Lodovico Sforza was certainly one of the most remarkable figures of the Italian Renaissance. He has generally been described as one of the blackest. "Born for the ruin of Italy," was the verdict of his contemporary Paolo Giovio, a verdict which every chronicler of the sixteenth century has endorsed. These men who saw the disasters which overwhelmed their country under the foreign rule, could not forget that Charles VIII., the first French king who invaded Italy, had crossed the Alps as the friend and ally of Lodovico Moro. They forgot how many others were at least equally guilty, and did not realize the vast network of intrigues in which Pope Julius II., the Venetian Signory, and the King of Naples all had a share. Later historians with one consent have accepted Paolo Giovio's view, and have made Lodovico responsible for all the miseries which arose from the French invasion. The bitter hatred with which both French and Venetian writers regarded the prince who had foiled their countrymen and profited by their mistakes, has helped to deepen this sinister impression. The greatest crimes were imputed to him, the vilest calumnies concerning his personal character found ready acceptance. But the more impartial judgment of modern historians, together with the light thrown upon the subject by recently discovered documents, has done much to modify our opinion of Lodovico's character. The worst charges formerly brought against him, above all, the alleged poisoning of his nephew, the reigning Duke of Milan, have been dismissed as groundless and wholly alien to his nature and character. On the other hand, his great merits and rare talents as ruler and administrator have been fully recognized, while it is admitted on all hands that his generous and enlightened encouragement of art and letters entitles him to a place among the most illustrious patrons of the Renaissance. To his keen intellect and discerning eye, to his fine taste and quick sympathy with all forms of beauty, we owe the production of some of the noblest works of art that human hands have ever fashioned. To his personal encouragement and magnificent liberality we owe the grandest monuments of Lombard architecture, and the finest development of Milanese painting, the façade of the Certosa and the cupola of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, the frescoes and altar-pieces of the Brera and the Ambrosiana. Above all, it was at the Milanese court, under the stimulating influence of the Moro, that Leonardo da Vinci's finest work was done.
As a man, Lodovico Sforza is profoundly interesting. Burckhardt has called him the most complete among the princely figures of the Italian Renaissance, and there can be no doubt that alike in his virtues and in his faults, he was curiously typical of the age in which he lived. Guicciardini, who was certainly no friend to him, and regarded him as the inveterate foe of Florence, describes him as "a creature of very rare perfection, most excellent for his eloquence and industry and many gifts of nature and spirit, and not unworthy of the name of milde and mercifull;" and the Milanese doctor Arluno, the author of an unpublished chronicle in the Biblioteca Marciana at Venice, says, "He had a sublime soul and universal capacity. Whatever he did, he surpassed expectation, in the fine arts and learning, in justice and benevolence. And he had no equal among Italian princes for wisdom and sagacity in public affairs." Contemporary writers describe him as very pleasant in manner and gracious in speech, always gentle and courteous to others, ready to listen, and never losing his temper in argument. He shared in the laxity of morals common to his age; but was a man of deep affections as well as strong passions, fondly attached to his children and friends, while the profound and lasting grief with which he lamented his dead wife amazed his more fickle contemporaries. Singularly refined and sensitive by nature, he shrank instinctively from bloodshed, and had a horror of all violent actions. In this he differed greatly from his elder brother Galeazzo Maria, who was a monster of lust and cruelty, intent only on gratifying his savage instincts, and as callous to human suffering as he was reckless of human life. Lodovico, as his most hostile critics agree, was emphatically not a cruel man, and rarely consented to condemn even criminals to death. But, like many other politicians who have great ends in view, he was often unscrupulous as to the means which he employed, and, as Burckhardt very truly remarked, would probably have been surprised at being held responsible for the means by which he attained his object. Trained from early youth in the most tortuous paths of Italian diplomacy, he acted on the principle laid down by the Venetian Marino Sanuto, that the first duty of the really wise statesman is to persuade his enemies that he means to do one thing and then do another. But in these tangled paths he often over-reached himself, and only succeeded in inspiring all parties with distrust; and, as too often happens, this deceiver was deceived in his turn, and in the end betrayed by men in whom his whole trust had been placed. Another curious feature of Lodovico's character was the strain of moral cowardice which, in spite of great personal bravery, marked his public actions at the most critical moments. This sudden failure of courage, or loss of nerve, that to his contemporaries seemed little short of madness, absolutely inexplicable in a man who had faced death without a thought on many a battle-field, ultimately wrought his own downfall as well as that of his State.
