Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations (Volume 55) (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series) [1 ed.] 9780866985741, 0866985743

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Ippolita Maria Sforza

Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations Ed i te d a n d t ra n sl ate d by

Diana Robin and Lynn Lara Westwater

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 55

DUCHESS AND HOSTAGE IN RENAISSANCE NAPLES

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 55

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEXTS AND STUDIES VOLUME 518

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Ser ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Ser ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Ser ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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Se r ie S edi to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se r ie S edi to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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Se r ie S edi to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se r ie S edi to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se r ie S edi to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se r ie S edi to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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IPPOLITA MARIA SFORZA

Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations •

Edited and translated by DIANA ROBIN and LYNN LARA WESTWATER

Iter Press Toronto, Ontario Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Tempe, Arizona 2017

Iter Press Tel: 416/978–7074

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 416/978–1668

Web: www.itergateway.org

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Tel: 480/965–5900

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 480/965–1681

Web: acmrs.org

© 2017 Iter, Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sforza, Ippolita, 1445-1488, author. | Robin, Diana Maury, editor, translator. | Westwater, Lynn Lara, editor, translator. Title: Duchess and hostage in Renaissance Naples : letters and orations / Ippolita Maria Sforza ; edited and translated by Diana Robin, Lynn Lara Westwater. Description: Tempe, Arizona : Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies ; Toronto, Ontario : Iter Press : Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017. | Series: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies ; 518 | Series: The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. The Toronto Series, 55 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016059386 | ISBN 9780866985741 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Sforza, Ippolita, 1445-1488—Correspondence. | Naples (Kingdom)—Court and courtiers—Correspondence. | Naples (Kingdom)—History—Spanish rule, 1442-1707--Sources. Classification: LCC DG848.112.S48 A4 2017 | DDC 945/.706092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016059386 Cover illustration: Pollaiuolo, Antonio del (1433-1498), Portrait of a Young Woman, ca. 1460. Oil on poplar. Inv. 1614. Gemaeldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. Photo: Joerg P. Anders. bpk Bildagentur / Art Resource, NY, ART182298. Cover design: Maureen Morin, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries. Typesetting: Becker Associates. Production: Iter Press.

For Anne and Robin Benning and Sofia, Julia and Anna Brodsky

Contents Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 Illustrations 41 Letters (1453–1486) Table: Source Texts of Translated Letters

57

1. Travels in Lombardy: Letters 1–22 (1453–1465)

61

2. Marriage and Betrayal: Letters 23–28 (1465–1466)

80

3. Between Milan and Naples: Letters 29–36 (1466–1467)

89

4. Galeazzo’s Marriage and Bianca Maria Visconti’s Death: Letters 37–45 (1467–1468)

97

5. The Ambassadors: Letters 46–67 (1469–1475)

108

6. Cholera: Letters 68–75 (1475–1476)

127

7. Assassination and the Struggle for Succession: Letters 76–83 (1477–1479)

134

8. Pazzi Conspiracy and the Ottoman Invasion of Otranto: Letters 84–93 (1479–1482)

145

9. Ippolita and Lorenzo: Letters 94–100 (1482–1486)

156

Orations (1455–1465) Wedding Oration for Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este (1455)

173

Oration for Pope Pius II (1459)

185

Oration for Bianca Maria Visconti (1465) Glossary of Names

191 197

Chronology 205 Bibliography 211 Index 219

Acknowledgments We are grateful to many colleagues and friends for their essential contributions to this edition. This volume could not have taken shape without the work of the Other Voice series editors Margaret King and Al Rabil. Not only did they support our edition from its inception to its completion but they also, through their continued work on the transformational Other Voice series, have given it a perfect home. We give our deepest thanks to Sarah Gwyneth Ross, whose reader’s report was meticulous in its analysis of our study of the letters and orations of Ippolita Maria Sforza. Her profound knowledge of early modern women’s writings and their historical contexts enabled us to reformulate our assumptions about this writer and her works in ways that have very much enriched our study. We could not have completed the research for this volume without the help of many generous colleagues. Julius Kirshner provided essential advice on research in Florence. Elena Brizio of the Archivio di Stato of Florence went to great lengths to ease our access to Ippolita’s many manuscript letters held there and Francesca Klein, also of the Archivio di Stato of Florence, helped us find the manuscript copy of an important autograph letter. The staff of the Archivio di Stato of Milan provided us unfettered access to the largest collection of Ippolita’s manuscript letters, and archivist Vicenza Petrilli went so far as to photograph many of the letters for us. We are grateful for the funds from The George Washington University that helped in part to fund our research. We found intellectual homes in the institutions where we undertook much of the research and writing for this volume—the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Marciana Library in Venice. We are profoundly grateful to the staff at each institution for their support of this project. Ippolita’s fifteenth-century prose and script occasionally flummoxed us. Daria Perocco of the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari was boundlessly generous with her time and expertise as she helped us to resolve many thorny linguistic and paleographical questions. Riccardo Drusi of Ca’ Foscari also weighed in on a key paleographical question. Elissa Weaver provided essential help on linguistic and paleographical matters, and was, as always, the model of intellectual generosity. We cannot imagine any intellectual endeavor without the colleagues, mentors and friends who have shaped us and inspire us in everything we do. In particular, we most gratefully acknowledge these colleagues whose enthusiasm, expertise and interest sustained this project: Masha Belenky, Serena Castaldo, Julie Campbell, Leah Chang, Diane Dillon, Rob Carlson, Lydia Cochrane, ­Konrad Eisenbichler, Sheila ffolliott, Jill Gage, Paul Gehl, Alessia Giachery, xv

xvi Acknowledgments

Ken Gouwens, Julia Hairston, Judy Hallett, Mario Infelise, Nancy Jaicks, Dale Kent, Anne Larsen, Suzanne Magnanini, John Marino, Lauro Martines, Sabrina Minuzzi, Letizia Panizza, Tiziana Plebani, Courtney Quaintance, Meredith Ray, Amy Richlin, Deanna Shemek, Michael Sherberg, Stefano Trovato, Jane Tylus, Sergio Waisman, and Gabriella Zarri. We would also like to thank Amyrose McCue Gill and Lisa Regan of TextFormations for their meticulous indexing of our book, and Margaret English-Haskin of Iter for her tireless work on every aspect of the book’s production. Finally, and most profoundly, we thank our partners Michael Perman and Jay Brodsky for keeping the home fires burning while we produced this work. We also express our deep gratitude to our children for their endless patience as we labored on this volume. They demonstrated that—as Ippolita Sforza contended in a letter to her mother—children’s love for their mothers knows no bounds. Ours likewise for them. We dedicate this volume to these beloved children, Anne and Robin Benning and Sofia, Julia and Anna Brodsky.

Introduction Ippolita Maria Sforza (1445–1488) When Ippolita Sforza, twenty years old, blonde, tall, slim, and famously learned, rode into Naples on 14 September 1465, King Ferrante clearly saw her as a highvalue hostage. The daughter of the duke of Milan, Ippolita was already en route to Naples to celebrate her marriage to the king’s son and heir when her brotherin-law Jacopo Piccinino was murdered while the king was hosting him at the C ­ astelnuovo1—an event that would darken the already grim reputation of her father-in-law. Ippolita would survive Ferrante’s vaunted hospitality2 for twentythree years to become one of the most influential women of her time. As the wife of the king’s son and a member of the royal household, she served the king as his unofficial ambassador to Milan, the primary conduit for the exchange of ideas and information between him and her brother Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who became duke of Milan soon after her arrival in Naples. Ippolita’s letters, and the dispatches she received in return from the two rulers and their agents, were a principal means of communication between the two states. Both her father-inlaw the king and her brother the duke sought her advice and opinions. Since her supposedly private letters to her father, mother, and brother in Milan were regularly intercepted by the king’s secretaries and ambassadors, she voiced her opinions about the royal family in Naples guardedly. Her awareness that her letters would be parsed by her enemies as well as her friends at court must be taken account in our interpretation of them. Ippolita Sforza’s letters and Latin orations are presented for the first time in English translation in this volume.3 A significant number of Ippolita’s autograph 1. Carlo Canetta, “La morte di conte Jacomo Piccinino,” Archivio storico lombardo ser. 1, vol. 9, fasc. 2 (1881): 252–88; Lucio Cardami, “Diarii di Messer Lucio Cardami,” in G. B.Tafuri, Istoria degli scrittori nati nel regno di Napoli, 3 (Naples: nella stamperia di Felice-Carlo Mosca, 1760), part 1, 495; Carol Kidwell, Pontano: Poet and Prime Minister (London: Duckworth, 1991), 95 and 371n16. Brief profiles of this and other significant figures named in this introduction may be found in the Glossary of Names, below. 2. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, is the most famous source on Ferrante’s savagery. Ferrante “was equalled in ferocity by none among the princes of his time… . [H]e liked to have his opponents near him, either alive in well-guarded prisons, or dead and embalmed, dressed in the costume which they wore in their lifetime…. His victims…were even seized while guests at the royal table.” Trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: Macmillan, 1928), 36–37. 3. Selected Italian letters of Sforza’s appear in Ferdinando Gabotto’s edition of Giovanni Gioviano Pontano, Lettere inedite in nome de’ reali di Napoli (Bologna: Romagnoli-dall’Acqua, 1893) and in Bruno

1

2 Introduction

letters survive. She dictated hundreds of others to her two personal secretaries: her childhood teacher and confidant from Milan, the humanist Baldo Martorelli; and after his death, the celebrated poet and head of King Ferrante’s literary academy, Giovanni Pontano. Her letters depict her own role in the most momentous events of her time: the frightening days and months following the public assassination of her brother Galeazzo in 1476; her younger brothers’ repeated attempts to seize the Milanese throne after the murder; the bloody Pazzi conspiracy in Florence and its repercussions in the peninsula in 1478–1479; the invasion of Italy by a force of Ottoman Turks and their occupation of Otranto in 1480–1481; and her father-in-law King Ferrante’s touch-and-go struggle to survive the cholera that threatened his life, his regency, and Ippolita’s survival in Naples.4 On a more visceral level, Ippolita’s letters detail her rage and sorrow over her husband’s serial sexual liaisons with both men and women, one of whom he moved into the family home in the Castel Capuano in the early 1470s. Ippolita’s last letters, written when she was in her early forties, betray one of the most enigmatic developments in her life. Among the gossips at Ferrante’s court, Ippolita’s estrangement from her husband Alfonso had long been the subject of speculation. At the same time, from 1483 on, Ippolita’s last, emotionally charged letters to Lorenzo de’ Medici, her confidant and friend of twenty years, had become suggestive of a relationship that would surely have compromised the duchess’s honor had these letters become public.5 On 20 August 1488, at age forty-three, without having shown prior signs of any illness, Ippolita collapsed and could not be revived. Her death was attributed to a cerebral abscess.6 Nonetheless, the circumstances of Ippolita’s death while resident in the household of a man reputed for brutality—and who may have arranged the death of Piccinino, her brother-in-law—raises questions.7 Twenty years before, in 1468, her mother, the Dowager Duchess Bianca Maria Visconti, had died Figliuolo’s edition of Pontano, Corrispondenza di Giovanni Pontano segretario dei dinasti aragonesi di Napoli, 2 novembre 1474–20 gennaio 1495 (Battipaglia [Salerno]: Laveglia & Carlone, 2012), henceforth “Figliuolo.” See now also the most complete edition of Sforza’s letters to date: Ippolita Maria Sforza, Lettere, ed. M. Serena Castaldo (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004), henceforth “Castaldo.” 4. On Ferrante’s attack of cholera in 1475 see Kidwell, Pontano, 114 and 272n55; Gabotto, Lettere inedite, nos. 9, 11–19, 21, 22; Figliuolo 13–22 (letters 11–21); and below, Letters 68–73, dated 12, 14, 16, 28, and 29 November 1475. 5. Letters 94–100, Ippolita’s last letters to Lorenzo de’ Medici, appear below accompanied by our analysis. No responses to these letters are found in Lorenzo’s own vast published correspondence: the Lettere, edited by Nicolai Rubinstein and F. W. Kent, 16 vols. (Florence: Giunti-Barbèra, 1977–2011). 6. The cause of her death as apostema nel capo was offered by Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, the fifteenth-century Bolognese author of famous women’s lives: Gynevera de le clare donne, ed. Corrado Ricco and Alberto Bacchi della Lega (Bologna: Romagnoli-dall’Acqua, 1888), 351. 7. See above, note 1.

Introduction 3 unexpectedly at the same age. At the time, her contemporaries, among them the great Milanese historian of the fifteenth century, Bernardino Corio, had famously accused the duchess’s son Galeazzo Sforza of her murder.8 As yet, no credible charges of foul play have been raised in the case of Ippolita’s premature death.

