Milan and the Renaissance under the Sforza

Historical Background

Whenever we focus our examination on Florence, Venice, and Rome, we have not done justice to the Renaissance, for the Renaissance, thanks to Lodovico and Leonardo, shone brighter for ten years in Milan than in Florence. In the Renaissance, liberty and the glorification of woman found their best embodiment in the person of Isabella d'Este in Mantua. Correggio, Perugino, and Signorelli in turn became the glory of Parma, Perugia, and Orvieto. Renaissance literature reached its peak through Ariosto in Ferrara and the cultivation of customs and manners in Urbino in the time of Castiglione. The Renaissance nurtured a kind of pottery art in Faenza and also Palladio's special architectural style in Vicenza. Men like Pinturicchio, Sassetta, and Sodoma revived Siena and turned Naples into the cradle and model of pleasant living and descriptive poetry. We must slowly traverse the peerless land of Italy from Piedmont to Sicily and let the various voices of its cities blend with the mixed melody of the Renaissance.

The economic life of the Italian states in the fifteenth century was as varied as their climate, dialect, and people's dress. Northern Italy, the area above Florence, sometimes had harsh winters, so that the Po River froze solid along its entire length; nevertheless, the coastal region around Genoa, sheltered by the Ligurian Alps, almost always had mild weather. Venice's air was occasionally cloudy and foggy, and rain wet its palaces, towers, and alleys; Rome was sunny but had foul and depressing air; Naples was paradise. Their cities and villages were occasionally subject to such earthquakes, floods, droughts, storms, famines, plagues, and wars that, at Malthus's pleasure,¹ they seemed to occur according to a predetermined plan to prevent overpopulation. In small towns, ancient handicrafts provided bread for the poor and furnished the means of pleasure for the rich. Only the textile industry had reached the factory and capitalist stage; a silk-weaving factory in Bologna had contracted with the city authorities to “employ four thousand female weavers.” Small traders, importing and exporting merchants, teachers, judges, physicians, administrators, and politicians formed a relatively prosperous class; a group of wealthy and worldly clerics gave color and flavor to courts and streets; and monks and friars with sad or cheerful faces wandered everywhere begging for alms. Landed or propertied nobles often lived in the city and sometimes in villas outside the city. At the highest level, a banker, condottiere, marquis, duke, doge, or king, with his wife or mistress, had a circle or court filled with luxurious objects and adorned with works of art. In the countryside, peasants were busy cultivating their small plots or feudal estates and were so accustomed to poverty that they rarely felt hardship.

Slavery on a small scale, mostly for domestic service, was common among the wealthy. Slaves were occasionally employed to strengthen the labor force of free peasants on large estates, especially in Sicily and in various places even in northern Italy. From the fourteenth century onward, the slave trade expanded; Venetian and Genoese merchants imported slaves from the Balkans, southern Russia, and Islamic countries. In Italian courts, Moorish slaves were a sign of refinement and luxury. Ferdinand the Catholic in 1488 sent a hundred Moorish slaves to Pope Innocent VIII as a gift; the pope distributed them as presents to cardinals and friends. In 1501, after the capture of Capua, many women of Capua were sold as slaves in Rome. But the scattered facts mentioned above more illustrate the morals and customs of the Renaissance era than its economic condition; slavery rarely played an important role in the production and transport of goods.

Transportation was mainly by mule or cart, or by river, canal, or sea. Wealthy persons traveled by horse or horse-drawn carriage. The speed of movement was relatively good, but travel was very arduous; from Perugia to Urbino—103 kilometers—it was a two-day journey, and the traveler needed a strong spine to endure it; a ship might take fourteen days from Barcelona to Genoa. Inns were numerous, noisy, dirty, and uncomfortable. One of them in Padua could accommodate two hundred travelers and two hundred horses. The roads were bad and dangerous. The main streets of the cities were paved with flagstones, but at night they rarely had lighting. Good water was supplied from the mountains, but it rarely reached the houses; it usually flowed into beautifully designed public fountains. Simple women and idle men sat beside them, enjoying the coolness of the water and spreading news.

The city-states that divided the Italian peninsula into several parts—like Florence, Siena, and Venice—were under the rule of commercial oligarchies and most were subject to more or less powerful “tyrants” who had prevailed over republican governments or corrupt societies. (The corruption of these governments stemmed from class exploitation and political violence.) From among powerful rivals, one man—almost always from humble families—rose, subdued, eliminated, or hired his rivals, and became the absolute ruler himself. In some cases, this one man transferred power to his heir. Thus, the Visconti or Sforza family ruled in Milan, the Scaliger in Verona, the Carrara in Padua, the Gonzaga in Mantua, and the Este in Ferrara. These men, because they prevented the outbreak of factional activities and protected the lives and property of the people inside the city and within the bounds of their own whims from aggression and raids, enjoyed a shaky popularity. The lower classes accepted these tyrants as the last refuge from the despotism of the strong. And the peasants also submitted to the rule of the tyrants because communal governments did not protect them, did not administer justice for them, and deprived them of liberty.

The tyrants were oppressive because they had no security. Since their rule lacked a legitimate precedent and there was constant fear of their being killed or of a revolt against them, they placed themselves under the protection of guards, were always afraid of their food and drink being poisoned, and lived in the hope of a natural death. In the first several decades of their rule, they governed with cunning, bribery, the silent killing of opponents, and the application of all the fine points of Machiavellian politics—before Machiavelli was born; after 1450, the passage of time strengthened their position, and they themselves were content to adopt milder methods of government. They prevented criticism and opposition and employed countless spies over the people. They lived in luxury and had a marvelous splendor. Nevertheless, they won the patience and respect of the people, and even in Ferrara and Urbino they were able to secure the sincere affection of their subjects by reforming the administrative system, administering justice—at least when their own interests were not in danger—helping the people in famine and other calamities, reducing unemployment by creating public works, building churches and monasteries, beautifying the cities, and assisting scholars, poets, and artists who supported their policy and made their name immortal.

They often engaged in small wars so that by expanding their borders they could provide greater security for themselves, and they had a special eagerness to seize profitable lands. They did not send their own people to war, for in that case they would have to arm them, and this would lead their work to bankruptcy. Instead, they hired mercenary soldiers and paid their wages from the proceeds of conquest, ransom, and confiscated and plundered goods. Bold adventurers, often with hungry soldiers from their own land, hastened across the Alps toward them and sold their services to whoever paid better, and since this was the case, they often changed their employer according to the amount of pay. A tailor from Essex, whom they knew in England as Sir John Hawkwood and in Italy as Acuto, with special cunning fought both for the profit of Florence and to its detriment; he accumulated hundreds of florins, died in 1394 as a prosperous farmer, and was buried with honor in Santa Maria del Fiore.

The tyrant also provided the costs of education as well as the expense of war; he built schools and libraries and paid the expenses of colleges and universities. Every small town in Italy had a school usually founded by the Church; every large city had a university. Under the instruction of the humanists, universities and courts improved public taste and manners, and art-loving and art-judging were strengthened; every educational center had artists of its own and a special architectural style. The desire for life increased for the educated classes throughout Italy; customs were relatively refined, and at the same time personal motives remained free in an unprecedented way. From the time of Augustus until then, genius had not found such favor, had not had such opportunity to grow, and had not enjoyed such liberty.