And yet, in spite of all his faults and failings, in spite of the strange tissue of complex aims and motives which swayed his course, Lodovico Sforza was a man of great ideas and splendid capacities, a prince who was in many respects distinctly in advance of his age. His wise and beneficial schemes for the encouragement of agriculture and the good of his poorer subjects, his careful regulations for the administration of the University and advancement of all branches of learning, his extraordinary industry and minute attention to detail, cannot fail to inspire our interest and command our admiration. In more peaceful times and under happier circumstances he would have been an excellent ruler, and his great dream of a united kingdom of North Italy might have been well and nobly realized. As it was, the history of Lodovico Moro belongs to the saddest tragedies of the Renaissance, and the splendour of his prosperity and the greatness of his fall became the common theme of poet and moralist.
The story of Lodovico's childhood is one of the pleasantest parts of his strangely chequered career. He was the fourth son of Francesco Sforza, the famous soldier of fortune who had married Madonna Bianca, daughter of the last Visconti, and reigned in right of his wife as Duke of Milan during twenty years. On the 19th of August, 1451, a year and a half after the great captain had boldly entered Milan and been proclaimed Duke, Duchess Bianca gave birth at her summer palace of Vigevano to a fine boy. This "bel puello," as he is called in the despatch announcing the news to his proud father, received the name of Lodovico Mauro, which was afterwards altered to Lodovico Maria, when, after his recovery from a dangerous illness at five years old, his mother placed him under the special protection of the Blessed Virgin. On this occasion Bianca vowed rich offerings to the shrine of Il Santo at Padua, and in discharge of this vow, her faithful servant Giovanni Francesco Stanga of Cremona was sent to Padua in February, 1461, to present a life-size image of the boy richly worked in silver, together with a complete set of vestments and of altar plate bearing the ducal arms, to the ark of the blessed Anthony. In documents still preserved in the Paduan archives the boy is twice over mentioned as Lodovicus Maurus filius quartus masculus, but the silver image itself bore the inscription, "Pro sanitate filii. Lodovici Mariæ, 1461."[2] There can, however, be little doubt that Maurus was the second name first given to Lodovico, and that this was the true origin of the surname Il Moro by which Francesco Sforza's son became famous in after-years. The most ingenious explanations of this name have been invented by Italian chroniclers. Prato and Lomazzo both say that Lodovico was called Il Moro because of the darkness of his complexion and long black hair. Guicciardini repeats the same, but Paolo Giovio, who had seen Lodovico at Como, asserts that his complexion was fair, and he owed this surname to the mulberry-tree which he adopted as his device, because it waits till the winter is well over to put forth its leaves, and is therefore called the most prudent of all trees. As a matter of fact, there is no doubt that the surname was given to Lodovico by his parents. "He was first called Moro by his father Francesco and his mother Bianca in his earliest years," writes Prato, and we find the same expression in the verse of a Milanese court poet: "Et Maurum læto patris cognomine dictum." The name naturally provoked puns. The dark-eyed boy with his long black hair and bushy eyebrows went by the nickname of Moro, and as he grew up, adopted both the Moor's head and the mulberry-tree as his badge. These devices in their turn supplied the poets and painters of his court with themes on which they were never tired of exercising their wit and ingenuity. Moors and Moorish costumes were introduced in every masquerade and ballet, a Moorish page was represented brushing the robes of Italy in a fresco of the Castello of Milan, while mulberry colour became fashionable among the ladies of the Moro's court, and was commonly worn by the servants and pages in the palace. Lodovico early gave signs of the love of literature and the great abilities which distinguished him in after-life. His quickness in learning by heart, his extraordinary memory, and the fluency with which he wrote and spoke Latin amazed his tutors. And he was fortunate in receiving an excellent education from the first Greek scholars of the day. Madonna Bianca, the only daughter of Filippo Maria, the last Visconti who had betrothed