The Other Voice Ippolita Sforza belongs to the tradition of urban, classically educated Italian women who came of age as intellectuals in the later fifteenth century.9 Three women, Isotta Nogarola, Cassandra Fedele, and Laura Cereta, all near contemporaries of Ippolita’s, were well known in the Veneto as writers, having circulated in manuscript hundreds of their stylishly written Latin letters that called to mind the prose of Sallust, Cicero, and even Apuleius.10 All three women studied Latin and Greek with humanist scholars: Nogarola with Martino Rizzoni, a student of the great humanist scholar Guarino Guarini; Fedele with the Hellenist and Servite friar Gasparino Borro; and Cereta with a cloistered nun and Latin scholar. Similarly, Ippolita studied Latin with Baldo Martorelli, a protégé of Vittorino da Feltre, the storied professor of rhetoric at Ferrara who established a humanist school at Mantua. She learned Greek from the émigré Hellenist Constantine Lascaris, who like Martorelli followed Ippolita to Naples where she continued her studies with both professors. Meredith Ray and Sarah Ross have seen the birth of a feminist epistolary tradition in Europe in the humanist Latin writings of Nogarola, Fedele, and Cereta.11 But Ippolita Sforza, whose Latin orations demonstrate her training as 8. For Corio, see Domenico Panebianco, “Documenti sull’ultima malattia di Bianca Maria Sforza e sulla peste del 1468,” in Archivio storico lombardo, ser. 9, vol. 8 (1969): 367–80. 9. Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr., ed. and trans., Her Immaculate Hand: Selected Works by and about the Women Humanists of Quattrocento Italy, 2nd ed. (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992). 10. Isotta Nogarola, Complete Writings: Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations, ed. and trans. Margaret L. King and Diana Robin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Cassandra Fedele, Letters and Orations, ed. and trans. Diana Robin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Laura Cereta, Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist, ed. and trans. Diana Robin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); see esp. Cereta’s Apuleian dialogue, at 180–202. For the Latin letters in translation of even earlier humanist women writers such as Maddalena Scrovegni, Cecilia Gonzaga, Battista Montefeltro Malatesta, and Costanza Varano, see also King and Rabil, Her Immaculate Hand. 11. Building on King and Rabil’s Her Immaculate Hand survey of the genesis of the tradition, see now Meredith Ray, Writing Gender in Women’s Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), esp. 22–25; and Sarah Gwyneth Ross, The Birth of Feminism. Woman as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), esp. 9–10, 144–59.

4 Introduction

a classicist, wrote no letters on the rights of women; nor do her epistles champion the contribution of the female voice to philosophical, moral, or theological ­discourse as do those of her feminist contemporaries. Instead, Ippolita’s letters demonstrate her influence in affairs of state as a woman and her ability to move policy at the highest levels of government, undiminished by her sex. Intellect trumps gender in the roles she assumes in her letters as unofficial ambassador, adviser, and informant.12 Ippolita Sforza’s political action took place consistently: she went right to the issues to be negotiated, even those involving naval strategies when Milan and Naples came perilously close to a war at sea off the coast of Barcelona in 1472. When civil war loomed as it did at the outbreak of cholera in Naples in November 1475 or after the assassination of her brother Galeazzo in Milan in December 1476, her letters vividly portrayed the network of key relationships she had built over the years with men and women who would enable her to save her own and her children’s lives. Stylistically, Ippolita’s correspondence operates on two levels. While her letters to family and friends follow Petrarch’s dictum that personal correspondence should exemplify “a plain and friendly style of speech,”13 her epistles to protonotaries, ambassadors, and heads of state display the formal elements of oratory that mark Cassandra Fedele’s letter to Lodovico da Schio, the rector of the faculty of liberal arts at the University of Padua, thanking him for inviting her to speak there,14 and Isotta Nogarola’s epistle to the Venetian nobleman Ludovico Foscarini on his arrival as Verona’s new governor.15 Ippolita’s letters contain no showpieces on humanist topics designed for manuscript publication such as Cereta’s epistolary essay to Pietro Zecchi on women and marriage, or her Petrarchan letter on her ascent of Mt. Isola titled “A Defense of Epicurus.”16 Nor, on the other hand, do Ippolita’s letters resemble the vernacular letters of her Florentine contemporary

12. Evelyn Welch comments in “Ippolita Maria Sforza, Duchess of Calabria,” in David Abulafia, ed., The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–1495: Antecedents and Effects (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1995), 35: “It was only in this last decade of her life that Ippolita’s capabilities as a diplomat were finally appreciated by Ferrante and Alfonso.” 13. Ronald Witt, “Medieval ‘Ars Dictaminis’ and the Beginnings of Humanism: A New Construction of the Problem,” Renaissance Quarterly 35, no. 1 (1982): 1–35, at 28–29. Petrarch, following Cicero, rejected for personal letters the stilus sublimis, prescribing instead hoc mediocre domesticum et familiare dicendi genus amice. 14. Fedele, Letters and Orations, 66–67. 15. Nogarola, Complete Writings, 128–31. 16. Cereta, Collected Letters, 65–72; 115–22.

Introduction 5 Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi with their interest in such domestic matters as local gossip, the purchasing of flax, and the finding of a good wet nurse.17 Like the great humanist scholar-statesmen of her era, Leonardo Bruni and Francesco Barbaro, Ippolita understood her role to be an active force in politics. Some of her letters are diplomatic dispatches from the field, documenting her activity as emissary, informant, and intermediary between the courts of her natal and marital kin. After her father’s death and her brother Galeazzo’s accession as duke in 1466, Ippolita’s letters to Galeazzo increasingly concern the fraught relations between Milan, Naples, Venice, Florence and the papacy more than ten years after their joining in a mutual defense league.18 Acting as her brother’s agent, she relays to him her observations and opinions of the foreign diplomats and local courtiers at Ferrante’s court. At the same time, she counsels him on the conduct of negotiations with Genoa, Naples, Venice and France; and, above all, on the perilous making and unmaking of alliances. Whereas her correspondence from Naples had principally been directed to her father and mother until their deaths in 1466 and 1468, the majority of her letters from 1469 to 1476 address her brother Galeazzo, the reigning duke of Milan, and his turbulent relations with her father-in-law, King Ferrante. Rebuilding a northern political alliance for herself after Galeazzo’s assassination, Ippolita writes to key members of her immediate family: Galeazzo’s wife, Bona of Savoy, a sister-in-law of King Louis XI of France; her other brothers Ludovico, Ascanio, and Sforza Maria; and Galeazzo’s son and heir to the ducal throne, Gian Galeazzo Sforza. She also addresses a number of letters to Sacramoro da Rimini, the Milanese ambassador to Rome and papal insider, whom she calls her “dear friend.” Galeazzo was as notoriously inept in his relations with his own councillors as he was with foreign leaders and their ambassadors.19 Emotionally and politically situated after her marriage between her natal Milan and her adoptive kingdom in the south, Ippolita was able to speak candidly to her brother and he would listen—or so she thought. Ippolita’s meatiest letters are written to advise her brother, now that she is a titled duchess with an inside line to the king and his courtiers, and on occasion to pull him back from the brink of an international incident. Between 1471 and 17. Alessandra Strozzi, Selected Letters of Alessandra Strozzi: A Bilingual Edition, trans. with intro. and notes by Heather Gregory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Strozzi, Letters to Her Sons, 1447–1470, ed. and trans. Judith Bryce (Toronto: Iter Academic Press; Tempe, AZ: ACMRS [Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies], 2016. 18. Based on the Peace of Lodi signed between Venice, Milan, and Florence in 1454, Naples and the papacy joining in the resuting Italian League in 1455. 19. Gregory Lubkin, A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), esp. 232–46; Vincent Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia d’Italia: Ferrante and Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Friendly Enemies and Hostile Allies,” in Abulafia, 91–122.

6 Introduction

1475, her letters to her brother are full of foreboding, reflecting, among other things, an ever-widening rift in the once-amicable relations between Galeazzo and her father-in-law Ferrante that threatened the peace of the peninsula. During these years, while Ippolita expresses her esteem for the ambassadors her brother dispatches to Naples, she soon makes equally clear her worry over his recall of men who, to her mind, had been his exemplary servants. In letter after letter, she advises Galeazzo to exercise caution. It is as if her epistolary narrative is heading inexorably for a disaster—a disaster that does come with the murder of the duke by his own courtiers on 26 December 1476. Unlike her younger contemporaries Laura Cereta and Cassandra Fedele, Ippolita Sforza did not circulate her letters publicly.20 Despite her fame as a highly educated woman involved in both policy-making and the arts, her Italian letters have remained for the most part unknown. The intellectual and political legacy of the themes voiced in her letters, however, which constitute an extraordinary public record of her ideas about governance, war, marriage, motherhood, family, and her own role in statecraft, can be seen in the generations of women writers who came after her. Ippolita’s letters can be seen as prototypes both for the self-fashioning of the influential women epistolographers who would follow her and for the fictional female characters portrayed in dialogues, plays, and essays in early modern European literature. The increasing volume and circulation of women’s writings in the sixteenth century indicate that representations of the female voice became a matter of great interest.21 The intense curiosity of the reading public about the nature of gender was now manifested in works by female authors from the fifteenth century on. In fact, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a proliferation of works that featured a new voice in Italian literature: that of the female author. The principal commercial presses in sixteenth-century Venice now published letter collections, dialogues, treatises, poetry books, and novels not only by women but by men impersonating women. In 1548, Ortensio Lando produced a bestseller, as Meredith Ray has shown, by publishing an anthology of 181 letters, most of them fictional, written by Lando himself, to be sold as the works of women.22

20. The letters of Cereta and Fedele that circulated in manuscript were collected and published in the seventeenth century by Giacomo Filippo Tomasini: Clarissimae feminae Cassandrae Fidelis venetae epistolae et orationes posthumae (Padua: Prostat apud Franceiscum Bolzettam, 1636); Laurae Ceretae brixiensis feminae clarissimae epistolae (Padua: Types Sebastiani Sardi, 1640). 21. Diana Robin, Publishing Women: The Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 22. Ray, Writing Gender; 45–52; Ortensio Lando, Lettere di molte valorose donne, nelle quali chiaramente appare non esser ne di eloquentia ne di dottrina alli huomini inferiori (Venice: appresso Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari[is], 1548).

Introduction 7 While neither Ippolita Sforza’s letters nor her life story were known by subsequent generations of women, her works live on as prototypes for the problems depicted in the autobiographical letters that early modern women would publish, either in printed volumes or in the manuscripts they circulated of their works. Their letters furnished testimony of their attitudes on education, motherhood, state governance, religion, medicine and the art of healing, war, and marriage— the most political of all institutions in early modern Europe. Ippolita’s letters can be seen, then, as a matrix for the letters, dialogues, and treatises of Laura Cereta, Vittoria Colonna, Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Mary Beale, Anna Maria van Schurman, and the many other women writers who came after her. If Ippolita Sforza’s letters model what it was to “write like a woman,” Moderata Fonte’s dialogue The Worth of Women (1600) was simply an expansion of the epistolary female voice to seven voices, all female, in dialogue with one another. The subjects of Fonte’s dialogue were those that Ippolita had aired in her letters, among them, marriage. Ippolita’s earliest letters from Naples portray her deeply ambivalent feelings about her marriage. While she boasts early in the marriage of a conversation she had with her husband about a book on state governance, in the next breath she describes being locked in her chambers by her own lady’s maid, which supposedly ensures the duchess’s safety but also prevents her from spying on her husband. Such letters, though they remained unpublished and unknown, are nonetheless prototypes for the anti-marriage speeches of Fonte’s fictional characters Leonora and Corinna in The Worth of Women.23 Ippolita’s frequent letters to her mother also suggest a template for what Ross, in her analysis of Fonte’s The Worth of Women has called the “feminization” of humanist amicitia (friendship), a term which in Cicero’s dialogue of the same name portrayed the idealized friendship between men who were intellectual equals.24 In Fonte’s dialogue, as in Ippolita’s letters to her mother, the conversation ranges across numerous subjects from politics to travel, representing a prototype of humanist friendships between women. But Ippolita also extended her Ciceronian idea of amicitia to her long-term relationship with Lorenzo de’ Medici. Addressing him as “my dear brother,” she wrote that the two friends “shared all things in common” (Letter 95: 7 April 1483). In this adaptation of amicitia, Ippolita anticipated the seventeenth-century Englishwoman Mary Beale’s appropriation of Cicero’s idealization of friendship as the basis for equality in between the sexes.25 23. See the discussion in Cereta, Collected Letters, 65–72; and Moderata Fonte (Modesta Pozzo), The Worth of Women: Wherein is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men, ed. and trans. Virginia Cox (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 48–49, 54–55, 113–14, 257–58. 24. Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 276–87. 25. Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 299–304.

8 Introduction

Ippolita’s engagement in the politics of the Neapolitan and Milanese courts and her letters to leading statesmen of the time anticipate the transnational community of male and female intellectuals that Carol Pal has so vividly described in her study of the circle of friends of the seventeenth-century Utrecht-born scholar Anna Maria van Schurman that extended from the Netherlands to England, Ireland, Germany and France.26 Schurman created an epistolary network that “cut across barriers of religion, nation, class, intellectual allegiance, and family formation.”27 It included Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, the French scholars Marie de Gournay and Marie du Moulin, and the Palatine Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. Similarly, the seventeenth-century Venetian nun Arcangela Tarabotti, writing from the confines of the cloister, used her letters to build an international network of supporters.28 The letters she published show her use of the epistolary form for self-promotion, social critique and public debate.29 Collection of letters had come a long way since the fifteenth century when the letters of women were circulated for the most part privately. Ippolita’s letters on the invasion of Otranto by Ottoman Turks could also have served as prototypes for the moving dispatches on the wars and city sieges men and women published in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Laura Cereta’s letter to the Brescian magistrate Luigi Dandolo describing the bloody siege of Rovereto and Calliano by the German army in 1487 is a case in point.30 Cereta had recalled the horror of the scene: It has saddened and disgusted Christian hearts (I believe) that they had left so many innocent people homeless, slaughtered so many soldiers, destroyed so many city walls, laid waste so many fields, and lighted the blazing fires of a bloody war. For the war had already 26. Carol Pal, Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 27. Pal, Republic of Women, 2. 28. See for example Lynn Lara Westwater, “A Rediscovered Friendship in the Republic of Letters: The Unpublished Correspondence of Arcangela Tarabotti and Ismaël Boulliau,” Renaissance Quarterly 65, no.1 (2012): 67–134. 29. Arcangela Tarabotti, Lettere familiari e di complimento (Venice: Appresso li Guerigli, 1650), now in modern Italian and English editions by Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater: respectively, Lettere familiari e di complimento (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 2005); and, translated by Ray and Westwater, Letters Familiar and Formal (Toronto: Iter Academic Press; Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012). See also Ray, Writing Gender, 196–99; and Arcangela Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, ed. and trans. Letizia Panizza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 19–28. 30. Cereta, Collected Letters, 160–64; see also Cereta’s antiwar letter to Francesco Fontana, 153–58. Both letters suggest Bruni’s writings on war: see C. C. Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence: The De militia of Leonardo Bruni (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961).

