Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497
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Title: Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497
Author: Julia Cartwright
Release date: May 27, 2008 [eBook #25622]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Bianca Sforza by Ambrogio de Predis. (Ambrosiana)]
BEATRICE D'ESTE
DUCHESS OF MILAN
1475-1497
_A STUDY OF THE RENAISSANCE_
BY
JULIA CARTWRIGHT
(MRS HENRY ADY)
_Author of_ "_Madame_," "_Sacharissa_," "_J. F. Millet_"
[Illustration]
1910
LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
_First Edition, November, 1899_
_Second Edition, June, 1903_
_Third Edition, November, 1903_
_Fourth Edition February, 1905_
_Fifth Edition, July, 1908_
_Sixth Edition, May, 1910_
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE
During the last twenty years the patient researches of successive
students in the archives of North Italian cities have been richly
rewarded. The State papers of Milan and Venice, of Ferrara and Modena,
have yielded up their treasures; the correspondence of Isabella d'Este,
in the Gonzaga archives at Mantua, has proved a source of inexhaustible
wealth and knowledge. A flood of light has been thrown on the history of
Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; public events and
personages have been placed in a new aspect; the judgments of posterity
have been modified and, in some instances, reversed.
We see now, more clearly than ever before, what manner of men and women
these Estes and Gonzagas, these Sforzas and Viscontis, were. We gain
fresh insight into their characters and aims, their secret motives and
private wishes. We see them in their daily occupations and amusements,
at their work and at their play. We follow them from the battle-field
and council chamber, from the chase and tournament, to the privacy of
domestic life and the intimate scenes of the family circle. And we
realize how, in spite of the tragic stories or bloodshed and strife that
darkened their lives, in spite, too, of the low standard of morals and
of the crimes and vices that we are accustomed to associate with
Renaissance princes, there was a rare measure of beauty and goodness, of
culture and refinement, of love of justice and zeal for truth, among
them. As the latest historian of the Papacy, Dr. Pastor, has wisely
remarked, we must take care not to paint the state of morals during the
Italian Renaissance blacker than it really was. Virtue goes quietly on
her way, while vice is noisy and uproarious; the criminal forces
himself upon the public attention, while the honest man does his duty in
silence, and no one hears of him. This is especially the case with the
women of the Renaissance. They had their faults and their weaknesses,
but the great majority among them led pure and irreproachable lives, and
trained their children in the paths of truth and duty. Even Lucrezia
Borgia, although she may not have been altogether immaculate, was not
the foul creature that we once believed. And the more closely we study
these newly discovered documents, the more we become convinced that this
age produced some of the most admirable types of womanhood that the
world has ever seen. When Castiglione painted his ideal woman in the
pages of the "Cortigiano," he had no need to draw on his imagination.
Elizabeth Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, and Isabella d'Este, Marchioness
of Mantua, were both of them women of great intellect and stainless
virtue, whose genuine love of art and letters attracted the choicest
spirits to their court, and exerted the most beneficial influence on the
thought of the day. Isabella, whose vast correspondence with the
foremost painters and scholars of the age has been preserved almost
intact, was probably the most remarkable lady of the Renaissance. The
story of her long and eventful life--a theme of absorbing interest--yet
remains to be written. The present work is devoted to the history of her
younger sister, Beatrice, Duchess of Milan, who, as the wife of Lodovico
Sforza, reigned during six years over the most splendid court of Italy.
The charm of her personality, the important part which she played in
political life at a critical moment of Italian history, her love of
music and poetry, and the fine taste which she inherited, in common with
every princess of the house of Este, all help to make Beatrice
singularly attractive, while the interest which she inspires is deepened
by the pathos of her sudden and early death.
If in Isabella we have the supreme representative of Renaissance culture
in its highest and most intellectual phase, Beatrice is the type of that
new-found joy in life, that intoxicating rapture in the actual sense of
existence, that was the heritage of her generation, and found
expression in the words of a contemporary novelist, Matteo
Bandello--himself of Lombard birth--when with his last breath he bade
his companions live joyously, "_Vivete lieti!_" We see this bride of
sixteen summers flinging herself with passionate delight into every
amusement, singing gay songs with her courtiers, dancing and hunting
through the livelong day, outstripping all her companions in the chase,
and laughing in the face of danger. We see her holding her court in the
famous Castello of Porta Giovia or in the summer palaces of Vigevano and
Cussago, in these golden days when Milan was called the new Athens, when
Leonardo and Bramante decorated palaces or arranged masquerades at the
duke's bidding, when Gaspare Visconti wrote sonnets in illuminated
books, and Lorenzo da Pavia constructed organs or viols as perfect and
beautiful to see as to hear, for the pleasure of the youthful duchess.
Scholars and poets, painters and writers, gallant soldiers and
accomplished cavaliers, we see them all at Beatrice's feet, striving how
best they may gratify her fancies and win her smiles. Young and old,
they were alike devoted to her service, from Galeazzo di Sanseverino,
the valiant captain who became her willing slave and chosen companion,
to Niccolo da Correggio, that all-accomplished gentleman who laid down
his pen and sword to design elaborate devices for his mistress's new
gowns. We read her merry letters to her husband and sister, letters
sparkling with wit and gaiety and overflowing with simple and natural
affection. We see her rejoicing with all a young mother's proud delight
over her first-born son, repeating, as mothers will, marvellous tales of
his size and growth, and framing tender phrases for his infant lips. And
we catch glimpses of her, too, in sadder moods, mourning her mother's
loss or wounded by neglect and unkindness. We note how keenly her proud
spirit resents wrong and injustice, and how in her turn she is not
always careful of the rights and feelings of her rivals. But whatever
her faults and mistakes may have been, she is always kindly and
generous, human and lovable. A year or two passes, and we see her,
royally arrayed in brocade and jewels, standing up in the great council
hall of Venice, to plead her husband's cause before the Doge and
Senate. Later on we find her sharing her lord's counsels in court and
camp, receiving king and emperor at Pavia or Vigevano, fascinating the
susceptible heart of Charles VIII. by her charms, and amazing Kaiser
Maximilian by her wisdom and judgment in affairs of state. And then
suddenly the music and dancing, the feasting and travelling, cease, and
the richly coloured and animated pageant is brought to an abrupt close.
Beatrice dies, without a moment's warning, in the flower of youth and
beauty, and the young duchess is borne to her grave in S. Maria delle
Grazie amid the tears and lamentations of all Milan. And with her death,
the whole Milanese state, that fabric which Lodovico Sforza had built up
at such infinite cost and pains, crumbles into ruin. Fortune, which till
that hour had smiled so kindly on the Moro and had raised him to giddy
heights of prosperity, now turned her back upon him. In three short
years he had lost everything--crown, home, and liberty--and was left to
drag out a miserable existence in the dungeons of Berry and Touraine.
"And when Duchess Beatrice died," wrote the poet, Vincenzo Calmeta,
"everything fell into ruin, and that court, which had been a joyous
paradise, was changed into a black Inferno."
Then Milan and her people become a prey to the rude outrages of French
soldiery. Leonardo's great horse was broken in pieces by Gascon archers,
and the Castello, "which had once held the finest flower of the whole
world, became," in Castiglione's words, "a place of drinking-booths and
dung-hills." The treasures of art and beauty stored up within its walls
were destroyed by barbarous hands, and all that brilliant company was
dispersed and scattered abroad. Artists and poets, knights and
scholars--Leonardo and Bramante, Galeazzo and Niccolo--were driven out,
and went their way each in a different direction, to seek new homes and
other patrons. But the memory of the young duchess--the _Donna beata_ of
Pistoja and Visconti's song--lived for many a year in the hearts of her
loyal servants, Castiglione enshrined her name in his immortal pages,
Ariosto celebrated her virtues in the cantos of his "Orlando Furioso,"
and far on in the new century, grey-headed scholars spoke of her as
"_la più zentil Donna d'Italia_"--the sweetest lady in all Italy.
And to-day, as we pace the dim aisles of the great Certosa, we may look
on the marble effigy of Duchess Beatrice and see the lovely face with
the curling locks and child-like features which the Lombard sculptor
carved, and which still bears witness to the love of Lodovico Sforza for
his young wife.
* * * * *
In conclusion, I must acknowledge how deeply I am indebted to Signor
Luzio, keeper of the Gonzaga archives at Mantua, and to his able
colleague, Signor Renier, for the assistance which they have lent to my
researches, as well as for the help afforded by their own publications,
in which many of Isabella and Beatrice d'Este's most interesting letters
have already been given to the world. The State archives of Milan and
Mantua are the principal sources from which the information contained in
the present volume is drawn, and a list of the other authorities which
have been consulted is given below.
ITALIAN.
Archivio di Stato di Milano, _Beatrice d'Este, Potenze
estere_, etc.
Archivio Gonzaga Mantova, _Copia lettera d'Isabella d'Este_,
etc.
A. Luzio and R. Renier, _Delle Relazioni di Isabella d'Este
Gonzaga con Ludovico and Beatrice Sforza_. Archivio Storico
lombardo, xvii.
T. Chalcus, _Residua_. Milano, 1644.
Archivio Storico Italiano, serie i. vol. iii.; Cronache
Milanesi di G. A. Prato, G. P. Cagnola, G. M. Burigozzo, etc.;
Serie iii. vol. xii., Serie v. vol. vi., Serie vii. vol. i.
L. A. Muratori, _Italicarum Rerum Scriptores_, vol. xxiv.
F. Muralti, _Annalia_.
Paolo Giovio, _Storia di suoi Tempi_.
Marino Sanuto, _Diarii, De Bello Gallico_, etc.
Bernardino Corio, _Historie Milanese_.
Rosmini, _Storia di Milano_.
Fr. Guicciardini, _Storia a'Italia_. Rendered into English by
G. Fenton. 1618.
F. Frizzi, _Storia di Ferrara_, vols. iv. and v.
P. Verri, _Storia di Milano_.
Baldassare Castiglione, _Lettere_. Edizione Serassi.
R. Renier, _Sonetti di Pistoia_.
Giornale Storico di Letteratura Italiano, vols. v. and vi.
Archivio Storico dell' Arte, vols. i. and ii.
Renier, _Canzoniere di Niccolo da Correggio_.
A. Campo Ghisolfo, _Storia delle Duchesse di Milano_. 1542.
Rivista Storica Mantovana.
Carlo Magenta, _I Visconti e Sforza nel Castello di Pavia_.
F. Calvi, _Bianca Maria Sforza Visconti, Regina dei Romani,
Imperatrice di Germania_.
Marchese d'Adda, _Indagini sulla Liberia Visconti Sforzesca
del Castello di Pavia_.
Malipiero, _Annali Veneti_.
Romanini, _Storia di Venezia_, vols. v. and vi.
Imhoff, _Historia Genealogica Italiæ_.
G. Uzielli, _Ricerche intorno a Leonardo da Vinci_.
G. Uzielli, _Leonardo da Vinci e Tre Gentil donne Milanesi_.
G. d'Adda, _Lodovico Maria Sforza_.
L. Beltrami, _Il Castello di Milano, sotto il dominio degli
Sforza_. 1450-1535.
L. Beltrami, _Bramante poeta_.
Padre Pino, _Storia genuina del Cenacolo_. 1796.
B. Bellincioni, _Le Rime annotate da P. Fanfani_. Bologna.
G. Tiraboschi, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vols. vi.
and vii.
P. Molmenti, _La Vita Privata di Venezia_.
A. Rusconi, _Lodovico il Moro a Novara_.
F. Gabotto, _Girolamo Tuttavilla_.
G. L. Calvi, _Notizie dei principali Professori di Belle Arti
che fiorivano in Milano_.
G. Mongeri, _L'Arte in Milano_.
C. Amoretti, _Memorie Storiche sulla vita gli studi e le opere
di Leonardo da Vinci_.
Brigola, _Annali della Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano_.
Carlo dell'Acqua, _Lorenza Gusnasco di Pavia_.
P. Pasolini, _Caterina Sforza_.
FRENCH.
Manuscrits Italiens, _Affaires d'état_. Bibliothèque
Nationale.
Pasquier le Moine, _MS. La Conquête du Duché de Milan_.
Bibliothèque Nationale.
Jean d'Auton, _Chroniques de Louis XII_. Edition publiée pour
la Société de l'Histoire de France, par R. de Maulde La
Claviere. 4 vols.
Philippe de Commines, _Memoires_. Nouvelle edition publiée par
la Société de l'Histoire de France.
Vicomte Delaborde, _L'Expédition de Charles VIII. en Italie_.
M. Eugène Müntz, _La Renaissance en Italie et en France à
l'époque de Charles VIII_.
M. Eugène Müntz, _Musée du Capitole_.
M. Eugène Müntz, _Leonardo da Vinci_.
C. de Cherrier, _Histoire de Charles VIII, Roi de France,
d'après des documents diplomatiques inédits_.
Louis Pélissier, _Louis XII. et Lodovico Sforza_. Recherches
dans les Archives Italiennes.
Louis Pélissier, _Notes Italiennes_.
Louis Pélissier, _Les amies de Lodovico Sforza_. (Revue
historique.)
Edmond Gaultier, _Étude historique sur Loches_.
Paravicini, _Architecture de la Renaissance en Italie_.
Aldo Manuzio, _Lettres et Documents_. Armand Baschet.
_Gazette des Beaux Arts_, vol. xvi.
GERMAN.
Dr. Ludwig Pastor, _Geschichte der Päpste_, vols. v. and vi.
Jacob Burckhardt, _Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien_.
Dr. W. Bode, Dr. Müller-Walde, _Jahrbuch der K. Preuss.
Kunstsammlungen_. Vols. ix., x., and xviii.
K. Kindt, _Die Katastrophe Lodovico Moro in Novara_.
Dr. Müller-Walde, _Leonardo da Vinci_.
ENGLISH.
_History of the Papacy_, by Dr. Creighton, Bishop of London.
Vols. iv. and v.
_The End of the Middle Ages_, by Madame James Darmetester.
_The Renaissance in Italy_. J. A. Symonds.
_Old Touraine_. T. Cook
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
1471-1480
The Castello of Ferrara--The House of Este--Accession of Duke
Ercole I.--His marriage to Leonora of Aragon--Birth of Isabella
and Beatrice d'Este--Plot of Niccolo d'Este--Visit of Leonora to
Naples--The court of King Ferrante--Betrothal of Beatrice d'Este
to Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Bari--And of Isabella d'Este to
Francesco Gonzaga 1
CHAPTER II
1451-1582
Lodovico Sforza--Known as Il Moro--His birth and childhood--Murder
of Duke Galeazzo Maria--Regency of Duchess Bona--Exile of the
Sforza brothers--Lodovico at Pisa--His invasion of Lombardy and
return to Milan--Death of Cecco Simonetta--Flight of Duchess
Bona--Lodovico Regent of Milan 11
CHAPTER III
1482-1490
Wars of Venice and Ferrara--Invasion of Ferrara--Lodovico Sforza and
Alfonso of Calabria come to the help of Ercole d'Este--Peace of
Bagnolo--Prosperity of Ferrara, and cultivation of art and learning
at Ercole's court--Guarino and Aldo Manuzio--Strozzi and Boiardo--
Architecture and painting--The frescoes of the Schifanoia--Music and
the drama--Education of Isabella and Beatrice d'Este 27
CHAPTER IV
1485-1490
Isabella d'Este--Lodovico Sforza delays his wedding--Plot against
his life--Submission of Genoa--Duke Gian Galeazzo--The Sanseverini
brothers--Messer Galeazzo made Captain-General of the Milanese
armies--His marriage to Bianca Sforza--Marriage of Gian Galeazzo
to Isabella of Aragon--Wedding festivities at Milan--Lodovico
draws up his marriage contract with Beatrice d'Este 40
CHAPTER V
1490-1491
Marriage of Isabella d'Este--Lodovico puts off his wedding--Cecilia
Gallerani--Her portrait by Leonardo da Vinci--Mission of Galeazzo
Visconti to Ferrara--Preparations for Beatrice's wedding--Cristoforo
Romano's bust--Duchess Leonora and her daughters travel to Piacenza
and Pavia--Their reception at Pavia by Lodovico 50
CHAPTER VI
1491
City and University of Pavia--Duomo and Castello--The library of the
Castello--Wedding of Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Bari, and Beatrice
d'Este, in the chapel of the Castello of Pavia--Galeazzo di San
Severino and Orlando--Reception of the bride in Milan--Tournaments
and festivities at the Castello--Visit of Duchess Leonora to the
Certosa of Pavia 60
CHAPTER VII
1491
Beatrice Duchess of Bari--Her popularity at the court of Milan--
Giangaleazzo and Isabella of Aragon--Lodovico's first impressions--
His growing affection for his wife--His letters to Isabella d'Este
--Hunting and fishing parties--Cussago and Vigevano--Controversy on
Orlando and Rinaldo--Bellincioni's sonnets 75
CHAPTER VIII
1491
Relations between Lodovico and Beatrice--Cecilia Gallerani--Birth of
her son Cesare--Her marriage to Count Bergamini--Beatrice at Villa
Nova and Vigevano--The Sforzesca and Pecorara--Lodovico's system of
irrigation in the Lomellina--Leonardo at Vigevano--Hunting-parties
and country life--Letters to Isabella d'Este 88
CHAPTER IX
1491-1492
Isabella of Aragon and Beatrice d'Este--Ambrogio Borgognone and
Giovanni Antonio Amadeo--Cristoforo Romano and his works at Pavia
and Cremona--The Certosa of Pavia--Illness of Beatrice--Her journey
to Genoa--Correspondence between Isabella and Lodovico Sforza--Visit
of the Marquis of Mantua to Milan 99
CHAPTER X
1491
Claims of Charles VIII. to Naples--Of the Duke of Orleans to Milan
--Intrigues of the Venetian Senate, of Pope Innocent VIII., and of
Ferrante and Alfonso of Naples--Visit of the French ambassadors to
Milan--Treasures of the Castello--Jewels of Lodovico Sforza--Isabella
of Aragon and her father--An embassy to the French court proposed--
Secret instructions of the Count of Caiazzo--_Fête_ at Vigevano
--Tournament of Pavia 112
CHAPTER XI
1492
Intellectual and artistic revival in Lombardy--Lodovico and his
secretaries--Building of the new University of Pavia--Reforms and
extension of the University--The library of the Castello remodelled
--Poliziano and Merula--Lodovico founds new schools at Milan--
Equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza--Leonardo's paintings at
Milan--Lodovico as a patron of art and learning 125
CHAPTER XII
1492
Beatrice d'Este as a patron of learning and poetry--Vincenzo
Calmeta, her secretary--Serafino d'Aquila--Rivalry of Lombard and
Tuscan poets--Gaspare Visconti's works--Poetic jousts with Bramante
--Niccolo da Correggio and other poets--Dramatic art and music at
the court of Milan--Gaffuri and Testagrossa--Lorenzo Gusnasco of
Pavia 141
CHAPTER XIII
1492
Visit of Duke Ercole to Milan, and of Isabella d'Este--Election of
Pope Alexander VI.--Bribery of the Cardinals--Influence of Ascanio
Sforza over the new Pope, and satisfaction of Lodovico--Hunting-
parties at Pavia and Vigevano--_Fêtes_ at Milan--Visit of Isabella
to Genoa--Lodovico's letters--Piero de Medici--King Ferrante's
jealousy of the alliance between Rome and Milan 155
CHAPTER XIV
1493
Birth of Beatrice's first-born son--The Duchess of Ferrara at Milan
--_Fêtes_ and rejoicings at court and in the Castello--The court
moves to Vigevano--Beatrice's wardrobe--Her son's portrait--Letters
to her mother and sister--Lodovico's plans for a visit to Ferrara
and Venice 166
CHAPTER XV
1493
Lodovico's ambitious designs--Isabella of Aragon appeals to her
father--Breach between Naples and Milan--Alliance between the Pope,
Venice, and Milan proclaimed--Mission of Erasmo Brasca to the king
of the Romans--Journey of Lodovico and Beatrice to Ferrara--_Fêtes_
and tournaments--Visit to Belriguardo, and return of Lodovico to
Milan--Arrival of Belgiojoso from France 176
CHAPTER XVI
1493
Visit of Beatrice and her mother to Venice--Letters of Lodovico to
his wife--Reception of the duchesses by the doge at S. Clemente--
Their triumphal entry--Procession and _fêtes_ in the Grand Canal--
Letter of Beatrice to her husband--The palace of the Dukes of
Ferrara in Venice 185
CHAPTER XVII
1493
_Fêtes_ at Venice in honour of the Duchess of Ferrara and Duchess of
Bari--Beatrice d'Este has an audience with the doge and Signory--
Explains Lodovico's position and his treaties with France and
Germany--Visit to St. Mark's and the Treasury--_Fête_ in the
ducal palace--The Duchess visits the Great Council--Takes leave of
the doge--Return to Ferrara 195
CHAPTER XVIII
1493
Return of Beatrice to Milan--Visit of Duke Ercole and Alfonso to
Pavia--Death of Duchess Leonora--Beatrice's _camora_ and
Niccolo da Correggio's _fantasia dei vinci_--Marriage of Bianca
Maria Sforza to Maximilian, King of the Romans, celebrated at Milan
--Letter of Beatrice to Isabella d'Este--Wedding _fêtes_ and journey
of the bride to Innsbrück--Maximilian's relations with his wife--
Bianca's future life 205
CHAPTER XIX
1493-1494
State of political affairs in Italy--Vacillating policy of Lodovico
Sforza--Death of King Ferrante of Naples--Alliance between his
successor Alfonso and Pope Alexander VI.--Lodovico urges Charles
VIII. to invade Naples--Sends Galeazzo di Sanseverino to Lyons--
Cardinal della Rovere's flight from Rome--Alfonso of Naples declares
war--Beatrice of Vigevano--The Gonzagas and the Moro--Duchess
Isabella and her husband at Pavia 221
CHAPTER XX
1494
Arrival of the Duke of Orleans at Asti--The Neapolitan fleet sent
against Genoa--The forces of Naples repulsed at Rapallo--Charles
VIII. at Asti--Beatrice d'Este entertains him at Annona--The king's
illness--His visit to Vigevano and Pavia--His interview with the
Duke and Duchess of Milan--Last illness and death of Giangaleazzo
Sforza--Lodovico proclaimed Duke at Milan--Mission of Maffeo
Pirovano to Maximilian 231
CHAPTER XXI
1494
Lodovico joins Charles VIII. at Sarzana--Suspicious rumours as to the
late duke's death--Piero de' Medici surrenders the six fortresses of
Tuscany to Charles VIII.--Lodovico retires in disgust from the camp
--Congratulations of all the Italian States on his accession--Grief
of Duchess Isabella--Her return to Milan--Mission of Maffeo Pirovano
to Antwerp--His interviews with Maximilian and Bianca--Letter to
Lodovico to the Bishop of Brixen--Charles VIII. enters Rome--His
treaty with Alexander VI. and departure for Naples 246
CHAPTER XXII
1495
Visit of Isabella d'Este to Milan--Birth of Beatrice's son, Francesco
Sforza--_Fêtes_ and comedies at the Milanese Court--Works of
Leonardo and of Lorenzo di Pavia--Mission of Caradosso to Florence
and Rome in search of antiques--Fall of Naples--Entry of King Charles
VIII. and flight of Ferrante II.--Consternation in Milan--Departure
of Isabella d'Este 258
CHAPTER XXIII
1495
Proclamation of the new league against France at Venice--Charles
VIII. at Naples--Demoralization of the victors--Charles leaves
Naples and returns to Rome--The Duke of Orleans refuses to give
up Asti--Arrival of the imperial ambassadors at Milan--Lodovico
presented with the ducal insignia--_Fêtes_ in the Castello--
The Duke of Orleans seizes Novara--Terror of Lodovico--Battle of
Fornovo--Victory claimed by both parties--The French reach Asti--
Isabella's trophies restored by Beatrice 266
CHAPTER XXIV
1495
Ferrante II. recovers Naples--Siege of Novara by the army of the
League--Review of the army by the Duke and Duchess of Milan--Charles
VIII. visits Turin and comes to Vercelli--Negotiations for peace--
Lodovico and Beatrice at the camp--Treaty of Vercelli concluded
between France and Milan--Jealousy of the other powers--Commines at
Vigevano--Zenale's altar-piece in the Brera 277
CHAPTER XXV
1496
The war of Pisa--Venice defends the liberties of Pisa against
Florence--Lodovico invites Maximilian to enter Italy and succour
the Pisans--The Duke and Duchess of Milan go to meet the emperor
at Bormio--Maximilian crosses the Alps and comes to Vigevano--His
interview with the Venetian envoys--His expedition to Pisa 287
CHAPTER XXVI
1496
Isabella d'Este joins her husband in Naples--Works of Bramante and
Leonardo in the Castello of Milan--The Cenacolo--Lodovico sends for
Perugino--His passion for Lucrezia Crivelli--Grief of Beatrice--
Death of Bianca Sforza--The Emperor Maximilian at Pisa--The Duke
and Duchess return to Milan--Last days and sudden death of Beatrice
d'Este 298
CHAPTER XXVII
1497
Grief of the Duke of Milan--His letters to Mantua and Pavia--
Interview with Costabili--Funeral of Duchess Beatrice--Mourning of
her husband--Letters of the Emperor Maximilian and Chiara Gonzaga--
Tomb of Beatrice in Santa Maria delle Grazie--Leonardo's Cenacolo,
and portraits of the duke and duchess--Lucrezia Crivelli 307
CHAPTER XXVIII
1497-1498
The Marquis of Mantua dismissed by the Venetians--He incurs Duke
Lodovico's displeasure by his intrigues--Isabella d'Este's
correspondence with the Duke of Milan--Leonardo in the Castello--
Death of Charles VIII.--Visit of Lodovico to Mantua--Francesco
Gonzaga appointed captain of the imperial forces--Isabella of
Aragon and Isabella d'Este--Chiara Gonzaga and Caterina Sforza--
Lodovico's will 322
CHAPTER XXIX
1499
Treaty of Blois--Alliance between France, Venice, and the Borgias--
Lodovico appeals to Maximilian--His gift to Leonardo and letter to
the Certosa--The French and the Venetians invade the Milanese--
Desertion of Gonzaga and treachery of Milanese captains--Loss of
Alessandria--Panic and flight of Duke Lodovico--Surrender of Pavia
and Milan to the French--Treachery of Bernardino da Corte and
surrender of the Castello--Triumphal entry of Louis XII 337
CHAPTER XXX
1499-1500
Louis XII. in Milan--Hatred of the French rule--Return of Duke
Lodovico--His march to Como and triumphal entry into Milan--Trivulzio
and the French retire to Mortara--Surrender of the Castello of Milan,
of Pavia and Novara, to the Moro--His want of men and money--Arrival
of La Trémouille's army--Lodovico besieged in Novara and betrayed to
the French king by the Swiss--Rejoicings at Rome and Venice--Triumph
of the Borgias--Sufferings of the Milanese--Leonardo's letter 352
CHAPTER XXXI
1500-1508
Lodovico Sforza enters Lyons as a captive--His imprisonment at
Pierre-Encise and Lys Saint-Georges--Laments over Il Moro in the
popular poetry of France and Italy--Efforts of the Emperor Maximilian
to obtain his release--Ascanio and Ermes Sforza released--Lodovico
removed to Loches--Paolo Giovio's account of his captivity--His
attempt to escape--Dungeon at Loches--Death of Lodovico Sforza--His
burial in S. Maria delle Grazie 367
CHAPTER XXXII
1500-1564
The Milanese exiles at Innsbrück--Galeazzo di Sanseverino becomes
Grand Ecuyer of France--Is slain at Pavia--Maximilian Sforza made
Duke of Milan in 1512--Forced to abdicate by Francis I. in 1515--
Reign of Francesco Sforza--Wars of France and Germany--Siege of
Milan by the Imperialists--Duke Francesco restored by Charles V.--
His marriage and death in 1535--Removal of Lodovico and Beatrice's
effigies to the Certosa 375
INDEX 381
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
BIANCA SFORZA, BY AMBROGIO DE PREDIS _Frontispiece_
_From a photograph by_ SIGNOR D. ANDERSON, of Rome.