Piedmont and Liguria

In southwestern Italy and the area that is now southeastern France lay the former principality of Savoy-Piedmont, whose ruling dynasty formed the oldest princely house in Europe until 1945. The founder of this state was Count Humbert I, who administered it as part of the Holy Roman Empire. This state rose to greatness in the time of Amadeus VI, nicknamed the “Green Count.” He annexed Geneva, Lausanne, Aosta, and Turin to his territory and made the latter city his capital. None of the rulers of his time had earned such a deserved reputation for wisdom, justice, and generosity. Emperor Sigismund elevated the counts of this state to the ducal rank (1416), but Amadeus VIII faced many troubles when he accepted his appointment as Felix V (1439). A century later, Savoy was conquered by Francis I for France (1536). Savoy and Piedmont became the battlefield between France and Italy; for this reason, both lagged behind the Italian Renaissance movement and had no share in Italy's torrential progress. The paintings of Defendente Ferrari in the Turin Gallery and also in his birthplace, Vercelli, are beautiful but mediocre from an artistic point of view.

South of Piedmont, Liguria embraces all the glory of the Italian Riviera: to the east of this region lies the Riviera di Levante (sunrise coast), and to the west the Riviera di Ponente (sunset coast); and at their meeting point lies Genoa, which is situated on hills, overlooks the deep blue sea, and is almost as magnificent as Naples. To Petrarch, Genoa was “the city of kings, the cradle of happiness, and the gateway of joy.” But this description was used for the period before Genoa's defeat (1378) at Chioggia. While Venice, with faithful and orderly cooperation of all classes, took steps to revive trade and regained its lost credit and prosperity, Genoa remained entangled in internal struggles between nobles among themselves and between nobles and the common people. The oppression of the oligarchy caused a small revolution (1383): armed butchers led a crowd toward the doge's palace and forced him to reduce taxes and expel the nobles from the government apparatus. Within five years (1390–1394), Genoa saw ten revolutions, and ten doges rose and fell in it; finally, since order seemed more valuable than liberty, the damaged republic, fearing dissolution into the land of Milan, surrendered itself with its Rivieras to France (1396). Two years later, the French were driven out after a violent revolution; five bloody battles took place in the streets, twenty palaces burned, government offices were looted and destroyed, and 1,000,000 florins of damage was incurred. Genoa once again found the anarchy of liberty unbearable and surrendered itself to Milan (1421). Milanese rule became unbearable, and a revolution that occurred in 1435 reestablished the republic in Genoa. Once again, strife between various factions began.

A factor of stability amid these fluctuations was the Bank of San Giorgio. At the beginning of the war with Venice, the government had borrowed from its citizens and given them bonds. After the war, it could not pay its debt, but it transferred the customs duties of the port to the lenders. The lenders founded an institution called the Bank of San Giorgio, formed a board of directors composed of eight people, and received a palace from the government for their administrative center. This exchange house or company was well managed, for it had less corruption than all other institutions of the republic. The collection of taxes was entrusted to this firm, which lent part of its funds to the government and in return received important properties in Liguria, Corsica, and the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. Gradually it became the country's treasury and a private bank that accepted monetary deposits, discounted bond funds, and lent to merchants and industrialists. Since all groups were economically dependent on it, everyone cherished it and did not touch it in revolution and war. Its administrative center, which is one of the magnificent palaces of the Renaissance era, still stands in Piazza Caricamento.

The fall of Constantinople was almost a severe blow to Genoa. Genoa's wealthy trading post in Pera, near Constantinople, fell into the hands of the Turks. When the poor republic of Genoa once again surrendered to France (1458), Francesco Sforza provided the cost of a revolution that caused the expulsion of the French and brought Genoa back under Milanese subjection (1464). The disturbance that weakened Milan after the murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1476) gave the people of Genoa a short period of liberty; but when Louis XII captured Milan (1499), Genoa also fell under his subjection. Finally, in the long struggle between Francis I and Charles V, a Genoese admiral named Andrea Doria turned his fleet against the French, drove them out of Genoa, and established a new republic (1528). This republic too, like Florence and Venice, was a commercial oligarchy, and only families whose names were registered in the “Golden Book” had the right to vote. The new regime established calm between political factions and preserved Genoa's independence until the appearance of Napoleon (1797).

Amid these acute disorders, Genoa contributed much less than its deserved share to the literature, science, and art of Italy. Its sailors engaged in maritime explorations with great eagerness; but when Christopher Columbus appeared among them, Genoa had become so cautious or impoverished that it could not help him realize his ambition. The nobles were busy with political affairs and the merchants with making profit, and neither of the two classes had time to think of lofty ambitions. The ancient church of San Lorenzo was altered to the style of Catholic churches (1307), its interior became very magnificent, and its chapel named San Giovanni Battista (completion year, 1451) was adorned with a beautiful altar and canopy by Matteo Civitali and a sorrowful statue of John the Baptist by Jacopo Sansovino. Andrea Doria, just as he revolutionized the government of Genoa, also transformed its art. He brought Fra Giovanni da Montorsoli from Florence to renovate the Doria palace (1529) and called Perino del Vaga from Rome to adorn it with frescoes, reliefs, various figures, and arabesques. The result of this action was the creation of one of the most magnificent buildings in Italy. Leone Leoni, Cellini's rival and enemy, came from Rome to design a delicate medallion of the admiral; and Montorsoli designed his tomb. In Genoa, the Renaissance began shortly before Doria and did not last long after his death.

Pavia

Between Genoa and Milan, the ancient city of Pavia stretches along the Ticino River. This city was the capital of the Lombard kings, but in the fourteenth century it was counted among Milan's dependencies, and the Visconti and Sforza families chose it as their second capital. In that city, Galeazzo II Visconti began the construction of the magnificent Castello palace in 1360, and Gian Galeazzo Visconti completed it. This palace was the residence of its second founder and later became the center of pleasure for the subsequent dukes of Milan. Petrarch called it “the most noble product of the new art,” and many of his contemporaries considered it superior to the royal palaces of Europe. Its library contained the most valuable book collections in Europe. Louis XII, after capturing Milan in 1499, took this library—with 951 illuminated religious manuscripts among its books—along with other spoils and the French army destroyed the interior of the palace with cannon fire (1527). Now nothing remains of this palace except its walls.

Although the Castello palace has been ruined, the best architectural work of the Visconti and Sforza dynasty—the former Carthusian monastery or Certosa in Pavia—still stands. This monastery is located at a distant point from the road amid Pavia and Milan. At this point, in a calm plain, Gian Galeazzo Visconti began the construction of a church, several cells, and a portico to fulfill his wife's vow. From the start of the work until 1499, the dukes of Milan continued the construction and beautification of the building to manifest their piety and art-loving in its existence. There is no more magnificent building in Italy. The facade of this building, which was built in the Lombard-Romanesque style with white Carrara marble, was designed, carved, and erected by Cristoforo Mantegazza and Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, artists from Pavia, with the encouragement and attention of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Ludovico il Moro (completion year, 1473). This building is very ornate and adorned with arches, statues, reliefs, medallions, columns, pilasters, capitals, arabesque figures, images of angels, saints, demons, beauties, princes, fruits, and flowers, which form a beautiful and harmonious whole and, at the same time, each of them astonishes man with its independent quality. Every part represents love and art that has been created with great effort; and the four windows of the church, which are the work of Amadeo, alone make the artist's name immortal. In some Italian churches, the exterior facade is very attractive; but in the facade of the Certosa di Pavia, every external form and view is extremely astonishing; among its amazing beauties, one can name the magnificent buttresses, tall towers, arcades, northern minarets of the transept and the apse behind the altar, and the columns and arches of the porticoes.