Introduction 9 caused a great many courageous men to come together, and the result has been carnage on both sides and many men have lost their lives. Corpses now lie piled high in carts and are being hauled away on all sides. Was there not time for sorrow and pity—a time when bloodshed might have touched and softened men’s minds?31 The legacy of Ippolita’s political counsel to her brother was far-reaching. Half a century after the duchess’ death, the poet Vittoria Colonna seemed almost to be imitating Ippolita’s daily words of advice in her letters to her brother on how he should practice diplomacy with the pope and his other adversaries. Colonna wrote daily letters to her brother Ascanio in his armed conflict with Pope Paul III during the Salt War of 1541 that closely resemble Ippolita’s letters counseling her brother Galeazzo on how to deal with her father-in-law, King Ferrante, and his ministers.32 Colonna not only followed closely the events leading up to her brother Ascanio’s war with the pope, but she acted as though she were her brother’s ambassador to the Vatican, corresponding with members of the papal court. She wrote letters to the chief officer in charge of the field commissary in the pope’s army, and even corresponded with Emperor Charles V, in the hope that he would intervene. Like Ippolita, Colonna counseled her brother Ascanio on each of the diplomatic moves that would bring to a close the pope’s war against him, on the tone he should take in addressing the pope, and on the points he ought to propose to effect a compromise.

Biography On 18 April 1445, Ippolita Sforza was born in Pesaro, long a Sforza enclave on the Adriatic coast. Her parents were Bianca Maria Visconti, the only legitimate child of Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan,33 and Francesco Sforza, the commander-in-chief of Visconti’s army and perhaps the greatest condottiere (mercenary general) of his day. Ippolita was two years old when, after two centuries of Visconti rule, the citizens of Milan revolted. On the death of her grandfather Duke Filippo Maria Visconti on 13 August 1447, an elite group of Milanese noblemen, jurists, and

31. Cereta, Collected Letters, 161. 32. On Colonna’s diplomacy, see Vittoria Colonna, Carteggio, ed. Ermanno Ferrero and Giuseppe Müller with a supplement by Domenico Tordi, 2nd ed. (Turin: E. Loescher, 1892), 214–27; and Robin, “The Salt War Letters of Vittoria Colonna,” in Publishing Women, 78–101. 33. Bianca Maria Visconti was the legitimized daughter of the duke and his mistress Agnese del Maino.

10 Introduction

ducal councilors assembled to declare the duchy a republic.34 Elections were held and within five weeks, the new captains of the republic ordered the dismantling of the Visconti palaces and the burning of the city records. Milan’s client cities revolted, refusing to pay taxes to Milan in return for its protection. The republic then hired Visconti’s former condottiere, Francesco Sforza, to bring them back into the fold. But in October 1448, Sforza defected from the republic himself, signing an agreement with the Venetians: they were to help him subjugate Milan and bring its client towns under their jurisdiction. By early 1449, civil war had broken out in Milan and most of the nobility had gone over to Sforza, abandoning the republic. Sforza now lay plans to take Milan not for Venice but himself. On 1 February 1449, he cordoned off access to the city, effectively stopping the flow of all foodstuffs into Milan. By fall and throughout the winter, famine held the city in its grip. The living fed on dogs, cats, and vermin; and the dead lay in the streets where they fell. On 20 February 1450, Sforza entered the city unarmed. The Milanese surrendered to him, and on 26 March 1450, he was invested as duke of Milan. A year after the war’s end, Sforza presided over the worst recorded plague in Milan’s history. In 1451, thirty thousand citizens died in the epidemic. Ippolita was then six years old. By 1450, Francesco Sforza had moved his wife and children from Pesaro to the ducal residence in Pavia. That year he appointed Baldo Martorelli as the teacher of his son Galeazzo and daughter Ippolita, then ages six and five.35 In

34. On the Ambrosian revolution of 1447–1451, the primary sources are Giovanni Simonetta, Rerum gestarum Francisci Sfortiae Mediolanensium ducis commentarii, ed. Giovanni Soranzo, in Rerum italicarum scriptores, second series, 21.2 (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1932); Pier Candido Decembrio, Annotatio rerum gestarum in vita Francisci Sfortiae IV Mediolanensium ducis, in Decembrio, Opuscula historica, ed. Attilio Butti, Felice Fossati, and Giuseppe Petraglione, in Rerum italicarum scriptores, second series, 20.1 (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1925), #1; and Decembrio, Vita Philippi Mariae III Ligurum ducis, in Opuscula historica, #2. For the most comprehensive modern account of rise and fall of the republic, see Francesco Cognasso, “La Repubblica di San Ambrogio,” in Storia di Milano, vol. 6: Il ducato visconteo e la repubblica ambrosiana, 1392–1450 (Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri, 1955), 387–448. See also Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Knopf, 1979), 140–48. For fuller bibliography, see Diana Robin, Filelfo in Milan: Writings 1451–1477 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 85–104. 35. Monica Ferrari, Per non manchare in tuto del debito mio: L’educazione dei bambini Sforza nel Quattrocento (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2000); Dario Cingolani, Baldo Martorello da Serra de’ Conti: Un umanista al servizio degli Sforza: Biografia con edizione delle lettere e della grammatica latina dal ms. trivulziano 786. [Serra de’ Conti]: Biblioteca Comunale, 1983; also Sandra Bernato, “Martorelli, Baldo,” DBI 71 (2008):358–59 .

Introduction 11 1454, Martorelli composed a Latin grammar text, his Grammatica latina,36 for both children. At age eight, Ippolita wrote her first vernacular letter, addressed to her father (Letter 1: 13 July 1453). She signed the letter manu propria (written in my own hand), indicating nonethless Martorelli’s influence, since he would cosign many of her letters “Baldus M.” Martorelli, who arrived in Milan in 1449, had received his own classical education from Vittorino da Feltre, who ran the celebrated palace school, the Casa Giosa, in Mantua at the court of Ludovico Gonzaga and his wife Barbara of Brandenburg. Many noble families in fifteenth-century Italy conducted their correspondence with one another in Latin. Official documents and correspondence exchanged between courts were often in Latin; and so the sons and daughters of elite families were trained not only to write eloquently in Latin but to ornament their prose with passages from Virgil, Plautus, Ovid, and other authors in the Roman canon.37 Ippolita’s vernacular letters everywhere manifest her schooling in Latin eloquence. Her three extant Latin orations delivered publicly in 1455, 1459, and 1465 further demonstrate her education in the elements of classical rhetoric.38 With the exception of one elegy in Latin that Ippolita wrote mourning her father’s death in 1466, no poetry has been attributed to her: Est socer ille meus Siculum rex gloria regum Est meus hic coniunx alter spes Latii Nil socer ipse magis nec coniunx deligit eque Fratribus Ipolite nil genitrice magis Hiis igitur sevum phar est lenire dolorem Hiis propria sunt magno vota ferenda deo.39 Ippolita also acquired a teacher of Greek in the refugee scholar Constantine Lascaris, who had in 1458 received the prestigious chair of Greek in Milan.40 He wrote a Greek grammar for her use, the Erotemeta, dedicating the work to her; it 36. Conserved in the Biblioteca Trivulziana in Milan, MS 786. 37. See, for example, Ippolita’s Wedding Oration for Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este (1455), given below. 38. Ippolita’s three extant orations in the original Latin and our English translations are given below. 39. Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets. Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 172–73. Stevenson’s translation reads: “My father-in-law is king and glory of the kingdom of Sicily,/ My husband is another hope for Latium,/ But neither my father-in-law himself, or my husband, please me more/ Than Ippolita’s brothers, or her mother./ Therefore for these, there is a light to relieve severe grief./ For these are proper prayers to be uttered to almighty God.” We have not been able to find any other citation of these verses. 40. On Lascaris and Ippolita Sforza see John Monfasani, “Lascaris, Constantine,” in Paul F. Grendler, ed., Encyclopedia of the Renaissance (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1999), 3.381–82. See also Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 172, and Castaldo, “Introduction,” lxxv, on her relationship with Lascaris.

12 Introduction

would be the first book published in Greek in Italy.41 In 1465, he followed Ippolita and her nuptial train to Naples, obtaining that same year an appointment at the university of Naples. Galeazzo, meanwhile, left Martorelli to study with Guinforte Barzizza, the son of Gasparino Barzizza, the eminent professor of moral philosophy and rhetoric at the university of Pavia. Even after he was made duke in 1450, Francesco Sforza found himself constantly at war. A respite from the battlefield came in April 1454, when Sforza concluded the Peace of Lodi with Venice and Florence, the papacy and Naples joining the resulting Italian League the following year. The agreement with King Alfonso I of Naples stipulated a double marriage alliance with Milan: the king’s grandson Alfonso was to marry Ippolita Sforza, then ten years old, while his granddaughter Eleonora d’Aragona was to be betrothed to Sforza Maria Sforza.42 Ten years later, in May 1465, Ippolita’s marriage to Alfonso was celebrated in Milan, with his brother Federico serving as his proxy. In June, Ippolita and her train of attendants left for Naples, stopping on the way in Florence, where they were the guests of the sixteen-year-old Lorenzo de’ Medici who had represented his family at Ippolita’s wedding in Milan.43 Ippolita and her party were lavishly entertained at the houses of the merchant elite in Florence as well by Lorenzo and the Medici. In August, as the group continued on their journey to Naples, Francesco Sforza halted Ippolita’s cortege for three weeks after hearing that that his son-in-law Jacopo Piccinino had been murdered at Ferrante’s castle in Naples where he had been a guest. Once assured that his daughter would be not only safe from harm but graciously received in Naples, the duke allowed Ippolita and her attendants to continue their journey. They arrived in Naples on 14 September. On 10 October 1465, the nuptial ceremonies were celebrated in Naples and the festivities went on for days. On 27 December, Ippolita officially received the title duchess of Calabria. In her letters to her mother, Ippolita described the games she and Alfonso played and the books they read together. But already in mid-January, three months into the marriage, Ippolita had Alfonso followed when she learned that he was slipping away to visit former lovers, among whom were young men as well as women.44 Angry and distraught, she complained bitterly to her mother, in spite of the fact that extramarital affairs were the rule among fifteenth-century noblemen. In any case, she had seen it all before with her own father and his 41. Monfasani, “Lascaris, Constantine.” 42. See Carlo Canetta, “Le sponsalie di casa Sforza con casa d’Aragona,” Archivio storico lombardo ser. 1, vol. 9, fasc. 1 (1882): 136–44, for the betrothal agreements. 43. Judith Bryce, “Performing for Strangers: Women, Dance, and Music in Quattrocento Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly 4, no.1 (2001): 1074–1107. 44. Regarding the diplomats’ correspondence on Ippolita’s having Alfonso tailed see Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 128–29.

Introduction 13 m ­ istresses.45 In March 1466, less than two months after her discovery of Alfonso’s affairs, Ippolita received news of the death of her father, the man she saw as her protector, confidant, and mentor rather than the distant figure he had been for much of her life since, as the consummate military man, Francesco was almost constantly in the field with his troops, moving from one outpost to another. Ippolita’s literary activity had begun almost as soon as she settled into the couple’s home at the Castel Capuano, a short walk from the King Ferrante’s residence at the Castelnuovo. Thanks to the fame of her Latin orations, the duchess was well known to the poets and the men of letters at court even before her arrival in their city. The Neapolitan literati saluted her as their own in encomia and other works in her honor. Reflective of the cultural dynamism of the Neapolitan court, her letters also suggest the nature of her relations with the court poets and architects of the realm, one of whom she commissioned to design a studio, or study, for her own use, where she could write, read, and display the art works and family portraits she collected, and meet privately with her friends, clients, and secretaries.46 In this respect she behaved no differently from men in her position. Her older brother, as noted below, had a private study built for himself in the Sforza castle in Milan where he displayed his hunting trophies.47 The writers in King Ferrante’s literary academy, named the Accademia Pontaniana after its president Giovanni Pontano, counted on the duchess’s patronage. Ippolita had already become something of a cult figure among the Italian poets as early as 1459. That year, at age fourteen, she had delivered a Latin oration at the Gonzaga court in Mantua before the international congress that Pope Pius II called to mount a crusade against the Ottoman Turks who had seized the Byzantine capital of Constantinople on 29 May 1453. Ippolita also received works dedicated to her by many members of the Academy: among them Lorenzo Valla, Flavio Biondo, Antonio Cornazzano, Francesco Galeota, Benedetto Gareth, Antonio Beccadelli (Panormita), Masuccio Saliterno, and, of course, Pontano himself, who would become her personal secretary in 1475, after the death of Baldo Martorelli. Ippolita was also praised by the Neapolitan chronicle writers Loise de Rosa and Giovanni Antonio Bonini; and she was memorialized in the sonnets of Bernardo Bellincioni and the Latin epigrams of Porcelio Pandoni and Antonio Beccadelli. The Florentine poet and playwright Luigi Pulci dedicated to her his Novella dello sciocco senese to her (The Story of a Sienese Fool). Other Neapolitan poets who celebrated her in their encomiastic works were Egidio Canisio, Paolo Parisi, and Gabriele Altilio, the teacher and later personal secretary of Ippolita’s son Ferrandino. 45. See for example Ippolita’s Letters 30 (13 January 1467) and 33 (19 May 1467). 46. Letter 24: 6 January 1466. See Judith Bryce, “’Fa finire uno bello studio et dice volere studiare’: ­Ippolita and her Books,” Bibliothéque d’humanisme et Renaissance 62, no. 1 (2002), 55–69. 47. See below at p. 16 and pp. 62–63.