SFORZA MS. ILLUMINATED _To face p. 83_
_From a private photograph._
ALTAR-PIECE, ASCRIBED TO ZENALE, WITH PORTRAITS OF
LODOVICO SFORZA, BEATRICE D'ESTE AND THEIR SONS _To face p. 284_
_From a photograph by_ SIGNOR D. ANDERSON, of Rome.
GALEAZZO DI SANSEVERINO, BY AMBROGIO DE PREDIS _To face p. 304_
_From a photograph by_ SIGNOR D. ANDERSON, of Rome.
TOMB OF LODOVICO SFORZA AND BEATRICE D'ESTE IN THE
CERTOSA OF PAVIA _To face p. 389_
_From a photograph by_ FRATELLI ALINARI, of Florence.
BEATRICE D'ESTE
CHAPTER I
The Castello of Ferrara--The House of Este--Accession of Duke Ercole
I.--His marriage to Leonora of Aragon--Birth of Isabella and Beatrice
d'Este--Plot of Niccolo d'Este--Visit of Leonora to Naples--The court of
King Ferrante--Betrothal of Beatrice d'Este to Lodovico Sforza, Duke of
Bari--And of Isabella d'Este to Francesco Gonzaga.
1471-1480
In the heart of old Ferrara stands the Castello of the Este princes. All
the great story of the past, all the romance of medieval chivalry, seems
to live again in that picturesque, irregular pile with the crenellated
towers and dusky red-brick walls, overhanging the sleepy waters of the
ancient moat. The song of Boiardo and Ariosto still lingers in the air
about the ruddy pinnacles; the spacious courts and broad piazza recall
the tournaments and pageants of olden time. Once more the sound of
clanging trumpets or merry hunting-horn awakes the echoes, as the joyous
train of lords and ladies sweep out through the castle gates in the
summer morning; once more, under vaulted loggias and high-arched
balconies, we see the courtly scholar bending earnestly over some
classic page, or catch the voice of high-born maiden singing Petrarch's
sonnets to her lute.
St. George was the champion of Ferrara and the patron saint of the house
of Este. There year by year his festival was celebrated with great
rejoicings, and vast crowds thronged the piazza before the Castello to
see the famous races for the _pallium_. It is St. George who rides full
tilt at the dragon in the rude sculptures on the portal of the
Romanesque Cathedral hard by; it is the same warrior-saint who, in his
gleaming armour, looks down from the painted fresco above the portcullis
of the castle drawbridge. And all the masters who worked for the Este
dukes, whether they were men of native or foreign birth--Vittore
Pisanello and Jacopo Bellini, Cosimo Tura and Dosso Dossi--took delight
in the old story, and painted the legend of St. George and Princess
Sabra in the frescoes or altar-pieces with which they adorned the
churches and castle halls.
The Estes, who took St. George for their patron, and fought and died
under his banner, were themselves a chivalrous and splendour-loving
race, ever ready to ride out in quest of fresh adventure in the chase or
battle-field. Men and women alike were renowned, even among the princely
houses of Italy in Renaissance time, for their rare culture and genuine
love of art and letters. And they were justly proud of their ancient
lineage and of the love and loyalty which their subjects bore them. The
Sforzas of Milan, the Medici of Florence, the Riarios or the Della
Roveres, were but low-born upstarts by the side of this illustrious race
which had reigned on the banks of the Po during the last two hundred
years. In spite of wars and bloodshed, in spite of occasional
conspiracies and tumults, chiefly stirred up by members of the reigning
family, the people of Ferrara loved their rulers well, and never showed
any wish to change the house of Este for another. The citizens took a
personal interest in their own duke and duchess and in all that belonged
to them, and chronicled their doings with minute attention. They shared
their sorrows and rejoiced in their joys, they lamented their departure
and hailed their return with acclamation, they followed the fortunes of
their children with keen interest, and welcomed the return of the
youthful bride with acclamations, or wept bitter tears over her untimely
end.
Of all the Estes who held sway at Ferrara, the most illustrious and most
beloved was Duke Ercole I., the father of Beatrice. During the
thirty-four years that he reigned in Ferrara, the duchy enjoyed a degree
of material prosperity which it had never attained before, and rose to
the foremost rank among the states of North Italy. And in the troubled
times of the next century, his people looked back on the days of Duke
Ercole and his good duchess as the golden age of Ferrara. After the
death of his father, the able and learned Niccolo III., who first
established his throne on sure and safe foundations, Ercole's two elder
half-brothers, Leonello and Borso, reigned in succession over Ferrara,
and kept up the proud traditions of the house of Este, both in war and
peace. Both were bastards, but in the Este family this was never held to
be a bar to the succession. "In Italy," as Commines wrote, "they make
little difference between legitimate and illegitimate children." But
when the last of the two, Duke Borso, died on the 27th of May, 1471, of
malarial fever caught on his journey to Rome, to receive the investiture
of his duchy from the Pope, Niccolo's eldest legitimate son Ercole
successfully asserted his claim to the throne, and entered peacefully
upon his heritage. Two years later, the next duke, who was already
thirty-eight years of age, obtained the hand of Leonora of Aragon,
daughter of Ferrante, King of Naples, and sent his brother Sigismondo at
the head of a splendid retinue to bring home his royal bride. After a
visit to Rome, where Pope Sixtus IV. entertained her at a series of
magnificent banquets and theatrical representations, the young duchess
entered Ferrara in state. On a bright June morning she rode through the
streets in a robe glittering with jewels, with a stately canopy over her
head and a gold crown on her flowing hair. Latin orations, orchestral
music, and theatrical displays, for which Ferrara was already famous,
greeted the bridal procession at every point. The houses were hung with
tapestries and cloth of gold, avenues of flowering shrubs were planted
along the broad white streets, and ringing shouts greeted the coming of
the fair princess who was to make her home in Ferrara. The happy event
was commemorated by a noble medal, designed by the Mantuan Sperandio,
the most illustrious of a school of medallists employed at Ferrara in
Duke Borso's time, while Leonora's refined features and expressive face
are preserved in a well-known bas-relief, now in Paris. Ercole and his
bride took up their abode in the Este palace, a stately Renaissance
structure opposite the old Lombard Duomo, a few steps from the Castello,
with which it was connected by a covered passage.
The charm and goodness of the young duchess soon won the heart of her
subjects. From the first she entered eagerly into Ercole's schemes for
ordering his capital and encouraging art, and brought a new and gentler
influence to bear on the society of her husband's court. There, too, she
found a congenial spirit in the duke's accomplished sister, Bianca, that
Virgin of Este, who was the subject of Tito Strozzi's impassioned
eulogy, and whose Latin and Greek prose excited the admiration of all
her contemporaries. This cultivated princess had been originally
betrothed to the eldest son of Federigo, Duke of Urbino, but his early
death put an end to these hopes, and in 1468 she married Galeotto della
Mirandola, a prince of the house of Carpi, who lived, at Ferrara some
years, and afterwards entered the service of Lodovico Sforza and served
as captain in his wars.
On the 18th of May, 1474, the duchess gave birth to a daughter, who
received the name of Isabella, always a favourite in the house of
Aragon, and was destined to become the most celebrated lady of the
Renaissance. A year later, on the 29th of June, 1475, a second daughter
saw the light. Her appearance, however, proved no cause of rejoicing, as
we learn from the contemporary chronicle published by Muratori--
"A daughter was born this day to Duke Ercole, and received the name of
Beatrice, being the child of Madonna Leonora his wife. And there were no
rejoicings, because every one wished for a boy."
No one in Ferrara then dreamt that the babe who received so cold a
welcome would one day reign over the Milanese, as the wife of Lodovico
Sforza, the most powerful of Italian princes, and would herself be
remembered by posterity as "la più zentil donna in Italia"--the sweetest
lady in all Italy. At least the name bestowed upon her was a good omen.
She was called Beatrice after two favourite relatives of her parents.
One of these was Leonora's only sister, Beatrice of Aragon, who in that
same year passed through Ferrara on her way to join her husband,
Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and whose presence, we are told by
the diarist, gave great pleasure to both duke and duchess. The other
Beatrice was Ercole's half-sister, the elder daughter of Niccolo III.,
who had long been the ornament of her father's court, when she had been
known as the Queen of Feasts, and it had become a common proverb that to
see Madonna Beatrice dance was to find Paradise upon earth. In 1448, at
the age of twenty-one, this brilliant lady had wedded Borso da
Correggio, a brother of the reigning prince of that city, and, after her
first husband's early death, had become the wife of Tristan Sforza, an
illegitimate son of the great Condottiere Francesco Sforza, Duke of
Milan. Although her home was now in Lombardy, Beatrice d'Este remained
on intimate terms with her own family, and her son Niccolo da Correggio
was known as the handsomest and most accomplished cavalier at the court
of Ferrara. He had accompanied his uncle Duke Borso on his journey to
Rome, and had been one of the escort sent to conduct Duchess Leonora
from Naples.
In the summer of the year following Beatrice's birth, the hopes of the
loyal Ferrarese were at length fulfilled, and a son was born to the duke
and duchess on the 21st of July, 1476. This time the citizens abandoned
themselves to demonstrations of enthusiastic delight. The bells were
rung and the shops closed during three whole days, and the child was
baptized with great pomp in the Chapel of the Vescovado, close to the
Duomo. The infant received the name of Alfonso, after his grandfather,
the great King of Naples, and a "beautiful fête," to quote one
chronicler's words, "was held in honour of the auspicious event in the
Sala Grande of the Schifanoia Villa." On this occasion a concert was
given by a hundred trumpeters, pipers, and tambourine-players in the
frescoed hall of this favourite summer palace, and a sumptuous banquet
was prepared after the fashion of the times, with an immense number of
_confetti_, representing lords and ladies, animals, trees, and castles,
all made of gilt and coloured sugar, which our friend the diarist tells
us were carried off or eaten by the people as soon as the doors were
opened.
But a few days afterwards, while Duke Ercole was away from Ferrara, his
wife was surprised by a sudden rising, the result of a deep-laid
conspiracy, secretly planned by his nephew, Niccolo, a bastard son of
Leonello d'Este. Niccolo's first endeavour was to seize on the person of
the duchess and her young children, an attempt which almost proved
successful, but was fortunately defeated by Leonora's own courage and
presence of mind. The palace was already surrounded by armed men, when
the alarm reached the ears of the duchess, and, springing out of bed
with her infant son in her arms, followed by her two little daughters
and a few faithful servants, she fled by the covered way to the
Castello. Hardly had she left her room, when the conspirators rushed in
and sacked the palace, killing all who tried to offer resistance. The
people of Ferrara, however, were loyal to their beloved duke and
duchess. After a few days of anxious suspense, Ercole returned, and soon
quelled the tumult and restored order in the city. That evening he
appeared on the balcony of the Castello, and publicly embraced his wife
and children amid the shouts and applause of the whole city. The next
day the whole ducal family went in solemn procession to the Cathedral,
and there gave public thanks for their marvellous deliverance. A
terrible list of cruel reprisals followed upon this rebellion, and
Niccolo d'Este himself, with two hundred of his partisans, were put to
death after the bloody fashion of the times.
A year later, when the danger was over and tranquillity had been
completely restored, Leonora and her two little daughters set out for
Naples, under the escort of Niccolo da Correggio, to be present at her
father King Ferrante's second marriage with the young Princess Joan of
Aragon, a sister of Ferdinand the Catholic. The duchess and her children
travelled by land to Pisa, where galleys were waiting to conduct them to
Naples, and reached her father's court on the 1st of June, 1477. Here
Leonora spent the next four months, and in September, gave birth to a
second son, who was named Ferrante, after his royal grandfather. But
soon news reached Naples that war had broken out in Northern Italy, and
that Duke Ercole had been chosen Captain-general of the Florentine
armies. In his absence the presence of the duchess was absolutely
necessary at Ferrara, and early in November Leonora left Naples and
hastened home to take up the reins of government and administer the
state in her lord's stead. She took her elder daughter Isabella with
her, but left her new-born son at Naples, together with his little
sister Beatrice, from whom the old King Ferrante refused to part. This
bright-eyed child, who had won her grandfather's affections at this
early age, remained at Naples for the next eight years, and grew up in
the royal palace on the terraced steps of that enchanted shore, where
even then Sannazzaro was dreaming of Arcadia, and where Lorenzo de'
Medici loved to talk over books and poetry with his learned friend the
Duchess Ippolita. Beatrice was too young to realize the rare degree of
culture which had made Alfonso's and Ferrante's court the favourite
abode of the Greek and Latin scholars of the age, too innocent to be
aware of the dark deeds which threw a shadow over these sunny regions,
where the strange medley of luxury and vice, of refinement and cruelty,
recalled the days of Imperial Rome. But the balmy breath of these
Southern climes, the soft luxuriant spell of blue seas and groves of
palm and cassia, sank deep into the child's being, and something of the
fire and passion, the mirth and gaiety, of the dwellers in this
delicious land passed into her soul, and helped to mould her nature
during these years that she spent far from mother and sister at King
Ferrante's court.
In these early days many personages with whom she was to be closely
associated in after-years were living at Naples. There were scholars and
poets whom she was to meet again in Milan at her husband's court, and
who would be glad to remind her that they had known her as a child in
her grandfather's palace. There was Pontano, the founder of the Academy
of Naples, who was busy writing his Latin eclogues on the myrtle bowers
of Baiae and the orange groves of Sorrento. There was her aunt, the
accomplished Ippolita Sforza, Duchess of Calabria, who had learnt Greek
of the great teacher Lascaris in her young days at Milan, and whose
wedding had brought the magnificent Lorenzo to the court of the Sforzas.
And for playmates the little Beatrice had Ippolita's children: the boy
Ferrante, whose chivalrous nature endeared him to his Este cousins, even
when their husbands joined with the French invaders to drive him from
his father's throne; and the girl Isabella, who was already affianced to
the young Duke Giangaleazzo, who was in future years to become her
companion and rival at the court of Milan. Here, too, in the summer of
1479, came a new visitor in the shape of Duchess Ippolita's brother,
Lodovico Sforza, surnamed _Il Moro_, himself the younger son of the
great Duke Francesco. On his elder brother Sforza's death, the King of
Naples had invested him with the duchy of Bari, and now he promised him
men and money with which to assert his claims against his sister-in-law,
the widowed Duchess Bona and the minions who had driven him and his
brothers out of their native land. In June, 1477, only a few days after
Leonora and her children left Ferrara, the exiled prince had arrived
there on his way to Pisa, and had been courteously entertained by Duke
Ercole in the Schifanoia Palace. Since then he had spent two dreary
years in exile at Pisa, fretting out his heart in his enforced idleness,
and pining for the hour of release. That hour was now at hand. Before
the end of the year, Lodovico Sforza had, by a succession of bold
manoeuvres, driven out his rivals and was virtually supreme in Milan.
