1559) was King of France from 31 March 1547 until his death in 1559. The second son of Francis I and Duchess Claude of Brittany, he became Dauphin of France upon the death of his elder broth ...

) stayed with a squire, Filippa's brother, Gian Antonio Duci. Henry was

seduce Seduction has multiple meanings. Platonically, it can mean "to persuade to disobedience or disloyalty", or "to lead astray, usually by persuasion or false promises". Strategies of seduction include conversation and sexual scripts, paralingual ...

d by Filippa on first sight, and she became his mistress. When Henri heard Duci was pregnant, he arranged for her to be maintained until she gave birth. Duci gave birth to their daughter, Diane de France, in Paris in 1538. This proved that Henry was not sterile; he had been married to Catherine de Médici, yet had still not produced an heir due to urological problems. The baby was named Diane after Henry's love, his mistress Diane de Poitiers, who raised the child along with her own two children. In 1541,

Francis I of France Francis I (french: François Ier; frm, Francoys; 12 September 1494 – 31 March 1547) was King of France from 1515 until his death in 1547. He was the son of Charles, Count of Angoulême, and Louise of Savoy. He succeeded his first cousin onc ...

granted Duci 400 a year for life in an Ordinaire de Touraine and allowed her to retire to a convent. She married the Italian gentleman and

privy councillor A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a state, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the mon ...

Jean Bernardin de Saint-Severin in 1546. After Diane was legitimized, Filippa was known as dame de Bléré en Touraine. In 1582, she became a

lady in waiting A lady-in-waiting or court lady is a female personal assistant at a court, attending on a royal woman or a high-ranking noblewoman. Historically, in Europe, a lady-in-waiting was often a noblewoman but of lower rank than the woman to whom ...

to queen dowager Catherine de Médici.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Duci, Filippa 1520 births 16th-century deaths 16th-century Italian women Mistresses of Henry II of France French ladies-in-waiting Household of Catherine de' Medici