14 Introduction

Ippolita Sforza died on 20 August 1488 at the age of forty-three, suddenly and without signs of a prior illness. The Paduan humanist Ludovico Odasio read her funeral oration at the requiem mass held for her in the cathedral in Naples. Giovanni Pontano stood beside her bier at the end and sang a Latin elegy.48

The Biographical Tradition As Pamela Benson has shown, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were the ages in which literary portraits of noblewomen became models of femininity to be imitated.49 But rather than the stylized lives of famous women of classical antiquity presented in Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus (Famous Women, 1362),50 the new collective biographies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries idealized women of the noble courts who were often portrayed as remarkable for their educational accomplishments as well as their beauty. In 1547, Giuseppe Betussi’s revised edition of Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus added forty-nine new biographies of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century women. The modern biographies introduced a major change in the biographical tradition, revealing that the public now saw learned women, as Sarah Ross has argued, “as participants in the family business of education, who brought honor both to their natal families and to the larger civic family of their native cities.”51 For early modern biographers, Ippolita Sforza was one such woman. Her life and accomplishments were described at length in the collected biographies of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti’s Gynevera, de le clare donne (Gynevera, of famous women, 1490); Giacomo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo’s De plurimis claris selectisque mulieribus opus (A work on the most famous and select women, 1497); Betussi’s supplement to Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus, titled Donne famose … ai giorni nostri (Famous women in our time, 1545); Paolo Morrigia’s La nobiltà di Milano (The Milanese nobility, 1595); Francesco Agostino della Chiesa’s Teatro delle donne letterate (A theater of literary women, 1620); and Niccola Ratti’s Della famiglia Sforza (The Sforza family, 1794/5), among many other such works, all of which praised their models as much for their education and intellectual 48. The full Latin text of the elegy (Castaldo, 91) with our English translation appears below at pp. 38– 39. 49. Pamela J. Benson, The Invention of the Renaissance Woman: The Challenge of Female Independence in the Literature and Thought of Italy and England (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992). 50. Benson, The Invention, 9, calls Boccaccio’s De mulieribus “the foundation text of Renaissance profeminism.” The date of the De mulieribus is Virginia Brown’s; see her edition and translation of Boccaccio’s work, Famous Women (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 51. Giovanni Boccaccio, Libro di M. Gio. Boccaccio delle donne illustri, ed. and trans. Giuseppe Betussi (Venice: Pietro de Nicolini da Sabbio, 1547); Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 96–101.

Introduction 15 accomplishments as for conventional female characteristics. Arienti discusses such traditional feminine qualities of Ippolita as her physical beauty and her piety; he also notes in some detail her facility at in demonstrating her learning and sophistication in conversation. Although he describes such physical characteristics as Ippolita’s blond hair, lovely eyes, her aquiline nose, and her height [Fu bella, biancha, bionda, ebbe occhi venusti, naso un poco aquilino… Fu più presto grande che mediocre],52 he especially prizes her oratorical gifts and her ability to talk about history, political theory, and statecraft, as well as about hunting, weaponry and arms, agriculture, and the roles of men and women.53 What Arienti and her other Renaissance biographers do not allude to are her Italian prose style, her skill at persuasion, and her mastery of a variety of tones and colors in the prose she uses in her letters depending on the occasion and her correspondent’s situation. Her early modern biographers appear not to have known her letters. In any case, not one of them cites her letters in their portraits of the duchess.

Synopsis of the Letters (1453–1486) The letters are grouped into nine chapters by chronology and theme.

1. Travels in Lombardy: Letters 1–22 (1453–1465) Despite the turbulence of the first seven years of her life, Ippolita Sforza’s first extant letter, dated 13 July 1453 and written in her own hand, betrays no sense of insecurity. Sent from the Visconti castle in Pavia to her father Francesco Sforza, her letter was dated the year that Constantinople, the city Italians regarded as the “New Rome,” fell to the forces of the Ottoman Turks. In July, three years after the civil war in Milan, the duchy remained at war with Venice over the control of Brescia, Bergamo, and Crema. War continued to inflame all of northern Italy until the Peace of Lodi was signed by Venice, Milan, and Florence on 9 April 1454. On 2 March 1455, the treaty of the Italian (or Italic) League that followed in consequence, agreed to by all five regional states—Milan, Naples, Venice, Florence, and the papacy—was proclaimed. In her earliest letters addressed to her father, who was throughout her childhood the most important figure in her family, Ippolita portrayed her life as a school for hunting and rural hospitality. On a week-long journey to Varese, 52. “Sapea parlare de hystorie, de le condictione di stati et di regni, et come quilli se doveano acquistare et mantenere”; “Sapea disputare de le cose urbane, de le arme, de’ cavalli, de cani, sparvieri, falchoni, de la agricultura, de li exercitii de le donne e de varie virtù degl’homini, che era una felicità ad audire.” Arienti, Gynevera, 339. 53. Arienti, Gynevera, 345.

16 Introduction

she met the Sforza’s neighbors in the smaller towns, villages, and ancestral castles that lay northwest of Milan. She hunted for quails and partridges with dogs and a hawk she learned to train. She traveled to the ducal hunting lodges with her mother, her brothers Galeazzo and Filippo, and her half-sister Drusiana,54 and the family servants. One of her letters describes a visit to her mother’s castle at Cremona, the city her father Filippo Maria Visconti had given Bianca as part of her dowry. In another letter, Ippolita depicted her journey to the neighboring castle of the Gonzaga, the lords of Mantua, whose daughter Dorotea, betrothed to Galeazzo, was her age. In Letters 2–5, written during a three-week stay at the family hunting lodge at Castro Leone (Castelleone, Castiglione), Ippolita, now thirteen, boasted to her father about her skill at catching partridges and quails with the hawk and hounds she trained. We also see how much a sign of disapproval from her father could wound her. In Letter 5, addressed to her father, she made no attempt to hide from him the hurt she felt when she learned from her mother that he had joked about her efforts at birdhunting. These letters also make clear that successful hawking, falconry, and hunting were integral to the Sforza children’s education and were markers of their progress. Ippolita’s older brother Galeazzo decorated a study in the Sforza castle in Milan with green velvet embossed with the ducal insignia, to put on display his numerous hawks, falcons, and other hunting animals.55 A second group of letters Ippolita sent to her father (Letters 6–10) spans the period from November 145856 to September 1459. The letters of November and December 1458 describe Ippolita’s three-week stay at her mother’s castle in Cremona. There the Sforza entourage, headed by the Duchess Bianca Maria, included Ippolita, her brothers Galeazzo and Filippo, and her half-sister Drusiana. Despite being surrounded by her brothers and sister and their neighbors, the ruling family from Mantua, the Marchesa Barbara of Brandenburg and her daughter Dorotea, Ippolita longed to see her father and spend time with him. Letters 9 and 10, both from September 1459, delineate scenes away from home, one remembered and the other imagined. The first of these describes the autumn sightseeing excursion on which she took her two grandmothers (Bianca Maria’s mother Agnese del Maino and Francesco Sforza’s mother Lucia Terzani da Marsciano57), which 54. Filippo Maria Sforza is Ippolita’s younger brother; Drusiana is a half-sister of Ippolita, a daughter of Francesco Sforza by his mistress Giovana d’Acquapendente. 55. On his hunting animals see Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri, La corte di Lodovico di Moro, 4 vols. in 3 (Milan: U. Hoepli, 1913–1923), vol. 1, part 2, 714–49. Galeazzo spent 3,000 ducats one year for his falconers and falcons alone. 56. Castaldo, 6n1, believes that Letter 6 is erroneously dated 15 December 1458; the correct date should be November 15. 57. Lucia was the longtime mistress of Francesco’s father, Giacomuzzo (Muzio) Attendolo Sforza, Count of Cotignola.

Introduction 17 included tours of the Visconti castle at Pavia and the Certosa, the monastery the Visconti had founded as a family mausoleum in 1396. The second depicts what she imagined to have been a great occasion: her father’s meeting in Rome with the newly-crowned pope, Pius II, at the papal court, and at the same time their neighbors from Mantua, the Marchese Ludovico and Marchesa Barbara of Brandenburg, who were there with their daughter Dorotea. Neither letter mentions the international congress the pope had summoned to Mantua in 1459, where church leaders and rulers from numerous European cities gathered to mount a crusade against the Ottoman Turks, conquerors of Constanople. At that congress, Ippolita delivered a Latin oration stating her father’s commitment to such a crusade, provided the other great city states agreed to join the expedition.58 In January 1462, Francesco Sforza was struck down by the return of the hydropsy and gout that had tormented him the preceding summer, this time in a more virulent form.59 It appeared that he would not live much longer. During his illness, Bianca Maria handled all high-level communications with the allies, assuring the pope and King Ferrante in Naples that the duke of Milan would stand by them. At the same time, the new king of France Louis XI sought to enlist the duke in an alliance against Naples, which he proposed to ratify with a marriage between the son of the pretender to the Neapolitan throne, Jean d’Anjou, and Ippolita Sforza. Even as rumors of Francesco’s imminent death spread throughout Italy, by February 1462 the duke had rallied. He refused Louis XI’s proposal of a marriage alliance and moved to secure not only his own kingdom but that of his ally King Ferrante. A group of eight letters from Ippolita written between early May and midJune 1462 (Letters 11–19) bear no hint of the turmoil she must have seen roiling around her in the preceding months. Addressing her letters from this point on no longer only to her father, who was now much weakened by his illness, but to both parents, she describes the pleasures and hospitality she enjoyed on a trip north to Bolate, Carone, Cislago, Tradate, Varese, and Castiglione Olana, before finally arriving back in Milan. Spending generally no more than a night in each town, she and her party kept such a breathtaking pace and covered so many towns and villages that she returned to Milan after a one week on the road feeling, she wrote, as if she had been traveling for many years (Letter 17: 11 May 1462). She and her party rose at dawn. They frequently rode for eight or more hours, often not stopping for the night until late in the evening. On one such late arrival in a village, a crowd of men and women who were dancing to the music of flutes and drums 58. See below Ippolita’s Oration for Pope Pius II (1459). 59. Antonio Menniti Ippolito, “Sforza, Francesco,” in DBI, 50 (1998):11 . The hydropsy (edema) Sforza suffered from appears to have been an extreme swelling and pooling of fluid in the lungs, legs, and around the heart.

18 Introduction

welcomed Ippolita and her party. They were then regaled with “a multitude and variety of dishes” served at their host’s castle (Letter 14: 7 May 1462). During the journey, Ippolita often stopped at a village to hear mass, often participating in a local religious festival. Wherever the group stopped, she and her friends were showered with gifts of game and cheeses, among other things. The purpose of her trip to the northern towns in the duchy of Milan was not only to meet old family friends, hunt, enjoy nature, and see the sights. It was also understood that Ippolita, as the duke’s eldest daughter, had been dispatched by her parents to play her role as their emissary: thus she was expected to strengthen the bonds of sociability, mutual exchange, and kinship in the duchy. Letter 19 (30 September 1463), written two years before her departure to Naples by the now eighteen-year-old Ippolita after an unsuccessful day of hunting at Melegnano, betrays no sense of the pressures that the duke and duchess were now facing. In May 1463, King Louis XI had officially ceded the governance of Genoa and Savoy to Francesco Sforza, obligations the duke was in no position to take on. In August of the same year, the duke’s longtime allies Pope Pius II and Cosimo de’ Medici died, leaving Florence in the hands of Cosimo’s invalid son Piero de’ Medici, while in Rome Paolo Barbo, a Venetian hostile to Milan, came to the papal throne as Pope Paul II. Written only a few months before Ippolita was to travel to the court of Naples where she would become the wife of Alfonso, duke of Calabria, son and heir of Ferrante, king of Naples, Ippolita’s letters of February and March 1465 reveal not only her sorrow at leaving home but her frustration at not being able to express what she feels. “God knows with how much sorrow your Lordship wrote his last letter, in which it seemed to me I saw with my own eyes the great pain it gave your Lordship,” she wrote her father (Letter 21: 12 February 1465). These last letters Ippolita wrote to her father before her departure suggest a sense of familial intimacy and emotional dependence, shared not only between the duke and duchess for whom this period was fraught with anxiety, but also by Ippolita and her parents. In February, Bianca suffered for several days from the excruciating pain of abdominal “blockage” (serramento), for which she is given medication (pilole) to relieve the pain.60 When Ippolita tells her father that her mother has become ill and is suffering, we learn for the first time of Francesco Sforza’s great concern for his wife.

2. Marriage and Betrayal: Letters 23–28 (1465–1466) In June 1465, Ippolita left Milan to embark on the long journey to the kingdom of Naples where she would marry Duke Alfonso of Calabria. She had traveled no 60. This incident may have been a harbinger of the illness she would die of three years later.