The first step which the new regent took was to ally himself with the
Duke of Ferrara. The houses of Sforza and Este had always been on
friendly terms, and Ercole's father Niccolo had presented Francesco
Sforza with a famous diamond in acknowledgment of the services rendered
him by the great Condottiere. When Francesco's son and successor, Duke
Galeazzo Maria, was murdered in 1476, his widow, Duchess Bona, had
renewed the old alliance with Ferrara, and a marriage had been arranged
between her infant daughter Anna Sforza and Duke Ercole's new-born son
and heir Alfonso. In May, 1477, this betrothal was proclaimed in Milan,
and a fortnight later the nuptial contract was signed at Ferrara. The
union of the two houses was celebrated by solemn processions and
thanksgivings throughout the duchy, and the infant bridegroom was
carried in the arms of his chamberlain to meet the Milanese ambassador,
who appeared on behalf of the little three-year-old bride. Seven years
afterwards, Duchess Leonora sent a magnificent doll with a trousseau of
clothes designed by the best artists in Ferrara, as a gift to the little
daughter-in-law whom she had not yet seen.
In 1480, Lodovico Sforza formally asked Ercole to give him the hand of
his elder daughter Isabella, then a child of six. Lodovico himself was
twenty-nine, and besides being a man of remarkable abilities and
singularly handsome presence, had the reputation of being the richest
prince in Italy. Duke Ercole further saw the great importance of
strengthening the alliance with Milan at a time when Ferrara was again
threatened by her hereditary enemies, the Pope and Venice.
Unfortunately, his youthful daughter had already been sought in marriage
by Federico, Marquis of Mantua, on behalf of his elder son, Giovanni
Francesco; and Ercole, unwilling to offend so near a neighbour, and yet
reluctant to lose the chance of a second desirable alliance, offered
Lodovico Sforza the hand of his younger daughter, Beatrice. The Duke of
Bari made no objection to this arrangement, and on St. George's Day,
Ercole addressed the following letter to his old ally, Marquis
Federico:--
"MOST ILLUSTRIOUS LORD AND DEAREST BROTHER,
"This is to inform you that the most illustrious Madonna Duchess of
Milan and His Illustrious Highness Lodovico Sforza have sent their
ambassador, M. Gabriele Tassino, to ask for our daughter Madonna
Isabella on behalf of Signor Lodovico. We have replied that to our
regret this marriage was no longer possible, since we had already
entered into negotiations on the subject with your Highness and your
eldest son. But since we have another daughter at Naples, who is only
about a year younger, and who has been adopted by his Majesty the King
of Naples as his own child, we have written to acquaint His Serene
Majesty with the wish of these illustrious Persons, and have asked him
if he will consent to accept the said Signor Lodovico as his kinsman,
since without his leave we were unable to dispose of our daughter
Beatrice's hand. The said Persons having expressed themselves as well
content with the proceeding, out of respect for the King's Majesty he
has now declared his approval of this marriage, to which we have
accordingly signified our consent. We are sure that you will rejoice
with us, seeing the close union and alliance that has long existed
between us, and beg your Illustrious Highness to keep the matter secret
for the present.
"HERCULES, DUX FERR., ETC.[1]
_Ferrara, 23rd April, 1480._"
It is curious to reflect on the possible changes in the course of
events in Italian history during the next thirty years, if Lodovico
Sforza's proposals had reached Ferrara a few months earlier, and
Isabella d'Este, instead of her sister Beatrice, had become his wife.
Would the rare prudence and self-control of the elder princess have led
her to play a different part in the difficult circumstances which
surrounded her position at the court of Milan as the Moro's wife? Would
Isabella's calmer temperament and wise and far-seeing intellect have
been able to restrain Lodovico's ambitious dreams and avert his ruin?
The cordial relations that were afterwards to exist between Lodovico and
his gifted sister-in-law, the Moro's keen appreciation of Isabella's
character, incline us to believe that she would have acquired great
influence over her lord; and that so remarkable a woman would have
played a very important part on this larger stage. But the Fates had
willed otherwise, and Beatrice d'Este became the bride of Lodovico
Sforza. Her royal grandfather, old King Ferrante, gave his sanction to
the proposed marriage, although he refused to part from his little
grandchild at present, and when, five years later, Beatrice returned to
Ferrara, she assumed the title and estate of Duchess of Bari, and was
publicly recognized as Lodovico's promised wife. She had by this time
reached the age of ten, and her espoused husband was exactly
thirty-four.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Luzio-Renier in Archivio Storico Lombardo, xvii. 77.
CHAPTER II
Lodovico Sforza--Known as Il Moro--His birth and childhood--Murder of
Duke Galeazzo Maria--Regency of Duchess Bona--Exile of the Sforza
brothers--Lodovico at Pisa--His invasion of Lombardy and return to Milan
--Death of Cecco Simonetta--Flight of Duchess Bona--Lodovico Regent of
Milan.
1451-1582
Lodovico Sforza was certainly one of the most remarkable figures of the
Italian Renaissance. He has generally been described as one of the
blackest. "Born for the ruin of Italy," was the verdict of his
contemporary Paolo Giovio, a verdict which every chronicler of the
sixteenth century has endorsed. These men who saw the disasters which
overwhelmed their country under the foreign rule, could not forget that
Charles VIII., the first French king who invaded Italy, had crossed the
Alps as the friend and ally of Lodovico Moro. They forgot how many
others were at least equally guilty, and did not realize the vast
network of intrigues in which Pope Julius II., the Venetian Signory, and
the King of Naples all had a share. Later historians with one consent
have accepted Paolo Giovio's view, and have made Lodovico responsible
for all the miseries which arose from the French invasion. The bitter
hatred with which both French and Venetian writers regarded the prince
who had foiled their countrymen and profited by their mistakes, has
helped to deepen this sinister impression. The greatest crimes were
imputed to him, the vilest calumnies concerning his personal character
found ready acceptance. But the more impartial judgment of modern
historians, together with the light thrown upon the subject by recently
discovered documents, has done much to modify our opinion of Lodovico's
character. The worst charges formerly brought against him, above all,
the alleged poisoning of his nephew, the reigning Duke of Milan, have
been dismissed as groundless and wholly alien to his nature and
character. On the other hand, his great merits and rare talents as ruler
and administrator have been fully recognized, while it is admitted on
all hands that his generous and enlightened encouragement of art and
letters entitles him to a place among the most illustrious patrons of
the Renaissance. To his keen intellect and discerning eye, to his fine
taste and quick sympathy with all forms of beauty, we owe the production
of some of the noblest works of art that human hands have ever
fashioned. To his personal encouragement and magnificent liberality we
owe the grandest monuments of Lombard architecture, and the finest
development of Milanese painting, the façade of the Certosa and the
cupola of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, the frescoes and altar-pieces of the
Brera and the Ambrosiana. Above all, it was at the Milanese court, under
the stimulating influence of the Moro, that Leonardo da Vinci's finest
work was done.
As a man, Lodovico Sforza is profoundly interesting. Burckhardt has
called him the most complete among the princely figures of the Italian
Renaissance, and there can be no doubt that alike in his virtues and in
his faults, he was curiously typical of the age in which he lived.
Guicciardini, who was certainly no friend to him, and regarded him as
the inveterate foe of Florence, describes him as "a creature of very
rare perfection, most excellent for his eloquence and industry and many
gifts of nature and spirit, and not unworthy of the name of milde and
mercifull;" and the Milanese doctor Arluno, the author of an unpublished
chronicle in the Biblioteca Marciana at Venice, says, "He had a sublime
soul and universal capacity. Whatever he did, he surpassed expectation,
in the fine arts and learning, in justice and benevolence. And he had no
equal among Italian princes for wisdom and sagacity in public affairs."
Contemporary writers describe him as very pleasant in manner and
gracious in speech, always gentle and courteous to others, ready to
listen, and never losing his temper in argument. He shared in the
laxity of morals common to his age; but was a man of deep affections as
well as strong passions, fondly attached to his children and friends,
while the profound and lasting grief with which he lamented his dead
wife amazed his more fickle contemporaries. Singularly refined and
sensitive by nature, he shrank instinctively from bloodshed, and had a
horror of all violent actions. In this he differed greatly from his
elder brother Galeazzo Maria, who was a monster of lust and cruelty,
intent only on gratifying his savage instincts, and as callous to human
suffering as he was reckless of human life. Lodovico, as his most
hostile critics agree, was emphatically not a cruel man, and rarely
consented to condemn even criminals to death. But, like many other
politicians who have great ends in view, he was often unscrupulous as to
the means which he employed, and, as Burckhardt very truly remarked,
would probably have been surprised at being held responsible for the
means by which he attained his object. Trained from early youth in the
most tortuous paths of Italian diplomacy, he acted on the principle laid
down by the Venetian Marino Sanuto, that the first duty of the really
wise statesman is to persuade his enemies that he means to do one thing
and then do another. But in these tangled paths he often over-reached
himself, and only succeeded in inspiring all parties with distrust; and,
as too often happens, this deceiver was deceived in his turn, and in the
end betrayed by men in whom his whole trust had been placed. Another
curious feature of Lodovico's character was the strain of moral
cowardice which, in spite of great personal bravery, marked his public
actions at the most critical moments. This sudden failure of courage, or
loss of nerve, that to his contemporaries seemed little short of
madness, absolutely inexplicable in a man who had faced death without a
thought on many a battle-field, ultimately wrought his own downfall as
well as that of his State.
And yet, in spite of all his faults and failings, in spite of the
strange tissue of complex aims and motives which swayed his course,
Lodovico Sforza was a man of great ideas and splendid capacities, a
prince who was in many respects distinctly in advance of his age. His
wise and beneficial schemes for the encouragement of agriculture and the
good of his poorer subjects, his careful regulations for the
administration of the University and advancement of all branches of
learning, his extraordinary industry and minute attention to detail,
cannot fail to inspire our interest and command our admiration. In more
peaceful times and under happier circumstances he would have been an
excellent ruler, and his great dream of a united kingdom of North Italy
might have been well and nobly realized. As it was, the history of
Lodovico Moro belongs to the saddest tragedies of the Renaissance, and
the splendour of his prosperity and the greatness of his fall became the
common theme of poet and moralist.
The story of Lodovico's childhood is one of the pleasantest parts of his
strangely chequered career. He was the fourth son of Francesco Sforza,
the famous soldier of fortune who had married Madonna Bianca, daughter
of the last Visconti, and reigned in right of his wife as Duke of Milan
during twenty years. On the 19th of August, 1451, a year and a half
after the great captain had boldly entered Milan and been proclaimed
Duke, Duchess Bianca gave birth at her summer palace of Vigevano to a
fine boy. This "_bel puello_," as he is called in the despatch
announcing the news to his proud father, received the name of Lodovico
Mauro, which was afterwards altered to Lodovico Maria, when, after his
recovery from a dangerous illness at five years old, his mother placed
him under the special protection of the Blessed Virgin. On this occasion
Bianca vowed rich offerings to the shrine of Il Santo at Padua, and in
discharge of this vow, her faithful servant Giovanni Francesco Stanga of
Cremona was sent to Padua in February, 1461, to present a life-size
image of the boy richly worked in silver, together with a complete set
of vestments and of altar plate bearing the ducal arms, to the ark of
the blessed Anthony. In documents still preserved in the Paduan archives
the boy is twice over mentioned as _Lodovicus Maurus filius quartus
masculus_, but the silver image itself bore the inscription, "_Pro
sanitate filii_. Lodovici Mariæ, 1461."[2] There can, however, be little
doubt that Maurus was the second name first given to Lodovico, and that
this was the true origin of the surname _Il Moro_ by which Francesco
Sforza's son became famous in after-years. The most ingenious
explanations of this name have been invented by Italian chroniclers.
Prato and Lomazzo both say that Lodovico was called Il Moro because of
the darkness of his complexion and long black hair. Guicciardini repeats
the same, but Paolo Giovio, who had seen Lodovico at Como, asserts that
his complexion was fair, and he owed this surname to the mulberry-tree
which he adopted as his device, because it waits till the winter is well
over to put forth its leaves, and is therefore called the most prudent
of all trees. As a matter of fact, there is no doubt that the surname
was given to Lodovico by his parents. "He was first called Moro by his
father Francesco and his mother Bianca in his earliest years," writes
Prato, and we find the same expression in the verse of a Milanese court
poet: "_Et Maurum læto patris cognomine dictum_." The name naturally
provoked puns. The dark-eyed boy with his long black hair and bushy
eyebrows went by the nickname of Moro, and as he grew up, adopted both
the Moor's head and the mulberry-tree as his badge. These devices in
their turn supplied the poets and painters of his court with themes on
which they were never tired of exercising their wit and ingenuity. Moors
and Moorish costumes were introduced in every masquerade and ballet, a
Moorish page was represented brushing the robes of Italy in a fresco of
the Castello of Milan, while mulberry colour became fashionable among
the ladies of the Moro's court, and was commonly worn by the servants
and pages in the palace. Lodovico early gave signs of the love of
literature and the great abilities which distinguished him in
after-life. His quickness in learning by heart, his extraordinary
memory, and the fluency with which he wrote and spoke Latin amazed his
tutors. And he was fortunate in receiving an excellent education from
the first Greek scholars of the day. Madonna Bianca, the only daughter
of Filippo Maria, the last Visconti who had betrothed her before she was
eight years old to Francesco Sforza, proved herself the best of wives
and mothers. By her courage and wisdom she helped her husband to gain
possession of her dead father's duchy, and won the hearts of all her
subjects by her goodness. While Francesco was engaged with affairs of
state, she directed the studies of her children, and gave her six sons
an admirable training in learning and knightly exercises. "Let us
remember," she said to her son's tutor, the learned scholar Filelfo,
"that we have princes to educate, not only scholars." We find her
setting the boys a theme on the manner in which princes should draw up
treaties, and desiring them in her absence to write to her once a week
in Latin. Several of these letters are still preserved in the archives
of Milan. There is one, for instance, in which Lodovico, then sixteen
years old, tells his mother that he is sending her seventy quails, two
partridges, and a pheasant, the result of a day's sport in the forest,
but takes care to assure her that the pleasures of the chase will never
make him neglect his books.
Many are the pleasant glimpses we catch of the family circle, whether in
the Corte vecchia or old ducal palace of the Viscontis at Milan, in the
beautiful park and gardens of the Castello at Pavia, or in their country
homes of Vigevano and Binasco. We see Duke Francesco riding out with his
young sons through the streets of Milan, visiting the churches and
convents that were rising on all sides, the new hospital, which was the
object of Madonna Bianca's tender care, the oak avenues and gardens with
which she loved to surround her favourite shrines. We find the boys at
home, helping their mother to entertain her guests with music and
dancing, and accompanying her on visits to the noble Milanese families.
One day their grandmother, Agnese di Maino, came to see the duke's sons
with an old gentleman from Navarre, who went home declaring that he had
never seen such wise and well-educated children; another time we hear of
a Madonna Giovanna coming to spend the day at the palace, and dancing
all the evening with Lodovico Maria; and when the duchess took her
younger children to visit Don Tommaseo de' Rieti, general laughter was
excited by the little four-year-old Ascanio, the future cardinal, who
walked straight up to a portrait of the duke, exclaiming, "There is my
lord father!" When the newly elected Pope Pius II., who as Eneas Sylvius
Piccolomini had often been in Milan, came to visit the duke in 1457, he
found Galeazzo reading Cicero, and his little brothers with their
cherub faces sitting round their tutor, intent on his discourse; while
on one occasion their sister Ippolita, the pupil of the great
Constantine Lascaris, pronounced a Latin oration in honour of His
Holiness. On Christmas day, a festival which was always celebrated with
much pomp at Milan, each of the duke's four elder sons came forward and
recited a Latin speech, and Lodovico delighted all who were present by
the ease and grace of his bearing, and the eloquent periods in which he
extolled his father's great deeds in peace and war.
The duke himself always singled out Lodovico for especial notice, and
said the boy would do great things. It was, no doubt, his sense of the
youthful Moro's talents that made Francesco choose him, at the age of
thirteen, to be the leader of the body of three thousand men which were
to join in the Crusade preached by Pope Pius II. On the 2nd of June,
1464, the ducal standard, bearing the golden lion of the house of Sforza
and the adder of the Visconti, was solemnly committed to the charge of
the young Crusader, before the eyes of the whole court, on the piazza in
front of the old palace, which was gaily decorated for the occasion with
garlands and tapestries. But the Pope died, and the idea of the Crusade
was abandoned. Lodovico, however, was sent by his father to Cremona, the
city which had been Duchess Bianca's dowry, and whose inhabitants were
among the most loyal subjects of the Sforza princes. Here he lived
during the next two years, enjoying his foretaste of power, and making
himself very popular with the Cremonese. In 1465, his accomplished
sister was married to Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, and Lorenzo de Medici
came to Milan for the nuptials. Then these two men, who in days to come
were to be so often named together as the most illustrious patrons of
art and letters in the Renaissance, met for the first time, and
discovered the mutual tastes which in future years often brought them
into close relation.
The sudden death of Duke Francesco in 1466 brought a change in
Lodovico's position, and the ingratitude with which the new duke,
Galeazzo, treated his widowed mother, naturally irritated his brothers.
In October, 1468, Bianca retired to Cremona, where she died a week
after her arrival--"more from sorrow of heart than sickness of body,"
wrote her doctor. The good duchess was buried by her husband's side in
the Duomo of Milan, and was long and deeply lamented both by her
children and subjects, and by none more than her son Lodovico, who
always remembered his mother with the deepest affection. But he remained
on good terms with Galeazzo, and was deputed by the new duke to receive
his bride, Bona of Savoy, when the princess arrived at Genoa, from the
French court, where her youth had been spent with her sister, the wife
of King Louis XI. During the next ten years Lodovico lived in enforced
idleness at the Milanese court, and, freed from the restraint of his
parents' authority, abandoned himself to idle pleasures. All we have
from his pen at this period are two short letters. In one, written from
Milan and dated April 19, 1476, he asks the Cardinal of Novara to stand
godfather to the illegitimate son whom his mistress, Lucia Marliani,
Countess of Melzi, had borne him, and who was to be baptized at Pavia.
The other is an affectionate letter addressed from Vigevano a year later
to Lucia herself, rejoicing to hear of her well-being, and looking
forward to seeing her after the feast of St. George. Whether the son was
Leone Sforza, afterwards apostolic protonotary, or whether he was the
child whose death Lodovic lamented a few years later, does not appear,
but all his life the Moro retained a sincere regard for the mother,
Lucia Marliani, and left her certain lands by his will.
Meanwhile, in the conduct of his elder brother Galeazzo he had the worst
possible example. Once in possession of supreme power, the new duke gave
himself up to the most unbridled course of vice and cruelty. The
profligacy of his life, and the horrible tortures which he inflicted on
the hapless victims of his jealousy and anger, caused Milanese
chroniclers to describe him as another Nero. He was commonly believed to
have poisoned both his mother and Dorotea Gonzaga, the betrothed bride
of whom he wished to rid himself when a more desirable marriage
presented itself. These charges were probably groundless, but some of
his actions went far to justify the suspicions of madness which he
aroused in the minds of his contemporaries. When, for instance, he
ordered his artists to decorate a hall at the Castello at Pavia with
portraits of the ducal family in a single night, under pain of instant
death, the Ferrarese Diarist had good reason to describe the new Duke of
Milan as a prince guilty of great crimes and greater follies. At the
same time, Galeazzo showed himself a liberal patron of art and learning.
He founded a library at Milan, invited doctors and priests to the
University of Pavia, and brought singers from all parts of the world to
form the choir of the ducal chapel. During his reign a whole army of
painters and sculptors were employed to decorate the interior of the
Castello of the Porta Giovia at Milan, which his father had rebuilt when
he gave up the ground in front of the old palace to the builders of the
Duomo, and which now became the chief ducal residence. Under his
auspices printing was introduced, and the first book ever produced in
Italy, the Grammar of Lascaris--a Greek professor who had taken refuge
at the court of the Sforzas on the fall of Constantinople--appeared at
Milan in 1476. The splendour of his court surpassed anything that had
been yet seen. Great rejoicings took place in 1469, when Lorenzo de
Medici came to Milan to stand godfather to the duke's infant son, and
Galeazzo was so delighted at the sight of the costly diamond necklace
which the Magnificent Medici presented to Duchess Bona on this occasion,
that he exclaimed, "You must be godfather to all my children!" The
wealth and luxury displayed by the duke and duchess when they visited
Florence two years later with a suite of two thousand persons,
scandalized the old-fashioned citizens, and, in Machiavelli's opinion,
proved the beginning of a marked degeneracy in public morals.
For a time the Milanese were amused by the _fêtes_ provided for them,
and dazzled by the sight of all this splendour; but retribution came in
time, and on the Feast of St. Stephen in the winter of 1476, Duke
Galeazzo was assassinated at the doors of the church of S. Stefano by
three courtiers whom he had wronged. The Milanese chronicler Bernardino
Corio gives a dramatic account of the scene, which he himself witnessed,
and relates how Bona, who was haunted by a presentiment of coming evil,
implored her lord not to leave the Castello that morning, and how three
ravens were seen hovering about Galeazzo's head on that very morning,
when, in his splendid suit of crimson brocade, the tall and handsome
duke entered the church doors, while the choir sang the words, "_Sic
transit gloria mundi_."