In the church courtyard, the human eye at once falls from these slender columns, through three successive layers of arcades, upon four rows of columns of the dome; this is a harmonious whole that has been admirably designed and built. Inside the church, everything has unparalleled grandeur: groups of columns that rise with pointed arches to reach the carved and paneled ceiling; bronze and iron railings with figures as delicate as royal nets; magnificent and ornate doors and corridors; jeweled marble altars; panels by Perugino, Bergognone, and Luini; inlaid singers' stalls; illuminated stained glass; columns, brackets, tiered arches, and beautifully carved cornices; the magnificent tomb of Gian Galeazzo Visconti made by Cristoforo Romano and Benedetto Briosco; and finally, the tomb and tombstone of Ludovico il Moro and Beatrice d'Este, which are connected with marble (although the two died with a ten-year time difference and eight hundred kilometers apart) as the last sign of a fiery love. In this magnificent building, various aspects of the Lombard, Gothic, and Renaissance styles are blended into one complete architectural work. During Ludovico's rule, Milan was a gathering place of beautiful women who had created an unrivaled court, and a center of high-ranking artists such as Bramante, Leonardo, and Caradosso from Florence, Venice, and Rome who were the cause of the elevation of Italian art.

The Visconti Family: 1378–1447

Galeazzo II, at his death in 1378, bequeathed his share of the Milanese territory to his son Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and he continued to use Pavia as the center of government. If Machiavelli had lived in the time of this man, he would truly have been delighted by his behavior. Gian Galeazzo, who was always busy studying in the great library of his palace, took care of his frail constitution, won the hearts of his subjects with light taxes, attended church with astonishing piety, filled his court with priests and monks, and was the last prince in Italy whom diplomats believed harbored the ambition to rule the entire Italian peninsula. Incidentally, this idea was correct; he pursued this goal until the end of his life, and to achieve it, he spared no treachery, hypocrisy, or self-murder, as if he had carefully read the yet unwritten Prince by Machiavelli and had never heard a word from Jesus.

At the same time as his rule, his uncle Bernabò ruled from Milan over the other half of the Visconti family's territory. Bernabò was a complete rogue; he taxed his subjects to the utmost limit of their endurance, forced peasants to feed and maintain his five thousand hunting dogs, and by announcing that criminals would be tortured for forty days, blocked any opposition. He laughed at Gian Galeazzo's piety, contemplated removing him from the field, and devised plans to rule over the entire hereditary Visconti territory. Gian, who had skilled spies, learned of all his plans; therefore, at the right time, he thought of anticipating him. One day he invited him to a meeting, and he went with two sons to his nephew's with an easy mind. Gian's secret guards arrested all three and apparently poisoned Bernabò (1358). Gian now became the ruler of Milan, Novara, Pavia, Piacenza, Parma, Cremona, and Brescia. In 1387 he captured Verona, and in 1389 Padua. In 1399 he astonished Florence by buying Pisa for 200,000 florins; in 1400 Perugia, Assisi, and Siena, and in 1401 Lucca and Bologna surrendered to his generals. Thus, Gian became almost master of all northern Italy from Novara to the Adriatic. Now, since the Papal States, following the repeated change of the ecclesiastical capital from Avignon to Rome as a result of the Great Schism (1378–1417), were weak, Gian set two rival popes against each other and thereby tried to seize all the Church's lands. His intention was that after achieving this purpose, he would march on Naples; then his sovereignty over Pisa and other ports would force Florence to submit. If he achieved this goal, only Venice would remain outside his domination, which also could not withstand a united Italy. But Gian Galeazzo, before he could achieve all his ambitions, said farewell to life in 1402 at the age of fifty.

Throughout this period, Gian Galeazzo did not go far from Pavia or Milan. He preferred conspiracy to war, and his successes were more due to his own cunning than to the victories of his generals. His preoccupation with political affairs did not distract his powerful mind from other works. He enacted laws that included regulations for public health and the compulsory isolation of patients with infectious diseases. He built the Pavia palace, began the construction of the Certosa di Pavia and the Milan Cathedral, invited Manuel Chrysoloras to teach Greek at the University of Milan, strengthened the University of Pavia, and assisted poets, artists, scholars, and philosophers and enjoyed their company. He extended the great canal from Milan to Pavia and thereby created an inland waterway across Italy from the Alpine region, through Milan and the Po River, to the Adriatic Sea, and prepared the means of irrigation for thousands of acres of land. Agriculture and commerce, thus strengthened, provided the means for the power of industry; Milan competed with Florence in wool weaving; its blacksmiths made weapons and armor for the warriors of Western Europe; in one disturbance, two skilled armorers made weapons for six thousand soldiers in a few days. Hundreds of silk weavers from Lucca, who had become poor due to war and local disputes, migrated to Milan in 1314; in 1400 the silk-weaving industry flourished in that city to such an extent that moral reformers complained and said that clothes had become shamefully beautiful due to excessive beauty. Gian Galeazzo preserved this progressive economy with proper administration, the administration of justice, reliable money, and fair taxes—which also included clerics and nobles. The postal service developed through his efforts; in 1425 more than a hundred horses were used for the post, letters from the people were accepted in all post offices; mounted couriers moved all day, and at night when necessary. In 1423 the revenues of Florence, Venice, and Milan were respectively 4,000,000, 11,000,000, and 12,000,000 gold florins. Kings were very eager to marry their daughters to the sons of the Visconti family. Emperor Wenceslaus, when in 1395 he formalized Gian's principality with a decree and made it “eternal” in the family, did nothing but confirm an actual truth.

But this “eternity” was only fifty-two years. Gian's eldest son, Gian Maria Visconti,¹ was thirteen years old at his father's death (1402). The generals who commanded Gian's victorious armies fought with each other for the position of regent. While these men fought for dominance over Milan, Italy was in a very troubled state: Florence recaptured Pisa; Venice captured Verona, Vicenza, and Padua; Siena, Perugia, and Bologna surrendered to local tyrants. Italy fell into its previous state and even worse, for Gian Maria, who had entrusted his government to tyrannical regents, spent his time playing with his dogs, had accustomed them to eating human flesh, and looked with special joy at the live eating of men whom he himself had condemned as political or social criminals. In 1412, three nobles killed him with a dagger.

