Maria Caterina Farnese
Duchess of Modena and Reggio
Maria Caterina Farnese (18 February 1615 – 15 August 1646) was a member of the Ducal House of Farnese. She was Duchess of Modena as the first wife of Francesco I d'Este, Duke of Modena. In some sources she is known simply as Maria Farnese.
Biography
Maria Caterina was born in Parma to Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma and his wife, Donna Margherita Aldobrandini. Her mother was Margherita Aldobrandini, daughter of Gianfrancesco and Olimpia Aldobrandini.
Maria was engaged to Francesco I d'Este, Duke of Modena, son of Alfonso III d'Este, Duke of Modena and Princess Isabella of Savoy. She married Francesco on 11 January 1631 in Parma.
Maria died 15 August 1646, having given birth to a son. She died at the Ducal Palace of Sassuolo outside Modena, the summer residence of the Dukes of Modena.
Issue
Maria and Francesco had:
Alfonso d'Este, Hereditary Prince of Modena (1632) died in infancy.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Maria Caterina Farnese” as duchess of Modena and Reggio. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as duchess of Modena and Reggio. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2445165. VIAF identifies the subject as 89050306. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1615, 1646, 1631 and 1632.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Maria Caterina Farnese” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.