"The peace of Italy is dead!" exclaimed Pope Sixtus IV. when the news of
Galeazzo's murder reached him. And the issue proved that he was not far
wrong. In her distress, the widowed duchess, who seems to have been
fondly attached to her husband, in spite of his crimes and follies,
addressed a piteous letter to the Holy Father owning her dead lord's
guilt, and asking him if he could issue a bull absolving him from his
many and grievous sins. In her anxiety for Galeazzo's soul, she promised
to atone as far as possible for his crimes by making reparation to those
whom he had wronged, and offered to build churches and monasteries,
endow hospitals, and perform other works of mercy. The Pope does not
seem to have returned a direct answer to this touching prayer, but he
took advantage of Bona's present mood to hurry on the marriage of
Caterina Sforza, the duke's natural daughter, with his own nephew,
Girolamo Riario, which had been arranged by Galeazzo, and which took
place in the following April. Lodovico was absent at the time of
Galeazzo's assassination, and with his brother Sforza, Duke of Bari, was
spending Christmas at the court of Louis XI. at Tours. They had not been
banished, as Corio asserts, but, tired of idleness and fired with a wish
to see the world, they had gone on a journey to France, and, after
visiting Paris and Angers, were on their way home when the news of the
duke's murder reached them. But if any hope of obtaining a share in the
government had been aroused in Lodovico's heart, it was doomed to speedy
disappointment. Cecco Simonetta, the able secretary and minister who had
administered the state under Galeazzo, kept a firm hold on the reins of
government, ruled the Milanese in the name of Duchess Bona and her young
son Gian Galeazzo. The Sforza brothers soon found their position
intolerable, and the intervention of a friendly neighbour, the Marquis
of Mantua, was necessary before they could obtain any recognition of
their right. At his request, Bona agreed to give each of her
brothers-in-law a suitable residence in Milan, as well as a portion of
12,500 ducats from the revenues of their mother's inheritance, the city
of Cremona. Filippo Sforza, the second of the brothers, who is described
as weak in intellect and a person of no account, was content to live
peaceably in Milan, where his very existence seems to have been
forgotten by his family, and where the only mention of him that occurs
again is that of his death in 1492. The other brothers were sent to
Genoa, where an insurrection had broken out, and succeeded in subduing
the rebels and restoring peace. But when they returned to Milan at the
head of a victorious army, with their kinsman the valiant Condottiere
Roberto di Sanseverino, a movement was set on foot among the old
Ghibelline followers of Duke Francesco to obtain the regency for Sforza,
Duke of Bari. Cries of _Moro! Moro!_ began to be heard in the streets of
Milan. Simonetta, becoming alarmed, threw Donato del Conte, one of the
Ghibelline leaders, into prison, upon which Sanseverino and the Sforzas
loudly demanded his release. Simonetta gave them fair words in return,
and induced the dissatisfied chiefs to meet in the park of the Castello,
where they agreed to lay down their arms. But Sanseverino, suspecting
treachery, set spurs to his horse, and, riding with drawn sword in his
hand out of the city through the Porta Vercellina, crossed the Ticino,
and did not pause until he was in safety. His companions soon followed
his example. Ottaviano Sforza, the youngest of the family, a brave lad
of eighteen, was drowned in crossing the swollen Adda, and his three
remaining brothers were condemned to perpetual exile. Sforza was
banished to his duchy of Bari, in the kingdom of Naples, Ascanio to
Perugia, and Lodovico to the city of Pisa.
During the next eighteen months Lodovico lived at Pisa, fretting his
heart out in exile and wasting the best years of his life, as he
complained to Lorenzo de Medici. His friend could only counsel patience,
for, sympathize as he might with the banished prince, Lorenzo was
closely allied with the rulers of Milan, and Lodovico soon saw that his
only hope of seeing his native land again was to be found in the support
of Ferrante, King of Naples, the sworn foe of the Medici. This monarch
looked on Simonetta as a traitorous villain who had taken advantage of
Bona's weakness to usurp the supreme power in Milan, and wrote to King
Louis XI, begging him to come to his kinswoman's help and assist in
restoring the Duke of Bari and his brother to their rights. But the
French king had no wish to be drawn into the quarrel, and when Ferrante
endeavoured to obtain the restoration of his exiled kinsmen by fair
means and had failed, Sforza and Lodovico resolved to try the fortunes
of war once more. Roberto di Sanseverino, whose mother had been a niece
of Duke Francesco, and who had large estates of his own in Lombardy,
placed his sword at their disposal, and they knew they could reckon on
the secret support of their Sforza and Visconti kinsmen in Milan. Among
these, Lodovico had a devoted partisan in Beatrice d'Este, the sister of
Duke Ercole of Ferrara, who had lately been left a widow for the second
time by the death of her husband, the brave soldier Tristan Sforza, and
who kept up a secret correspondence with the exiled princes. Early in
February, 1479, the Sforza brothers and Roberto di Sanseverino landed in
Genoa and boldly raised the standard of revolt. Simonetta retaliated by
confiscating their revenues and proclaiming them rebels, while he hired
Ercole D'Este and Federigo Gonzaga to join the Florentines in resisting
the advance of the Neapolitan forces. In the midst of these warlike
preparations, Sforza Duke of Bari died very suddenly at Genoa. His death
was attributed, after the fashion of the day, to poison secretly sent
him from Milan; but, as Corio remarks, many persons thought that his
excessive stoutness was the true cause of his decease. Lodovico, whom
the King of Naples immediately invested with the dukedom of Bari in his
brother's stead, now crossed the Genoese Alps and boldly invaded the
territory of Tortona. But the enterprise was a perilous one, and the
allied forces of Milan were preparing to crush his little army, when an
unexpected turn of fortune altered the whole condition of affairs.
Duchess Bona, a very beautiful woman, but, as Commines remarks, "_une
dame de petit sens_" had become infatuated with a certain Antonio
Tassino, a Ferrarese youth of low extraction, whom Galeazzo had
appointed carver at the royal table, and who, after the duke's death,
had made himself indispensable to his mistress. The _liaison_ had
created a coolness between the duchess and her prime minister, of which
Beatrice d'Este and some of the Sforza party cleverly availed
themselves to widen the breach. They deplored the growing arrogance of
Simonetta, and lamented the success of his intrigues against Lodovico,
who was his sister-in-law's nearest relative and rightful protector.
Acting on their suggestion, Bona took a sudden resolve. She sent a
messenger to invite Lodovico to return to Milan in his nephew's name,
and late in the evening of the 7th of October, 1479, the Moro, leaving
the camp at Tortona, arrived in Milan, and was secretly admitted into
the Castello by the garden door. The duchess and her son, Gian Galeazzo,
a boy of ten, received him with open arms, and great was the joy among
all the Ghibellines of Milan, when they heard to their surprise that
Duke Francesco's son was once more among them. Simonetta looked grave,
as he well might, when he heard the news. "Most illustrious duchess," he
said to Bona the next day, "do you know what will happen? My head will
be cut off, and before long you will lose this state." But he proceeded
to congratulate Lodovico on his return, and was received by him in the
most courteous manner. When the news of these events reached the rival
camps outside Milan, a truce was proclaimed, and the leaders on either
side disbanded their armies. The object of the expedition was attained,
and Lodovico restored to his rightful place at Milan. But neither
Roberto di Sanseverino nor the other Ghibelline leader could be content
while their hated rival Simonetta was still at large. They sent
messengers to Lodovico, imperiously demanding his summary punishment,
and declaring that they would never lay down their arms until he and his
confederates were imprisoned. After some delay, Lodovico yielded to
their demand; Bona's faithful secretary was arrested and sent to Pavia
with his brother, while the fickle populace sacked their houses.
Congratulations poured in from all the kinsfolk of the Sforza family.
Caterina Sforza, the illegitimate daughter of Duke Galeazzo, who had
been brought up by Bona with her own children, wrote from Rome, where
she was living with her husband, Girolamo Riario, Count of Imola and
Forli at the papal court, to rejoice with her brother the young duke
over the fall of the hated minister; "_quelo nefandissimo Cecho_ the
murderer of our family and our flesh and blood." Now at length, he
adds, she will be able to visit Milan and see her beloved mother once
more in peace and safety. And her husband's uncle, Pope Sixtus IV.,
himself wrote to congratulate both duke and duchess on the arrest of
Simonetta and the restoration of peace and tranquillity. Lodovico was
now formally associated with Duchess Bona in the regency, and his
brother Ascanio was recalled and advanced to the dignity of Archbishop
of Pavia. Before many months were over peace was concluded with
Florence, and with the full approval of King Ferrante, the Duke of
Ferrara accepted Lodovico Sforza as his future son-in-law.
Meanwhile party feeling still ran high in Milan, and the Ghibellines,
with Sanseverino and Pusterla at their head, never ceased to clamour for
Simonetta's head. People began to complain that Lodovico, who had been
brought back to power by the Ghibellines, was after all a Guelph at
heart, and a traitor to his party. In vain the Moro advocated milder
measures, and wrote a letter to Simonetta, offering to release him on
payment of a ransom. The old secretary, who was upwards of seventy years
of age, refused, saying that he was ill and weary of life, and had no
fear of death. At length Lodovico, vexed by the continual recriminations
of his Ghibelline followers, reluctantly gave way. Bona signed the death
warrant of her old servant, and on the 30th of October, 1480, Simonetta
was beheaded in the Castello of Pavia. His brother Giovanni, an able and
learned scholar, was released, and lived to write the famous Sforziada,
or history of Duke Francesco's great deeds, which he dedicated to his
son Lodovico.
Already one-half of the unfortunate minister's prophecy had come true;
the other half was soon to be fulfilled. For a few months Bona rejoiced
in her freedom from the cares of state, and left all to Lodovico, "who
could do her no greater pleasure than not to speak of these things,"
says Commines. She herself was treated with the utmost respect, and
spent her time in feasting and dancing, and loaded her favourite with
honours. Tassino lived in rooms next to her own, and rode out with the
duchess on pillion behind him. But her favourite, encouraged by the
folly of his mistress, became every day more indolent, until one day he
kept Lodovico Sforza and the chief officers of state waiting at the door
of his room while he finished his toilet. Yet nothing could cure Bona's
infatuation, and she went so far as to beg Lodovico to appoint her
minion's father to be governor of the _Rocca_ of Porta Zobia (Giovia),
as the Castello of Milan was called. Fortunately Eustachio, who had been
appointed to the post by Duke Galeazzo, and solemnly charged to hold it,
in case of his own death, until his son was of age, refused to give up
the keys; and the young duke and his brother Ermes were conducted into
the Rocca, while at the same moment Tassino received an order from the
Council to leave Milan. This he did without delay, taking with him a
large sum of money and many valuable pearls and jewels which he had
received from the duchess. When Bona heard of her favourite's flight she
flew into a frantic rage, and, "forgetful alike of honour and maternal
duty," as Corio writes, she renounced her share of the regency, saying
that she placed her son in his uncle's care, and left Milan. "Like some
demented woman," continues Corio, she fled as far as Abbiategrasso,
where she was detained by Lodovico's orders, and not allowed to proceed
to France as she had intended. In the end, however, she effected her
purpose, and retired to her brother-in-law's Louis XI.'s court, where
she remained during the next few years, vowing vengeance against
Lodovico, and bitterly repenting her weakness in having consented to his
return. So Lodovico Moro, "that hero of patience and cunning," as
Michelet calls him, at length attained his object, and found himself
sole Regent of Milan. _Merito e tempore_ was the motto which he had
chosen for his own, and which he placed in golden letters on his shield,
and illuminated on the vellum pages of his favourite books, in the firm
belief that all things come to the man who can learn to bide his time.
Henceforth his head appeared together with that of his younger nephew on
all coins and medals, and the words _Lodovico patrue gubernante_
inscribed below.
Pandolfini, the Florentine ambassador, who had watched his course with
profound interest, sent a minute report of the latest developments of
public events to Lodovico's friend, the Magnificent Medici. A year
before, when Lodovico had just returned to Milan, the envoy remarked,
"Signor Lodovico is very popular here, both with the people and with
Madonna." Again, a little later, he wrote, "Madonna trusts much in
Messer Lodovico's good nature." Now he added, "The whole government of
the kingdom is placed in Lodovico's hands." He could not refrain from an
expression of admiration at the peaceable manner in which this
revolution had been accomplished. "With what ability and skill he has
effected this sudden change!" And he added, "I tell him, if he uses his
opportunities well, he will become the arbiter of the whole of Italy."
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Caffi in A. S. L., xiii.
CHAPTER III
Wars of Venice and Ferrara--Invasion of Ferrara--Lodovico Sforza and
Alfonso of Calabria come to the help of Ercole d'Este--Peace of Bagnolo
--Prosperity of Ferrara, and cultivation of art and learning at Ercole's
court--Guarino and Aldo Manuzio--Strozzi and Boiardo--Architecture and
painting--The frescoes of the Schifanoia--Music and the drama--Education
of Isabella and Beatrice d'Este.
1482-1490
Such was the prince to whom Duke Ercole had betrothed his younger
daughter, and who had suddenly become one of the chief personages in
North Italy. But more than ten years were to elapse before the
child-bride even saw her affianced husband. During that time both Milan
and Ferrara passed through many vicissitudes, and at one moment
Beatrice's father and his state were reduced to the utmost extremity.
The Venetians availed themselves of the troubled state of Lombardy and
the civil strife that divided the house of Sforza, to attack their old
enemy the Duke of Ferrara. In 1482 Roberto di Sanseverino, the valiant
captain who had been one of the chief instruments in restoring his
kinsman Lodovico Sforza to his country, left Milan in a rage, because he
did not consider his salary sufficient, and offered his services to the
Republic of Venice. With his gallant sons to help him, he invaded the
territory of Ferrara at the head of an army of seventeen thousand men,
and carried all before him. The Pope as usual took up the quarrel of the
Venetians, in the hope of sharing the spoil, and while Ercole's ally,
King Ferrante of Naples, was engaged in resisting the papal forces, the
Genoese, who had revolted against Duchess Bona in 1478, and elected a
doge of their own, occupied Lodovico Sforza's attention. The Ferrarese
troops were completely defeated in a battle under the citadel of
Argenta, many of the Ferrarese leaders were slain, and the duke's
nephew, Niccolo da Correggio, and three hundred men were taken prisoners
to Venice. Sanseverino made good use of his advantage, and his son
Gaspare, better known by his nickname of Fracassa, marched to the very
gates of Ferrara, and planted the Lion of St. Mark on the peacocks'
house in the ducal park. Meanwhile the plague had broken out in Ferrara,
and so great was the scarcity of wheat in the beleaguered city, that
Battista Guarino, the tutor of the young Princess Isabella, applied to
her betrothed husband Francesco Gonzaga for a grant of corn to save him
from starvation. Worse than all, Duke Ercole himself lay dangerously ill
within the Castello, and a report of his death was circulated through
the city. At this critical moment Duchess Leonora once more showed her
courage and presence of mind. Seeing the greatness of the danger, she
sent her children with a safe escort to Modena, and calling the
magistrates together, she harangued them from the garden loggia, and
bade them be true to their old lords of the house of Este. The citizens,
moved to tears at the sight of Leonora's majesty and courage, shouted
with one voice, "Diamante!"--the watchword of the house of Este, and
vowed to die for their duke. In their enthusiasm, the people broke open
the palace doors, and rushing into the chamber where Ercole lay on his
sick-bed, covered his hands with kisses, and would not be satisfied
until they had heard his voice again and knew him to be alive. After
this outburst of loyalty, they rallied bravely to the defence of the
city. Every man who could bear arms in Ferrara helped to man the walls,
and the country-folk, rising in thousands, harassed the invading army
and cut off their supplies. Fortunately, help was at hand. On the one
hand, Lodovico Sforza's troops checked the advance of the Venetians on
the side of Modena; on the other, Ercole's brother-in-law, Alfonso, Duke
of Calabria, himself rode at the head of fifty horsemen and a troop of
infantry to the help of the beleaguered city.
Throughout the long struggle that followed, Lodovico Sforza proved
himself a wise and faithful friend of the house of Este, and it was
chiefly owing to him that Ferrara preserved her independence. But the
duke and his people had to make great sacrifices on their part, and at
the peace of Bagnolo, which was finally concluded in 1484, seven towns
were ceded to Venice, and the fertile district of Rovigo in the
Polesina, "_un petit pays_," in the words of Commines, "_tout environné
d'eau et abondant a merveille en tous biens_."
A period of renewed peace and prosperity followed upon these disastrous
wars. Ercole, although in his early youth he had proved himself a
valiant soldier, had in reality far greater taste for the arts of peace
than for those of war, and now devoted himself to the more congenial
task of adorning Ferrara and cultivating letters. His father Niccolo
III. had been the first prince in Northern Italy to take part in the
revival of Greek learning that had been set on foot in Naples and
Florence. He it was who, in 1402, revived the ancient University of
Ferrara, and invited the best scholars of the day to give lectures to
its students. At his prayer, the Sicilian Hellenist Aurispa, who had
travelled to Greece and Constantinople in search of Greek manuscripts,
fixed his residence at Ferrara; while Battista Guarino of Verona became
the tutor of Niccolo's own son Leonello, and inspired the young prince
with that ardour for learning which made him the most accomplished ruler
of his time. It was Niccolo, again, who invited the celebrated Paduan
doctor, Michele Savonarola, to fill the chair of medicine at the
University of Ferrara. Michele's son became court physician to Ercole,
and his grandson, the famous Dominican friar, Fra Girolamo Savonarola,
who had forsaken the study of medicine to take the vows of a preaching
brother, delivered his first course of Lent sermons in Ferrara during
that troubled year 1482.
The General Council held at Ferrara in 1438 brought some of the first
Greek Oriental scholars together in that city, and Niccolo d'Este
himself assisted at many of the discussions held by these learned
professors. His son Leonello, besides encouraging students by his own
example, devoted great pains and expense to the University library which
he founded, while his successor, Duke Borso, pensioned poor students,
who were clothed and fed at his cost. Ercole now followed in his
father's and brother's steps with so much success that under his reign
the University of Ferrara became the foremost in Italy, and boasted no
less than forty-five professors, while the number of students reached
four hundred and seventy-four. In those days the most renowned scholars
of the age flocked from all parts of Italy to hear Guarino lecture; and
Aldo Manuzio, the great printer, and his illustrious friend Pico della
Mirandola, the phoenix of the Renaissance, came to Ferrara to sit at the
feet of this revered teacher. Here Aldo acquired the passion for Greek
literature which made him inscribe the word Philhellene after his name
on his first printed books. Here, in his own turn, he lectured on Greek
and Latin authors to the cultured youth of Ercole's court, and here he
would have set up his printing-press, under his friend Duchess Leonora's
patronage, if the Venetian war had not forced him to leave Ferrara. Both
from the court of Alberto Pio at Carpi, where he found refuge with a
kinsman of the Estes, and at Venice, where he founded his famous
printing-press, he kept up frequent communications with the duke's
family, and dedicated books to young Cardinal Ercole, and bound and
printed choice editions of Petrarch and Virgil for his sister Isabella
d'Este. But if Duke Ercole emulated the zeal of his predecessors in the
encouragement of classical learning, he surpassed them all in his love
of travel, of building, and of theatrical representations. During the
next twenty years he indulged freely in all of these favourite pursuits.
His opportunities of travel, indeed, were limited by the duties of his
position; but whenever he could find leisure, he gratified his roving
taste by paying frequent visits to Milan or Venice, where the
magnificent palace bestowed upon his ancestor Nicolas II. in the last
century, but confiscated during the war with Ferrara, had been restored
to him at the peace of Bagnolo. In 1484, he took Duchess Leonora there
with a suite of seven hundred persons. On this occasion the palace
originally decorated by Duke Borso was sumptuously restored, and the
Doge and Senate entertained their guests with princely hospitality. A
more distant pilgrimage to the shrine of S. Jago of Compostella in
Spain, which Ercole had planned in 1487, had to be abandoned, owing to
the opposition of Pope Innocent VIII.; but eight years later the duke
paid another visit to Florence, on the pretence of discharging a vow
which he had made to Our Lady of the Annunziata. To the last the
adventurous disposition of the Estes, the love of seeing and hearing new
things, marked his character and governed his actions.
Meanwhile his imagination found plenty of food for activity at home, and
nothing interfered with his love of building or with the delight which
he took in the stage. Under him, Ferrara became one of the finest cities
in Italy. Her broad streets and spacious squares, her noble statues and
imposing monuments, the stately symmetry of her well-kept ways, made a
deep impression on Lodovico Sforza when he visited his wife's home. At
the beginning of his reign Ercole had sent to Florence to borrow
Alberti's Treatise on Architecture from Lorenzo de' Medici, and had
carried out his improvements on the principles advocated by the
Renaissance architect. On every side new churches and palaces rose into
being, a lofty Campanile was added to the ancient Lombard Cathedral, an
equestrian statue of Niccolo III. and a bronze effigy of Duke Borso
adorned the piazza in front of the Castello. Soon Ercole's subjects
caught their duke's passion for building, and vied with him in erecting
new and sumptuous houses. His brother, Cardinal Sigismondo, raised the
Palazzo Diamante, that magnificent Renaissance structure in the Via
degli Angeli. The Trotti and the Costabili, the Strozzi and Boschetti,
all followed suit and built palatial residences in the neighbourhood.
These fine buildings were surrounded with spacious gardens. One of
Ercole's first improvements had been to lay out the noble park outside
the town, and to people it with stags and goats, with gazelles and
antelopes and the spotted giraffes which Niccolo da Correggio describes
in his poems; and on the gates leading from the city were marble busts
carved by the hand of Sperandio, the famous medallist who had worked so
long for the ducal house, and who has left us portraits of all the chief
personages at the Ferrarese court. The courtyard of the ancient Este
palace was adorned with wide marble staircases, the villa of Belfiore
was enlarged and beautified, while that of Belriguardo, twelve miles
from the city, on the banks of the Po, became celebrated as the most
sumptuous of all the stately pleasure-houses in which Renaissance
princes took delight. No pains or expense were spared in the decoration
of these luxurious country houses. The terraced gardens and marble
loggias were adorned with fountains and statues, the halls were hung
with costly tapestries and gold and silver embroideries. Eastern carpets
and carved ivories, cameos and intaglios, precious gems and rare
majolica from Urbino and Casteldurante were brought together in the
Camerini of the Castello and the halls of the Schifanoia palace, that
favourite Sans-Souci of the Este princes close to the court-church of S.
Maria in Vado and to the convent of Leonora's friends, the nuns of S.