Introduction 19 further than Siena when the news of the apparent murder of Jacopo Piccinino, husband of Ippolita’s sister Drusiana, put the wedding plans on hold. Piccinino, who led the armies of both King Ferrante and Duke Francesco Sforza, had been brought to Naples on the promise that the king would name him viceroy of the Abruzzi, and was lavishly entertained when he arrived on 4 June 1465. But on 24 June he was taken away in chains, and on 12 July, it was reported that he had died in the palace. Exactly where he or how he died is not known, though poison was suspected. Fearing that Ippolita herself might be held hostage at the Neapolitan court or worse, Sforza halted his daughter’s cortege in Siena for three weeks until he could be assured of her safety.61 Ippolita arrived at last in Naples on 14 September 1465, to celebrate her marriage on 10 October. Between 6 January and 3 February 1466, now officially the duchess of Calabria, she dispatched a series of letters to her mother and father in Milan describing both the pleasures and the humiliations she experienced at the Castel Capuano. Her father-in-law King Ferrante, she reported, showed his interest in her well-being, though principally by letter. Within the first year of the marriage, Ippolita commissioned her own servant Donato, whom she had brought with her from Milan, to follow Alfonso. When the duke accused her of not showing him respect,62 she countered that she expected to be treated by her husband “not as a servant but a companion”63—her response reported to Bianca Maria by Pietro da Landriano, a Milanese nobleman Ippolita’s mother had sent to Naples to observe her daughter’s situation. In another letter Ippolita complained that Alfonso had commanded Ippolita’s own maidservant to lock her into her apartments when he left—presumably so she would not be able to spy on the duke herself (Letter 24: 6 January 1466). Ippolita’s anger about her husband’s infidelities caused a scandal at court and embarrassed her parents. The resident ambassador Antonio da Trezzo described the incident to Bianca Maria, and da Landriano was sent back to Naples with the message that Alfonso’s disrespectful treatment of Ippolita, if continued, would damage the alliance between the two cities.64 In the same letter, Ippolita took care to remind her mother and father that she was still the gifted Latin scholar, writer and avid reader who had come to 61. Despite this show of disapproval, some scholars suggest that Francesco Sforza collaborated in Ferrante’s murder of Piccinino. See, for example, Menniti Ippolito, “Francesco Sforza,” 11; and Alan Ryder, “Ferdinando I d’Aragona, re di Napoli,” DBI 46 (1996):179 . 62. Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 128–29. 63. See below Letter 30: 13 January 1467. For the quoted comment see also ASMi, SPE, Napoli, 216, Pietro da Landriano to Bianca Maria Sforza, 10 Jan. 1467, in Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 129. 64. Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 128–29.

20 Introduction

Naples with her own library of classical texts.65 She proudly told them that she had ordered a study be built for her own use as a room of her own where she could read and write without being disturbed. In this letter, Ippolita’s self-presentation as an independent, working scholar resists the humiliation inflicted on her by her husband. So too does her plan to display the power of the Sforza clan to her Neapolitan family by mounting a gallery of portraits [tavoletti retratti] of her parents and her siblings in her study to warn and rebuke anyone in the kingdom of Naples who might attempt in any way to diminish her honor. As a postscript to this letter, Ippolita reminds her mother of her sexual needs as a young bride, asking Bianca Maria to send her some of the sweet-smelling unguent the duchess regularly used. Alfonso may have strayed, but Ippolita by no means has given up to hope of winning back his love (Letter 24: 6 January 1466). Only months after her arrival in Naples, Ippolita began to play the role of an intermediary between the two courts. Her father’s longtime general and kinsman Roberto di Sanseverino had approached her for a favor, she wrote her parents on 13 January 1466 (Letter 26). Sanseverino’s chancellor had requested an annual salary of six thousand ducats from King Ferrante and an equal amount from Francesco Sforza so that he could maintain his troops either in Lombardy or the kingdom of Naples, as needed. She had interceded with her father on Sanseverino’s behalf, she wrote, on the basis of “the very great love” that her father’s general had always shown her. In a subsequent letter (Letter 28: 3 February 1466), Ippolita regaled her father and mother with the details of sumptuous four-day visit to Caiazzo where Sanseverino took her and her husband on three all-day hunts in the mountains and entertained them with food, wines, and other pleasures at his beautiful country estate. The early period of her letters from Naples ends with two signal events: the earthquake of January 1466 and her father’s death two months later, on 8 March. Her letter of 15 January (Letter 27) describes the earthquake that struck the city and, in particular, the Castel Capuano, terrifying her and her servants in the early hours of the morning while her husband had been away hunting. Fortunately nobody in her household was hurt and the house was undamaged. Though no letter in this collection marks the passing of her father, Ippolita asked her mother in Letter 31 of 12 February 1467, eleven months after his death, whether she should still be wearing mourning.

65. Tammaro de Marinis, La biblioteca napoletana dei re d’Aragona, 4 vols. (Milan U. Hoepli, 1947– 1952), 1:97–116.

Introduction 21

3. Between Milan and Naples: Letters 29–36 (1466–1467) The death of Francesco Sforza left his twenty-two-year-old son Galeazzo Sforza at the head of one of the most powerful military states in Europe. When Galeazzo came to the throne as the fifth duke of Milan, he had the backing of two kings: Ferrante of Naples and Louis XI of France.66 But Galeazzo was distrustful of his father’s friends and quick to alienate them. Within three years of his father’s death, every one of the relationships his father forged had come undone. In one of his first moves, he excluded his mother Bianca Maria Visconti from all decision-making, though she had been his father’s political partner, and had assiduously cultivated friendships of her own with a number of heads of state. Bianca was reduced to corresponding in cipher with King Ferrante and the Milanese ambassador Antonio da Trezzo so that Galeazzo would not be able to read her dispatches.67 While Francesco Sforza had been instrumental in the pacification of the peninsula, within a year after his death, Galeazzo and his friends in Naples increasingly spoke of the need to go to war against their former allies.68 Amid the deterioration of Galeazzo’s relationships with former friends of the duchy, Ippolita stepped in, more ready than ever to assume a public role. She assured her brother of King Ferrante’s loyalty and commitment to him (Letter 29: [1466] 1471?),69 and advised him not only on policy but on his demeanor: he should show the king that he knows “that his Majesty loves you more than if you were his own son.” At the same time, the drama over Alfonso’s infidelities that had first surfaced early in 1466 continued to be played out in a series of letters between Ippolita, her mother, and ultimately her brother. Gossip about the couple’s battles circulated in Naples and Milan. Ippolita’s servant Donato whom she had ordered to tail her husband and report on his affairs was expelled from court and sent back to Milan (Letter 30: 13 January 1467). Ippolita’s mother Bianca Maria dispatched the Milanese nobleman Pietro da Landriano to the Castel Capuano to explain that if Ippolita were unhappy in Naples—and this was not a concern to be taken lightly—the alliance would surely suffer. Each of these letters communicated Ippolita’s sorrow about her marital troubles and guilt for the trouble she has caused. She regretted that her report of Alfonso’s infidelity had saddened her mother and she reassured her of Alfonso’s love for her (Letter 30: 13 January 1467). Galeazzo, 66. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 93. 67. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 96. 68. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 97. 69. Castaldo notes at 33n1 that the archivists have dated this letter, which is missing the month and year of composition, to 1466, but she believes it should be dated 1471 because on 1 January of that year Ferrante concluded a treaty with Venice.

22 Introduction

however, worried that Ippolita’s speaking so openly about her husband’s infidelity might endanger her servants’ status if they acted as her couriers. In her final letters on her marital problems during the spring of 1467, Ippolita asked again for her brother’s forgiveness if he felt it owed for the trouble she had caused (Letter 33: 19 May 1467). Two letters of recommendation for her courtiers, the Duke of Melfi and master of the Castello in Cremona, Estore Oldoyno (Letters 35 and 36: 22 June and 6 July 1467), both addressed to her brother Galeazzo in Milan, indicate another key role Ippolita played as the go-between and negotiator-in-chief between the two houses of Naples and Milan.

4. Galeazzo’s Marriage and Bianca Maria Visconti’s Death: Letters 37–45 (1467–1468) Ippolita’s Letters 37 and 43 together frame the duchess’s nearly seven-month stay in Milan. These letters encompass three major events in Ippolita’s life: the birth of her first child, her brother’s marriage, and the death of her mother. On 7 August 1467 (Letter 37), brimming with excitement, Ippolita mirrored her mother Bianca Maria’s expressions of pride and happiness at her daughter’s delivery of her first child: a boy, Ferrante, soon to be called Ferrandino. In an unusual postscript, Ippolita mused philosophically on the quality of the love between mothers and their children. Whose love is greater, she asked: that of the children for their mother, or that of the mothers for their offspring? Ippolita’s affectionate letters to her brother and her mother during her halfyear stay in her homeland describe neither the ceremonies and nor the parties and lavish entertainments she and her husband Alfonso attended during the months and weeks that preceded her brother Galeazzo’s marriage to Bona of Savoy, a sister-in-law of Louis XI, king of France. What is clear in her Milan letters of 1468 is the thread of longing for an emotional closeness with her brother that repeatedly eluded her. Ippolita and her husband Alfonso arrived by boat on Christmas day 1467 in Genoa where they were met by her younger brother Ludovico and her half-brother Sforza Secondo.70 In January 1468, Galeazzo held a joust at the Porta Giovia Castle to which he had invited hundreds of guests in honor of Alfonso and Ippolita. In the months preceding the wedding, while the Dowager Duchess Bianca Maria was confined by illness to the family residence at the Corte d’Arengo for the months February through April, Galeazzo and his guests were constantly on the move between the Sforza castles in Milan, Pavia, and Lomellina. The duke 70. Ludovico’s half brother Sforza Secondo, son of Francesco Sforza and Giovanna d’Acquapendente, is not to be confused with Galeazzo and Ludovico’s full brother Sforza Maria Sforza.

Introduction 23 entertained his guests with hunting parties, dining, sightseeing, and elaborate costume pageants. Her brothers Ludovico and Sforza Maria then showed Alfonso the treasures of the ducal library in the Castello at Pavia and the legendary marble sculptures and tombs at the Certosa Monastery.71 The wedding of Bona and Galeazzo was formalized in two ceremonies. The first of these was celebrated in the bride’s home in Amboise, France, on 12 May 1468, with Galeazzo’s half-brother Tristano Sforza72 acting the part of Bona’s groom. After the ritual ceremony, a symbolic consummation of the union was enacted: Bona and her brother-in-law kissed and got into bed, where according to custom “they touched one another’s bare leg.”73 The second wedding ceremony was held in the groom’s city. The wedding mass was celebrated on 7 July 1468 in the central piazza facing the Duomo rather than inside it. The night before the public ceremony, Galeazzo and Bona consummated their marriage at the Sforza castle in Vigevano.74 When Ippolita returned to Naples on 1 August 1468, she sent her mother one of the longest and most oblique letters to survive from her correspondence (Letter 43: 13 October 1468; an autograph). As noted above, the relationship between Ippolita’s brother Galeazzo, now the duke of Milan, and his mother had deteriorated to such a point that Bianca Maria was communicating with King Ferrante only by using a secret code which Galeazzo was unable to decipher. In Letter 43, Ippolita reported to her mother the main points of the long conversation she had with Ferrante when she returned to Naples from Milan concerning her mother’s increasingly dangerous situation in Cremona. Ippolita’s letter to her mother was not written in code. Nonetheless, it is difficult to determine who is speaking or about whom since her entire report is in indirect discourse and rather than naming names, she relies almost exclusively throughout the letter on pronouns (isso, ello, quello, quella, questo, lo, lui, glielo, etc.) to recount the conversation she has had with the king. The message Ippolita carried from the king in Letter 43 was overwhelmingly reassuring and full of affection for Bianca Maria. Ferrante was clearly concerned not only about the duchess’s health, welfare, and safety but also about preserving the independence of her regency at Cremona. He said he had always counseled Bianca Maria “with as much love as he would if [she] were his mother.” Moreover, just as King Alfonso I of Naples (Ferrante’s father) loved the Sforza, 71. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 56–59. 72. Tristano Sforza was another son by Giovanna d’Acquapendente and Francesco Sforza. Tristano was sent as a surrogate because appearing as the groom of the French king’s sister would have made Galeazzo appear inferior in rank to her, a danger to his status as the ruler of Milan. 73. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 49. 74. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 48–49; see Cesare Cantù, “Curiosità d’archivio: Nozze di Bona Sforza,” Archivio storico lombardo ser. 1, vol. 2, fasc. 2 (1875): 179–93.

24 Introduction

so he Ferrante would continue to honor his father’s bond of friendship with the Sforza family—although Galeazzo, Ferrante pointedly noted, betrayed that trust. Galeazzo had nullified the dowry agreement originally contracted between his brother Sforza Maria and Ferrante’s daughter Eleonora.75 Ferrante had further warned Bianca Maria (via Ippolita) about what he had heard from other sources: namely that Galeazzo was planning to seize his mother’s dower city of Cremona for himself. The duchess, the king told Ippolita, should stand her ground. She would be assured not only of his support, he said, but also that of her longtime friend and neighbor, the marchese of Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga.76 Ippolita’s entire letter pitted the dowager duchess at every turn against her brother Galeazzo. In short, Ippolita played a considerable role in keeping her mother from trusting her eldest son, now that he was married to Bona of Savoy, a power in her own right as the sister-in-law of King Louis XI of France and the daughter of the duke of Savoy. During the late winter and spring months of festivities leading up to the celebration of Galeazzo and Bona’s marriage, Dowager Duchess Bianca Maria had not been at all well. The summer months were no better for her. In mid-August, five weeks after her son’s wedding in Milan, the duchess collapsed at the family hunting lodge at Melegnano, on her way home to Cremona. Too weak to travel any further, she died there on 23 October 1468. At the bedside of the forty-three-year-old duchess when she died were her son Galeazzo, the longtime ducal chancellor Cicco Simonetta, and the duchess’s old friend and confidant, the poet Francesco Filelfo. Angered at Galeazzo’s letter about Bianca Maria’s death and his treatment of her during the last year of her life, Ippolita sent him only the briefest note (Letter 44: 19 November 1468): “How much the terrible and very bitter news of our mother’s death,” she wrote, “will always be the cause of sorrow and weeping.” Contemporary observers, among them Venice’s top general Bartolomeo Colleoni and historian Bernardino Corio, accused Galeazzo of having murdered his mother.77

75. See Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 41. The cancellation of the betrothal was mutual: Galeazzo refused to give his brother Sforza Maria a city worthy of Eleonora’s large dowry; Ferrante then refused to give his daughter Eleonora to Sforza Maria. The agreement would not fully unravel until 1472, but in 1468, Galeazzo’s actions were already provoking Ferrante’s anger. 76. Castaldo, 50n2: Bianca did commission the Antonio da Trezzo, the Milanese ambassador in Naples and longtime friend of hers, to ask Ludovico to be ready to intervene militarily should she need him. 77. Panebianco, “Documenti sull’ultima malattia”; Bernardino Corio, Storia di Milano, 3 vols. (Milan: F. Colombo, 1855–1857), vol. 2, edited by A. Butti and L. Ferrario (1856): 1377.