His brother, Filippo Maria Visconti, apparently inherited wisdom and cunning, seriousness and patience, and ambition and foresight from his father. But Gian Galeazzo's “calm” courage turned in Filippo into constant cowardice, fear of being killed, and a firm belief in the treachery of all people. He never left the Porta Giovia palace in Milan, ate and grew fat, and in every matter resorted to superstitions and astrologers. Nevertheless, he was able to continue his long rule until the end of his life solely by cunning and to dominate his country and generals, and even the members of his own family. He married Beatrice Tenda for her money and condemned her to death on charges of treason, then married Maria of Savoy and isolated her from everyone except her maids; and since she had no son, he chose a mistress for himself. From this relationship a beautiful daughter named Bianca was born who won her father's affection and to some extent reformed his morals. Filippo continued his father's tradition of supporting scholars, invited famous scholars to the University of Pavia, and entrusted artistic works to Brunelleschi and Pisanello, the unrivaled designer and medallion maker. He ruled Milan with useful despotism, eliminated internal disputes, preserved order, protected peasants from the injustices of landowners, and safeguarded the property of merchants from the raids of thieves and bandits. With skillful diplomacy and wise use of the army, he restored the subjection of Parma, Piacenza, all of Lombardy to Brescia, and all the lands between Milan and the Alps to Milan, and in 1421 persuaded the people of Genoa that his despotism was less harmful than internal wars. He encouraged marriages between hostile families and thus ended many enmities. Against a hundred small oppressions that were previously common, he established one oppression, and his people, who were deprived of liberty but freed from the bonds of internal struggles, complained, prospered, and increased in number.

He had a special talent for finding capable generals; but since he feared they would take his place, he incited them against each other, and always fanned the flames of war in the hope of regaining what his father had gained and his brother had lost. In his wars with Venice and Florence, powerful condottieri such as Gattamelata, Colleoni, Carmagnola, Braccio, Fortebraccio, Montone, Piccinino, Muzio Attendolo, and ... appeared. Muzio was a young peasant belonging to a large family whose women and men were all warriors; as a result of the physical strength and willpower he had placed at the service of Queen Joanna II of Naples, she gave him the title Sforza; but finally he fell out of favor with her and was imprisoned. His sister went to the prison fully armed and forced the jailer to free him. After his release, he was appointed commander of one of Milan's armies but shortly afterward drowned while crossing a river (1424). His illegitimate son, who was then twenty-two years old, took his father's place, showed bravery in wars, and finally ascended to the throne.

The Sforza Family: 1450–1500

Francesco Sforza was the ideal model of Renaissance soldiers: tall, handsome, strong, and brave; in his army he was the best runner, jumper, and wrestler; he slept little and marched in summer and winter with his head uncovered; he won the sincere affection of his men by sharing their hardships, being content with their ordinary rations, and leading them to conquest and victory—more with military techniques and war stratagems than with the multitude of men and weapons. His fame was so unrivaled that enemy forces several times, upon seeing him, laid down their weapons and, removing their hats, congratulated him as the greatest general of the time. When he contemplated seizing a region, he spared no effort to achieve his purpose; he alternately fought for the profit of Milan, Florence, and Venice until, when Filippo married his daughter to him to win his sincere affection and gave him Cremona and Pontremoli as dowry (1441). When six years later Filippo died without an heir and the Visconti family thus became extinct, Francesco thought of annexing Milan to his wife's dowry.

But the people of Milan thought differently; they declared their government a republic and named it Ambrosia in memory of a powerful bishop who a thousand years earlier had disciplined Theodosius and converted Augustine to Christianity. But the opposing factions in the city could not agree on this matter; Milan's dependencies, taking advantage of the opportunity, declared their liberty and some of them fell under Venetian subjection; the danger of attack from Venice or Florence increased; moreover, the Duke of Orléans, Emperor Frederick III, and Alfonso, King of Aragon, all claimed Milan as their own. Francesco fought all Milan's enemies with extraordinary power, but when the new government of Milan made a peace treaty with Venice without consulting him, he turned his troops against the republic and besieged Milan so that its people suffered from famine. After the city's surrender, he entered it amid the cheers and admiration of the people and satisfied their hunger for liberty by distributing bread. A general assembly composed of one person from each family was formed and the principality was conferred upon him. Thus, the Sforza dynasty began its short but brilliant rule (1450).

Francesco's rise did not change his life. He continued to live simply and work hard. Occasionally he was tyrannical and cruel, but he excused his actions with the claim that they were for the country's good; usually he was a just and humane man. He had little sensitivity to the beauty of women. His clever wife killed his mistress and then forgave her husband's sin; she bore him eight children, wisely guided him in politics, and by helping the poor and supporting the oppressed won the people's affection toward him. Filippo showed as much ability in statecraft as in military leadership. He established a social order in the city that caused the people's prosperity and erased the unpleasant memories of past sufferings and harmful liberties from their minds. To resist revolt or siege, he began the construction of the strongly fortified Castello Sforzesco palace. He created canals in his territory, organized public works, and built the city's great hospital. He brought Filelfo, the famous humanist, to Milan and encouraged knowledge, culture, and art; he also attracted Vincenzo Foppa from Brescia with happy promises to establish a painting academy. By securing the firm support and steadfast friendship of Cosimo de' Medici, he protected himself from the threat of Venice, Naples, and France. By marrying his daughter Ippolita to Alfonso, son of Ferdinand, he disarmed Naples; he checkmated the Duke of Orléans through signing an alliance treaty with Louis XI, King of France. Some nobles were waiting for his death or to seize his position, but the success of his government frustrated their plans, and he continued to live successfully and died peacefully like successful generals (1466).

His son, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who had been raised in luxury and comfort, never struggled with poverty nor had to deal with struggle. He surrendered the reins to pleasure, luxury, and splendor. With special delight he deceived the wives of his friends and suppressed opposition with a ruthlessness that apparently mysteriously and indirectly came to him from the Visconti family through the kind Bianca, so that the people of Milan, who were accustomed to absolute rule, did not resist his oppression, but what the people had endured out of fear, personal revenge compensated. Girolamo Olgiati was very saddened by the death of his sister, who had been seduced and then rejected by the duke; Giovanni Lampugnani considered the duke responsible for the destruction of his wealth. These two, with the complicity of Carlo Visconti, finished the prince's work. All three had become familiar with Roman history and its ideals at the school of Niccolò Montano. One of these ideals was tyrannicide, which had been transmitted from Brutus to Brutus.¹ These three, after seeking help from the saints, entered the church of Saint Stephen, where Galeazzo was worshiping, and killed him with a dagger (1476). Lampugnani and Visconti were killed in the same place; Olgiati was tortured so much that almost all his bones were broken or dislocated. Then he was flayed alive, but until his last breath he refused to repent and instead repeatedly uttered the names of pagan heroes and Christian saints and sought their approval for his action. At the moment of death, he uttered this sentence, which is part of classical and Renaissance literature: “Death is bitter, but fame is eternal.”

Galeazzo bequeathed his principality to a seven-year-old child, Gian Galeazzo Sforza. During three turbulent years, Guelfs and Ghibellines fought with force and cunning for the position of regent. The winner of this contest was one of the most prominent and complex personalities of the Renaissance era: Ludovico Sforza, the fourth son of Francesco Sforza. His father gave him the nickname “Mauro”; his contemporaries, on account of his black hair and eyes, jokingly turned this nickname into il Moro (the Moor), and he himself accepted this nickname with good humor; Moorish signs and clothes became common in his court. Other wits found in his name a synonym for the mulberry tree (whose Italian word is moro); thus the mulberry tree also became a symbol for his court, he made the color of the mulberry common in Milan, and provided a subject and theme for some of the decorations of his palace. Ludovico's great teacher was the scholar Filelfo, who firmly laid the foundation of his education in classical literature; but his mother, Bianca, told the master: “We must raise a prince, not just a scholar,” and took care that her sons also became skilled in the arts of government and war. Ludovico was not very strong physically, but he possessed the innate intelligence of the Visconti family, without their ruthlessness and tyranny; thus, with all his defects and sins, he became one of the most civilized men in history.