Vito. In this charming retreat, where Borso and Ercole alike loved to
escape from the cares of state, we may still see the remnants of these
splendid decorations which once adorned these halls: the painted
arabesques and stucco frieze of children playing musical instruments,
the barrel-vaulted ceilings, and marble doorways with their rows of
cherub heads and dolphins. There the unicorn which Borso took for his
device, figures side by side with the imperial eagle granted him by
Frederic III when he came to visit Ferrara, and the fleur-de-lis of
France, which the Estes were privileged to bear on their coat-of-arms.
There we still see fragments of the frescoes on the months and seasons
of the year which Cossa and his scholars painted at the bidding of
successive dukes. Borso is there on his white horse as he rides out
hunting, attended by falconers and pages leading his favourite
greyhounds in the leash; or looking on at the races of St. George's Day,
surrounded by scholars and courtiers, dwarfs and jesters, and fair
ladies clad in glittering robes of cloth of silver and gold. All the
pageant of court-life in old Ferrara, as it was in the days when Duke
Ercole reigned and Isabella and Beatrice d'Este grew up under the good
Duchess Leonora's care, passes again before our eyes, as we linger in
these low halls of the little red-brick palace among the fruit trees of
this deserted quarter.
Niccolo III. and his elder sons had all been liberal patrons of art, and
had invited the best artists they could find from other parts of Italy.
Vittore Pisanello and Jacopo Bellini had both of them visited Ferrara
and painted portraits of the Este princes--that of Leonello, with his
long hooked nose and low forehead, is still preserved at Bergamo, and
Piero de' Franceschi, the mighty Umbrian, is said to have supplied a
design for Duke Borso's tomb. But it was in later years, under Ercole's
reign, that this little group of native artists arose, and that Cosimo
Tura and his followers founded the school which gradually spread to
Bologna and Modena and boasted such masters as Lorenzo Costa and
Francia, or helped to mould the genius of a Raphael and a Correggio.
Tura himself remained at Ferrara all his life, painting altar-pieces for
Duchess Leonora's favourite churches, as well as frescoes in the duke's
villas and portraits of the different members of the ducal family in
turn. In 1472, before the Duke's marriage, he painted the portrait of
Ercole--strange to say--together with his illegitimate daughter Lucrezia
d'Este, to be sent as a present to his bride, Leonora of Aragon, at her
father's court of Naples. Again, in the summer of 1485, he was called
upon in his capacity of court painter to paint the likeness of the
youthful Isabella for her affianced husband, Francesco Gonzaga; and
before the year was out he had to perform the same task for the other
little bride, who had just returned from Naples. The following paper in
the Ferrarese archives fixes the exact date of the portrait, which was
evidently sent as a Christmas gift to Lodovico Sforza at Milan. "On the
24th of December, 1485, Cosimo Tura received four gold florins from the
duke, for painting from life the face and bust of the Illustrissima
Madonna Beatrice, to be sent to Messer Lodovico Maria Sforza, Duca di
Bari, consort of the said Beatrice--Carlo Continga taking it to him."
Unfortunately, both of these portraits have perished, and the only
representation of Beatrice as a girl that we have is the sculptor
Cristoforo Romano's well-known bust in the Louvre.
While the native schools of painting became active and prosperous under
Ercole's auspices, a flourishing school of arts and crafts arose in
Ferrara under the immediate patronage of the duchess. From the day of
her marriage, Leonora not only showed that intelligent love of art and
learning which might have been expected in a princess of the house of
Aragon, but a warm interest in the well-being of her subjects, together
with excellent sense and a strong practical bent. At her invitation,
tapestry-workers from Milan and Florence came to settle at Ferrara, and
skilled embroiderers were brought over from Spain. The duchess herself
superintended these workers, selected the colours and patterns, and
became an authority in the choice of hangings and decoration of rooms.
While Ercole had an insatiable passion for gems and cameos, antique
marbles and ivories, Leonora showed an especial taste for gold and
silver metal-work. Silver boxes and girdles curiously chased and
engraved were constantly sent to the duchess by Milanese goldsmiths, and
among the workers in this line whom she frequently employed was
Francesco Francia, the goldsmith painter of Bologna. In 1488, this
artist sent her an exquisite chain of gold hearts linked together, which
excited general admiration, and may perhaps have been intended as a
bridal gift for Elizabeth Gonzaga, the sister of Isabella's betrothed
husband, who visited Ferrara that spring, on her way to Urbino.
Leonora's own jewels were said to be the finest and most artistic owned
by any princess of her day, and, as in the case of other Renaissance
ladies, formed no inconsiderable portion of her fortune; and, in
consequence, they were frequently pawned to raise money for her
husband's wars. The duchess's famous necklace of pearls, we learn, was
repeatedly lent by the duke to bankers or goldsmiths in Rome and
Florence as pledges for the repayment of loans advanced during the war
with Venice.
Music was another of Ercole's favourite pastimes, and the choir of his
court chapel at one time rivalled that of Milan, which was held to be
the best in Italy. Violinists and lute-players were brought from Naples
to Ferrara, French and Spanish tenors were included among the singers
who accompanied the duke on his journeys. A still more distinctive
feature of his court were the theatrical representations, which became a
prominent part of all the palace festivities, and which undoubtedly owed
much to the duke's taste for dramatic art. Under his directions, a
spacious theatre was fitted up in the old Gothic Palazzo della Ragione
on the cathedral square. Here Latin comedies were performed before an
audience which included the most learned classical scholars of the day,
and Italian dramas were seen for the first time upon the stage. In 1486,
an Italian version of the _Menæchimi_, translated by Ercole himself,
was acted here, with interludes of masques and morris dances, violin
music, and recitations. This was followed, a year later, by a
performance of _Cefalo_, one of the oldest of Italian dramas, a pastoral
play composed by Niccolo da Correggio, chiefly taken from Ovid's
"Metamorphoses," and which is said to have suggested the subjects of
Correggio's famous frescoes in the Abbess of San Paolo's parlour at
Parma. Each Christmas and carnival these theatrical representations were
repeated, and many were the distinguished visitors who came to Ferrara
to witness these celebrated performances. The _Amphitryon_ and _Cassina_
of Plautus were frequently given. On one occasion, a play adapted from a
dialogue of Lucian's by Matteo Boiardo was acted. Another time, at the
wedding of a Marchese Strozzi, a Latin comedy written by the
bridegroom's brother, Ercole Strozzi, was performed before the whole
court. Sometimes, by way of variety, sacred subjects were placed upon
the stages. Tableaux of the Annunciation and the history of Joseph were
introduced, accompanied with recitations and music. While the duke was
known to have a strong preference for classical plays, the duchess and
her daughters took pleasure in lighter forms of literature, and
encouraged the songs and romances which courtly poets wrote for their
benefit in the _lingua vulgare_. A new school of Italian poets sprang up
at Ferrara in the last years of the century. Antonio Tebaldeo, the
friend of Castiglione and Raphael--"our Tebaldeo," whom Pietro Bembo
declared Raphael had painted in so lifelike a manner that he was not so
exactly himself in actual life as in this portrait--had his home at
Ferrara in these early days, and enjoyed the favour of the Marchioness
Isabella in his later years. While the elder Strozzi, Tito, had the
reputation of being the best Latin poet of the day, his son Ercole
belonged to the circle of younger scholars, and, like his friends Bembo
and Ariosto, wrote elegant Italian verses as well as Latin epistles and
orations. Then there was the blind poet Francesco Bello, the author of
the "Mambriano," that heroic poem on the favourite Carlovingian legend;
Andrea Cossa of Naples, who sang his own _rime_ and _strambotti_ to the
music of the lute; Niccolo da Correggio, called by Isabella d'Este and
Sabba da Castiglione "the most accomplished gentleman of the age, the
foremost man in all Italy, in the art of poetry and in courtesy," who
devoted his muse to the service of gentle ladies, and composed _canzoni_
and _capitoli_ or set Petrarch's sonnets to music for Isabella and
Beatrice's pleasure. And among Ercole's courtiers at Ferrara there was
one still greater, Matteo Boiardo, Count of Scandiano, who was intimate
with both duke and duchess, and held many high posts at court. He was a
member of the splendid suite sent in 1473 to escort Leonora from Naples
to Ferrara, and afterwards held the important post of Governor of Modena
during many years. But in the midst of official labours and court
duties, Matteo was all the while engaged in writing his great work
of the "Orlando Innamorato," that wonderful epic in which classic and
romantic ideas are mingled together as strangely as in Piero di Cosimo
or Sandro Botticelli's paintings. The first cantos of his poem, begun in
1472, were published at Venice in 1486, with a dedication to Duke
Ercole, and the work was continued at intervals throughout his life, and
was only interrupted by the death of the poet. This took place in 1494,
when the first French armies were first seen descending upon Italy, and
the sweet singer of high romance broke off abruptly with a prophetic
note of warning in his last accents--"While I am singing, I see all
Italy set on fire by these Gauls, coming to ravage I know not how many
fresh lands, alas!"
In this city which was at once the home of Italian epic and Italian
drama, at this court where the boy Ariosto was to take up the song that
dropped from the lips of Boiardo, and to wear the laurel in his turn,
the young princesses of Este grew up. There were three of them, for
Lucrezia, the duke's illegitimate daughter, had found a kind mother in
the duchess, and was brought up with her young step-sisters Isabella and
Beatrice, until in 1487, she became the wife of Annibale Bentivoglio,
and went to live in Bologna. Under Leonora's careful and vigilant eyes,
these maidens were trained in all the culture of the day. Their
classical studies were directed by Battista Guarino, the son of the
learned Verona humanist, the same who begged the Marquis of Mantua for a
grant of wheat that he might the better be able to teach his betrothed
bride Madonna Isabella during the famine at Ferrara. With him they
learnt sufficient Latin to read Cicero and Virgil, as well as Greek and
Roman history. Music and dancing were taught them almost from infancy.
They learnt to play the viol and lute, and sang _canzoni_ and sonnets to
the accompaniment of these instruments. Beatrice, we know, was
passionately fond of music. She employed the great Pavian Lorenzo
Gusnasco to make her clavichords and viols of the finest order, and like
her father, she never travelled without her favourite singers. Isabella
herself had a beautiful voice, and sang with a sweetness and grace which
charmed all hearers. The most accomplished poets of the Renaissance,
Pietro Bembo and Niccolo da Correggio, Girolamo Casio and Antonio
Tebaldeo, were proud to hear her sing their verses, and the Vicenza
scholar Trissino, forestalling Waller in this, wrote a _canzone_
addressed to "My Lady Isabella playing the lute."
Messer Ambrogio da Urbino began to give Isabella dancing lessons almost
as soon as she could walk. Later on a certain Messer Lorenzo Lavagnolo,
who had taught Elizabeth and Maddalena Gonzaga, the young sisters of the
Marquis of Mantua, and had afterwards been sent to the court of Milan to
teach Duchess Bona's daughters, came to Ferrara. This master, who was
commended to the Duchess of Milan by the Marchioness Barbara of Mantua
as superior to all other professors of the art of dancing, gave lessons
to Isabella and her sisters, as we learn from a letter which she wrote
to her affianced husband, thanking him in her sister's name and her own
for having sent so excellent a teacher to undertake the task, and
recommending this faithful and devoted servant to His Excellency's
notice. A bill for making dresses and scenery that were employed in a
"_festa_" composed by Messer Lorenzo for the duke's daughters is
preserved in the Gonzaga archives, and at Lucrezia's wedding, in 1487,
this renowned master travelled to Bologna to direct the _fêtes_ given in
honour of her marriage.
Some knowledge of French seems to have formed part of an Italian lady's
education at this period, but even Isabella, with all her quickness and
talent, was never able to speak French fluently, and Beatrice had
recourse to interpreters when she received the visit of King Charles
VIII. at Asti, and was required to make civil speeches in reply to his
compliments. But they read Provençal poetry and translations of Spanish
romances from the rare volumes, sumptuously bound in crimson velvet with
enamelled and jewelled clasps and corners, that were among the most
precious treasures of Duchess Leonora's cabinet. Above all, they took
delight in French romances, such as "_I reali di Francia_"--that book
which was so popular with Italian ladies, and became familiar with the
exploits of Roland and the paladins of Charlemagne's court. As they bent
over their embroidery-frames at their lady mother's side, in the painted
camerini of the Castello, or under the acacias and lemon-trees of the
Schifanoia villa, they listened to the wonderful fairy tales which
Matteo Boiardo recited, and heard him tell how Rinaldo of Montalbano was
pelted with roses and lilies and made captive by Cupid's dames. Now and
then, on summer evenings, they were allowed to join in the water-parties
at Belriguardo, and float down the stream in the ducal bucentaur to the
sound of the court violins, or else take part in those hunting
expeditions for which Beatrice developed a passionate taste in
after-years. As the frescoes of Schifanoia show, hunting was always a
favourite pastime at the court of Ferrara. The duke kept many hundred
horses in his stables, and the greatest care was bestowed upon his breed
of dogs and falcons. When Borso went to Rome in 1471, he took in his
retinue eighty pages, each leading four greyhounds in a leash; and when
he entertained the Emperor Frederic III. at Ferrara, he presented him
with fifty of his best horses. Ercole often received gifts of Barbary
horses from the Sultan of Tunis or the famous Gonzaga stables that were
reckoned the best in Italy, and bought Spanish jennets and steeds of
Irish race to improve his own breed. And Duchess Leonora owned a special
breed of greyhounds which were held in high esteem, and a pair of which
she sent to Caterina Sforza, Madonna of Forli, at the humble request of
this adventurous lady.
But it was only on very rare occasions that the young princesses of Este
were allowed to leave their studies, which occupied their whole days,
and, as we learn from their different preceptors' letters, absorbed
their whole attention. Nor, we may be quite sure, was their religious
education neglected under the eye of their mother, a sincerely devout
and pious woman, who took pleasure in the converse of learned Dominicans
and Carmelites, and paid frequent visits to S. Vito, close to the
Schifanoia villa, and to the Convent of Corpus Domini, in which church
she was buried. Her many charitable works, the liberality with which she
helped her poorer subjects, relieved their wants, and gave dowries to
virtuous maidens, as well as her munificence in adorning altars and
churches with rich ornaments, are recorded by every Ferrarese historian.
Sabadino degli Arienti places her high among the illustrious women of
the age, and says her deeds cannot fail to have opened the adamant doors
of Paradise, while Castiglione speaks of her excellent virtues as known
to the whole world, and pronounces her worthy to have reigned over a far
larger state. With the pattern of this admirable mother before their
eyes, with all that was choicest in art and fairest in nature around
them, Leonora's daughters grew up to womanhood, and insensibly acquired
that enthusiasm for beauty in all its varied forms, that fine taste and
perception which distinguished them above their contemporaries, which
made Isabella at the end of her long life still the most attractive
woman of her day, and which caused the bravest soldiers and the wisest
scholars to lament the untimely death of the youthful Duchess Beatrice.
In all the difficult and tangled ways which they were separately called
upon to tread, the breath of scandal, the slander of idle tongues, never
sullied their fair names. Both princesses held fast to the ideal of
their girlhood, and, leading the same pure and spotless life, left the
same gracious memory behind them, alike in the old Mantuan city on the
banks of the classic Mincio, where Isabella's presence lingers like some
delicate perfume about the _Camerini_ of the ancient Castello, and in
that grander and more splendid court where Beatrice reigned for a few
brief years by the Moro's side at Milan.
CHAPTER IV
Isabella d'Este--Lodovico Sforza delays his wedding--Plot against his
life--Submission of Genoa--Duke Gian Galeazzo--The Sanseverini brothers
--Messer Galeazzo made Captain-General of the Milanese armies--His
marriage to Bianca Sforza--Marriage of Gian Galeazzo to Isabella of
Aragon--Wedding festivities at Milan--Lodovico draws up his marriage
contract with Beatrice d'Este.
1485-1490
Isabella d'Este, the eldest of Ercole's and Leonora's two daughters,
early displayed the striking beauty and great qualities that
distinguished her in after-years. Her regular features and delicate
colouring, her ready wit and gracious manners, charmed all the visitors
to Ferrara. The letters of princes and ambassadors were full of her
praises. The Mantuan envoy who was sent to Ferrara in 1480, to arrange
the terms of the marriage contract, was amazed at the little bride's
precocity. The six-year-old child not only danced charmingly before him,
but conversed with a grace and intelligence which seemed to him little
short of miraculous. All her teachers told the same story. Whatever
Madonna Isabella did was well done. Her quickness in learning, her
marvellous memory, and application to her studies were the theme of
every one at court. She was the apple of her father's eye, her mother's
most sweet and cherished companion--"_la mia carissima e dolce figliuola
sopra altre_." When she married and left home for Mantua, her poor old
tutor shed tears at the loss of his favourite pupil, and wandered
through the castle recalling her every word and movement; while for
weeks the good duchess could not bear to enter the room or open the
windows of the room which her darling child had occupied, and which was
now left empty and desolate.
By the side of this brilliant creature, her younger sister, the little
Beatrice, passed comparatively unnoticed. Her name is scarcely ever
mentioned in the records of the period. Yet she was only a year younger
than Isabella, and if all had gone well, the double wedding of the two
sisters was to have been celebrated at the same time in February, 1490.
But Lodovico Sforza had shown no inclination to press the matter. He
professed the most cordial friendship for the Duke of Ferrara, who had
every reason to be grateful for his help in the Venetian wars, and
entertained Ercole magnificently when, in 1487, he paid a visit to
Milan. But when the question of her marriage was mooted, he made excuses
and suggested further delay. The extreme youth of the bride, the urgency
of affairs of state, were all brought forward as excellent reasons for
putting off the marriage until a more convenient season. During the ten
years after his return to Milan, Lodovico's time and thoughts had been
fully occupied. The internal as well as the external affairs of his
state, the attacks of public enemies and private foes, alike demanded
his whole energies. But so far Fortune had favoured him in a wonderful
way. An attempt was made by Duchess Bona's confessor to assassinate him
on the steps of Saint Ambrogio at Christmas, 1485, but fortunately
failed, because that day Lodovico entered the church by a side door to
avoid the crowd. The sympathy excited by this cowardly attempt on his
life, and by his recovery from a dangerous illness which brought him to
the point of death, helped to strengthen his position at home, while
complete success attended his arms and diplomacy. On the one hand,
Venice was forced to accept his terms of peace; on the other, Genoa,
sorely pressed by her old rival Florence, appealed to the Regent of
Milan for assistance, and once more recognized the supremacy of Gian
Galeazzo Sforza. A cardinal's hat was obtained for Ascanio Sforza, in
whom Lodovico found an able and loyal supporter both in Rome and Milan.
And when, in 1488, Lodovico's niece, Caterina Sforza, turned to him for
help against the conspirators who had murdered her husband and seized
the Rocca of Forli, a Milanese army under young Galeazzo di Sanseverino
was promptly sent to her assistance. The citadel was besieged and
captured, and the rights of Caterina and her son Ottaviano were
triumphantly vindicated. Thus on every side the house of Sforza was
restored to its former dignity, and the great Condottiere's name was
respected and honoured. The Milanese once more enjoyed a period of peace
and prosperity, and Lodovico was able to devote himself to his favourite
pursuits, the encouragement of learning and of the fine arts. Even at
the most anxious and busiest times, in the midst of the war with Venice
and the negotiations for the league against her, Lodovico had found time
to carry on his brother's schemes for the decoration of the Castello of
Milan, and to help forward the works of the Duomo and the Certosa of
Pavia. He had begun to rebuild the palace of Vigevano on a splendid
scale, and had set on foot a vast system of irrigation for the
improvement of the ducal estates. Besides encouraging the rising school
of native artists, he had invited the best foreign architects and
painters, sculptors and poets, to his court. Already Bramante of Urbino
was the chief architect at the ducal court, and now Lorenzo de' Medici
sent a young Florentine master to Milan who played the lute divinely,
and whose varied talents might prove serviceable to his friend Lodovico.
So Leonardo da Vinci came to the court of the Moro, and found in him so
genial and understanding a patron, so generous and kindly a friend, that
he settled at Milan, and remained in the duke's service for the next
sixteen years. Thus Lodovico Sforza had shown himself a wise and
excellent regent, and had earned the gratitude of both prince and
people, while the young duke in whose name he governed was growing up to
man's estate. From his birth Gian Galeazzo had been a frail and sickly
child, subject to constant feverish attacks, and in the year 1483 was so
dangerously ill that at one moment his doctors despaired of his
recovery. As he grew older, it became plain that his mind was as feeble
as his body. He was utterly incapable of applying himself to serious
business, far less of administering state affairs. His whole days were
spent in idleness and pleasure, in hunting and drinking. Horses and dogs
were the only objects in which he took any interest. Under these
circumstances, it became plain that Lodovico would remain the actual
ruler of Milan even though his nephew bore the title of duke. All
outward respect was paid to Gian Galeazzo; he lived in great state, with
a household and officers of his own, and was surrounded by regal pomp on
public occasions. Clad in ducal robes, he appeared seated on a throne
erected in front of the Duomo when the Genoese patricians arrived at
Milan, and received their homage as duke of the principality of Genoa.
His brother Ermes, his sisters Bianca and Anna, shared his state, and
when Bianca's betrothed husband the young prince of Savoy died, she was
formally affianced in the Duomo to the eldest son of Matthias Corvinus,
King of Hungary. But the real sovereign of Milan was Lodovico Duke of
Bari. Here and there a jealous or discontented Milanese nobleman might
grumble, but the majority of the duke's subjects felt that in these
troublous days a strong hand was needed at the helm, and knew that they
had this strong man in the Moro.
