Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D
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stilled resentment by announcing that criminals would be tortured
for forty days. He laughed at Giangaleazzo's piety, and schemed how to
dispose of him and make himself master of all the Visconti heritage.
Gian, equipped with the spies necessary to any competent government,
learned of these plans. He arranged a meeting with Bernabo, who came
conveniently with two sons; Gian's secret guard arrested all three,
and apparently poisoned Bernabo (1385). Gian now ruled Milan,
Novara, Pavia, Piacenza, Parma, Cremona, and Brescia. In 1387 he
took Verona, in 1389 Padua; in 1399 he shocked Florence by buying Pisa
for 200,000 florins; in 1400 Perugia, Assisi, and Siena, in 1401 Lucca
and Bologna, submitted to his generals; and Gian was master of
nearly all north Italy from Novara to the Adriatic. The Papal States
were now weakened by the Schism (1378-1417) that had followed the
return of the papacy from Avignon. Gian played pope against rival
pope, and dreamed of absorbing all the lands of the Church. Then he
would send his armies against Naples; his control of Pisa and other
outlets would force Florence into submission; Venice alone would
remain unbound, but helpless against a united Italy. However in 1402
Giangaleazzo, aged fifty-one, died.
All this time he had hardly moved from Pavia or Milan. He liked
intrigue better than war, and achieved by subtlety more than his
generals won for him by arms. Nor could these political enterprises
exhaust the fertility of his mind. He issued a code of laws
including the regulation of public health and the compulsory isolation
of infectious disease. `05067 He built the Castello of Pavia, and
began the Certosa di Pavia and the cathedral of Milan. He called
Manuel Chrysoloras to the chair of Greek in the University of Milan,
fostered the University of Pavia, helped poets, artists, scholars, and
philosophers, and relished their company. He extended the Naviglio
Grande, or Great Canal, from Milan to Pavia, thereby opening an inland
waterway across the breadth of Italy from the Alps through Milan and
the Po to the Adriatic Sea, and providing irrigation for thousands
of acres of soil. The agriculture and commerce so promoted
encouraged industry; Milan began to rival Florence in woolen goods;
her smiths made weapons and armor for warriors throughout western
Europe; in one crisis two master armorers forged arms for six thousand
soldiers in a few days. `05068 In 1314 the silk weavers of Lucca,
impoverished by faction and war, had migrated by hundreds to Milan; by
1400 the silk industry was well developed there, and moralists
complained that clothing had become shamefully beautiful. Giangaleazzo
protected this flourishing economy with wise administration, equable
justice, and reliable currency, and a tolerable taxation that extended
to clergy and nobility as well as laymen and commoners. Under his
prodding the postal service was expanded; in 1425 over a hundred
horses were regularly employed by the post; private correspondence was
accepted at post offices, and traveled all day- in emergency, all
night as well. In 1423 Florence had an annual state revenue of
4,000,000 gold florins ($100,000,000), Venice 11,000,000, Milan
12,000,000. `05069 Kings were glad to have their sons and daughters
marry into the Visconti family. Emperor Wenceslas merely crowned
fact with form when (1395) he gave imperial sanction and legitimacy to
Gian's title of duke, and invested him and his heirs with the duchy of
Milan "forever."
This proved to be fifty-two years. Gian's oldest son, Gianmaria
Visconti, *05021 was thirteen when his father died (1402). The
generals who had led Gian's victorious armies competed for the
regency. While they fought for Milan, Italy resumed her fragmentation:
Florence recaptured Pisa; Venice took Verona, Vicenza, and Padua;
Siena, Perugia, and Bologna submitted to individual despots. Italy was
as before, and worse, for Gianmaria, leaving the government to
oppressive regents, devoted himself to his dogs, trained them to eat
human flesh, and joyfully watched them feed on the live men whom he
had condemned as political offenders or social criminals. `050610 In
1412 three nobles stabbed him to death.
