Princess Isabella Maria of Parma

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Maria Isabella painted by Jean-Marc Nattier

Isabella Maria of Parma, (Italian: Maria Elisabetta Luisa Antonietta Ferdinanda Giuseppina Saveria Dominica Giovanna Borbone, principessa di Parma) (December 31, 1741 – November 27, 1763), was the daughter of Philip, Duke of Parma and his wife Louise-Elisabeth, eldest daughter of Louis XV of France. She grew up at Philip V's court in Madrid, but when her father became Duke of Parma the family moved to the duchy in northern Italy.

Isabella learned to play the violin, and she also read books by philosophers and theologians like Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet or John Law. She sometimes became melancholic and, after her mother's death in 1759, was often preoccupied with thoughts about death.

On October 6, 1760, at the age of 18, she was married to Archduke Joseph of Austria, heir of the Habsburg Monarchy. She quickly charmed the court in Vienna with her beauty and intelligence; apparently Isabella could solve difficult mathematical problems.

She and Joseph's sister Maria Christina quickly became best friends. Although they met every day, they also wrote letters to each other. In one letter she professes her love for Maria Christina: "I am writing you again, cruel sister, though I have only just left you. I cannot bear waiting to know my fate, and to learn whether you consider me a person worthy of your love, or whether you would like to throw me into the river.... I can think of nothing but that I am deeply in love. If I only knew why this is so, for you are so without mercy that one should not love you, but I cannot help myself.". In a different letter she wrote: "I am told that the day begins with God. I, however, begin the day by thinking of the object of my love, for I think of her incessantly."

She gave birth to two children, Maria Theresia, in 1762, and Marie Christine in 1763. Marie Christine (named after her sister-in-law) died at birth and Isabella herself died a few days later from smallpox. Her daughter Maria Theresia died in January 1770 from pneumonia.

She is buried in Maria Theresa's vault in the imperial crypt vaults in Vienna, Austria.

In 1765, her father-in-law Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor died and her husband succeeded him as Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II.