By degrees Lodovico removed those governors of cities and fortresses
whose loyalty he had reason to suspect, and replaced them by
confidential servants. Filippo Eustachio, captain of the Castello of
Milan, a brave and honest man, Corio tells us, who had refused to yield
up the keys of the Rocca to Bona's minion, but whose brothers had been
implicated in the plot against Lodovico's life, was one day arrested by
the duke's orders, and imprisoned at Abbiategrasso; he was afterwards
released, no evidence of his guilt being produced, but his post was
filled by one of the Moro's servants. Chief among the trusted captains
in whom Lodovico placed his confidence were the Sanseverini brothers, "i
gran Sanseverini," as they were called in the court poet's verses, as
much on account of their great strength and stature as of the exalted
position which they held at the Milanese court. Their father, that
turbulent soldier Roberto, after making three desperate attempts to
unseat the prince whose return to power he had effected, and being three
times proclaimed a rebel and outlaw at Milan, had taken service under
Pope Innocent VIII. and led the campaign against Alfonso of Calabria, as
Captain-general of the Church. But before long he quarrelled with the
Pope and returned to the service of the Venetian Republic, until in
August, 1486, at the age of seventy, he fell fighting with heroic valour
against the Imperialists in the battle of Trent. Of his twelve sons,
four entered the service of their kinsman, Lodovico Sforza, and rose to
high honour and dignity. All of them were mighty men of valour like
their father before them, while a fifth, Cardinal Federigo, was to prove
a staunch adherent of the Sforzas in days to come. He inherited the
giant stature as well as the martial tastes of his family, and at the
consecration of Pope Alexander VI. is said to have lifted Borgia in his
arms and placed him on the high altar. The eldest of the brothers,
Giovanni Francesco, Count of Caiazzo, succeeded to his father's estates
in Calabria, but lived at Milan, and became one of Lodovico's chief
captains. Both Gaspare--the gallant soldier known by his surname of
Captain Fracassa--and Antonio Maria, the husband of the fair and learned
Margherita Pia of Carpi, a beloved friend and cousin of the Este
princesses, were prominent figures at the Milanese court. But the most
famous and popular of all the brothers was Galeazzo. This brilliant and
accomplished cavalier, who was to play so great a part at the Milanese
court, early attracted the notice of Lodovico by his personal charm and
rare skill in knightly exercises. As a rider and jouster, he was without
a rival. Wherever he entered the lists, at Milan or Venice, at Ferrara
or Urbino, he invariably carried off the prize, and was proclaimed
victor in the games. And to this prowess in courtly exercises he joined
a love of art and learning which especially commended him to the Moro.
Unlike his brother Captain Fracassa, who refused Caterina Sforza's
invitation to join in dance and song, saying that war was his trade and
he sought no other, Galeazzo was a model of courtesy and grace. All fair
ladies had a smile for him. Isabella d'Este and Elisabetta Gonzaga
honoured him with their friendship, and Beatrice d'Este found in him the
truest of friends and best of servants. Three kings of France, Charles
VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I., singled him out for special
distinction, and after enjoying the highest honour at Lodovico Sforza's
court, he lived to become Grand Ecuyer of France in the next century.
French Italian chroniclers alike own the fascination of his handsome
presence and extol the _gentilezza_ of this very perfect knight.
Leonardo da Vinci and Luca Pacioli the mathematician had in him a noble,
generous patron, and Baldassare Castiglione, who knew him in his youth
at Milan, has enshrined his memory in the pages of his "Cortigiano." It
was this rare union of qualities which endeared the young Sanseverino to
the Moro, who chose him for his intimate friend and companion. On his
return from his successful campaign against the Forli rebels, Lodovico
appointed him Captain-general of the Milanese armies, a step which
naturally excited great jealousy among his rivals, and mortally wounded
the pride of Messer Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, an older captain in the same
service. Short of stature and rude of speech, with the big nose and
rugged features that are familiar to us in Caradosso's medal, this able
soldier presented a curious contrast to the brilliant and courtly Messer
Galeazzo, whose rival he remained to the end of his life. Yet he knew
how to appreciate genius, and after his triumphant return to Milan in
1499, employed Leonardo to paint his portrait and design his tomb.
Although a Guelph by birth, Trivulzio, up to this time, had been one of
Lodovico's most active supporters. But when he saw a younger rival
preferred to him, he left Milan in disgust and retired to Naples, where
he entered King Ferrante's service, and became from that time a bitter
enemy of the Sforza's. Meanwhile the Moro loaded his favourite Galeazzo
with honours and rewards. He gave him the fine estate of Castelnuovo in
the Tortonese, which had once belonged to his father, the great
Condottiere Roberto, as well as a house in Pavia near the church of San
Francesco and a palace in Milan, near the Porta Vercellina, and allowed
him to build a villa and extensive stables in the park of the Castello.
As a last and crowning honour, he bestowed upon this fortunate youth the
hand of his illegitimate daughter Bianca, a beautiful and attractive
child to whom he was fondly attached. Of her mother we have no certain
knowledge, but she is generally supposed to have been some mistress of
low origin, and Bianca herself is described by a contemporary writer as
"_figlia ex pellice nata_." The wedding was solemnized with great
splendour in the chapel of the Castello di Pavia, on the last day of the
year 1489, but the young princess was still a child, and Galeazzo had to
wait five years before he took home his bride. After his marriage he
adopted the name of Sforza Visconti, and was treated by Lodovico as a
member of his family.
Another wedding which took place about this time was that of the young
duke, Gian Galeazzo. He had already entered his twentieth year, and the
Princess Isabella of Aragon, to whom he had been betrothed in his
father's lifetime, was turned eighteen, so that the marriage could no
longer be delayed. In November, 1488, his brother Ermes was sent to
Naples with a suite of four hundred persons, who entered King Ferrante's
capital sumptuously arrayed in silk brocade, and amazed even his
luxurious courtiers by the splendour of their gold chains and jewelled
plumes. At least Isabella's father, Alfonso, who had little love for his
brother-in-law, and had already found Lodovico more than a match for his
own cunning, could not complain that his daughter had not been
honourably treated. After a rough passage in the depth of winter, which
sorely tried the patience of the court poet Bellincioni, who was a
member of the Milanese suite, the bride landed on the 7th of February,
and travelled by land to Genoa and Tortona. There her bridegroom, the
young Duke of Milan, was awaiting her, with his uncle Lodovico, and a
banquet as memorable for ingenuity as for splendour was given in her
honour. Each course was introduced by some mythological personage. Jason
appeared with the golden fleece, Phoebus Apollo brought in a calf stolen
from the herds of Admetus, Diana led Actæon in the form of a stag,
Atalanta followed with the wild boar of Calydon, Iris came with a
peacock from the car of Juno, and Orpheus carried in the birds whom he
had charmed with his lute. Hebe poured out the wines, Vertumnus and
Pomona handed round apples and grapes, Thetis and her sea-nymphs brought
every variety of fish, and shepherds crowned with chaplets of ivy
arrived from the hills of Arcady, bearing jars of milk and honey to the
festive board. At Milan fresh wonders were awaiting the bridal pair. The
court of the Castello was hung with blue drapery and wreaths of laurel
and ivy, above which the ducal arms, designed in antique style, were
seen, supported by figures of Centaurs. Under a seven-columned portico
adorned with crimson-and-gold hangings, the duke's sister, Bianca Maria
Sforza, received the bride, and led her to a richly decorated chamber in
the Camera della Torre. On the following day the wedding was solemnized
with great pomp in the Duomo. The duke and duchess, clad in white,
walked hand-in-hand up the great aisles of the church, and finally, were
escorted to the rooms prepared for them in the Rocca, and after the
Milanese fashion, hung with pure white satin. But the most memorable
part of the wedding festivities, and that to which Lodovico himself
devoted especial attention, was the performance of an operetta composed
by the court poet Bellincioni for the occasion. "It was called _Il
Paradiso_" adds the chronicler to whom we owe these details, "because
Maestro Leonardo Vinci, the Florentine, had with great art and ingenuity
fabricated a paradise or celestial sphere, in which the seven planets
were represented by actors in costumes similar to those described by
those poets of old, who each in turn spoke the praise of Duchess
Isabella."
The festivities were interrupted by the illness of the young duke, who
was so much exhausted by the fatigues of these successive
entertainments, that he was unable to leave his bed for some weeks. But
in the following summer two splendid tournaments were held at Pavia, at
which Messer Galeazzo, as Sanseverino is always styled in Milanese
annals, appeared with twenty followers in golden armour, mounted on
chargers with gold trappings and harness, and, having unhorsed no less
than nineteen of his opponents, bore off the first prize, a length of
costly silver brocade. The duke and duchess were present with their
whole court, but the Ferrarese ambassador remarked that the crowd all
shouted, "Moro! Moro!" and that Signor Lodovico was by far the most
popular personage with the citizens of Pavia.
"He is a great man, and intends to be what he is in fact
already--everything!" he wrote in his despatches to Ferrara. "And yet
who knows? In a short time he may be nobody."
Gian Galeazzo, however, showed no signs of interfering with his uncle in
the management of public affairs. On the contrary, he gave full rein to
his pleasure-loving tastes, seldom came to Milan, and spent his days at
Pavia or Vigevano in the company of his young wife and a few favourites.
Duchess Isabella, as time showed, was a woman of strong character and
deep feeling, but she never seemed to have acquired any influence over
her feeble husband, and found herself powerless to arouse him to any
sense of his position, "_La dicte fille_" says Commines, "_etoit fort
courageuse et eut volontier donné crédit à son mary, si elle eut pu,
mais il n'etoit guère saige et révélait ce qu'elle lui disait_."
Lodovico treated both his nephew and niece with the utmost respect, and
discussed the situation freely with the Florentine ambassador
Pandolfini, saying that King Ferrante's envoy had lately gone so far as
to suggest that, since this young man could never rule for himself, his
uncle might as well assume the title, as well as the cares, of the head
of the state. But this, Lodovico declared, was a crime of which he would
never be guilty. "If I were to attempt such a thing," he exclaimed, "I
should be infamous in the eyes of the whole world!"
For the present the sense of power, the knowledge that he was the actual
ruler, sufficed him, and, as the King of Naples himself recognized, no
one could have governed Milan more wisely or well than Lodovico did in
his nephew's name. The birth of Duchess Isabella's son, in December,
1490, may have been a blow to his hopes. But the happy event was
celebrated with due rejoicings, the costly presents from the city of
Milan and court officials were displayed in the Castello, and the infant
heir of the house of Sforza received the name of his renowned
great-grandfather, Francesco, together with the title of Count of Pavia.
Meanwhile Lodovico felt that it was time to think of his own marriage,
and to keep the troth which he had pledged to the child-princess of
Este. His actions, as he well knew, were narrowly watched at the court
of Ferrara. Duchess Leonora was beginning to feel anxious about her
daughter's future, and the marriage of Anna Sforza with young Alfonso
d'Este had also to be arranged. Accordingly in May, 1489, when the Duke
of Milan's wedding was safely over, the Ferrarese envoy Giacomo Trotti
was sent back to his master duly acquainted with Signor Lodovico's
wishes and intentions respecting these important matters.
On the 10th of May, the articles of the marriage contract were finally
drawn up and signed at the Castello of Ferrara. They were on the same
basis as the marriage treaties which had lately been drawn up between
the Marquis Mantua and Isabella d'Este and the Duke and Duchess of
Milan. Lodovico was to receive 40,000 gold crowns and 2000 more in
jewels as Beatrice's portion. A sum equal to three-parts of the bride's
dower was to be chargeable on the goods and lands of Signor Lodovico. If
the most illustrious Madonna were to die without children, this dowry
was to be returned, as was stipulated in the case of the Duchess of
Milan. With regard to the choice and arrangement of the bride's
household, and the number of her women, Lodovico was content to leave
all particulars to the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara, trusting to their
goodness and prudence to settle all these matters on a scale suitable to
the birth and rank of a princess of this illustrious house. But he
especially begged Duke Ercole to see that Madonna Beatrice was well
supplied with clothes and other necessary articles of toilet fitting the
position which she would occupy at Milan as wife of the Duke of Bari and
Regent of the State. Last of all, the date of the marriage was
positively fixed for the month of May, 1490, Lodovico promising to
defray all the expenses of the wedding festivities. At the same time it
was also decided that Madonna Anna's marriage should take place in July,
1490, by which time Signor Alfonso would have completed his fourteenth
year, and the sum due to Messer Lodovico for Beatrice's dowry was to be
deducted from that of his niece, who, as a princess of Milan, was to
receive a portion of 100,000 crowns.
So Beatrice d'Este's wedding-day was at length fixed, and Duchess
Leonora rejoiced in the happy prospect of seeing both her daughters
married in the course of the following year.
CHAPTER V
Marriage of Isabella d'Este--Lodovico puts off his wedding--Cecilia
Gallerani--Her portrait by Leonardo da Vinci--Mission of Galeazzo
Visconti to Ferrara--Preparations for Beatrice's wedding--Cristoforo
Romano's bust--Duchess Leonora and her daughters travel to Piacenza and
Pavia--Their reception at Pavia by Lodovico.
1490-1491
The young Marquis of Mantua, Gian Francesco Gonzaga, had proved himself
a more ardent lover than Lodovico Sforza. He frequently exchanged
letters and compliments with his youthful bride, or sent Isabella
presents and verses written in her honour by Mantuan poets. After his
father's death in 1484, he visited Mantua, and brought Duchess Leonora a
Madonna painted by the hand of the great Paduan master, Andrea Mantegna,
the court painter of the Gonzagas. In the autumn of the same year,
Leonora took her daughter to Mantua for a short visit, where she first
met Gian Francesco's sister, Elizabeth Duchess of Urbino, who was to
become her dearest friend and constant companion in the early days of
her married life. Four years afterwards, the same Elizabeth, the
peerless Duchess of Castiglione and Bembo's adoration, stopped at
Ferrara on her wedding journey to her new home of Urbino, and received
an affectionate welcome from Leonora and her daughters. The duchess, she
wrote, treated her as a mother, while in the Marchesana she had already
found a loving sister and friend. On the 11th of February, 1490,
Isabella's own wedding was celebrated at Ferrara, and the following
morning the bride rode through the streets of the city, with the Duke of
Urbino on her right and the Ambassador of Naples on her left hand. On
the 12th, the bride set out for Mantua, travelling by water up the
river Po in a stately bucentaur presented to Isabella by Duke Ercole,
adorned with rich carving and gilding. Her parents and three brothers,
Alfonso, Ferrante, and the boy Ippolito, afterwards well known as
Ariosto's patron, Cardinal d'Este, with a large suite, accompanied her
to the gates of Mantua, where a magnificent reception awaited her. The
young marquis had made great preparations to welcome his bride, and,
after the fashion of the days, had borrowed gold and silver plate,
carpets, and hangings from all his friends and relations, including the
famous tapestries of the Trojan war, which were the chief ornaments of
the palace of Urbino. The _fêtes_ passed off brilliantly, the crowds
which assembled in the streets of Mantua were enormous, and the utmost
enthusiasm was excited by the youth and loveliness of the bride. The
only drawback was the absence of Mantegna, whom Pope Innocent had
detained in Rome, in spite of his master's urgent request that the
painter might return in time to arrange the wedding festivities.
The void which Isabella left in her old home was keenly felt alike by
her mother and sister. The duchess could not console herself for her
daughter's absence, and after spending a delightful week with her
sister-in-law Elizabeth on the lake of Garda, among the lemon-groves and
gardens of those sunny shores, Isabella and her husband returned to
Ferrara in April. Here she found that Beatrice's marriage had been again
put off by Signor Lodovico's wish until the summer, and Isabella agreed
to return to Ferrara early in July, and accompany her mother and sister
to Milan. But when July came and the young marchioness reached Ferrara,
she found to her surprise that all these plans had been suddenly
changed. Lodovico had once more found it impossible to keep his
engagement, and pleaded urgent public affairs and unavoidable pressure
of business to excuse his apparent apathy. This time the duke and
duchess were seriously annoyed, and began to doubt if Lodovico ever
intended to wed their daughter. The question was gravely discussed
during Isabella's visit, and a messenger from Milan suddenly reached
Ferrara late one evening. It was no other than Messer Galeazzo Visconti,
one of Lodovico's most trusted envoys, who had ridden from Milan in
great haste, with letters from his lord. The contents of these letters
remained unknown. One thing only was clear: they gave the duke great
dissatisfaction. And Messer Galeazzo departed the next day, as quickly
as he came. "I have tried in vain," wrote Benedetto Capilupi, the
Marquis of Mantua's agent at Ferrara, "to discover the reason of all
these disturbances. Every one is out of temper, and the duke seems to be
very much displeased. M. Galeazzo has left suddenly."
Isabella returned to join her husband at Mantua, leaving affairs in this
unsatisfactory state. Beatrice's wedding seemed further off than ever,
and doubts as to her union with Signor Lodovico began to be openly
expressed. It was well known at Ferrara, where everything that happened
at the court of Milan was minutely reported to Duke Ercole by his
faithful envoy, Giacomo Trotti, that Lodovico Sforza had a mistress to
whom he was fondly attached, and whom he had for many years past treated
with the respect and honour due to a wife. This was Cecilia Gallerani,
afterwards the wife of Count Lodovico Bergamini, a young Milanese lady
of noble birth, as distinguished for her learning as for her beauty. She
spoke and wrote Latin fluently, composed sonnets in Italian, and
delivered Latin orations to the theologians and philosophers who met at
her house. Contemporary writings abound in allusions to the rare virtues
and learning of "la bella Gallerani," the Sappho of modern times.
Scaligero wrote epigrams in her honour, Ortensio Lando classes her with
Isabella d'Este and Vittoria Colonna among the most cultured women of
the age. The novelist Matteo Bandello, himself a friar of the Dominican
convent of S. Maria delle Grazie at Milan, is never tired of singing
Cecilia's praises, and of describing the pleasant company who met at the
countess's palace in Milan or at her villa near Cremona. There, he tells
us, all the finest wits, all the most distinguished strangers in Milan
assemble, and you may hear valiant captains reasoning with doctors and
philosophers, or look at paintings and designs by living artists and
architects, and listen to the playing and singing of the best musicians.
As a young girl, Cecilia's charms captured the heart of the Moro, who,
as early as 1481, bestowed the estate of Saronno, which he had inherited
from his brother Sforza, upon her by a deed of gift, in which he
extolled her learning and excellence, and at the same time recalled the
merits and services of her ancestors. Soon after Leonardo da Vinci's
arrival in Milan, Lodovico employed him to paint the portrait of his
fair young mistress, and we have more than one proof of the admiration
which the Florentine master's work excited among his contemporaries. In
the _Rime_ of the court-poet, Bellincioni, we find the following sonnet
evidently inspired by this picture and bearing the inscription: "On the
portrait of Madonna Cecilia, painted by Maestro Leonardo." The poet
seeks to appease Dame Nature's wrath at the sight of this portrait, in
which the painter has represented the lovely maiden "listening, not
speaking," but so full of life and radiance, that the sun's beams grow
dim before the brightness of her eyes. And instead of envying art, he
bids her rejoice that this living image of so beautiful a form will be
handed down to future ages, and give thanks to Lodovico's wisdom and
Leonardo's genius for having preserved this fair face to be the joy and
wonder of posterity. "Thine, O Nature," he cries, "is the honour! the
more living and beautiful Cecilia shall appear in the eyes of
generations to come, the greater will be thy glory! For long as the
world endures, all who see her face will recognize in Leonardo's work
the close union of Art and Nature."
"Che lei vedrà, così ben che sia tardo,
Vederla viva, dirà: basti ad noi
Comprender or quel che è natura et arte."
On the 26th of April, 1498, a year after Beatrice d'Este's death, her
sister the Marchioness Isabella herself wrote to the Countess Bergamini
from Mantua, begging her for the loan of the portrait which Leonardo had
painted of her and which she had formerly seen in Milan. "Having to-day
seen some fine portraits by the hand of Giovanni Bellini, we began to
discuss the works of Leonardo, and wished we could compare them with
these paintings. And since we remember that he painted your likeness; we
beg you to be so good as to send us your portrait by this messenger whom
we have despatched on horseback, so that we may not only be able to
compare the works of the two masters, but may also have the pleasure of
seeing your face again. The picture shall be returned to you
afterwards, with our most grateful thanks for your kindness, and
assuring you of our own readiness to oblige you to the utmost of our
power, etc.
"ISABELLA D'ESTE.
From Mantua."
Cecilia sent the precious picture by the courier to Mantua, with the
following note in reply:--
"MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND EXCELLENT MADONNA AND VERY DEAR LADY,
"I have read your Highness's letter, and since you wish to see my
portrait I send it without delay, and would send it with even greater
pleasure if it were more like me. But your Highness must not think this
proceeds from any defect in the _Maestro_ himself, for indeed I do not
believe there is another painter equal to him in the world, but merely
because the portrait was painted when I was still at so young and
imperfect an age. Since then I have changed altogether, so much so that
if you saw the picture and myself together, you would never dream it
could be meant for me! All the same, your Highness will, I hope, accept
this proof of my good-will, and believe that I am ready and anxious to
gratify your wishes, not only in respect to the portrait, but in any
other way that I can, since I am ever Your Highness's most devoted slave
and commend myself to you a thousand times.
"Your Highness's servant,
CECILIA VISCONTA BERGAMINA,[3]
From Milan, the 29th of April, 1498."
Since that day when the great Florentine first painted her, Cecilia
Gallerani had developed into a handsome matron, and as Lodovico Sforza's
recognized mistress she enjoyed a position of great honour at court. For
some years she occupied a suite of rooms in the Castello of Milan, where
her lover constantly visited her and took the greatest delight in her
company. His passion for this beautiful and intellectual woman only
seemed to increase 108 with years. She had already borne him one son,
the Leone, whom he was known to love so well that his courtiers did not
dare tell him the sad news when the child died suddenly in 1487. The
Duke of Bari, it was even said, intended ere long to make her his lawful
wife, and thus to render her future issue legitimate.