Introduction 25

5. The Ambassadors: Letters 46–67 (1469–1475) As early as August 1469, Ippolita had begun to come to terms with her anger and sorrow over Alfonso’s affairs with young men and women. From 1467 on, she had complained relentlessly about him to her mother and her brother.78 Ippolita’s father-in-law Ferrante and husband Alfonso had retaliated in May 1469, she wrote (Letter 46: 13 May 1469). They expelled all her male countrymen and servants from the Castel Capuano in Naples and ordered them to return to Milan. Only her secretaries Jacopo Oldoyno and Baldo Martorelli, her tailor, and her women attendants were allowed to remain. Later that summer, her letters expressed some pleasure at her brother’s having sent her a gentleman from Milan to keep her company (Letters 48: 27 June 1469; 49: 1 July 1469; and 50: 4 August 1469). At court, Ippolita studied the tact and diplomacy of men like Pietro da Gallarate, a lifetime courtier and favorite of Galeazzo’s who regularly accompanied the duke on state visits,79 and Antonio da Trezzo, the Milanese ambassador to Naples, who managed to surf the waves of the Neapolitan court for fifteen years—until Galeazzo fired him in 1470. Ippolita could not, in fact, have had the successes she enjoyed as an unofficial ambassador in the service of both Milan and Naples had she not found a means to put aside her resentment and sense that she had been betrayed not only by her husband but also by her own brother. Though he had fought his mother until the end, after her death the twentyfour-year-old duke of Milan felt he lacked the anchor in his relations with foreign states that Bianca Maria had provided. The duchess had been widely admired not only in Italy but in France and Germany. Ippolita strove at least to advise her brother and to serve as his connection to other courts in Italy. Certainly Galeazzo saw her father-in-law King Ferrante, who had long been his father’s friend, counselor and partner, more as a rival and potential foe than a protector. That Galeazzo was desperately unsure of his own ambassadors is clear from the fact that within the space of four years he hired and then fired three seasoned diplomats, each of whom had served him loyally as his resident ambassador in Naples. As a result, the ambassadorial post to Naples had become a revolving door. By 1474, Ippolita—the only ambassador her brother could not dismiss and his only longterm ally–found herself enmeshed in a high stakes game between the two most powerful city states in Italy. In the meantime, Galeazzo sent Pietro da Gallarate to Naples. Pietro served two functions at the Neapolitan court: he provided Ippolita with a trusted friend and confidant from Milan; and at the same

78. Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 128–32. See Ippolita’s Letters 30 (13 January 1467); 31 (12 February 1467); 32 (21 March 1467); 33 (19 May 1467); and 37 (7 August 1467). 79. On Gallarate, see Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 45, 234, 271, 274.

26 Introduction

time he served as an unofficial ambassador who could keep Galeazzo informed of developments at both the Neapolitan court and Castel Capuano. Early in 1470, Galeazzo fired Antonio da Trezzo, thus losing the most valuable tutor he could have had in the politics of both Milan and Naples. Previously, da Trezzo had served Ippolita’s grandfather, Filippo Maria Visconti, as a member of the mounted guard (famiglio cavalcante),80 and her father, Francesco Sforza, as ambassador to the court of Naples. Stationed there from 1455, he had been the main source of financial aid and military counsel to King Ferrante from Milan, and belonged to the king’s inner circle of advisers.81 Protected by the king after his dismissal by Galeazzo, da Trezzo stayed on in Naples for the rest of his life. On 24 April 1470, Giovanni Andrea Cagnola became Galeazzo’s chief ambassador to the court of Naples.82 Ippolita praised Cagnola extravagantly (Letter 51: 17 August 1470), and noted that he not only managed all Galeazzo’s affairs well but that he was much appreciated at court “by all of us who love your lordship.” By October 1471, however, Galeazzo had decided that Cagnola was “too gentle to deal with the Neapolitan court.”83 In November, the duke fired his chief ambassador when he discovered that he had allowed King Ferrante’s secretary Cavalchino Guidoboni to use his cipher to communicate secretly with Milan.84 That winter, without missing a beat, Ippolita congratulated her brother on recalling to Milan his now-disgraced ambassador Cagnola and Ferrante’s double-dealing agent Guidoboni. She praised the appointment of a much more colorful diplomat, Francesco Maletta, as Galeazzo’s principal ambassador to Naples.85 Maletta was known for the candid dispatches he sent Galeazzo on Alfonso’s sexual adventures and other current gossip.86 “Francesco,” she wrote to Galeazzo (Letter 54: 19 80. On da Trezzo see Nicola Raponi, “Da Trezzo, Antonio,” DBI 3 (1961):578–80 ; David Abulafia, “The Inception of the Reign of King Ferrante I of Naples: The Events of Summer 1458 in the Light of Documentation from Milan,” in Abulafia, The French Descent, 71–89; Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 97–99. 81. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 95. 82. Franca Petrucci, “Cagnola, Giovanni Andrea,” DBI 16 (1973):312–14 . 83. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 111. 84. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 109. 85. Maria Nadia Covini, “Maletta, Francesco,” DBI 68 (2007):162–64 ; see also Giorgio Chittolini, ed., Gli Sforza, la chiesa lombarda, la corte di Roma: Strutture e pratiche beneficiarie nel ducato di Milano, 1450–1535 ([Pisa]: GISEM; Naples: Liguori, 1989), 28–31. 86. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 112, quoting from Maletta to Galeazzo, in ASMi, Sforzesco Potenze Estere, Napoli, 2 November 1473, cart. 225, on Alfonso who, though he was ill at the time, “could not resist having sex with both men and women” (non se può continere dal cohito, tanto feminile quanto masculo).

Introduction 27 December 1471), “appears to me to have taken a good road and I hope that you will be content with him.” After five years at the Neapolitan court, she had got the lay of the land. But Ippolita took pride in acting as an ambassador herself. Two months after she reported having given birth to a healthy baby boy (Letter 56: 1 April 1472), Ippolita was instrumental in a diplomatic coup for both Milan and Naples. In June 1472, rebels in Barcelona were threatening to unseat Ferrante’s kinsman and ally, Giovanni d’Aragona.87 At the same time, Galeazzo had promised to support Jean d’Anjou’s effort to send war ships from Genoa to aid the rebels. At the eleventh hour, Galeazzo’s ambassador Francesco Maletta, Ippolita and Alfonso, and Ferrante and his principal adviser at the time, Diomede Carafa, succeeded in crafting an agreement that kept Milan and Naples from the brink of war (Letters 56: 1 April 1472; 57: 19 May 1472).88 Galeazzo would not allow Jean d’Anjou to send a convoy to aid the rebels in Barcelona. Ferrante in turn pledged not to aid Venice if the Republic made war on Milan. In a letter of 16 June 1472 (Letter 58), Ippolita urged Galeazzo to accept the agreement, so a new chapter can begin and our sleepless nights can be forgotten. I want to say one thing: that it was a good thing for your Lordship when you sent [to Naples] the ambassador messer Francesco [Maletta], who most self-assuredly refused to let himself be deceived, and your Lordship is indeed obligated to treat him well. (118) But six months after the Barcelona pledge was sealed, Galeazzo was clearly wavering and Ippolita found it necessary to urge her brother in the strongest possible terms not to renege on his promise (Letter 59: 26 September 1472). On 2 November 1474, the mercurial Galeazzo instead turned the Barcelona deal on its head. He ratified a treaty solely between Florence, Milan, and Venice, excluding Ferrante. On 24 March 1475, Maletta wrote Galeazzo that he was suffering from “a nervous condition” and a stomach disorder was causing him to seek a doctor’s assistance.89 In August, the duke finally permitted Maletta to leave Naples, signaling—to Ippolita’s dismay—a further deterioration of relations between Ferrante 87. Not to be confused with Giovanni d’Aragona, the son of King Ferante, mentioned in Letter 80, who became a cardinal in 1480. 88. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 114. 89. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 119n102, quoting from Maletta to Galeazzo, in ASMi, Sforzesco Potenze Estere, Napoli, 24 March 1475, cart. 227: “I’ve suffered from an attack of nerves for several days. It has subsided now but it has unsettled my stomach and I am still being treated by doctors” (io me son trovato già molti dì patire passione de nervi, la quale hora me lassata, ma cum molto destemperamento de stomaco unde anchora me trovo in mane de medici …).

28 Introduction

and Galeazzo (Letters 66: 1 August 1475; 67: 10 August 1475). Earlier that year, the king’s ambassador to Milan, Antonio Cicinello had begged the king to release him from what he regarded as an impossible post.90 Ippolita had attempted early that summer to bring her brother and her father-in-law’s states back into alignment. In June she had written to Galeazzo proposing a marriage alliance between a son of the duke of Venosa, who was a member of Ferrante’s inner circle, and Margherita Gonzaga the daughter of Galeazzo’s longtime friend and ally, Ludovico Gonzaga, the lord of Mantua (Letter 65: 2 June 1475).

6. Cholera: Letters 68–75 (1475–1476) In November 1475 both Ferrante and Ippolita’s husband Alfonso came down with a virulent form of cholera.91 Father and son were struggling with raging fevers so severe that the king’s death seemed imminent.92 Ippolita’s letters on the gravity of their illness, sent hourly by courier,93 reflected her own precarious situation in Naples. At the height of the king’s sickness, her letters to her brother conceal neither her panic nor the depth of her need, as, for example, in Letter 71: 16 November 1475: I have continually kept you informed, my most illustrious Lord, of the sickness of his majesty the lord king and the illustrious lord my duke  …. At present I am writing to report to your Lordship that his majesty has become so much sicker that his death is predicted, though we are not entirely without hope that he will live. If he dies, my faith and my hope for anything I might need reside in your Lordship, as my father and lord. (130) If neither her husband nor father-in-law were to recover, the kingdom would be left leaderless imperiling her own life and that of her children. Though she says nothing explicit about the threat to the Aragonese throne if there were another barons’ revolt,94 she writes to her brother that, if the king died, “my faith 90. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 119. 91. Kidwell, Pontano, 114. We are following Kidwell who identifies the life-threatening disease Ferrante and his son Alfonso were suffering from in 1475 as cholera. Castaldo, 80n1, concurs with the diagnosis. Figliuolo also includes eleven of Ippolita’s letters (Letters 11–21, at pp. 13–22), cosigned by Pontano, that detail Ferrante and Alfonso’s struggle with cholera during November 1475. 92. On the king’s illness, see below Letters 68–73, dated 12, 14, 16, 28, and 29 November 1475. 93. Letter 69: 14 November 1475. 94. The first barons’ revolt took place in 1459–1464, following the death of Ferrante’s father, King Alfonso I, in 1458.

Introduction 29 and my hope for anything I might need reside in your Lordship” (Letter 71: 16 November 1475). At the same time Galeazzo, worried over the problem of the Neapolitan succession should Ferrante and Alfonso die from the fever, sent Bishop Sacramoro da Rimini, his ambassador to the papal court in Rome,95 to report on situation in Naples.96 The duke stood ready to send his own troops south to Naples in the event of a hostile takeover.97 The first of the many letters Ippolita will address to Sacramoro (Letter 74: 25 March 1476) presages the close relationship she will later develop with that ambassador after Galeazzo’s assassination. In Ippolita’s only good news during this period, she informed Sacramoro in her next letter that Galeazzo’s key ally, Duchess Yolanda of Savoy, sister of King Louis XI of France, had returned to rule her duchy after months of enemy occupation by the troops of John of Burgundy (Letter 75: 14 December 1476).

7. Assassination and the Struggle for Succession: Letters 76–83 (1477–1479) The anxiety Ippolita experienced throughout the month of November in Naples turned out to be insignificant in comparison to the news she would receive a year later. Galeazzo, who feared assassination and generally traveled with a personal guard of fifty mounted crossbowmen, had good reason to be afraid. By the last several years of his rule, as Gregory Lubkin describes him, Galeazzo had offended virtually everyone with whom he had dealings: He had lost the personal charm that had prompted Benedetto Dei to liken him to “the son of the god Mars, newly descended” in 1459. Rather, the duke had shown himself to be harsh, peremptory, and defiant of social conventions. He behaved abusively toward those within his power and reacted with extreme emotions to situations that hardly merited them. When Galeazzo lost his favorite dog “which he would keep in his chamber,” he had it publicly proclaimed that anyone who stole a dog—from himself or any other person—would suffer the confiscation of all his property.98 On 26 December 1476, in an act that would reverberate across Europe, assassins wielding knives and swords set upon Galeazzo Sforza as he entered the church of Santo Stefano in Milan to celebrate St. Stephen’s Day mass. That year, 95. Pope Sixtus IV then reigning. 96. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 120n106; see Gabotto, Lettere inedite, Ippolita’s letters 12–19. 97. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 120n107: Galezzo to Ippolita (21 November 1475), cart. 227. 98. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 234–35.

