Rinascimento privato
 The book is divided into seven parts, interspersed with twelve letters by Robert de la Pole. The narrative is constructed as a long flashback that takes place in 1533, when the almost sixty Isabella is writing her memoirs in the so-called Clocks' Room, in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantova. Apart from some reference to the present or the distant past, the narrative takes place mostly in chronological order, from the year 1500 to 1533, precisely the date when Isabella comes out of that scene, ending the main events of his life (she then died in 1539).