ENWhile the Polish nobility were not ready for a queen who refused to play a purely domestic role, Bona Sforza was well prepared to expand the functions of Polish queenship.4 A member of the dynasty that had ruled the Duchy of Milan since the mid-fifteenth century, Bona was Poland's most powerful early modern queen consort; as historian Katarzyna Kosior has observed, "the line between regnant and consort were blurred in the eyes of some of her subjects".5 She was also Poland's first Italian queen, pollinating the Polish royal court with the artistic and intellectual sensibilities of the Italian Renaissance as well as an Italian understanding of statecraft. Bona's mother and paternal grandmother provided her with models upon which she constructed her own expansive version of Polish queenship.6.