P. della Francesca, pinx. L. Ceroni, sculp.

Alinari

FEDERIGO, DUKE OF URBINO, AND BATTISTA, HIS WIFE

From the picture by Piero della Francesca in the Uffizi Gallery

These bereavements probably predisposed their father to a proposal made to him at Mantua by the Duke of Milan, that he should marry his niece Battista Sforza, daughter of the Lord of Pesaro, whose descent we have already explained, and who was now about thirteen years of age.[102] Her mother's death, when she was but eighteen months old, had occasioned her being carried at an early age to the court of Milan, where those gifts and endowments were well cultivated for which her mother and great-grandmother had been renowned. Nearly of an age with her cousin Hippolita Maria, one of the paragon princesses of her age, whose marriage to the heir presumptive of the Neapolitan crown we have noticed, she shared her laborious education, and amply redeemed her own hereditary claim to the talents and classical acquirements then in vogue among the pedantic dames of Italy. With the like showy scholarship and precocious command of Latin rhetoric to which her female predecessors had been trained, she was put forward to welcome illustrious visitors at Milan and Pesaro, in harangues which we are assured were sometimes prepared, sometimes extempore, but always elegant and appropriate.[103] The same contemporary authority attributes her engagement with Federigo to the influence of King Alfonso immediately upon Gentile's death; but the dispensation is dated the 4th of October, 1459,[104] and in the following month the betrothal took place at Pesaro, where great satisfaction was displayed, and a donation of 3000 bolognini, or 75 florins, was voted by the council to Alessandro, of which he would accept but two-thirds. The marriage was celebrated at Urbino, on the 10th of February, 1460; and we turn to Sanzi's Chronicle, in the hope of finding some interesting details commemorated by an eye-witness. These pomps are, however, unfortunately curtailed by the poet, anxious to resume the dull recital of little wars. He describes the bride as

"A maiden
With every grace and virtue rare endowed,
That heaven at intervals on earth vouchsafes,
In earnest of the bliss reserved on high."

Muzio most unaccountably omits all notice of the marriage; we, however, learn from Betussi that she was tiny in person, but inherited the gifts and eloquence of her grandmother, Battista di Montefeltro. These she publicly exercised at Mantua, in an oration addressed to Pius II., and answered in a compliment dictated either by his gallantry or critical acumen. Bernardo Tasso has pleasingly embodied the testimony of her contemporaries:—

"The first of them in equal favour holds
Demosthenes and Plato; reading, too,
Plotinus, while, in wisdom as in words,
Arpino's orator she well shall match;
Consort of one unconquered, Frederick,
Urbino's Duke and long-tried champion."[105]