Princess Vittoria seems to have merited the affections of her relations, so warmly expressed in these and many similar letters. On arriving at her future capital, she had been placed for education in a convent, where her progress was so rapid that before she was eight years old, she composed as well as penned her letters, and within two other years could write them in Spanish. From the period of her betrothal, she was always addressed as Grand Duchess, and her marriage was privately celebrated in 1633, when she was under twelve, her husband being then double her age. Four years later, the public celebration of this union took place with suitable demonstrations of joy, and in due time it produced two sons, Cosimo, afterwards Grand Duke, and Francesco Maria, Cardinal de' Medici. In her grandson, the Grand Duke Giovanni Gaston, the male line of the Medici expired in 1737, when their state passed to the house of Lorraine. The portraits of Vittoria preserved in the Pitti Gallery represent her as an overgrown but comely matron, of good-humoured expression. Her matured character did not realise its early promise. Proud, vain, suspicious, and weak, she inherited her grandfather's predilection for the society of priests; and her bigotry, increasing with her years, so contrasted with the frank and lively temperament of her husband, that a separation became advisable. These faults she transmitted to her favourite son Cosimo, under whose reign they bred many public evils. She died in 1694, after twenty-four years of widowhood, disliked by her subjects as much as her husband had been esteemed. The Duchess Livia retired a few weeks after her bereavement to her paternal estate of Castel Leo, near Sassoferrato, where she lived in great retirement, and in religious exercises, varied by visits to Assisi and Loreto. She left her whole property to her granddaughter the Grand Duchess Vittoria.