His brother Filippo Maria Visconti seemed to have inherited the
subtle intelligence, the patient industry, the ambitious and farseeing
policies of his father. But what had been sedentary courage in
Giangaleazzo became in Filippo sedentary timidity, a perpetual fear of
assassination, a haunting belief in universal human perfidy. He shut
himself up in the castle of Porta Giovia at Milan, ate and grew fat,
cherished superstitions and astrologers, and yet by pure craft
remained to the end of his long reign the absolute master of his
country, his generals, and even of his family. He married Beatrice
Tenda for her money, and condemned her to death for infidelity. He
married Maria of Savoy, kept her secluded from all but her ladies in
waiting, brooded over his lack of a son, took a mistress, and became
partly human in his affection for the pretty daughter Bianca who was
born of this liaison. He continued his father's patronage of learning,
called noted scholars to the University of Pavia, and gave commissions
to Brunellesco and the incomparable medalist Pisanello. He ruled Milan
with efficient autocracy, suppressing faction, maintaining order,
protecting peasants against feudal exactions, and merchants against
brigandage. By deft diplomacy and adroit manipulation of his armies he
restored to Milanese allegiance Parma and Piacenza, all of Lombardy to
Brescia, all the lands between Milan and the Alps; and in 1421 he
persuaded the Genoese that his dictatorship was milder than their
civil wars. He encouraged marriages between rival families, so
ending many feuds. For a hundred petty tyrannies he set up one; and
the population, shorn of liberty but free from internal strife,
grumbled, prospered, and multiplied.
He had a flair for finding able generals; suspected them all of
wishing to replace him; played them off against one another; and
kept war brewing in the hope of regaining all that his father had
won and his brother had lost. A breed of powerful condottieri
developed in his wars with Venice and Florence: Gattamelata, Colleoni,
Carmagnola, Braccio, Fortebraccio, Montone, Piccinino, Muzio
Attendolo... Muzio was a country lad, one of a large family of male
and female fighters; he won the cognomen Sforza by the strength of
body and will with which he served Queen Joanna II of Naples; he
lost her favor and was thrown into prison; his sister, in full
armor, forced his jailers to set him free; he was given command of one
of the Milanese armies, but was drowned soon afterward while
crossing a stream (1424). His bastard son, then twenty-two, leaped
into his father's place, and fought and married his way to a throne.
V. THE SFORZAS: 1450-1500
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Francesco Sforza was the ideal of Renaissance soldiers: tall,
handsome, athletic, brave; the best runner, jumper, wrestler in his
army; sleeping little, marching bareheaded winter and summer;
winning the devotion of his men by sharing their hardships and
rations, and leading them to lucrative victories by strategy and
tactics rather than by superior numbers or arms. So unrivaled was
his reputation that enemy forces, on more than one occasion, laid down
their arms at sight of him, and greeted him with uncovered heads as
the greatest general of his time. Ambitious to found a state of his
own, he allowed no scruple to hinder his policy; he fought alternately
for Milan, Florence, and Venice until Filippo won his loyalty by
giving him Bianca in marriage, with Cremona and Pontremoli as her
dowry (1441). When, six years later, Filippo died heirless, bringing
the Visconti dynasty to an end, Francesco felt that the dowry should
include Milan.
The Milanese thought differently; they proclaimed a republic named
Ambrosian from the masterful bishop who had chastened Theodosius and
converted Augustine a thousand years before. But the rival factions in
the city could not agree; the dependencies of Milan snatched the
opportunity to declare themselves free; some of them fell before
Venetian arms; danger was imminent of a Venetian or Florentine attack;
moreover the Duke of Orleans, the Emperor Frederick III, and King
Alfonso of Aragon all claimed Milan as their own. In this crisis a
deputation sought Sforza, gave him Brescia, and begged him to defend
Milan. He fought off its enemies with resourceful energy; but when the
new government made peace with Venice without consulting him he turned
his troops against the Republic, besieged Milan to the edge of
starvation, accepted its surrender, entered the city amid the
acclamations of a hungry populace, and dulled the lust for liberty
by distributing bread. A general assembly was summoned, composed of
one man from each household; it invested him with the ducal
authority over the protests of the Emperor, and the Sforza dynasty
began its brief and brilliant career (1450).
His elevation did not change his character. He continued to live
simply and to work hard. Now and then he was cruel or treacherous,
alleging the good of the state as his excuse; generally he was a man
of justice and humanity. He suffered from a lawless sensitivity to the
beauty of women. His accomplished wife killed his mistress, and then
forgave him; she bore him eight children, advised him wisely in
politics, and won the people to his rule by succoring the needy and
protecting the oppressed. His administration of the state was as
competent as his leadership of its armies. The social order that he
enforced brought back to the city a prosperity that dimmed the
memory of its suffering and its fitful liberty. As a citadel against
revolt or siege he began to build the enormous Castello Sforzesco.