Ludovico was not handsome; like most great men, he lacked this virtue that aids pleasure. His face was excessively fat, his nose excessively long and curved, and his lips too firmly pressed together; nevertheless, in a profile portrait of him attributed to Boltraffio and in his busts in Lyon and the Louvre, a silent power, a sensitive intelligence, and almost a sign of refinement are observed in his features. Because he was the cleverest politician of his time, he earned a great reputation; sometimes he was hesitant, often he deviated from the path of honesty, sometimes he did not observe the side of caution, and sometimes he broke promises; these were the defects of diplomacy in the Renaissance era—defects that perhaps are still among the necessities of politics. Nevertheless, fewer princes of the Renaissance era equaled him in mercy and generosity; oppression was contrary to his innate desire, and countless men and women benefited from his donations. He was mild and humble and showed a kind of sensual sensitivity to beauty and art; he had an imaginative and emotional temperament but rarely lost his moral balance; he was skeptical and superstitious and, although he ruled over millions, he was a slave to his own astrologer—what we have said was a collection that formed Ludovico's personality.

He ruled as regent of Milan in place of his nephew for thirteen years (1481–1494). Gian Galeazzo Sforza was young and retiring, feared the responsibilities of government, was often ill, and did not have the ability to undertake serious matters. Guicciardini called him “of little capacity.” Gian Galeazzo himself devoted himself to amusement and relaxation and gladly entrusted the administration of the country to his uncle—who jealously praised him and trusted him with suspicion.

Ludovico ruled with ability. He had created a large experimental farm and a livestock breeding center around his summer cottage in Vigevano. In this farm, experiments were conducted on the cultivation of rice, vines, and mulberry trees; dairy workshops produced butter and cheese so excellent that they had no precedent throughout Italy. In the mountains and plains of that region, twenty-eight thousand cows, buffaloes, sheep, and goats grazed; vast stables bred purebred stallions and mares whose results were among the best horses in Europe. At the same time, the silk-weaving industry in Milan employed twenty thousand workers and had taken many foreign markets from Florence; blacksmiths, goldsmiths, woodworkers, inlayers, potters, mosaicists, glass painters, perfumers, embroiderers, tapestry weavers, and musical instrument makers added to the prosperity of Milan's industries, adorned palaces, provided ornaments for courtiers, and exported their surplus products to buy the necessary luxury goods from the East with their revenues. To facilitate movement and the transport of goods, and “to provide more light and air for the people,” Ludovico widened the main streets; at his command, palaces and gardens were built for the nobles on both sides of the streets leading to the principality palace; and the cathedral, which was now complete in every respect, competed with the lively worldly life. In 1492 Milan had a population of 128,000. During Ludovico's rule, this city progressed even more than in the time of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, but complaints were heard from every corner that the revenues of the city's progressive economy caused the strengthening of the regent and his court more than they saved the people from poverty. Householders were dissatisfied with heavy taxes; in Cremona and Lodi, protests against the existing situation took the form of revolt and disturbed the peace of those two cities. In response to these protests, Ludovico said that more money was needed to build hospitals and care for the sick, to assist the universities of Pavia and Milan, to finance agriculture, livestock breeding, and industry; and to dazzle the eyes of ambassadors whose governments attached importance only to wealth and power with works of art and the expensive splendor of his court.

The people of Milan were not satisfied with these works; but when Ludovico married the most beautiful and lovable princess of Ferrara, upon the bride's entry into Milan, they apparently participated in his joy. Ludovico had no claim to equality with Beatrice d'Este's charming chastity; he was now thirty-nine years old and had passed the period of love affairs with several mistresses from whom he had two sons and one daughter; this daughter was the fortunate-natured Bianca, and Ludovico loved her as much as his father loved the kind lady from whom this daughter took her name. The bride, Beatrice d'Este, who had been raised in Naples and learned the ways of pleasant living there, had left Naples before any dust settled on her pure skirt, but her life in that city had made her so extravagant that she now spent Ludovico's wealth with open hands to such an extent that the people of Milan called her “addicted to luxury.” Nevertheless, the people forgave her this sin, for she spread such harmless joy around herself that it blocked the way to protest. One of the chroniclers of that time writes: “She spent night and day in dancing, singing, and delightful amusements,” in such a way that her cheerfulness spread to the entire court. The dignified Ludovico fell in love with her a few months after marrying her and for a time confessed that all power and wisdom were too insignificant compared to his new happiness. Under her husband's care, her mind strengthened and she added intellectual delicacy to the charm of youthful cheerful spirit: she learned to speak Latin, devoted herself to state affairs, and sometimes served her husband like a skilled ambassador. Her letters to her more famous sister Isabella d'Este are like fragrant flowers in the forest of Machiavellian struggles of the Renaissance.

With the cheerful Beatrice who led the dance parties, and the hardworking Ludovico who provided the cost of these parties, Milan was now considered not only in Italy but in all Europe the most luxurious land. The Castello Sforzesco palace with its great tower, successive luxurious rooms, inlaid floors, stained-glass windows, embroidered cushions, Persian carpets, figured tapestries depicting the legends of Troy and Rome, ceilings by Leonardo and statues by Cristoforo Solari or Cristoforo Romano had reached the utmost splendor. In that luxurious and magnificent environment, scholars mingled with warriors, poets with philosophers, artists with generals, and all with women whose natural beauty was increased by skillful calm and precious jewels and luxurious clothes. Musicians created excitement with their instruments, and sweet songs added great charm to the halls. While Florence trembled before Savonarola and burned the pride of love and art, music and revelry ruled in Ludovico's capital. Husbands overlooked the flirtations of their wives in exchange for their own debaucheries. Masquerade parties were often held, and hundreds of strange clothes covered countless sins. Men and women were so engrossed in dancing and singing that it seemed as if poverty had not lurked behind the city walls, France was not planning to attack Italy, and Naples was not seeking to destroy Milan.

Bernardino Corio, who came from his birthplace Como to this court, writes with special flourish in the classical style in his book History of Milan (1500):

The court of our princes was extremely magnificent and full of new fashions, fresh clothes, and joy and happiness. Nevertheless, in this time the burden of virtue had become so heavy from every side that Minerva competed with Venus, and each of these two wanted to make her school more splendid. The most beautiful youths bowed their heads at Cupid's threshold. Fathers surrendered their daughters, husbands their wives, and brothers their sisters to him and so fearlessly approached that hall of love that their action greatly astonished the beneficiaries of wisdom. Minerva also strove with all her power to adorn her respectable academy as much as possible. For this reason, Prince Ludovico with outstanding pomp invited the most prominent scholars and artists from all parts of Europe to his court. In this court, Greek knowledge and Latin prose and poetry flourished, and skilled poets, sculptors, and painters from distant countries had gathered; pleasant music and sweet melodies were heard; these sounds were so harmonious and ear-pleasing that it seemed as if they had descended from heaven to this magnificent court.