30 Introduction

contrary to his usual custom, Galeazzo had sent his brothers Ludovico and Sforza Maria away to France, and he had allowed Ascanio to remain in Pavia where he was at university instead of returning home to the Porta Giovia Castle in Milan. On the morning of 26 December, the duke entered Santo Stefano with an unusually small retinue consisting of two ambassadors, twelve camerieri, and several other attendants. As Galeazzo approached the altar, one of his attendants, the young nobleman Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani, pulled out a knife and stabbed the duke where he stood. Two other conspirators, both noblemen, Gerolamo Olgiati and Carlo Visconti, joined with their servants in the killing. Stabbed in the stomach, the wrist, the left breast, and many times in the back, Galeazzo died at once.99 Lampugnani was seized and killed before he could leave the church. A group of youths dragged his corpse through the city; and the remains of his body were fed to pigs. The decapitated heads of the other conspirators were placed on the campanile of the Broletto in the center of Milan.100 After the murder of her husband, Bona of Savoy assumed the role of the regent of Milan for her seven-year-old son and heir to the throne, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, as was dictated by the duke’s will. Members of the ducal administration and leading citizens quickly assembled a package of measures to calm the populace and allay potential unrest. The citizens were offered a restitution of the salt taxes taken in advance by ducal tax collectors; those imprisoned for debt or unpaid fines were released and their debts forgiven; and food was allowed to be transported in and out of the city without customs payments.101 Five weeks after the assassination, three of Galeazzo’s brothers Ludovico, Sforza Maria, and Ottaviano attempted a coup d’état. In mid-February, Ippolita wrote to her sister-in-law Bona of Savoy, now the mother of the heir apparent, pleading for sisterly understanding and support for her brothers (Letter 80: 19 February 1477). She begged Bona to consider the brothers of Galeazzo as her family members, and hoped her sister-in-law would look after them “with good love,” and that she would promote “harmony among them and bind [her]self to them more every day.” Bona reached an agreement with the brothers on 24 February 1477, in which she agreed to give each of them an annual pension of 12,500 ducats in exchange for their loyalty to her.102 But on 25 May, the brothers attempted another coup, sending a few thousand men to Porta Tosa—but the population did 99. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 240; see Bortolo Belotti, Il dramma di Gerolamo Olgiati (Milan: L. F. Cogliati, 1929); and also Robin, Filelfo in Milan, 143. 100. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 240–41. 101. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 242. 102. Franco Catalano, “L’ingresso vittorioso in Milano di Lodovico il Moro,” in Storia di Milano, vol. 7: L’età sforzesca dal 1450 al 1500, part 2, Il Ducato di Milano nella politica dell’equilibrio, by Franco Catalano (Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri, 1956), 316 and 316n2; Caterina Santoro, Gli Sforza (Milan: Editori Associati, 1994), 182–91.

Introduction 31 not support them and the rebellion failed. On June 1, the Sforza brothers agreed to go into exile: Sforza Maria went to Bari; Lodovico was sentenced to go to Pisa or Florence; Ascanio to Siena or Perugia; Ottaviano, the youngest of the brothers, drowned in the river Adda when he tried to swim across the border to flee to Cremona, his mother’s dower city.103 Next, in four meaty dispatches sent during the year immediately following Galeazzo’s murder, Ippolita addressed Milan’s ambassador to Pope Sixtus IV, Sacramoro da Rimini, about urgent foreign affairs.104 In these letters, Ippolita demonstrated to the ambassador that she was acting not merely as a representative of her brother and the duchy of Milan but as a player and a force in her own right in the region. By the spring of 1477, the states on the duchy’s borders had rallied forces to fill the power vacuum left in the wake of Galeazzo’s death. Ippolita turned not only to her husband and father-in-law to combat the nascent threats to the Milanese throne, but also to Sacramoro, the duchy’s well-connected envoy to the pope, as a source of information as well as influence. Ippolita’s first three letters to Sacramoro made it clear that the Fieschi clan in Genoa represented the first line of danger to the Milanese monarchy. The three-way sharing of information between Ippolita, Sacramoro, and Ferrante resulted in the King’s sending a convoy of galleons to board the Genoese ships and take Fieschi’s men prisoner before they could reach Milan. But there were further problems. Ippolita’s fourth letter to Sacramoro (Letter 82: 15 January 1478) indicated that the power vacuum left by Galeazzo’s death extended all the way east to the Romagna and as far south as Florence. Faenza, a city long under Milanese protection, and the city’s lord, Galeotto Manfredi, were now in 1477 threatened by the pope’s nephew, Girolamo Riario. Ippolita’s letter to Sacramoro was a timely call for his intervention with the pope, whom she deeply mistrusted. In a matter of months, on 26 April 1478, Riario (already the ruler of Forli and Imola) and Francesco Pazzi would attempt, with the full support of Sixtus and Ferrante, to mount a conspiracy to overthrow another longtime ally of Milan’s, the Medici in Florence. Ippolita’s letters aimed to enlist the pope to bring an end to Riario’s ambitions.

8. Pazzi Conspiracy and the Ottoman Invasion of Otranto: Letters 84–93 (1479–1482) A bloody civil war raged in Florence for the rest of 1478. King Ferrante now joined forces with the pope in the Pazzi-led war to unseat the Medici. Clearly, Ippolita collaborated with Ferrante in crafting the letter she sent her sister-in-law 103. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 243. 104. Letters 78: 10 March 1477; 80: 2 April 1477; 81: 18 July 1477; 82: 15 January 1478.

32 Introduction

Bona of Savoy and her brothers at the beginning of November the following year, in an attempt to negotiate between the two states. Her goal for the duchy of Milan and the kingdom of Naples was a lasting alliance. Thus she wrote in Letter 84: 4 November 1479: Every request from your Excellencies affords me the highest and most extraordinary pleasure, and whatever I do, I do with a twofold sense of obligation: first, because of the close ties I have with your illustrious Lordship and Ladyship; and second, because I know I am doing something very pleasing to his majesty the king, who desires nothing more than union of these two states, Milan and Naples, so that the two may become one, as all reason dictates and commands. (146) In December, one month after her kinsman Alessandro d’Ancona carried this letter to Milan, Lorenzo de’ Medici set off for Naples to sue for peace, an embassy whose success Ippolita had predicted (Letter 81: 28 December 1479). For three months Lorenzo enjoyed Ferrante’s hospitality, the lavish parties the king put on to honor him, and the frequent walks in the royal gardens alone with Ippolita—about which she would later reminisce (Letter 87: 3 July 1480). Lorenzo, in fact, spent so much time with the Ippolita that at one point during the peace talks when he could not be found, it was discovered he was with her.105 On 13 March 1480, Lorenzo concluded a peace treaty with King Ferrante, with Ippolita participating as a signatory.106 Ferrante withdrew his support of Pope Sixtus IV’s war against the Medici, and by December of that year, Lorenzo returned to power in Florence amid bonfires and jubilation.107 The year 1480 represented a watershed not only for Milan and Naples, but for the rest of Italy. In August of that year, after Lorenzo departed from Naples, Ottoman forces that had set sail from Gaeta for Pisa the previous 5 March invaded and sacked Otranto, killing some 12,000 Italians and enslaving some 10,000 men, women, and children. In October 1480, two months after the fall of Otranto, Ludovico Sforza ousted Bona of Savoy from her position as head of state and sent her to the Visconti castle at Abbiategrasso, a day’s journey from Milan. On 30 October, Cicco Simonetta, for fourteen years Galeazzo’s first secretary of the chancery, was charged with treachery and beheaded at the Sforza castle in Pavia. Bona’s eleven-year-old son Gian Galeazzo, whose coronation as duke of Milan had occurred two years before, on 24 April 1478, remained at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan with Ludovico acting as his guardian. 105. Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 135; Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere, 4:327. 106. Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 135. 107. Lauro Martines, April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 187–96.

Introduction 33 Though the Ottoman invaders would not pull out of Otranto until September 1481, two breathless dispatches, penned the previous spring by Pontano but also signed and most certainly composed by Ippolita, offered upbeat news to her family in Milan, who must have feared for her life during the long Turkish occupation of a city not that far from Naples (Letters 90: 6 March 1481; and 91: 16 May 1481). In the first of these Ippolita writes: The captain of the Royal Fleet has returned to Brindisi victorious. They burned thirteen palanders108 and some other small galleons. Since I still have no other precise details to report I won’t write at greater length at the present time. I will tell you that on the palanders and the galleons, where there were one hundred or one hundred and fifty persons on board, only three have survived. Indeed, of the great number of men who sailed with the Turkish fleet there are barely three hundred survivors. May our Lord God be thanked. Since they had no suitable wind, their ships were unable to reach our fleet of galleons. There were nineteen of these, three smaller boats, and eight ships. (153) And in the second: There is nothing else new to report after the blow given the Turks on the eighth of the present month, except that there are some fugitives from Otranto who say that those who remain inside the city are completely demoralized. A good part of the artillery with the Alfonsine catapult109 had arrived on the battlefield … (153) At the close of the second letter, Ippolita refers in passing to their allies, the troops of Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus; she never mentions that the king’s wife Beatrice d’Aragona was Ferrante’s legitimate daughter and her own sister-in-law, who was just eight when the twenty-year-old Ippolita arrived at the Neapolitan court to marry Alfonso in 1465. The actual marriage between Beatrice and King Matthias occurred just two or three days before Galeazzo was assassinated.110 108. A flat-bottomed ship used on the Mediterranean, originally used by the Turks for transporting cavalry and their horses. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. 109. Camillo Minieri-Riccio, “Alcuni fatti di Alfonso I di Aragona dal 15 aprile al 31 maggio 1458,” Archivio storico per le province napoletane 6 (1881), fasc. 1:1–56; 2:231–58; 3:441–61. This weapon had been developed by Ferrante’s father, Alfonso I, king of Naples. 110. On Beatrice d’Aragona, see Edith Pàsztor, “Beatrice d’Aragona, regina d’Ungheria,” DBI 7 (1965):347– 49 .

34 Introduction

Ippolita’s Letter 93 of 23 January 1482, addressed to her thirteen-year-old nephew Gian Galeazzo, is a remarkable document. Here for the first time, Ippolita omits the formulaic epistolary greeting in Latin she had always used after her brother’s death, naming her brothers, her sister-in-law and her son. Now reaching out to Gian Galeazzo alone, she heads her letter “To the Most Illustrious prince and Most Excellent lord, son, son-in-law and dearest nephew” [Illustrissime princeps et Excellentissime domine, fili, gener ac nepos cordialissime].111 Coming at the end of five years of personal insecurity for Ippolita, from her brother’s assassination at Santo Stefano in 1476 to the Ottoman invasion of the peninsula in 1480, this letter to the young Gian Galeazzo marks Ippolita’s assumption of a new role as King Ferrante’s unofficial ambassador to the court of Milan. She articulates here not only the binding principles of their two states, Milan and Naples, but also maps out her complex connection to Gian Galeazzo on both sides of their families. On the Naples side of the royal clan into which her nephew will marry, Ippolita bears the titles of daughter-in-law of the king, wife of the king’s son, and mother of Gian Galeazzo’s future bride. But on the Milanese side, she is Gian Galeazzo’s future mother-in-law, sister of his deceased father Galeazzo. She is also Gian Galeazzo’s aunt and a co-descendant with her nephew of Francesco Sforza, her father and his grandfather. In the formal language of Letter 93, thick with Ciceronian cadences, Ippolita announces the arrival of official letters to be read aloud by Ferrante’s orators. While such formality of tone and style is almost unprecedented in her earlier letters to her brother Ludovico and nephew Gian Galeazzo, this letter of 1482 cannot simply be written off as the work of her secretary Pontano, since the same species of classical rhetoric can be seen in Ippolita’s early Latin orations.112 But the most noteworthy aspect of this letter to her young nephew is the extent to which almost every sentence emphasizes the complex relationship between Gian Galeazzo, who embodies the future of the Milanese state, and Ippolita, who represents the history of both states, past and future: Your most illustrious Lordship will recognize in the letters of your magnificent ambassadors the extraordinary love and fatherly concern that his majesty the king has for your Excellency’s needs as well as for the preservation of your state, concerning which the king has no motive and purpose other than that which he has for his own state. And so we, who are in the middle between that state there and 111. Castaldo, letter 94, p. 100. Note string of vocative endings in the Latin address line; note also Ippolita’s use of the vocative case fili of filius. Gian Galeazzo is Ippolita’s brother Galeazzo’s son, her nepos (nephew); and her daughter Isabella’s fiancé and her (Ippolita’s) son-in-law: gener. 112. Her Latin orations have also been attributed to other writers, but we find the evidence convincing that they are by her hand.

Introduction 35 this state here, can and do bear witness in such a way that, to anyone with sound judgment and especially to your most illustrious Lordship, it should be unquestioned because of the many ties and common interests which so clearly bind us together …. Nonetheless, we are informing your illustrious Lordship that from this side, as a daughter, a wife, and a mother, and from the other side as a mother, aunt, sister, and descendant of the family, we are completely prepared to undergo any trouble, effort and danger. (155)

9. Ippolita and Lorenzo: Letters 94–100 (1482–1486) In 1482, Ippolita saw the longtime Sforza generals Roberto di Sanseverino and Pier Maria Rossi defect to Venice. By that time, Venetian troops had already seized Modena and Reggio in the War of Ferrara, and the following year they occupied almost all the Este duchy. In response, King Ferrante, Pope Sixtus IV, and Florence under the leadership of Lorenzo de’ Medici, formed a league to combat the Venetian threat not only to Ferrara but to the Sforza duchy as well. Not long after Sanseverino and Rossi surrendered to Ludovico Sforza in June 1483, the Venetian ambassador Antonio Loredan urged King Charles VIII of France to join Venice in the War of Ferrara against Sforza Milan.113 The final letters included in this collection, composed during the last six years of Ippolita’s life, show the duchess struggling to find allies for herself and her children beyond her connections in Milan and Naples. In the years 1482 to 1486, she stepped up her correspondence with Lorenzo de’ Medici. Lorenzo was caught during these years between his loyalty to the king of Naples and his own government in Florence. In June 1482, the pro-Neapolitan government in Siena, the Noveschi (the political party formed by the nobles), was ousted from power by the party of the popolo (the party representing the non-noble faction in Siena: the people).114 The Noveschi fled en masse to Naples where King Ferrante and his son Alfonso welcomed them with open arms, offering them patronage, honors, and offices. For many of the exiles Naples became home.115 But when the Neapolitan nobleman Giulio Orsini, a kinsmen of Lorenzo’s wife, led a company of Noveschi exiles to the gates of Siena in May 1485, Lorenzo’s ambassador Filippo Pandolfino 113. Michael E. Mallett, “Italian Involvement in the French Invasion,” in Abulafia, The French Descent, 153; see also Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere, vol. 7, ed. Michael E. Mallett, letters 681 and 694. 114. On the Florence/Naples involvement in the near civil war in Siena in 1482–1485, see Humphrey Butters, “The Policy of Protection in Late Fifteenth-Century Italy: Florence and the Failed Sienese Exiles’ Plot of 1485,” in Abulafia, The French Descent, 137–49. The leader of the Sienese Noveschi militia was Giulio Orsini, the cousin of Lorenzo’s Neapolitan wife. 115. Butters, “The Policy of Protection,” 143.