He cut new canals through the land, organized public works, and
built the Ospedale Maggiore, or Great Hospital. He brought the
humanist Filelfo to Milan, and encouraged education, scholarship,
and art; he lured Vincenzo Foppa from Brescia to develop a school of
painting. Threatened by the intrigues of Venice, Naples, and France,
he held them all at bay by winning the decisive support and firm
friendship of Cosimo de' Medici. He disarmed Naples by wedding his
daughter Ippolita to Ferdinand's son Alfonso; he checkmated the Duke
of Orleans by signing an alliance with Louis XI of France. Some nobles
continued to seek his death and his power, but the success of his
government disordered their plans, and he lived to die, in peace,
the traditional death of generals (1466).
Born to the purple, his son Galeazzo Maria Sforza never knew the
discipline of poverty and struggle. He gave himself up to pleasure,
luxury, and pomp, seduced with special relish the wives of his
friends, and punished opposition with a cruelty that seemed to have
descended to him, deviously and mysteriously, through the kindly
Bianca from the hot Visconti blood. The people of Milan, inured to
absolute rule, offered no resistance to his despotism, but private
vengeance punished what public terror brooked. Girolamo Olgiati
grieved over a sister seduced and then discarded by the Duke; Giovanni
Lampugnani thought himself despoiled of property by the same lord;
together with Carlo Visconti they had been trained by Niccolo
Monteno in Roman history and ideals, including tyrannicide from Brutus
to Brutus. After imploring the help of the saints, the three youths
entered the church of St. Stephen, where Galeazzo was worshiping,
and stabbed him to death (1476). Lampugnani and Visconti were killed
on the spot. Olgiati was tortured till almost every bone in his body
was broken or torn from its socket; he was then flayed alive; but to
his last breath he refused to repent, called upon pagan heroes and
Christian saints to approve his deed, and died with a classic and
Renaissance phrase on his lips: Mors acerba, fama perpetua - "Death
is bitter, but fame is everlasting." `050611
Galeazzo left his throne to a seven-year-old boy, Giangaleazzo
Sforza. For three chaotic years Guelf and Ghibelline factions competed
in force and fraud to capture the regency. The victor was one of the
most colorful and complex personalities in all the crowded gallery
of the Renaissance. Lodovico Sforza was the fourth of Francesco
Sforza's sons. His father gave him the cognomen Mauro; his
contemporaries jokingly transformed this into il Moro - "the Moor"-
because of his dark hair and eyes; he himself good-humoredly
accepted the nickname, and Moorish emblems and costumes became popular
at his court. Other wits found in the name a synonym for the
mulberry tree (in Italian, moro ); this too became a symbol for
him, made the mulberry color fashionable in Milan, and provided a
theme and motive for some of Leonardo's decorations in the Castello
rooms. Lodovico's chief teacher was the scholar Filelfo, who gave
him a rich grounding in the classics; but his mother Bianca warned the
humanist that "we have princes to educate, not merely scholars"; and
she saw to it that her sons should also be skilled in the arts of
government and war. Lodovico was seldom physically brave; but in him
the intelligence of the Visconti freed itself from their cruelty,
and with all his faults and sins, he became one of the most
civilized men in history.
He was not handsome; like most great men, he was spared this
distracting handicap. His face was too full, his nose too long and
curved, his chin too ample, his lips too firmly closed; and yet in the
profile attributed to Boltraffio, in the busts in Lyons and the
Louvre, there is a quiet strength in the features, a sensitive
intelligence, an almost soft refinement. He earned the reputation of
being the craftiest diplomat of his time, sometimes vacillating, often
devious, not always scrupulous, occasionally unfaithful; these were
the common faults of Renaissance diplomacy; perhaps they are the
hard necessities of all diplomacy. Nevertheless few Renaissance
princes equaled him in mercy and generosity; cruelty was against his
grain, and countless men and women enjoyed his beneficence. Mild and
courteous, sensually susceptible to every beauty and every art,
imaginative and emotional and yet rarely losing perspective or his
temper, skeptical and superstitious, the master of millions and the
slave of his astrologer- all this was Lodovico, the unstable
culminating heir of clashing strains.