Perhaps it was Beatrice who, in the warmth of maternal affection, brought misfortune to Ludovico and Italy. In 1493 Beatrice gave birth to a son who was named Maximilian after his godfather, the heir to the empire. Beatrice feared for her own fate and that of her son in case of Ludovico's death, for her husband had no legal right to the principality of Milan. Gian Galeazzo Sforza might, with the assistance of Naples, depose and exile him, or even kill him; and if Gian happened to have a son, his principality would pass to that son, regardless of whatever fate Ludovico might have. Ludovico, who shared this anxiety with his wife, secretly sent someone to Maximilian and proposed the marriage of his niece Bianca Maria Sforza to him, on the condition that after ascending the throne, Maximilian would grant him the title and powers of the principality of Milan, and promised to give 400,000 ducats (equivalent to 5,000,000 dollars) as dowry to the bride. We must add that the emperors who had given the ducal title to the Visconti dynasty had refused to grant it to the Sforza family. Milan was legally still subject to the empire.

Gian Galeazzo Sforza was so engrossed with his dogs and physicians that he paid no attention to these developments; but his angry and passionate wife Isabella felt Ludovico's intention and renewed her insistence with her father. In January 1494 Alfonso became King of Naples and openly adopted a hostile policy toward the regent of Milan. Pope Alexander VI was not only an ally of Naples but also intended to unite the city of Forlì—which at that time was under the rule of one of the Sforza family—with the other cities of his territory, in order to strengthen his domain. Lorenzo de' Medici, who had a friendly relationship with Ludovico, had died in 1492. Ludovico, who had become very hopeless of his own protection, allied Milan with France and agreed that whenever Charles VIII wanted to establish his right to the throne and crown of Naples, he would allow him and the French army to pass from northwestern Italy toward their destination.

When the French came, Ludovico welcomed Charles and wished him success in his march on Naples. When the French army set out southward, Gian Galeazzo Sforza died as a result of several different illnesses. Ludovico was mistakenly suspected of poisoning him, and because he hastened to apply the title of principality to himself, this suspicion was strengthened (1495). Meanwhile Louis, Duke of Orléans, attacked Italy with another French army and declared that since he was a descendant of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, he would seize Milan as his hereditary possession. Ludovico realized that his welcoming of Charles had been a great mistake. Therefore, he quickly changed his policy and helped form a league with Venice, Spain, Alexander VI, and Maximilian, called the “Holy League,” to expel France from the Italian peninsula; Charles quickly returned by the same path he had come, was defeated at Fornovo, and with difficulty managed to bring his defeated army back to France. Louis of Orléans decided to wait for a better opportunity.

Ludovico was elated by the apparent success of his intricate policy: he had disciplined Alfonso, frustrated the Duke of Orléans, and led the league to victory. Now his position seemed secure; therefore, he reduced his political vigilance and again devoted himself to enjoying the pleasures of the court and the freedoms of his youth. When Beatrice became pregnant for the second time, Ludovico freed her from marital duties and entered into a relationship with Lucrezia Crivelli (1496). Beatrice endured her husband's infidelity with great sorrow and no longer spread joy around herself, but she devoted herself to raising her two sons. Ludovico was hesitant between his mistress and his wife and said that he loved both. In 1497 Beatrice became pregnant for the third time, but this time she gave birth to a dead son and herself, after enduring severe pain, said farewell to the world at the age of twenty-two.

From that moment everything changed in the city and in the duke's own being. One of the chroniclers of that time says: “The people expressed such sorrow as had never before been seen in Milan. The court went into mourning; Ludovico, who was overwhelmed with remorse and grief, spent consecutive days in solitude and prayer. This strong man, who had never let the thought of religion enter his mind, now had only one desire, and that was to die, to see Beatrice again, to ask her forgiveness, and to regain her affection. For two weeks he refused to receive envoys and his children; every day he participated in three masses and went to his wife's grave in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. He commissioned Cristoforo Solari to carve a recumbent image of him, and since he wanted to be in the same grave with her, he ordered that after his death his likeness be placed beside his wife's image. What he said was done, and that single tomb in the Certosa di Pavia still recalls the short brilliant time for Ludovico and Milan, and Beatrice and Leonardo—a time that had now come to an end.”

Ludovico's misfortune came quickly. In 1498, the Duke of Orléans became King of France as Louis XII and, immediately after the beginning of his reign, declared his intention to seize Milan. Ludovico sought allies but found none; the government of Venice openly reproached him for his welcome of Charles. Ludovico entrusted the command of his army to Galeazzo di San Severino, who due to excessive beauty and goodness did not have the aptitude for generalship; Galeazzo fled upon seeing the enemy, and the French entered Milan unhindered. Ludovico entrusted the protection of his strongly fortified palace to his trusted friend Bernardino da Corte and emphasized to him to hold out until he (Ludovico) obtained help from Maximilian. Then, with disguised clothing and facing many difficulties, he went to Innsbruck to Maximilian. When Gian Francesco Gonzaga, husband of Isabella (Beatrice's sister), led his small army, the French retreated into the palace; Ludovico entered the city triumphantly (February 5, 1500). During his short stay in the city, a specific French prisoner, who was named the Chevalier Bayard, was brought before him. This brave man was famous for bravery and humility; Ludovico returned his sword and horse to him and freed him and returned him with an escort to the French camp. The French did not repay this courtesy well; the French garrison stationed in the palace bombarded the streets of Milan with cannons until Ludovico, to preserve or calm the people, transferred his command center to Pavia. The soldiers, since their pay was overdue, suggested that they compensate for this arrears by plundering Italian cities. But Ludovico angered them by forbidding them from this action. Ludovico asked Gian Francesco Gonzaga, husband of Isabella (Beatrice's sister), to lead his small army; Francesco accepted his request but secretly negotiated with the French. When the French reached Novara, Ludovico brought his heterogeneous force to the field, but the soldiers fled and the commanders made a pact with the French; when Ludovico wanted to flee in disguise, his Swiss soldiers handed him over to the enemy (April 10, 1500). He accepted his fate with calm and only demanded that the Divine Comedy by Dante be brought to him from his library in Pavia. He was taken, now white-haired but still proud, to Lyon, paraded through the city streets amid the mockery of the people, and then imprisoned in the fortress of Lys-Saint-Georges in the province of Berry. Louis XII refused to meet with him and ignored Emperor Maximilian's pleas for his release, but allowed him to walk in the palace grounds, fish in its moat, and receive his friends. When Ludovico became seriously ill, Louis sent his own physician Metrasalom to visit him and brought one of Ludovico's jesters from Milan to entertain him. In 1504 Ludovico was transferred to the fortress of Loches and given even more liberty. In 1508 Ludovico attempted to escape; by hiding in a bundle of hay he found his way out, but got lost in the forest and hunting dogs found his trail. After his capture, he was subjected to harsher imprisonment; he was imprisoned in a dungeon and deprived of books and writing materials.

On May 17, 1508, in complete isolation and cut off from the luxurious life of his palace, at the age of fifty-seven, he said farewell to the world.

He was a sinner before the people and his homeland, but he loved beauty and honored the men who had brought music, art, poetry, and knowledge to Milan. A century earlier, one of Italy's greatest historians named Girolamo Tiraboschi said in his description of him:

If we consider the countless number of scholars who flocked from all parts of Italy to his court to receive honor and assured reward; if we recall how many architects and painters were invited by him to Milan and how many magnificent buildings were constructed by him, if we bear in mind how he built the great University of Pavia, paid its budget, and created scientific schools of every kind, if in addition to all this we study the eloquent praises said in his honor and the treatises dedicated to him by scholars of various nations, we feel inclined to consider him the best prince in world history.

