When Monteverdi arrived in Mantua, he stepped from the provincial Cremonese environment into one of the most cosmopolitan and artistically ambitious courts of northern Italy. Under the Gonzagas’ rule, Mantua had been for over a century an important commercial centre, and its financial resources had fuelled the patronage goals – musical, artistic, and literary – of a succession of rulers: in the first decades of the sixteenth century the Marquis Francesco and his wife, Isabella d'Este, established a permanent musical chapel and through their court composers, Marco Cara and Bartolomeo Tromboncino, cultivated the development of such Italian vernacular forms as the frottola; Duke Federico II and in particular his brother, Cardinal Ercole, enhanced the sacred cappella; Guglielmo, himself a competent composer, built the basilica of Santa Barbara and as a strongly religious ruler fostered primarily sacred music, employing such composers as Alessandro Striggio, Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi, Giaches de Wert, and Benedetto Pallavicino, as well as maintaining a correspondence with Palestrina, whom he tried to hire and from whom he sought advice on his own compositions; and Monteverdi's direct employer, Vincenzo I, sought to make Mantuan music competitive in its forward-looking style with that of the Ferrarese court under Alfonso II d'Este, encouraging the composition of secular works by Wert, Pallavicino and Monteverdi himself.