There were four brothers who became in turn Dukes of Hanover: Christian Louis, George William, John Frederick, and Ernest Augustus.[125] All four were under the spell of France and Italy. They passed the greater part of their time away from their own States, choosing Venice for preference. George William married morganatically a French lady of the noble family of Poitou, Eléonora d'Olbreuse. John Frederick was pensioned by Louis XIV, and became Catholic. He took Versailles for his model, and founded an Opera in 1672 at Hanover. He had also the acumen to call Leibnitz into his States,[126] but he took great care on his side that he should remain there. He died in the course of a journey to Venice. Ernest Augustus, who succeeded him, in 1680, was the patron of Steffani. He married the beautiful and intelligent Duchess Sophia, a Palatine princess, stepdaughter of James I Stuart, aunt of the Palatine of France, and sister of the Princess Elizabeth, friend of Descartes.[127] She herself was the friend and correspondent of Leibnitz, who admired her. She had great intellectual gifts, spoke seven languages, read widely, and had a natural taste for the beautiful. "No one had greater gifts," said Madame her niece, Michel de Montaigne. With great lucidity of thought, decidedly outspoken, she professed an epicurean materialism of great superiority and intelligence.[128] Her husband valued her little, but he was brilliant and ostentatious. They were the most polished and distinguished couple in Germany at the Court of Hanover.[129] Both loved music, but Ernest Augustus seems never to have dreamt that it existed anywhere outside of Italy, and he might almost as well have been called the "Duke of Venice" as the Duke of Hanover, for he was constantly in Venice, and never wished to leave it for long.[130]