Dorotea Malatesta (26 April 1478 – 1509) was an Italian noblewoman and the mistress of Cesare Borgia from 1500 to 1503. She was abducted by her lover while she was on the way to marry the Venetian general Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, and she remained his lover until her release in 1503.
Biography[]
Dorotea Malatesta was born in Rimini in 1478, the daughter of Pandolfo IV Malatesta, and she was raised at the court of the wife of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro. She was married by proxy to Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, commander of the Venetian army's infantry. In 1500, Cesare Borgia was asked by ambassador Antonio Giustiniani to escort Malatesta from Rimini to Venice to meet her husband, but the two of them had sex together, and she became a lover of his. During the transfer near Cesena, Cesare Borgia's men ambushed her escort and reclaimed her, and Ambassador Giustiniani headed to confront Borgia about her abduction. Borgia blamed the incident on Diego Ramires, a former Ferraran courtier, and he kept Malatesta by his side; this threatened to lead to a breakdown of the vital alliance between the Republic of Venice and the Papal States. In 1503, she was released with the apologies of the House of Borgia. She died in Venice in 1509.