For thirteen years (1481-94) he governed Milan as regent for his
nephew. Giangaleazzo Sforza was a timid retiring spirit, dreading
the responsibilities of rule; he was subject to frequent illness,
and incapable of serious affairs- incapacissimo, Guicciardini called
him; he gave himself to amusement or idleness, and gladly left the
administration of the state to the uncle whom he admired with envy and
trusted with doubt. Lodovico resigned to him all the pomp and splendor
of the ducal title and office; it was Gian who sat on the throne,
received homage, and lived in regal luxury. But his wife, Isabella
of Aragon, resented Lodovico's retention of power, urged Gian to
take the reins of office in his own hands, and begged her father
Alfonso, heir to the throne of Naples, to come with his army and
give her the powers of an actual ruler.
Lodovico governed efficiently. Around his summer cottage at Vigevano
he developed a vast experimental farm and cattle-breeding station;
experiments were made there in cultivating rice, the vine, and the
mulberry tree; the dairies made butter and cheese of such excellence
as even Italy had never known before; the fields and hills pastured
28,000 oxen, cows, buffaloes, sheep, and goats; the spacious stables
sheltered the stallions and mares that bred the finest horses in
Europe. Meanwhile, in Milan, the silk industry employed twenty
thousand workers, and captured many foreign markets from Florence.
Ironmongers, goldsmiths, woodcarvers, enamelers, potters,
mosaicists, glass painters, perfumers, embroiderers, tapestry weavers,
and makers of musical instruments contributed to the busy din of
Milanese industry, adorned the palaces and personages of the court
with ornaments, and exported sufficient surplus to pay for the
softer luxuries that came from the East. To ease the traffic of men
and goods, and "give the people more light and air," `050612
Lodovico had the principal streets widened; the avenues leading to the
Castello were lined with palaces and gardens for the aristocracy;
and the great cathedral, which now took its definitive form, rose as a
rival focus of the city's throbbing life. Milan had in 1492 a
population of some 128,000 souls. `050613 It prospered under
Lodovico as not even under Giangaleazzo Visconti, but complaints
were heard that the profits of this flourishing economy went rather to
strengthen the regent and glorify his court than to raise the populace
from its immemorial poverty. Householders groaned at the heavy
taxes, and riots of protest disturbed Cremona and Lodi. Lodovico
answered that he needed the money to build new hospitals and care
for the sick, to support the universities of Pavia and Milan, to
finance experiments in agriculture, breeding, and industry, and to
impress with the art and lavish magnificence of his court
ambassadors whose governments respected only those states that were
rich and strong.
Milan was not convinced, but it seemed to share Lodovico's happiness
when he brought to it as his bride the tenderest and most lovable of
the Ferrara princesses (1491). He made no pretense that he could match
the vivacious virginity of Beatrice d'Este; he was already
thirty-nine, and had served a number of mistresses, who had given
him two sons and a daughter- the gentle Bianca whom he loved as his
father had loved the passionate lady from whom she took her name.
Beatrice raised no difficulties about these usual preparations of
the Renaissance male for monogamy; but when she reached Milan she
was shocked to find her lord's latest mistress, the beautiful
Cecilia Gallerani, still lodged in a Castello suite. Worse yet,
Lodovico continued to visit Cecilia for two months after his marriage;
he explained to the Ferrarese ambassador that he had not the heart
to send away the cultured poetess who had so graciously entertained
his body and soul. Beatrice threatened to return to Ferrara;
Lodovico yielded, and persuaded Count Bergamini to marry Cecilia.