her before she was eight years old to Francesco Sforza, proved herself the best of wives and mothers. By her courage and wisdom she helped her husband to gain possession of her dead father's duchy, and won the hearts of all her subjects by her goodness. While Francesco was engaged with affairs of state, she directed the studies of her children, and gave her six sons an admirable training in learning and knightly exercises. "Let us remember," she said to her son's tutor, the learned scholar Filelfo, "that we have princes to educate, not only scholars." We find her setting the boys a theme on the manner in which princes should draw up treaties, and desiring them in her absence to write to her once a week in Latin. Several of these letters are still preserved in the archives of Milan. There is one, for instance, in which Lodovico, then sixteen years old, tells his mother that he is sending her seventy quails, two partridges, and a pheasant, the result of a day's sport in the forest, but takes care to assure her that the pleasures of the chase will never make him neglect his books.
Many are the pleasant glimpses we catch of the family circle, whether in the Corte vecchia or old ducal palace of the Viscontis at Milan, in the beautiful park and gardens of the Castello at Pavia, or in their country homes of Vigevano and Binasco. We see Duke Francesco riding out with his young sons through the streets of Milan, visiting the churches and convents that were rising on all sides, the new hospital, which was the object of Madonna Bianca's tender care, the oak avenues and gardens with which she loved to surround her favourite shrines. We find the boys at home, helping their mother to entertain her guests with music and dancing, and accompanying her on visits to the noble Milanese families. One day their grandmother, Agnese di Maino, came to see the duke's sons with an old gentleman from Navarre, who went home declaring that he had never seen such wise and well-educated children; another time we hear of a Madonna Giovanna coming to spend the day at the palace, and dancing all the evening with Lodovico Maria; and when the duchess took her younger children to visit Don Tommaseo de' Rieti, general laughter was excited by the little four-year-old Ascanio, the future cardinal, who walked straight up to a portrait of the duke, exclaiming, "There is my lord father!" When the newly elected Pope Pius II., who as Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini had often been in Milan, came to visit the duke in 1457, he found Galeazzo reading Cicero, and his little brothers with their cherub faces sitting round their tutor, intent on his discourse; while on one occasion their sister Ippolita, the pupil of the great Constantine Lascaris, pronounced a Latin oration in honour of His Holiness. On Christmas day, a festival which was always celebrated with much pomp at Milan, each of the duke's four elder sons came forward and recited a Latin speech, and Lodovico delighted all who were present by the ease and grace of his bearing, and the eloquent periods in which he extolled his father's great deeds in peace and war.
The duke himself always singled out Lodovico for especial notice, and said the boy would do great things. It was, no doubt, his sense of the youthful Moro's talents that made Francesco choose him, at the age of thirteen, to be the leader of the body of three thousand men which were to join in the Crusade preached by Pope Pius II. On the 2nd of June, 1464, the ducal standard, bearing the golden lion of the house of Sforza and the adder of the Visconti, was solemnly committed to the charge of the young Crusader, before the eyes of the whole court, on the piazza in front of the old palace, which was gaily decorated for the occasion with garlands and tapestries. But the Pope died, and the idea of the Crusade was abandoned. Lodovico, however, was sent by his father to Cremona, the city which had been Duchess Bianca's dowry, and whose inhabitants were among the most loyal subjects of the Sforza princes. Here he lived during the next two years, enjoying his foretaste of power, and making himself very popular with the Cremonese. In 1465, his accomplished sister was married to Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, and Lorenzo de Medici came to Milan for the nuptials. Then these two men, who in days to come were to be so often named together as the most illustrious patrons of art and letters in the Renaissance, met for the first time, and discovered the mutual tastes which in future years often brought them into close relation.
