Preeminent among these were Elizabetta Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, and Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua. The palace of the former--"that peerless lady who excelled all others in excellence"--was famous for its precious antiques in bronze and marble, but above all for its superb collection of rare old books and manuscripts in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Isabella d'Este, who was through life the most intimate friend of Elizabetta Gonzaga, was acclaimed by her contemporaries as "the first lady in the world." She was a true daughter of the Renaissance, in the heart of which she was brought up; and "the small, passing incidents of her everyday life are to us memorials of the classic age when the gods of Parnassus walked with men."[216] She was an even more enthusiastic collector than the Duchess of Urbino, and her magnificent palace in Mantua was filled with the choicest works of Greek and Roman art that were then procurable. She has been described as one who secured everything to which she took a fancy. She had but to hear of the discovery of a beautiful antique, a rare work in bronze or marble uncovered by the spade of the excavator, when she forthwith made an effort to procure it for her priceless collection. If that was not possible, she would not rest until she could secure something else even more precious. She aimed at supremacy in everything artistic and intellectual, and would be content with nothing short of perfection. Hence it is that her collection of antiques, like those of her friend, the Duchess of Urbino, is rightly regarded as having been of singular value in preparing the way for the foundation of scientific archaeology--a foundation that was laid by the eminent German scholar, Winckelmann, in the eighteenth century by the publication of his masterly work--_History of the Art of Antiquity_. The first woman of eminence to take an active part in archaeologic excavation was the youngest sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, "the beautiful, clever and ambitious Caroline." When Joachim Murat became king of Naples, after his brother-in-law, Joseph Bonaparte, had in 1808 been transferred to the throne of Spain, his wife, Queen Caroline, gave at once a new impetus to the work of the excavation of Pompeii along the lines planned a few years before by the eminent Neapolitan scholar, Michele Arditi. She exhibited the keenest interest in the work, and the notable discoveries which were made under her inspiring supervision of this important undertaking show how much classical archaeology owes to her intelligent and munificent patronage.