Historians have devoted very little attention to Ferrante d'Este, Duke Ercole I's second son. If he went down in history, it was because of his participation in Giulio d'Este's plot against his half-brother Alfonso, which ended up with Ferrante dying in prison in 1540 and Giulio being freed 19 years later. Besides this, only poor and fragmentary information can be found about Ferrante. But he deserves more.

Born in Naples in 1477, while his mother Eleonora d'Aragona was paying a visit to her father King Ferrante, Ercole's son spent most of his youth there, coming back to Ferrara at the age of 11. In 1493 he was sent to France to live at Charles VIII's court, from which he returned in 1497, after having accompanied the king's descent into Italy in 1494. Some months later, Ferrante managed to enter the service of Venice as a condottiero and the following year went to Tuscany with his company in order to defend Pisa against Florence. The campaign turned out to be a failure and d'Este with the rest of the Venetian army left Pisa in April 1499. After this inglorious experience, Ferrante's military career came to a stop and, until the already-mentioned plot against Alfonso, he led a courtly life with few events of any importance.

Only Lewis Lockwood has devoted some attention to Ferrante, studying his role as a musical amateur, yet d'Este also had some role as a patron of literature, for the poet Antonio Tebaldeo dedicated two of his rhymes to him.