The sudden death of Duke Francesco in 1466 brought a change in Lodovico's position, and the ingratitude with which the new duke, Galeazzo, treated his widowed mother, naturally irritated his brothers. In October, 1468, Bianca retired to Cremona, where she died a week after her arrival—"more from sorrow of heart than sickness of body," wrote her doctor. The good duchess was buried by her husband's side in the Duomo of Milan, and was long and deeply lamented both by her children and subjects, and by none more than her son Lodovico, who always remembered his mother with the deepest affection. But he remained on good terms with Galeazzo, and was deputed by the new duke to receive his bride, Bona of Savoy, when the princess arrived at Genoa, from the French court, where her youth had been spent with her sister, the wife of King Louis XI. During the next ten years Lodovico lived in enforced idleness at the Milanese court, and, freed from the restraint of his parents' authority, abandoned himself to idle pleasures. All we have from his pen at this period are two short letters. In one, written from Milan and dated April 19, 1476, he asks the Cardinal of Novara to stand godfather to the illegitimate son whom his mistress, Lucia Marliani, Countess of Melzi, had borne him, and who was to be baptized at Pavia. The other is an affectionate letter addressed from Vigevano a year later to Lucia herself, rejoicing to hear of her well-being, and looking forward to seeing her after the feast of St. George. Whether the son was Leone Sforza, afterwards apostolic protonotary, or whether he was the child whose death Lodovic lamented a few years later, does not appear, but all his life the Moro retained a sincere regard for the mother, Lucia Marliani, and left her certain lands by his will.
Meanwhile, in the conduct of his elder brother Galeazzo he had the worst possible example. Once in possession of supreme power, the new duke gave himself up to the most unbridled course of vice and cruelty. The profligacy of his life, and the horrible tortures which he inflicted on the hapless victims of his jealousy and anger, caused Milanese chroniclers to describe him as another Nero. He was commonly believed to have poisoned both his mother and Dorotea Gonzaga, the betrothed bride of whom he wished to rid himself when a more desirable marriage presented itself. These charges were probably groundless, but some of his actions went far to justify the suspicions of madness which he aroused in the minds of his contemporaries. When, for instance, he ordered his artists to decorate a hall at the Castello at Pavia with portraits of the ducal family in a single night, under pain of instant death, the Ferrarese Diarist had good reason to describe the new Duke of Milan as a prince guilty of great crimes and greater follies. At the same time, Galeazzo showed himself a liberal patron of art and learning. He founded a library at Milan, invited doctors and priests to the University of Pavia, and brought singers from all parts of the world to form the choir of the ducal chapel. During his reign a whole army of painters and sculptors were employed to decorate the interior of the Castello of the Porta Giovia at Milan, which his father had rebuilt when he gave up the ground in front of the old palace to the builders of the Duomo, and which now became the chief ducal residence. Under his auspices printing was introduced, and the first book ever produced in Italy, the Grammar of Lascaris—a Greek professor who had taken refuge at the court of the Sforzas on the fall of Constantinople—appeared at Milan in 1476. The splendour of his court surpassed anything that had been yet seen. Great rejoicings took place in 1469, when Lorenzo de Medici came to Milan to stand godfather to the duke's infant son, and Galeazzo was so delighted at the sight of the costly diamond necklace which the Magnificent Medici presented to Duchess Bona on this occasion, that he exclaimed, "You must be godfather to all my children!" The wealth and luxury displayed by the duke and duchess when they visited Florence two years later with a suite of two thousand persons, scandalized the old-fashioned citizens, and, in Machiavelli's opinion, proved the beginning of a marked degeneracy in public morals.