Beatrice was a girl of fourteen when she came to Lodovico. She was
not especially pretty; her charm lay in the innocent gaiety with which
she approached and appropriated life. She had grown up at Naples and
learned its joyous ways; she had left it before it could spoil her
guilelessness, but it had imparted to her a carefree extravagance
which now, in the lap of Lodovico's wealth, so indulged itself that
Milan called her amantissima del lusso - madly in love with
luxury. `050614 Everybody forgave her, for she diffused such
innocent merriment- "spending day and night," reports a contemporary
chronicler, `050615 "in singing and dancing and all manner of
delights"- that the whole court caught her spirit, and joy was
unconfined. The grave Lodovico, some months after their marriage, fell
in love with her, and confessed for a while that all power and
wisdom were negligible things beside his new felicity. Under his
care she added graces of mind to the lure of her youthful esprit:
she learned to make Latin speeches, dizzied her head with affairs of
state, and at times served her lord well as an irresistible
ambassadress. Her letters to her still more famous sister, Isabella
d'Este, are fragrant flowers in the Machiavellian jungle of
Renaissance strife. `050616
With playful Beatrice to lead the dance, and hard-working Lodovico
to pay the bills, the court of Milan became now the most splendid
not only in Italy but in all Europe. The Castello Sforzesco expanded
to its fullest glory, with its majestic central tower, its endless
maze of luxurious rooms, its inlaid floors, its stained-glass windows,
its embroidered cushions and Persian carpets, its tapestries telling
again the legends of Troy and Rome; here a ceiling by Leonardo,
there a statue by Cristoforo Solari or Cristoforo Romano, and almost
everywhere some luscious relic of Greek or Roman or Italian art. In
that resplendent setting scholars mingled with warriors, poets with
philosophers, artists with generals, and all with women whose
natural charms were enhanced by every refinement of cosmetics,
jewelry, and dress. The men, even the soldiers, were carefully
coiffured and richly garbed. Orchestras played a combination of
musical instruments, and song filled the halls. While Florence
trembled before Savonarola and burned the vanities of love and art,
music and loose morals reigned in Lodovico's capital. Husbands
connived at their wives' amours in exchange for their own
excursions. `050617 Masked balls were frequent, and a thousand gay
costumes covered a multitude of sins. Men and women danced and sang as
if poverty were not stalking the city walls, as if France were not
planning to invade Italy, as if Naples were not plotting the ruin of
Milan.
Bernardino Corio, who came from his native Como to this court,
described it with classic flourishes in his lively Historia di
Milano (c. 1500):
-
The court of our princes was splendid exceedingly, full of new
fashions, dresses, and delights. Nevertheless, at this time virtue was
so much lauded on every side that Minerva had set up great rivalry
with Venus, and each sought to make her school the most brilliant.
To that of Cupid came the most beautiful youths. Fathers yielded to it
their daughters, husbands their wives, brothers their sisters, and
so thoughtlessly did they thus flock to the amorous hall that it was
reckoned a stupendous thing by those who had understanding. Minerva,
she too, sought with all her might to adorn her gentle Academy.
Wherefore that glorious and most illustrious Prince Lodovico Sforza
had called into his pay- as far as from the uttermost parts of Europe-
men most excellent in knowledge and art. Here was the learning of
Greece, here Latin verse and prose flourished resplendently, here were
the poetic Muses; hither the masters of the sculptor's art and those
foremost in painting had gathered from distant countries, and here
songs and sweet sounds of every kind and such dulcet harmonies were
heard, that they seemed to have descended from Heaven itself upon this
excelling court. `050617a
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Perhaps it was Beatrice who, in the fervor of maternal love, brought
disaster to Lodovico and Italy. In 1493 she bore him a son, who was
named Maximilian after his godfather, the heir apparent to the
Imperial throne. Beatrice wondered what her future, and the boy's,
would be should Lodovico die. For her lord had no legal right to
rule Milan; Giangaleazzo Sforza, with Neapolitan aid, might at any
moment depose, exile, or kill him; and if Gian should manage to have a
son, the duchy would presumably descend to that son, regardless of
Lodovico's fate. Lodovico, sympathizing with these worries, sent a
secret embassy to King Maximilian, offering him his niece, Bianca
Maria Sforza, in marriage, with a tempting dowry of 400,000 ducats
($5,000,000), provided that Maximilian, on becoming emperor, would
confer upon Lodovico the title and powers of duke of Milan. Maximilian
agreed. We should add that the emperors, who had given the ducal title
to the ruling Visconti, had refused to sanction its assumption by
the Sforzas. Legally Milan was still subject to Imperial authority.
Giangaleazzo was too busy with his dogs and doctors to bother his
head with these developments, but his fuming Isabella sensed their
trend, and renewed her pleas to her father. In January, 1494,
Alfonso became King of Naples, and adopted a policy frankly hostile to