Literature

Ludovico and Beatrice gathered many poets around them, but life in their court was so pleasant that it could not create that continuous and painful turmoil that can inspire a poet to create a masterpiece. Serafino of Aquila was short and ugly, but his sonnets, which were sung with his voice and to the sound of a lute that he himself played, were a source of pleasure for Beatrice and her friends. When Beatrice died, this poet left Milan, for he could not endure the heavy silence of the rooms that were once filled with the sound of Beatrice's laughter. Ludovico brought two Tuscan poets named Camelli and Bellincioni to Milan in the hope that they could refine the harsh Lombard dialect. The result of this work was a war between Tuscan and Lombard poets in which original and delicate poems had driven out the venomous ones. Bellincioni was so ill-tempered that, after his death, one of his rivals wrote an inscription for his tombstone to this effect: “O you who pass by here, step softly, lest he who lies here rise and bite you.” Ludovico chose one of the Lombard poets, named Gaspare Visconti, as court poet. In 1496, Visconti dedicated 143 sonnets and other poems to Beatrice. These were written with gold and silver lines on ivory-colored leather, illuminated with beautiful miniatures, and bound in a gilded cardboard volume adorned with floral designs. Visconti was a worthy poet, but time has consigned him to oblivion. He loved Petrarch and engaged in a serious but friendly poetic debate with Bramante over comparing the merits of Petrarch and Dante, for that great architect (Bramante) liked to consider himself a poet as well. Such poetic contests were among the entertainments of Renaissance courts; almost everyone participated in them, even generals composed poetry. The best poems composed in the time of the Sforza family were by a cultured courtier. This person, named Niccolò da Correggio, came to Milan with Beatrice's entourage at the time of her marriage, but stayed there because of the affection he felt for Beatrice and Ludovico and served the two as a poet and statesman. After Beatrice's death, he composed his most elegant poems in her elegy. Cecilia Gallerani, Ludovico's mistress who was herself a poet, managed a circle of poets, scholars, statesmen, and philosophers. All the delicacies of life and culture that characterized the eighteenth century in France flourished and prospered in Milan in Ludovico's time. Husbands overlooked the flirtations of their wives in exchange for their own debaucheries. Masquerade parties were often held, and hundreds of strange clothes covered countless sins. Men and women were so engrossed in dancing and singing that it seemed as if poverty had not lurked behind the city walls, France was not planning to attack Italy, and Naples was not seeking to destroy Milan.

Bernardino Corio, who came from his birthplace Como to this court, writes with special flourish in the classical style in his book History of Milan (1500):

On May 17, 1508, in complete isolation and cut off from the luxurious life of his palace, at the age of fifty-seven, he said farewell to the world.

Literature

Bernardino Corio, who came from his birthplace Como to this court, writes with special flourish in the classical style in his book History of Milan (1500):

On May 17, 1508, in complete isolation and cut off from the luxurious life of his palace, at the age of fifty-seven, he said farewell to the world.

Art

Despotism was a blessing for Italian art. Several rulers competed with each other in employing architects, sculptors, and painters to adorn the capital and make their name immortal and spent large sums on the advancement of art—a expenditure that a national government rarely allocates to beauty. If the fruits of the people's labor were to be distributed justly, there would never be enough money left for the advancement of knowledge and art. The result was that in Renaissance Italy a high courtly and aristocratic art came into being that often conformed in form and subject to the needs of rulers and clerics. The most aristocratic art is that which, outside the work and effort of groups of people, creates an advantage and honor for them; examples of this kind of art are the Gothic churches and the temples of ancient Greece and Rome.

Any critic reads the Milan Cathedral as a “sick beauty” in which the structural lines are confused; but the people of Milan have now for five centuries eagerly gathered in its vast space—which has striking grandeur—and even in these days of doubt and skepticism praise it as a sign of success and pride. Gian Galeazzo Visconti began this building in 1386 and designed it on a scale suitable for the capital of a united Italy. The formation of such a country was one of his ambitions; for this reason he made this building so vast that forty thousand people could gather in it to worship God and admire Gian. According to tradition, at that time the women of Milan had contracted a mysterious disease that disrupted their pregnancy and childbirth, and many of their children died in infancy. Gian himself saw the loss of three sons who were all born with difficulty and soon died; for this reason he built this great place of worship as a “gift to the Virgin Mary” and prayed that he might have an heir and that the mothers of Milan might give birth to healthy children. Architects came from France, Germany, and Italian cities. Those who came from the north brought the Gothic style and the Italians exaggerated in decoration; as a result, harmony of style and form was lost and the struggle between the advisers caused a two-century delay in completing the building. Over time, the taste and aesthetic sense of the people of the world changed, the aesthetic sense of those who completed the building did not conform to that of its beginners. When Gian Galeazzo died (1402), only the walls had been built; from then on the construction work progressed very slowly due to lack of budget. Ludovico invited Bramante, Leonardo, and others to Milan to design a dome that would create harmony and unity between the numerous minarets, but their opinion was not accepted. Finally in 1490 Giovanni Antonio Amadeo was detached from his construction works in the Certosa di Pavia and the supervision of the building of the cathedral was entirely entrusted to him. He and most of his colleagues were more sculptors than architects, so they did not consider it proper that any of the surfaces of the building remain uncarved or unadorned. Giovanni spent the last thirty years of his life on this work (1490–1522); nevertheless, the dome was not completed until 1759, and the exterior facade of the cathedral, which had begun in 1616, remained unfinished until Napoleon issued a decree in 1809 for its completion.

In Ludovico's time this cathedral held the second rank in the world in terms of size, since it had an area of 11,100 square meters; today this rank belongs to St. Peter's Basilica and the Seville Cathedral. Nevertheless, this building still prides itself on its width and length (88 by 148 meters), its height from the ground to the top of the statue of the Virgin Mary on the spire of the dome (107.9 meters), 135 magnificent minarets, and 2,300 statues that adorn its minarets, columns, walls, and ceilings. The entire building of the cathedral, even its roof, is made of white marble that with great effort has been brought from several Italian quarries to the site. Although the height of its facade is low in proportion to its width, its magnificent dome covers it from view. A person must be suspended in space to see all the minarets at once, or must circle several times around the great stone tomb that is among the countless buttresses to feel the indescribable grandeur of the whole building, or must pass through the narrow and crowded streets and suddenly enter the square of the chapel to observe the complete splendor of the building's facade; or must, on one of the holy feasts, flow with the crowds from one of its great doors into the interior and let those spaces, columns, capitals, arches, pointed arches, statues, altars, and stained-glass windows reveal the secret of faith, hope, and praise in a wordless language.

Just as this cathedral is a memorial to Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and the Certosa di Pavia is the tomb of Ludovico and Beatrice, the great hospital is also a simple but magnificent memorial to Francesco Sforza. Sforza, to erect a building worthy of the principality of that great and magnificent city, summoned Antonio Averlino, known as Filarete, from Florence (1456) to design it in the Lombard-Romanesque style. Bramante, who was probably the architect of the hospital courtyard, built two rows of Roman arches in front of it and placed a beautiful cornice around each of them. The great hospital, until World War II destroyed most of it, was one of Milan's major prides.