Under these circumstances, it can hardly be wondered if Lodovico Sforza
showed some reluctance in keeping the troth which he had plighted to the
young princess of Este, while Duke Ercole's vexation was the more
pardonable. For a time it seemed as if a rupture between the two houses
was inevitable, and all thought of a union between them must be
abandoned. But soon a change came over Il Moro's dream. The difficulties
in the way of a closer union with Cecilia Gallerani were great, and must
invariably lead to jealousies and quarrels of a serious order. His own
position in Milan would be endangered, and fresh hindrances placed in
the way of his future designs. At the same time, the alliances with
Ferrara and Mantua were both of great importance to the state, and could
not be lightly thrown away. So he determined to sacrifice his
inclinations to political exigencies, and make Beatrice d'Este his wife.
Accordingly, at the end of August he sent another ambassador, Francesco
da Casate, to Ferrara with a magnificent gift for his bride, in the
shape of a necklace of large pearls set in gold flowers, with a very
fine pear-shaped pendant of rubies, pearls, and emeralds. This costly
jewel was duly presented to Beatrice in the name of her affianced
husband, and Duchess Leonora wrote forthwith to give her daughter
Isabella the good news, informing her that Signor Lodovico hoped she
would accompany her mother and sister to Milan that autumn for the
wedding. The young marchioness was delighted to accept this invitation,
and in the course of a few days she paid another visit to Ferrara, to
assist in the preparations for her sister's marriage. Messer Galeazzo
Visconti was sent there again to learn the duke and duchess's pleasure
as to their daughter's journey, and, after making the final
arrangements, left Ferrara on the 26th of November. The bride's
departure was fixed for the last day of the year, and the wedding, it
was decided, should take place in the chapel of the Castello of Pavia on
the 16th of January.
Isabella hurried to Mantua to buy horses and clothes, jewels and plate
for her journey, and announced her intention of taking upwards of one
hundred persons in her suite, with ninety horses and trumpeters.
Afterwards, however, she reduced the number to fifty persons and thirty
horses at the request of Lodovico, who begged her to bring as few
attendants as possible, owing to the large number of guests who were
expected at Milan. Her husband, the Marquis Gianfrancesco, had naturally
been included in the invitation, but as a close ally of the Venetians he
did not think it politic to appear at the wedding of Lodovico Sforza.
The Signory of Venice were known to look coldly on this alliance between
Ferrara and Milan, and entertained the deepest distrust of Lodovico's
policy. So Isabella decided to join her mother and sister on their
journey up the river, and proceed with them to Pavia and ultimately to
Milan. Meanwhile another emissary from Milan had arrived at Ferrara.
This was the young sculptor, Cristoforo Romano, who was sent to Signor
Lodovico to carve a bust-portrait of his bride before she left her
father's home. The son of a Pisan sculptor who had settled in Rome,
Cristoforo's genius had attracted attention when he was quite a boy, and
he had been sent to Milan by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza. The young Roman
master was one of those brilliant and versatile artists who especially
commended themselves to Lodovico. He sang and played the lute admirably,
while his literary tastes made him the intimate friend of Bembo and
Castiglione, and a great favourite with the cultured princesses of
Mantua and Urbino. He takes a leading part in the dialogues of the
Cortigiano, and is frequently mentioned as worthy to rank with Michael
Angelo, whose fame he might have rivalled had he not suffered from
continual ill health. As it is, the few works which he left behind him
are marked with singular grace and refinement. His bust of Beatrice, now
in the Louvre, where for many years it passed as the work of Leonardo,
is at once remarkable for its truth and charm. The somewhat irregular
features of the maiden of fifteen years are admirably given, the
roundness of her cheeks, the pouting lips and slightly _retroussé_ nose,
and the curling locks are faithfully represented; yet we realize the
force of character that lies under this soft, child-like face, and the
frank joyousness which made her so attractive. Each stray lock of hair
is rendered with delicate accuracy, the brocaded bodice of her gown and
the scarf lightly thrown over her shoulders are elaborately adorned with
the triangular diamond and other favourite devices of the house of Este.
The quaint figure of the two hands holding a veil, from which
fertilizing dust falls on the open flower, is supposed to be an emblem
of marriage, and is said to signify that Beatrice was already an
affianced bride. But since the words "Herculis filiæ" are cut in the
marble, it is plain that Cristoforo carved the bust while the young
duchess was still in her father's home, and probably took it home with
him that autumn to Milan.
That year the winter set in with unusual severity. The bitter frost and
cold which man and beast endured that January were long remembered, both
in Mantua and Ferrara. On Christmas night it began to snow, and so heavy
and continuous was the fall, that by noon on the next day the snow lay
three feet deep in front of the Vescovado, or Bishop's house, opposite
the Este palace. The Po was frozen over, and the ice on the river never
thawed until the first week in February, while the snow lasted till the
12th of March, and some patches might still be seen in the streets of
Ferrara on the 20th of that month.
In the midst of these unwonted rigours, the wedding-party set out on
their long journey. The royal brides of these days seem to have been
singularly unlucky in the matter of weather. For one thing, they always
travelled in the depths of winter. Elizabeth Gonzaga almost died of
exhaustion after the sufferings of her journey from Mantua to Urbino in
a violent tempest, which kept her ship tossing on the waves of the Po
for several days and nights. The fleet which conveyed Isabella and her
escort from Naples to Leghorn, narrowly escaped shipwreck off the coast
of Tuscany. Bianca Sforza had to ride in December over the roughest
roads across the Alps of the Valtellina, to join her Imperial lord at
Innsbrück. And now Leonora and her daughters were called upon to brave
the terrors of an Arctic winter on their way to Milan.
"On the 29th of December, 1490," writes the diarist of Ferrara,
"Madonna Beatrice, daughter of Duke Ercole, went to Milan to marry
Signor Lodovico Sforza, accompanied by her mother, Leonora Duchess of
Ferrara; and also by Messer Sigismondo, her uncle"--the duke's younger
brother, Cardinal d'Este--"and her brother, Don Alfonso, who went to
bring home his bride, Madonna Anna, sister of the Duke of Milan and
daughter of Galeazzo, and he rode in a sledge because the Po was
frozen."[4]
The ladies of the party travelled in rude country carts--"_carrette_"--as
far as Brescello, where the Po was navigable, and they were able to
continue their journey by water to Pavia. Here Messer Galeazzo Visconti
was awaiting them with a fleet of boats and three bucentaurs, by which
pompous name the rude barges in which these high-born personages travelled
were glorified. The many discomforts and the actual cold and hunger which
the Este ladies endured during the five days which they spent on board
these vessels are graphically described in a letter addressed to Isabella's
husband by her Ferrarese lady-in-waiting, Beatrice de' Contrari, after the
travellers had reached Pavia. The boat which bore the provisions for the
party was delayed by stress of weather, so that the travellers were left
with but scanty breakfast and no dinner. When at length they anchored near
the shore of Toresella at three o'clock at night, the Marchesana and her
ladies were in a starving condition. "If it had not been for the timely
help of Madonna Camilla, who sent us part of her supper from her barge, I
for one," writes the lively lady-in-waiting, "should have certainly been
by this time a saint in Paradise." As for going to bed, all wish for
sleep was put out of their heads by the rocking of the ship and the
uncomfortable berths, and the poor Marchesana was so cold and wretched
without a fire that she wished herself dead, and her lady-in-waiting
could not keep back her tears. However, at length these miseries were
ended, Piacenza was safely reached, on the 12th of January, and the
royal ladies and their companions were hospitably entertained by Count
Bartolommeo Scotti, and enjoyed the luxury of warm fires and comfortable
beds!
"And now that we have arrived," wrote Beatrice de' Contrari to her lord,
the marquis, "and are beginning to enjoy these weddings for the sake of
which we have suffered so many discomforts, I am thinking seriously of
making my last will and testament."[5]
After a day's rest at Piacenza, the bridal party continued their journey
up the river, and reached Pavia at half-past four on Sunday afternoon.
Here Signor Lodovico was awaiting them on the banks of the river Ticino,
which joins the Po a few hundred yards below the city, with a gallant
company of Milanese lords and gentlemen, and himself conducted first
Beatrice and then her mother and sister to the shore. Together they rode
on horseback over the covered bridge which spans the river, and passed
through the long streets until they reached the goal of their journey,
and entered the gates of the far-famed Castello of Pavia.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] G. Uzielli, _Leonardo da Vinci e Tre Gentil donne Milanesi_, p. 23.
[4] A Muratori, R. I. S., xxiv. 282.
[5] Luzio-Renier in A. S. L., xvii. 85.
CHAPTER VI
City and University of Pavia--Duomo and Castello--The library of the
Castello--Wedding of Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Bari, and Beatrice d'Este,
in the chapel of the Castello of Pavia--Galeazzo di San Severino and
Orlando--Reception of the bride in Milan--Tournaments and festivities at
the Castello--Visit of Duchess Leonora to the Certosa of Pavia.
1491
The ancient city of Pavia, the capital of the Lombard kings before the
conquest of Charlemagne, still presents a picturesque and imposing
appearance to the traveller, who sees the red-brick walls and gates of
the old fortifications and the slender bell-towers of its Romanesque
churches rising out of the green plains on the banks of the broad and
swift Ticino. But it was a far grander and more beautiful sight in the
days when Lodovico Sforza's bride landed near the chapel on the bridge,
and in the fading light of the short winter afternoon rode at his side
through the chief streets of the old Lombard capital, or, as it was
proudly called, the city of a hundred towers. On the princely cavalcade
wound, amid a dense crowd of people shouting, "_Moro! Moro!_" up the
long Strada Nova, with its marble palaces, and newly painted loggias
adorned with busts and frescoes, in front of the stately _Ateneo_ with
its halls and porticoes for the different schools, which had the
reputation of being the finest university in all Italy, and past the
rising walls of the new Duomo which Lodovico was building on the site of
the ruined basilica of Charlemagne's time. A few months before, the
renowned Sienese architect, Francesco Martini, had arrived at Pavia on
horseback to give his advice as to the cupola of the new cathedral,
accompanied by His Excellency's servant, Magistro Leonardo, the
Florentine, and a vast train of servants, and had been entertained at
the public expense. Martini had soon left again for Milan, after giving
the architect of the Duomo, Bramante's pupil Cristoforo Rocchi, the
benefit of his advice, and promising to send him a model of the cupola;
but Leonardo had remained at Pavia all the summer and autumn, turning
over old manuscripts in the library of the Castello, and discussing
anatomical problems with the professors and surgeons of the university,
until a peremptory summons had reached him from the governor of the
Castello at Milan, desiring him to return immediately and assist in
decorating the ball-room for the wedding _fêtes_. Another visitor, a
citizen of Beatrice's own city of Ferrara, had also been at Pavia a few
months before--the Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, who had visited
the Certosa and Castello of Pavia on his way from Brescia to preach at
Genoa, before he was summoned at Pico della Mirandola's request to begin
his famous course of Lent sermons in St. Mark's of Florence. But now the
duke's painter and the humble friar had both gone their separate ways,
Fra Girolamo to startle the scholars of the Medici circle with his
thunders, and Leonardo to paint cupids in the halls of the Castello at
Milan, and to resume his labours at the great equestrian statue of
Francesco Sforza, which Signor Lodovico was longing to see finished. All
unconscious of their existence, the young bride of the powerful regent
rode at her lord's side and entered the wide courtyard through the great
gateway, under the lofty towers of the famous Castello which for over a
hundred and fifty years had been the home of Viscontis and Sforzas.
After the cold and fatigue of the long journey in this snowy winter
season, the bridal party were thankful to reach the end of their journey
and to enjoy a day's rest before the wedding ceremony, which, after
consultation with Messer Ambrogio da Rosate, the chief court physician
and astrologer, had been fixed for Tuesday, the 17th of January, this
being the day of Mars, and therefore especially propitious for the
marriage of a lord, who above all things desired the birth of a son.
Throughout his life Il Moro, like many of his contemporaries, had a
blind belief in the stars, and placed the most implicit confidence in
Messer Ambrogio, who was said to have saved his life during his
dangerous illness at Vigevano three years before, and who had been
lately called upon to cast the horoscope of Pope Innocent VIII. at the
earnest entreaty of His Holiness. "Maestro Ambrogio has been suddenly
called to fly to Vigevano," wrote Giacomo Trotti to Ferrara one day in
1489, "because he is a professor of astrology, by which this excellent
Signor orders all his actions." The date of Lodovico's journeys, the
hour of all important court ceremonies, and even the movements of his
armies in time of war, were regulated by the course of the stars. Messer
Ambrogio, consequently, became a most important personage at the court
of Milan. "Without him," wrote Beatrice's maid of honour to the
Marchioness Isabella, "nothing can be done here."
The beautiful park and gardens at Pavia lay deep in snow, their lakes
and fountains were all frozen over, but there was plenty to interest and
amuse the visitors within the walls of this great Castello, of which
they had heard so much, and which was said to be the grandest of royal
houses in the whole of Europe. Three or four generations of masters had
been employed by successive Visconti dukes to rear this glorious fabric,
which in its palmy days must have been a noble monument of Lombard
architecture. The long colonnades of low round arches went back to
Romanesque days and the times of the first Visconti lords of Pavia; the
Gothic windows of the banqueting-hall and upper stories had been
finished in the reign of the great Giangaleazzo, and were enriched with
slender marble shafts and exquisite terra-cotta mouldings similar to
those that we admire to-day in the cloisters of the Certosa. The vaulted
halls were painted with the finest ultramarine and gold, and the arms of
Sforzas and Viscontis, the lilies of France and the red cross of Savoy,
appeared on the groined roof between planets and stars of raised gold.
The vast Sala della Palla, where the dukes and their courtiers indulged
in their favourite pastime of "pall-mall," which Burckhardt calls the
classic game of the Renaissance, was decorated with frescoes by the best
artists of Pavia or Cremona, representing fishing and hunting scenes.
Portraits of the dukes and duchesses were introduced, together with
lions and tigers, wild boars and stags flying before the hounds, in the
forest shades or on the open moor. The ball-room was adorned with
historic subjects from the lives of the earlier Viscontis. The poet
Petrarch, who had once filled a chair in the university, was seen
delivering an oration before the duke; and Giangaleazzo, the founder of
the Duomo of Milan and of the Certosa, was represented seated at a
festive board laden with gold and silver plate, entertaining foreign
ambassadors, with his armour-bearer standing at his side, and his
cupbearer pouring out the wine, while huntsmen and falconers with horses
and dogs awaited his pleasure. Of later date were the frescoes in the
duchess's rooms, representing the marriage of Galeazzo Sforza at the
French court and the reception of Bona of Savoy at Genoa, while the
paintings which adorned the chapel had only lately been completed by
Vincenzo Foppa and Bonifazio da Cremona.
Signor Lodovico was very proud, as he might well be, of this his
ancestral home, and of the famous library which he had done so much to
improve. He led his guests from room to room, and showed them all the
rare and curious objects--the armoury with its store of ancient coats of
mail and hauberks, of swords and helmets of ancient design, and its
choice specimens of the engraved and damascened work; the breastplates
and greaves that were a _specialité_ of Milanese armourers at this
period; the wonderful clock of copper and brass worked by wheels and
weights, upon which Giovanni Dondi had spent sixteen years of ceaseless
thought and toil, and which not only had a peal of bells, but a complete
solar system, showing the movement of sun, moon, and planets as set
forth by Ptolemy. After Dondi's death, Duke Galeazzo had to send to
Paris for a clockmaker who could regulate the works of this elaborate
machine, which was so much admired by Charles V. when he visited Pavia
in 1530, that he commissioned a mechanician of Cremona to make a similar
one for him to take back to Spain. And Messer Lodovico showed them also
what he himself held to be his greatest treasures--the precious books
adorned by exquisite miniatures from the hand of Fra Antonio da Monza
and other living artists, the Sforziada and the Chant de Roland, and the
rare Greek and Latin manuscripts which he had been at such infinite
pains to collect; the _codici_ brought from Bobbio by Giorgio Merula,
and the manuscripts which Erasmo Brasca had discovered when _Il Moro_
sent him to search for missing texts in the convents of the South of
France. For Lodovico himself spared no expense and grudged no time or
trouble in order to enrich what he felt to be a great national
institution. Two years before he had addressed a letter to the son of
Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary--the prince who was to have wedded
Bianca Sforza--begging him to have a rare manuscript by Festus Pompeius
copied for him, and deploring the "decay of the knowledge of the Latin
tongue in Italy, and the loss of so many priceless classical works which
the barbarians have carried away."
The sight of these precious and varied treasures were fully appreciated
by the cultivated Duchess Leonora, who had grown up among the scholars
of her royal father's academy at Naples, and by her daughter, the
accomplished Marchesana Isabella, ever eager, as she says in one of her
letters, to see and learn some new thing, "_desiderosa di cosa nova_."
And Signor Lodovico proved himself the most courteous and pleasant of
hosts, conversing with graceful ease on a thousand subjects, and
gratifying his new sister-in-law by the marked attention and courtesy
with which he treated her.
"I find myself highly honoured and caressed by Signor Lodovico," she
wrote to her husband from Pavia; and the discerning eyes of the
Ferrarese ambassador, Giacomo Trotti, noticed how much pleasure His
Excellency already took in the company of Madonna Beatrice and the
Marchesana. On that first day which they spent together at the Castello,
Trotti wrote to Duke Ercole, "Signor Lodovico is always at his wife's
side, speaking to her and watching her most attentively. And he tells me
that it would be impossible for her to give him greater pleasure or
satisfaction than she does, and never ceases to praise her."
The first impression which the youthful bride made on her husband was
evidently favourable. By all accounts, Beatrice was a singularly lovely
and fascinating child. Without the regular features and distinguished
air of her sister Isabella, there was a distinct charm in her sparkling
dark eyes and jet-black hair, her bright colouring and gay smile. The
contemporary chronicler Muralti describes her in his Annals as "of
youthful age, beautiful in face, and dark in colouring, fond of
inventing new costumes, and of spending day and night in song and
dancing and all manner of delights." In these early days at Pavia and
Milan there was, indeed, Trotti tells us, a certain shyness and reserve
about her that was only natural and might well be ascribed to maiden
shyness and timidity, but in the freedom and gaiety of her new life this
soon gave way to the irrepressible mirth and joyousness of youthful
vivacity. From the first she seems to have become sincerely attached to
Lodovico, who, although considerably older than herself, and already
thirty-nine years of age, was a very handsome and splendid-looking man,
of imposing stature and striking countenance, with courteous manners and
gentle ways. And however often he may have excited her jealousy or
wounded her feelings, his young wife never wavered in her love for him,
but proved, as he himself confessed, the best and most devoted of
companions.
On Tuesday, the 17th of January, the long-delayed wedding finally took
place, in the Castello of Pavia. A small but very brilliant company was
assembled that day in the ancient chapel of the Visconti. The official
festivities were to be celebrated at Milan, where the duke and duchess
and their court were awaiting the bride's arrival, and the Ferrarese
ambassador was the only foreign envoy present at the wedding. But
Lodovico's personal friends and retainers mustered in force, as well as
those captains and courtiers who could claim kinship with the house of
Este. Niccolo da Correggio was there, as one nearly related to both
bride and bridegroom, and was universally pronounced to be the
handsomest and best dressed of all the cavaliers who were present that
day. There, too, was Galeotto Prince of Mirandola, the husband of the
gifted Bianca d'Este, and Rodolfo Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua's
uncle, and, conspicuous by their lofty stature and martial air, the four
Sanseverino brothers.
The bride, arrayed in a white robe sown with pearls and glittering with
jewels, was led to the altar by the Duchess of Ferrara and Marchioness
of Mantua, supported by the young Don Alfonso, his uncle Sigismondo,
and a select retinue of Ferrarese courtiers and ladies. It was rumoured
that the Marquis Gianfrancesco Gonzaga had himself been seen in the
crowd assembled in the courtyard of the Castello, and, much to
Isabella's surprise, Lodovico asked the marchioness, at the banquet
which followed, if this report were true. But Isabella could only reply
that if her husband were at Pavia, she was unaware of the fact, and it
was not until the last day of the tournament at Milan that the marquis
appeared in public.
"The nuptial benediction was pronounced, and the act of espousals
confirmed by the ring which Signor Lodovico placed on the bride's
finger, and that night the marriage was consummated," were the words of
the official proclamation that was made in Milan the next day, and duly
notified to the magistrates of the different cities in the duchy as well
as to the duke's ambassadors at foreign courts.
On the following morning Lodovico left for Milan, to complete the
arrangements for the bride's reception early in the following week.
Nothing, he was determined, should be left undone to do honour to his
nuptials or to make the occasion memorable both in the eyes of the
people of Milan and throughout Italy. During the summer and autumn
preparations had been actively going on, and a whole army of painters,
goldsmiths, and embroiderers were at work, decorating the suite of rooms
in the Rocca, or inner citadel of the Castello of the Porta Giovia,
adjoining the Corte Ducale, where the Moro and his bride were to take up
their abode. "Here all hands are busy," wrote the Ferrarese envoy to his
master, "and Lodovico takes care that for the duchess nothing is done by
halves." When the date of the wedding had been finally determined, every
nerve was strained to complete the works within the Castello, and an
imperative summons was issued by Messer Ambrogio Ferrari, the chief
ducal commissioner, to the governors of Cremona, Piacenza, and Pavia,
commanding the immediate return of the painters who were absent in these
cities. Among the masters especially mentioned in these letters, we find
the names of Bernardino da Rossi, Zenale and Buttinone di Treviglio,
Treso di Monza, and Magistro Leonardo. This was none other than the
great Florentine, then absent at Pavia, who was required to give his
advice, if not to assist, in the actual decoration of the _Sala della
palla_ on the first floor of the Castello. The vaulted roof of this
spacious hall, which was to serve as ball-room on this occasion, was
painted in azure and gold to imitate the starry sky, while the walls
were hung with canvases representing the heroic deeds of the great
Condottiere, Francesco Sforza, whose glorious memory his son Lodovico
was always eager to celebrate. At the entrance of the hall, an effigy of
the hero on horseback was placed under a triumphal arch, with an
inscription recalling his greatness, and saying that by virtue of these
mighty exploits his children now triumph and hold festival in his
honour.