For a time the Milanese were amused by the fêtes provided for them, and dazzled by the sight of all this splendour; but retribution came in time, and on the Feast of St. Stephen in the winter of 1476, Duke Galeazzo was assassinated at the doors of the church of S. Stefano by three courtiers whom he had wronged. The Milanese chronicler Bernardino Corio gives a dramatic account of the scene, which he himself witnessed, and relates how Bona, who was haunted by a presentiment of coming evil, implored her lord not to leave the Castello that morning, and how three ravens were seen hovering about Galeazzo's head on that very morning, when, in his splendid suit of crimson brocade, the tall and handsome duke entered the church doors, while the choir sang the words, "Sic transit gloria mundi."
"The peace of Italy is dead!" exclaimed Pope Sixtus IV. when the news of Galeazzo's murder reached him. And the issue proved that he was not far wrong. In her distress, the widowed duchess, who seems to have been fondly attached to her husband, in spite of his crimes and follies, addressed a piteous letter to the Holy Father owning her dead lord's guilt, and asking him if he could issue a bull absolving him from his many and grievous sins. In her anxiety for Galeazzo's soul, she promised to atone as far as possible for his crimes by making reparation to those whom he had wronged, and offered to build churches and monasteries, endow hospitals, and perform other works of mercy. The Pope does not seem to have returned a direct answer to this touching prayer, but he took advantage of Bona's present mood to hurry on the marriage of Caterina Sforza, the duke's natural daughter, with his own nephew, Girolamo Riario, which had been arranged by Galeazzo, and which took place in the following April. Lodovico was absent at the time of Galeazzo's assassination, and with his brother Sforza, Duke of Bari, was spending Christmas at the court of Louis XI. at Tours. They had not been banished, as Corio asserts, but, tired of idleness and fired with a wish to see the world, they had gone on a journey to France, and, after visiting Paris and Angers, were on their way home when the news of the duke's murder reached them. But if any hope of obtaining a share in the government had been aroused in Lodovico's heart, it was doomed to speedy disappointment. Cecco Simonetta, the able secretary and minister who had administered the state under Galeazzo, kept a firm hold on the reins of government, ruled the Milanese in the name of Duchess Bona and her young son Gian Galeazzo. The Sforza brothers soon found their position intolerable, and the intervention of a friendly neighbour, the Marquis of Mantua, was necessary before they could obtain any recognition of their right. At his request, Bona agreed to give each of her brothers-in-law a suitable residence in Milan, as well as a portion of 12,500 ducats from the revenues of their mother's inheritance, the city of Cremona. Filippo Sforza, the second of the brothers, who is described as weak in intellect and a person of no account, was content to live peaceably in Milan, where his very existence seems to have been forgotten by his family, and where the only mention of him that occurs again is that of his death in 1492. The other brothers were sent to Genoa, where an insurrection had broken out, and succeeded in subduing the rebels and restoring peace. But when they returned to Milan at the head of a victorious army, with their kinsman the valiant Condottiere Roberto di Sanseverino, a movement was set on foot among the old Ghibelline followers of Duke Francesco to obtain the regency for Sforza, Duke of Bari. Cries of Moro! Moro! began to be heard in the streets of Milan. Simonetta, becoming alarmed, threw Donato del Conte, one of the Ghibelline leaders, into prison, upon which Sanseverino and the Sforzas loudly demanded his release. Simonetta gave them fair words in return, and induced the dissatisfied chiefs to meet in the park of the Castello, where they agreed to lay down their arms. But Sanseverino, suspecting treachery, set spurs to his horse, and, riding with drawn sword in his hand out of the city through the Porta Vercellina, crossed the Ticino, and did not pause until he was in safety. His companions soon followed his example. Ottaviano Sforza, the youngest of the family, a brave lad of eighteen, was drowned in crossing the swollen Adda, and his three remaining brothers were condemned to perpetual exile. Sforza was banished to his duchy of Bari, in the kingdom of Naples, Ascanio to Perugia, and Lodovico to the city of Pisa.