In the opinion of Ludovico and his court, the highest-ranking artist of Milan was not Leonardo but Bramante, for Leonardo had only revealed part of his being for his time. Bramante's title is Donato d'Agnolo, who was born in Castel Durante, Urbino—Bramante means possessor of insatiable ambitions. He went to Mantua to study with Mantegna; he learned enough to be able to draw mediocre frescoes, and also painted an excellent portrait of the mathematician Luca Pacioli. Perhaps it was in Mantua that he met Leon Battista Alberti while drawing the plan of the church of Sant'Andrea; in any case, repeated experiences in drawing landscapes and mirrors drew Bramante from painting to architecture. In 1472 he came to Milan and with the seriousness of a man who wants to do great works examined the overall plan of the cathedral. Around 1476 he found an opportunity to reveal his essential nature by designing the church of Santa Maria around the small church of San Satiro. In this small masterpiece, he showed his special architectural style: the apses behind the altars and semicircular storerooms, octagonal domes and round cupolas, all of which are adorned with delicate cornices and overall are in the form of different layers placed on top of each other forming an attractive unified whole. Bramante, who had no space for one of the apses, used the perspective method and painted the wall behind the altar with the image of an apse in such a way that its intersecting lines create the view of a real spatial depth. He added an apse, a dome, and beautiful porticoes to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, all of which were destroyed in World War II. After Ludovico's death, Bramante went south and prepared to destroy and rebuild Rome.

The sculptors of Ludovico's court were not masters like Donatello and Michelangelo, but they made hundreds of beautiful statues for the Certosa, the cathedral, and the palaces. Cristoforo Solari, known as the Hunchback, will be remembered as long as the tomb of Ludovico and Beatrice remains. Gian Cristoforo Romano had captivated hearts with his courteous behavior and sweet voice; he made the best statues in the Certosa, but after Beatrice's death, following a year of insistence by the rulers of Mantua, he went there. There he made a beautiful entrance adorned with several figures for Isabella's study room in the Paradiso palace and made her likeness in a Renaissance-style medallion. Then he went to Urbino to work for Duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga; it was there that he became one of the prominent persons in Castiglione's Book of the Courtier. The greatest medallion maker of Milan was Cristoforo Foppa, who made the sparkling jewels of Beatrice and aroused Cellini's jealousy.

A generation before Leonardo, there were good painters living in Milan. Vincenzo Foppa, who was born in Brescia and trained in Padua, worked mostly in Milan. His frescoes in Sant'Eustorgio were famous in their time, and his image of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian still adorns the walls of the Castello. His pupil, Ambrogio Bergognone, has left a more delightful heritage; the face of the Virgin Mary in the Brera and Ambrosiana galleries in Milan, Turin, and Berlin. All these faces express a pious and faithful spirit. To this work must be added an interesting image of the childhood of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, which is part of the Wallace collection in London; also the Annunciation panel in the Incoronata church in Lodi, one of the most successful paintings on this difficult subject. When Leonardo entered Milan, Ambrogio de Predis was the court painter of Ludovico and apparently participated to some extent in preparing the panel of the Virgin of the Rocks, a work by Leonardo; the interesting image of the music-making angels in the National Gallery in London is probably one of his works; perhaps his most delicate souvenir is two images that are now in the Ambrosiana: one of these two images belongs to a young man whose identity is unknown;¹ the other belongs to a young woman who is now generally believed to be Bianca, Ludovico's illegitimate daughter. Rarely has a painter been able to depict the beauties of a dignified girl, who is at the same time proudly aware of her simple beauty, in this way.

The cities subject to Milan suffered from attracting talented individuals to Milan, but some of them were able to gain a place in the history of art. Como was not content to be only a gateway to Milan for the lake that had made it famous, but also prided itself on having buildings such as the Torre del Comune, the Broletto, and above all its magnificent marble cathedral. The magnificent Gothic facade of that cathedral was built in the time of the Sforza rule (1457–1487); Bramante built a beautiful entrance on the south side, and on the east side Cristoforo Solari built a magnificent apse in the Bramante style. More interesting than all these forms is a pair of statues on both sides of the great entrance: on the left Pliny the Elder, on the right Pliny the Younger, both ancient citizens of Como and civilized pagans who in the days of the tolerant rule of Ludovico the Moor had found a place in that Christian cathedral.

The jewel of Bergamo was the Colleoni Chapel. This Venetian commander who was born in this city wanted to be buried in a chapel and have a tomb adorned with a statue in memory of his conquests. Giovanni Antonio Amadeo designed this chapel and tomb with special taste, and Sixtus of Nuremberg installed a wooden equestrian statue on that tomb that, if Verrocchio had made a similar one in bronze, would have gained more fame. Bergamo was so close to Milan that it could not keep its painters, but one of them named Andrea Previtali, after studying with Bellini in Venice, returned to Bergamo (1513) to leave relatively fine panels for it as a souvenir.

Brescia, which was sometimes subject to Venice and sometimes to Milan, maintained a balance between the influence of those two cities and developed its own artistic school. Vincenzo Foppa, after spreading his artistic works in several cities, returned to his birthplace Brescia to spend the last years of his life there. His pupil Vincenzo Civerchio participated in the glory of forming the Brescian school. Girolamo Romani, who is called Romanino, first studied with Fra Molo and later in Padua and Venice. Then he made Brescia his center and worked there and in other cities of northern Italy. Among his works are numerous frescoes, altar screens, and painted images that have excellent coloring, but their lines are not very admirable. Here we only mention the image of the Virgin and Child that is in the church of San Francesco and is placed in a very beautiful frame, the work of Stefano Lamberti. His pupil Alessandro Bonvicino, who is known as Moretto da Brescia, elevated this series of artists' school to its peak by re-mixing the Venetian sensual charm with the warm religious feelings that were always associated with the Brescian style. In the church of Santa Nazaro and Santa Celso, where Titian had installed the Annunciation panel, Moretto painted the Coronation of the Virgin panel that is equally beautiful. The archangel of this image in terms of form and appearance equals the most beautiful images of Correggio. He too, like Titian, could, whenever he wanted, draw a beautiful image of Venus; in the Salome panel instead of depicting a murderer, he shows one of the noblest and most charming faces in Renaissance painting.

The city of Cremona began its life around its twelfth-century cathedral and the Torrazzo bell tower connected to it, which in terms of grandeur almost equals the towers of Giotto and the Giralda. Inside the chapel, Giovanni da Sacco—who was called il Pordenone after his birthplace—created his masterpiece, the image of Jesus carrying his cross. Three famous families gave several consecutive generations of prominent painters to Cremona: these families were the Bembi (Bonifazio, Benedetto, Gian Francesco), the Boccaccini, and the Campi. Boccaccio Boccaccini, after studying in Venice and burning his fingers in a competition with Michelangelo in Rome, returned to Cremona and attracted the admiration of observers with his frescoes of the Virgin Mary in the cathedral; and his son Camillo continued his father's brilliant work. In the same way, the work of Galeazzo Campi was continued by his sons Giulio and Antonio, as well as by Bernardino Campi, pupil of Giulio. Galeazzo drew the plan of the church of Santa Margherita in Cremona and then painted the magnificent scene of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple in it. Thus, in Renaissance Italy the arts blended in one brain and flourished in the existence of geniuses whose brilliant talent had not even been seen in the Greece of Pericles' time.