At the same time, orders were sent in the duke's name to the seneschals
of the castles and towns between Pavia and Milan to see that the roads
and bridges were repaired and widened, in order that the bridal party
might be able to travel without hindrance or inconvenience. On the 18th
of January, invitations were issued to the chief lords in the state, as
well as to those foreign princes who were connected by marriage with the
Sforza and Este families, the Marquis of Montferrat, the Marquis of
Mantua, Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna, and others, requesting them to
honour with their presence a three-days' tournament to be held on the
great _piazza_ in front of the Castello, during the last week in
January.
While Lodovico was personally superintending the final arrangements,
seeing that the last touches were given to the frescoes in the duchess's
_Camerino_, or discussing to the masques and comedies that were to be
performed, with Bramante and Leonardo, his bride remained at Pavia with
her family and friends. The princesses of Este were well content, for
not only were all the treasures of the Castello and library at their
disposal, but they had the best of company in the person of Messer
Galeazzo di Sanseverino, who had been charged by his father-in-law,
Signor Lodovico, to supply his place during the interval of his enforced
absence. And certainly no better squire of dames could have been found
than this courteous and brilliant cavalier. He took Isabella and
Beatrice out riding in the park, and showed them some of the beauties
of that wide domain, which in the French chronicler's eyes seemed more
like the garden of Eden than any earthly spot. They could not, it is
true, admire those flowery lawns watered by crystal streams, and groves
of plane and cypress and myrtle, which charmed the travellers from the
north, and made Commines exclaim there was no other region in the world
as divinely beautiful as the Milanese land. But they could visit the
pleasure-houses and pavilions in the gardens, and hunt the stags and red
deer that ran wild in the park. For their amusement Messer Galeazzo let
fly some of those good falcons of his, with their jewelled hoods and
silver bells, and chased the herons and water-fowl along the lake, while
the ducal huntsmen followed in their suits of green velvet embroidered
with gold, and blew their golden bugles. Indoors they laughed and sang
together, and turned over the leaves of the illuminated missals or the
rare folios of the library. And as they talked of Messer Matteo
Boiardo's famous new poem and of the old French romances, a lively
discussion over the respective merits of the paladins, Roland and
Rinaldo di Montalbano arose between the two princesses on the one hand,
and Messer Galeazzo on the other. Isabella and Beatrice were all in
favour of the knight of Montalbano as the type of Italian chivalry,
while Sanseverino, who had kinsmen at the court of France and took
delight in French costumes and French literature, was as much at home in
France as he was at Milan, and defended the matchless glory of his hero,
Orlando. The quarrel waxed warm between them in those idle days, and in
the fulness of their youth and high spirits they amused themselves,
crying out, "Rolando! Rolando!" on the one side, and a "Rinaldo!" on the
other, until one afternoon Messer Galeazzo was acknowledged victor, and
even Isabella took up his cry of Roland, but soon returned to her old
allegiance, and declared boldly that she would allow no rival to the
wronged knight of Montalbano. The controversy was to be prolonged for
many a day, and was to become the theme of more than one merry letter
and gay challenge between the Marchesana Isabella and the handsome
Sanseverino, who soon won over Duchess Beatrice to his side. So the days
flew by until the week was almost over, and the time came to start for
Milan. Every hour fresh news reached Pavia of the new wonders and
marvellous entertainments that were awaiting them at the Milanese
capital, and Isabella's spirits rose high with eager expectation and
delight.
"You ought to be here," this lively princess wrote to her youngest
brother-in-law, Giovanni Gonzaga, who had stayed behind at Mantua, and
was absent from the wedding _fêtes_. And she told him of all the jousts
and banquets and balls that were to succeed each other at Milan, this
wonderful city which she was longing to see for herself. "And among
other _fêtes_," she added, "there will be three of the finest theatrical
representations that have ever been seen. But one thing which will make
you still more envious is that from Milan we mean to go and visit that
glorious city of Genoa, where you have never been! Only think how many
new places and lands we shall have seen by the time of our return! We
wish you all good things, but fear our wishes will profit you little,
and are sure my letter will make your mouth water."
On Saturday the 21st the bridal party set out from Pavia, and, leaving
the Certosa on the right, travelled across the Lombard plain to Binasco,
where they spent the night at the feudal castle of the Visconti, the
ruins of which may still be seen on the heights above the little town.
On Sunday morning the procession entered Milan, and the bride was
received by her cousin, Isabella of Aragon, wife of the reigning duke,
who had ridden out to meet her at the suburban church of S. Eustorgio,
where the bones of the martyred friar, S. Pietro Martire, repose in
their shrine of sculptured marble. At the gates Duke Gian Galeazzo and
his uncle met them, followed by a brilliant company of Milanese nobles,
and Lodovico, clad in a gorgeous mantle of gold brocade, rode through
the streets at the side of his youthful bride. A hundred trumpeters
marched before them, filling the air with strains of martial music, and
the crowds, who had assembled from all parts of Lombardy, thronged
around to gaze on the duchess and her daughters, and more especially on
the Moro's bride.
The street decorations that day were on the grandest scale. Lodovico had
given orders that no expense should be spared, and the magnificence of
the pageant amazed the foreign ambassadors and visitors from Mantua and
Ferrara. Not only were the walls and balconies hung with red and blue
satin or brocades, while wreaths of ivy were twined round the columns
and doorways, but one whole street where the armourers had their shops
was lined with effigies of armed warriors on horseback, entirely clad
with chain-armour and plates of damascened steel. "Every one took these
mailed figures to be alive," says Tristan Calco, the admiring chronicler
to whom we owe these details. The procession halted on the _piazza_ in
front of the Castello, and the heralds gave a loud blast of music as the
bride was lifted from her horse, and received under the grand portal by
the duchess-mother, Bona of Savoy, and her two daughters, Bianca Maria
and Anna Sforza. Bona herself had returned to Milan at the French king's
request soon after her son's marriage, and had consented to an outward
reconciliation with her brother-in-law, Lodovico. Her daughter Anna's
marriage with the heir of the house of Este had always been one of the
objects of her fondest wishes, and now she gave Duchess Leonora and her
daughters a cordial welcome to her son's court.
On the following day the marriage of Alfonso d'Este and the princess
Anna was privately solemnized in the ducal chapel, but the final nuptial
benediction was deferred until their return to Ferrara, a month later.
Meanwhile the bride's sumptuous trousseau and jewels, as well as the
splendid presents received by her, were displayed during the next week
in the Castello, before the courtiers who came to pay their homage to
the newly wedded Duke and Duchess of Bari. Of Anna Sforza herself we
hear little, but her beauty and gentleness are praised by more than one
contemporary chronicler, and endeared her especially to her uncle
Lodovico, who was sincerely grieved by her early death. She and her
husband paid frequent visits to Milan after her marriage, and were very
happy in the society of Beatrice, whom she only survived a few months,
dying at the birth of her first babe, to the great sorrow of her
father-in-law, Duke Ercole. "She was very beautiful and very charming,"
writes the Ferrarese diarist, "and there is little to tell about her,
because she lived so short a time."
The most splendid _fêtes_ were yet to come. On the 24th of January, the
day after Alfonso and Anna's wedding, three tribunals were erected on
the piazza, the one occupied by a group of heralds and trumpeters, the
other loaded with precious bowls and dishes of gold and silver plate,
the gifts of the magistrates of Milan and other cities to Signor
Lodovico and his bride. The new duchess, accompanied by the other
princes and princesses, arrayed in their richest robes and literally
blazing with precious jewels, writes an eye-witness, ascended the third
tribunal erected in the centre, and received the homage of the deputies
of the city; after which two cavaliers, a Visconti and a Suardi, bending
on one knee before the bride, took from her hand two lengths of cloth of
gold, which were hung in the courtyard, as prizes to be given to the
victor in the tournament. That evening two hundred Milanese ladies of
high rank were invited to the great ball, or _festa per le donne_, given
in the Sala della palla. On this occasion peasant girls from all parts
of Italy, clad in the red, white, and blue of the Sforza colours, danced
before the court, and "the palm of Terpsichore," we are told, was
awarded to a Tuscan maiden.
On the 26th, the Giostra, which was to be the crowning event of the
week's festivities, began. At the tournament held in Pavia in honour of
Giangaleazzo's wedding, the knights had for the most part appeared in
their ordinary attire; but this time, to add greater splendour to the
occasion, they entered the lists in companies, clad in fancy costumes
and bearing symbolical devices after the fashion of the day. First of
all came the Mantuan troop of twenty horsemen clad in green velvet and
gold lace, bearing golden lances and olive boughs in their hand, with
Isabella's kinsman, Alfonso Gonzaga, at their head. Then came Annibale
Bentivoglio, the young husband of Lucrezia d'Este, with the Bologna
knights, riding on a triumphal car drawn by stags and unicorns, the
badge of the House of Este. These were followed by Gaspare di
Sanseverino, with a band of twelve riders in black and gold Moorish
dress, bearing Lodovico's device of the Moor's head on their helmets and
white doves on their black armour. Last of all came a troop of wild
Scythians, mounted on Barbary steeds, who galloped across the _piazza_,
and then, halting in front of the ducal party, suddenly threw off their
disguise and appeared in magnificent array, with the captain of the
Milanese armies, Galeazzo di Sanseverino, at their head. He planted his
golden lance in the ground, and at this sign a giant Moor, advancing to
the front, recited a poem in honour of Duchess Beatrice.[6]
These pageants and masques formed an important feature of Renaissance
_fêtes_, and were evidently regarded as such by the chroniclers of these
wedding festivities, but to us the chief interest of this tournament
lies in the knowledge that the Scythian disguise assumed by Galeazzo di
Sanseverino and his companions was designed by no less a personage than
Leonardo da Vinci. Some of the drawings of savages and masks which we
see to-day on the stray leaves of his sketch-books may relate to these
figures, but we know for certain that he was actually employed by Messer
Galeazzo to arrange this masquerade. In a note in his own handwriting,
on the margin of the "Codex Atlanticus," we read, "Item, 26 of January,
being in the house of Messer Galeazzo di San Sev^o, ordering the festa
of his Giostra, certain men-at-arms took off their vests to try on some
clothes of savages, upon which Giacomo" (the apprentice whom he had
already caught thieving at Pavia) "took up a purse which lay on the bed
with their other clothes, and took the money that was inside it." The
actual share which the great Florentine took in the preparation of the
wedding festivities has often been discussed, and we are never likely to
know how much of the duchess's cabinet he painted, or what part he took
in the decoration of the city, but at least this characteristic note on
the lad whose honesty he had reason to suspect, proves that he was
present in Milan at the time, and was the authority to whom Lodovico's
son-in-law naturally turned for advice in planning this masquerade.
Incidents of this kind help us to realize how many and varied were the
offices Leonardo was called upon to discharge in his master's service,
and how frequent were the interruptions which interfered with the
painting of his pictures or the modelling of his great horse.
After this pageant, the serious business of the Giostra began, and the
tilting-matches lasted during three whole days. Among the foremost
knights who distinguished themselves on this occasion, the chronicler
and court poet mention the Marquis of Mantua, who entered the lists in
disguise; young Annibale Bentivoglio, who wounded his hand badly, but
refused to leave the ground; the Marchesino Girolamo Stanga, one of
Isabella d'Este's especial friends and of Beatrice's most devoted
servants; and Niccolo da Correggio, who was universally admired in his
suit of gold brocade. All four Sanseverini brothers fought in the lists
with their wonted skill and valour, but once more Messer Galeazzo,
_Gentis columen_, came off the victor and proved himself unrivalled in
courtly exercises, both as jouster and swordsman. On the last day of the
tournament the prizes were given away, and Messer Galeazzo was conducted
triumphantly to the Rocca, and there received the _pallium_ of gold
brocade from the bride's own hand.[7] As soon as Lodovico recognized the
Marquis of Mantua, he sent him a pressing invitation to take his place
with the ducal party; and Gianfrancesco, unable to refuse so courteous a
request, joined his wife and sat down with the rest of his kinsfolk to
the family banquet, which was held that night in the Castello.
A curious letter, addressed by the Duke of Milan to his uncle Cardinal
Ascanio Sforza in Rome, gives a full and minute account of this
tournament, which Giangaleazzo describes as one of the most important
events of his reign, and which he begs may be fully reported to His
Holiness Pope Innocent. He dwells on the extraordinary magnificence of
the sight, on the number and size of the lances used, which were more
numerous and larger than ever before seen on these occasions, and ends
with a splendid tribute to Messer Galeazzo, who both in valour and
fortune surpassed all others. On the other hand, we recognize the
cunning of Lodovico in the despatch addressed on this occasion by the
ducal secretary to the Milanese envoy at Bologna. Here the incidents of
the Giostra are briefly recounted, and great stress is laid on the
valour displayed by Messer Annibale Bentivoglio, who, notwithstanding
his wounded hand, broke many lances, and, in spite of his great youth,
proved himself as skilled a jouster as any, and won no less glory than
if he had borne off the prize, which he would certainly have done if
fortune had served him as well as he deserved.
The wedding festivities were now brought to a close, and were
unanimously pronounced to have passed off with brilliant success.
Nothing now remained for the bride's mother but to take leave of her
daughter and return home. Accordingly, on the 1st of February, Duchess
Leonora set out on her homeward journey, with her son and his newly-made
bride and the Marchioness Isabella, accompanied by an escort of two
hundred Milanese gentlemen, with Anna's brother, Ermes Sforza, and the
Count of Caiazzo--Gianfrancesco, the eldest of the Sanseverino brothers
--at their head. Both Leonora and Isabella were anxious to see the
Certosa, of which they had heard so much, on their way back to Pavia,
and Lodovico, glad to do the honours of this famous abbey, in which he
took a just pride, sent a courier with the following letter to inform
the prior and brothers of the Duchess of Ferrara's visit:--
"Since, besides the other honours which we have paid to the illustrious
Duchess of Ferrara, we are above all anxious to show her the most
remarkable things in our domain, and since we count this our church and
monastery to be among the chief of these, we write this to inform you
that the said duchess will visit the Certosa on Wednesday next, on her
return home. And we desire you to give her a fitting reception, and to
prepare an honourable banquet for the duchess and her company, which
will number about four hundred persons and horses. No excuse on your
part can be allowed, since this is our will and pleasure. And above all
you will see that an abundant supply of lampreys is prepared. But we are
quite sure that you will do your best to pay honour to the duchess,
since otherwise we should feel obliged to do a thing that would be
displeasing to you, and send our chamberlain to provide for her
honourable entertainment."[8]
The prior and brothers of the Certosa knew their own interest too well
not to comply with this somewhat imperious missive, and left nothing
undone which could gratify their illustrious guests. Isabella's
curiosity for the beautiful and marvellous was amply gratified, and in
Lodovico's future letters to his sister-in-law we find more than one
allusion to "our church and convent of the Certosa, which you saw when
you were at Pavia." After spending the following night at the Castello
di Pavia, the duchess and her large party embarked on the bucentaurs
that were awaiting them at the junction of the Ticino and the Po, and
reached Ferrara on the 11th of February, there to begin a new series of
splendid entertainments in honour of Don Alfonso's marriage with this
Sforza princess.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Porrò in A. S. L., ix. 501, etc.
[7] T. Chalcus, _Residua_, 90.
[8] C. Magenta, _I Visconti e Sforza nel Castello di Pavia_, i.
CHAPTER VII
Beatrice Duchess of Bari--Her popularity at the court of
Milan--Giangaleazzo and Isabella of Aragon--Lodovico's first
impressions--His growing affection for his wife--His letters to Isabella
d'Este--Hunting and fishing parties--Cuzzago and Vigevano--Controversy
on Orlando and Rinaldo--Bellincioni's sonnets.
1491
We have seen how the childhood and early youth of Beatrice d'Este had
been spent, first at her grandfather the King Ferrante's court at
Naples, afterwards in her own home at Ferrara. Under the watchful eye of
a wise and careful mother, she had been trained in all the learning and
accomplishments of the day, but had been allowed little liberty or
opportunity of revealing her strong individuality. Her charms and
talents had been thrown into the shade by the superior beauty and
intellect of the Marchioness Isabella, and until the day she landed at
Pavia she had been regarded in the comparatively insignificant light of
the younger and less gifted sister. Now all this suddenly changed. At
the age of fifteen, Beatrice d'Este found herself the wife of the ablest
and most powerful prince in Italy, released from all the restraints
hitherto imposed upon her and placed in a position of absolute freedom
and independence. From the quiet regularity of the sheltered life which
she had led at Ferrara by her mother's side, she suddenly found herself
transplanted to the gayest and most splendid court in Italy, surrounded
by every luxury that wealth could give and every beautiful object that
taste could devise. The bravest captains and the most accomplished
artists of the day were at her feet, ready to obey her orders and
gratify her smallest fancy. Leonardo and Bramante were at hand to
arrange pageants and masquerades, to paint _amorini_ on her mantelpiece
or mythological fables along the frieze of her rooms, to build elegant
pavilions, or lay out labyrinths and lakes in her garden. Bellincioni
and a dozen other poets celebrated her name and recorded her words and
actions in verse; learned scholars and commentators read Dante to her
when she cared to listen. Niccolo da Correggio not only wrote sonnets
and canzoni for her to sing but invented new patterns for her gowns; and
Cristoforo Romano laid down the sculptor's chisel to play the lyre or
viol for her pleasure. For her the wise man of Pavia, Lorenzo Gusnasco,
fashioned cunningly wrought instruments, lutes and viols inlaid with
ebony and ivory, and organs inscribed with Latin mottoes; and the
wonderful tenor, Cordier, the priest of Louvain, sang his sweetest and
most entrancing strains in the ducal chapel. For her amusement the court
jesters laughed and chattered and played their foolish tricks--Diodato,
who had followed her from Ferrara, and the witty clown Barone, the
petted favourite of Isabella d'Este and Veronica Gambara and a dozen
other great ladies. And Messer Galeazzo was ready to risk his life and
ruin his best clothes, all for the sake of his duchess. From the moment
of Beatrice's arrival at the Milanese court she won all hearts, less by
her beauty than by her vivacity and high spirits, her bright eyes and
ringing laugh, her frank gladness and keen enjoyment of life. How
favourable was the first impression which the young duchess made upon
those around her, we learn from the letters which the Ferrarese envoy
and ladies-in-waiting addressed almost daily to her anxious parents,
during the first few weeks after her marriage. Every little incident,
each word or act that is likely to please Duchess Leonora, is faithfully
reported by these good servants, in their eagerness to allay the natural
fears of the loving mother for the absent child in her brilliant but
difficult position. The demeanour of Signor Lodovico towards his wife,
all he said and thought of her, was narrowly watched by Giacomo Trotti,
and duly repeated in his letters to Ferrara. For the present this was
eminently satisfactory. "Signor Lodovico," writes the ambassador during
the wedding festivities at Milan, "has nothing but the highest praise
both for his wife and the Marchesana. He is never tired of saying how
much pleasure he takes in their company.
"Here jousting and tilting, feasting and dancing, are the order of the
day. Signor Lodovico is delighted with his wife's appearance, and
to-day, when she gave away the prizes, he kissed her repeatedly in the
eyes of all the people."
And again a few days later, when the festivities were ended and the
ducal family were enjoying a little rest before the party broke up, he
writes--
"Whenever Lodovico Sforza is wanted, he is always to be found in the
company of his wife, of the Marchesana, of Don Alfonso and Madonna Anna,
with whom he is never tired of talking and laughing, exactly as if he
were a youth of their own age."
On the 6th of February, after the departure of the duchess and her
children, Trotti wrote again, remarking, "Signor Lodovico seems to think
of nothing but how best to please and amuse his wife, and every day he
tells me how dear she is to him."[9]
Among the Ferrarese ladies who had remained at Milan, in attendance on
the young duchess, was her cousin, Polisenna d'Este, who, being
considerably older and more sedate, and no longer either young or
beautiful, had for these very reasons been placed by Leonora in her
daughter's household, and desired to keep her informed of all that
happened. Early in February this lady-in-waiting wrote the following
letter to Isabella d'Este, in terms that were well calculated to
reassure both the anxious sister and mother as to Beatrice's happiness
and her husband's behaviour:--
"MOST ILLUSTRIOUS MADONNA AND DEAR MARCHESANA,
"Since I have remained here after your Highness's departure from Milan,
continually in the company of your sister, the illustrious Duchess of
Bari, and of her husband, Signor Lodovico, I will no longer delay to
discharge my duty in sending you some comforting words as to the
well-being and happiness of the said duchess. I cannot express how happy
she is to see herself every day more affectionately caressed and petted
by her husband, who seems to find his sole delight in giving her every
possible pleasure and amusement. It is indeed a rare joy to see them
together and to realize what cordial love and good-will he bears her.
God grant it may last long! And I felt that I must write this good news
to your Highness, knowing that it would give you especial satisfaction.
I will only add that the air here seems to suit her particularly well,
and that she is certainly very much improved and stronger in appearance,
and seems every day to grow more beautiful. I beg of your Highness to
commend me to Madonna Beatrice and Collona.
"Your Highness's servant,
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