36 Introduction

informed him that the Florentines had already sent troops to crush the exiles’ army and their hope of regaining Siena.116 The seven letters included in our collection that Ippolita wrote to Lorenzo between 1480 and 1486 (Letters 87, 92, 94–97, and 100) are representative not only of the close relationship that had developed between them in the seventeen years since their first meeting at her wedding. These letters also reflect the enduring bond between the Sforza and the Medici, two of the most powerful families in Italy in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. From late 1478 to early 1479, Lorenzo had spent three months at King Ferrante’s court in Naples seeking support after the Pazzi coup had driven the Medici out of Florence in April that year. During his stay in Naples, Lorenzo renewed his friendship with Ippolita.117 A year later, Ippolita wrote Lorenzo recalling their conversation in the garden on a particular day in Naples (Letter 87: 3 July 1480): If Ioacchino had come without any letter from me, it would have given your magnificence too clear a reason to complain about me. I decided to write in order to deny you such a motive, and also to satisfy his majesty the lord king, who quite frequently asks me how my friend [colligato] is, that is, you. This letter, however, does not regard the duties of friendship [colligatione] nor those of state, but is merely intended to let your magnificence know that we think of you all the time. We don’t know, however, if you think very frequently about our walk in the garden, which is beautiful and in full flower. But it is true that when new leaves are budding one should not visit it too often. However that may be, we think again and again of the garden walk and your magnificence. And since Ioacchino is the bearer of this letter, and he is very close to us, we commend him to your magnificence not only for general things, but also for those things that regard his honor and reputation. (150) In 1482, the thirty-year-old Lorenzo de’ Medici sat at the pinnacle of the Florentine state, “as the needle,” wrote the great fifteenth-century historian Francesco Guicciardini, “between the diplomatic scales” of the Italian states (l’ago della bilancia).118 In an autograph letter written that year (Letter 94: 1 April 1482), not cosigned by any of her secretaries, and addressing Lorenzo, this man who held the Italian world in balance, as “my dear brother,” Ippolita warned that she suspected 116. Butters, “The Policy of Protection,” 144. 117. Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 132–33, documents the loans she received from the Medici bank. 118. Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, in Opere di Francesco Guicciardini, ed. Emanuella Lugnani Scarano, vols. 2–3 (Turin: UTET, 1981), 2:89. Born of a noble Florentine family, Guicciardini (1483–1540) was compared to Thucydides by the great eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon.

Introduction 37 her brother, the priest Ascanio, of disloyalty to her family in Milan. After the assassination of Ippolita’s brother Galeazzo in 1476, three of the Sforza brothers, including Ascanio, had plotted to seize the throne before the late duke’s son and heir Gian Galeazzo could come of age. After their failed coup, Duchess Bona of Savoy exiled the three conspirators from Milan. Speaking in this letter “in [her] role as the duchess of Calabria and not as the sister of the monsignor,” Ippolita warned Lorenzo to be wary of Ascanio, since he was affiliated with a group hostile to Bona’s regency in Milan. At the time of the letter’s writing Ascanio was in Naples, though he would soon seek refuge in Venice, proving timely her admonition to Lorenzo about the danger her brother might pose to the defense league formed by Lorenzo, Ferrante, and Pope Sixtus IV against Venice. A second letter (Letter 95: 7 April 1483), dated a year later and addressed to Lorenzo, “her magnificent brother and dearest friend and ally,” again written in Ippolita’s own hand, contrasts well with the preceding letter. The duchess here wholeheartedly recommends her faithful servant Francesco Scorna to Lorenzo, begging the latter to receive her man with kindness. In a companion piece, written to Lorenzo the following year (Letter 97: 29 August 1484), Ippolita praises Lorenzo’s chief ambassador, Filippo Pandolfino, not only for his role in strengthening the alliance between Naples and Florence, but also for attending to “a certain thing that is very close to my heart,” by which she may have been referring to the restoration of her friends, the exiled Sienese Noveschi, to their homeland in Siena with the help of the Florentines. She may also have been alluding to something more personal. In the meantime, on 18 April 1483 (Letter 96), Ippolita had sent Lorenzo the first of two letters, startling in their intimacy, each of them concerning his relationship with a new character in the letters: a woman she refers to as “Lavinia.”119 This mysterious ”Lavinia” comes up again as the topic of Ippolita’s next letter to Lorenzo (Letter 100: 11 December 1486), the final letter in this edition of Ippolita’s epistolary works. But before that final letter is considered, note should be made of two earlier epistles (Letters 98: 20 September 1484, and 99: 6 September 1485), in which Ippolita speaks not of “Lavinia,” but of the precariousness of her own situation in Naples and her need for allies. Each of these two letters addresses a newly crowned head of state in northern Italy, men she sees as future political partners. The first of these letters is directed to Francesco Gonzaga, who at age fifteen has become the lord of Mantua. Praising Giorgio Brugnolo, the Mantuan ambassador to Naples for his service, Ippolita, as a Sforza herself, appears to be reinforcing the longterm alliance and friendship of her parents with their neighbors, the Gonzaga. The second of these letters, written to her sixteen-year-old nephew Gian 119. The official collection of the Lettere of Lorenzo de’ Medici contains no hint of a female by that name.

38 Introduction

Galeazzo Sforza, the duke of Milan, fulfils a similar function. She underlines the importance of Galeazzo’s new station and her respect for him as both her kinsman and political ally, by many times in this letter addressing the young man, soon to be the husband of her daughter Isabella, as “your Excellency.” Letter 100, finally, the last in our edition of the collected letters of Ippolita Sforza, written two years before her death, offers further clues to the identity of the mysterious woman referred to in Letter 96 as “Lavinia.” Invoking the woman’s name “Lavinia” again in this autograph letter, Ippolita warns Lorenzo against the dangers of carrying out “vigils not prescribed in the calendar” and she alludes to his wife’s disapproval. Further discussion of the “Lavinia” mystery is found in the section “The Lavinia Letters” in the Letters chapter below.120

Epitaph (1488) Ippolita Sforza, duchess of Calabria, died unexpectedly on 18 August 1488. She was forty-three years old at the time. For twenty-three years, she had been a principal player in the great fifteenth-century struggle between the two leviathan states, Milan and Naples, for hegemony in Italy. Ippolita was survived by her father-in-law King Ferrante; her husband Alfonso, duke of Calabria, later Alfonso II, king of Naples; her first-born son Ferrante (Ferrandino), later Ferrante II, king of Naples; her daughter Isabella; and her second son Pietro. Ippolita’s life was celebrated in a solemn funeral mass in Naples. The head of the king’s academy, Giovanni Pontano, sang for her a last Latin elegy as he stood beside her bier:121 Hippolytam quisquis videat miretur, ut illam ipse quidem credat Pallada vel Venerem; talis ea in tumulo est; illi sic prorsus ademit Mors nihil, ut dicat Pallada seu Venerem. Permanet et decor atque oris praestantia culti, huius ut atque huius iam fluat ore melos; permanet et sua maiestas, popularis et aurae122 ille quidem vere conciliator Amor, ut simul et Venerem referatque et Pallada, ut illi insit et hinc Pallas, insit et inde Venus. Non hic Hippolyte iacet, at Pallasque Venusque; at tumulus nec habet Pallada nec Venerem, 120. Section 9, Ippolita and Lorenzo: Letters 94–100 (1482–1486). In particular, see letters 96 and 100. 121. The elegy is given by Castaldo, 91. 122. “Popularis et aurae/ille quidem vere conciliator Amor”: P. Vergili Maronis, Opera. Aeneidos (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953), 4.173–95. On Dido’s love affair and gossip; see also Q. Horati Flacci, Opera (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), Carmen 3.2.10.

Introduction 39 nec iacet Hippolyte tumulo. Mihi parcite divae: Pallas et Hippolyte cum Venere hic recubant, cum Venere Hippolyte recubat, cum Pallade et ipsa Hippolyte, ut divae tres tumulo hoc iaceant.123

123. Our translation: Whoever gazes upon Ippolita so marvels/ that he believes she is Pallas or Venus:/ thus she appears in her tomb; Death so robs her of nothing,/ that he proclaims her to be Pallas or Venus./ The loveliness of her face and the elegance of her manner still live,/so that the poetry of both this goddess and that one still flows from her lips:/ her grandeur still remains; and Love, truly that procurer of public opinion,/ thus names her Venus and thus Pallas, /so that Pallas lives in her and Venus then too./Nor does Ippolita lie here but Pallas and Venus; nor does this tomb hold Pallas alone or Venus./Nor does Ippolita lie alone in this tomb. Have mercy upon me, O goddesses:/ Pallas and Ippolita lie here with Venus, Ippolita lies here with Venus and she lies here with Pallas herself; thus do three goddesses lie in this tomb.

Illustrations Figure 1. Italy, Milan, topography map, from Codice di Tomomeo / De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman Images DGA 509229. Figure 2. An exterior view of the 15th-century Castello Sforzesco in Milan / Scott S. Warren / National Geographic Creative / Bridgeman Images NGE1436167. Figure 3. An exterior view of the 15th-century Castello Sforzesco in Milan / Scott S. Warren / National Geographic Creative / Bridgeman Images NGE1436168. Figure 4. Francesco Sforza (1401-66), Duke of Milan (oil on canvas), Bembo, Bonifacio (c. 1420-82) / Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy / Bridgeman Images XIR 157701. Figure 5. Portrait of Bianca Maria Visconti (Settimo Pavese, 1425-Melegnano, 1468), duchess of Milan and wife of Francesco Sforza (1401-1466), painting attributed to Bonifacio Bembo (c. 1420-1482) / De Agostini Picture Library / M. Carrieri / Bridgeman Images DGA 775178. Figure 6. After Francesco Laurana (1430-1502). Bust of a woman, possibly Ippolita Maria Sforza, ca. 1473. Plaster cast, 49.0 x 45.50 x 22.50 cm. Photo credit: © Royal Academy of Arts, London. Figure 7. Portrait of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, 1471 (oil on board), Pollaiuolo, Antonio del (1431 / 1432-1498) / Galleria degli Uffi zi, Florence, Italy / Bridgeman Images MEP 2627500. Figure 8. Woodcut depicting the assassination of Galeazzo Maria Sforza; from the Lamento del Duca Galeazo Maria, Duca di Milano, Quando fu morto nella Chiesa di Santo Stefano da Giovan’Andrea da Lampognano. Firenze, 1583 presso Giovanni Baleni. Wikimedia Commons, accessed 7 December 2016. https://commons .wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frontespizio_Lamento_del_duca_Galeazzo _Maria_-Sforza,_1444-1473-,_1476.jpg. Figure 9. The Tavola Strozzi, 1472-3 (tempera on panel), Rosselli, Francesco (1445-c.1513) (attr.) / Museo Nazionale di San Martino, Naples, Italy / Bridgeman Images XIR 349728. Figure 10. Bust of King Ferrante]. Galleria Napoletana (Museo di Capodimonte). Photography by Sailko, 28 November 2013. Wikimedia Commons, accessed 7 December 2016. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Ignoto,_busto_di_ferrante_I_d%27aragona,_1450-1500_ca.,_ da_palazzo_de_scorciatis.JPG. Figure 11. Andrea Guacialotti, Medaglia di Alfonso d’Aragona, Duca di Ca41

42 Illustrations labria, 1481. Photograph by Sailko, 15 August 2013. Wikimedia Commons, accessed 7 December 2016. https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAndrea_guacialotti%2C_medaglia_di_ alfonso_d’aragona%2C_duca_di_calabria%2C_1481.JPG. Figure 12. Lorenzo de’ Medici, Andrea del Verrocchio-Werkstatt: Orsino Benintendi, polychromy on terracotta, 65.8 × 59.1 × 32.7 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1943.4.92. Fifteenth- or sixteenthcentury terra-cotta bust, probably based on 1478 life-like wax sculptures by Andrea del Verrocchio and Orsino Benintendi. Wikimedia Commons, accessed 7 December 2016. https://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File%3AVerrocchio_Lorenzo_de_Medici.jpg. Figure 13. Letter 96. Ippolita Sforza (autograph) to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 18 April 1483. Image reproduction courtesy of the Italian Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo. Further reproduction and duplication prohibited. Figure 14. Letter 100. Ippolita Sforza (autograph) to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 11 December 1486. Image reproduction courtesy of the Italian Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo. Further reproduction and duplication prohibited.

Figure 1. Map of 15th-century Milan from the Codice di Tomomeo.

Figure 2. An exterior view featuring a round tower of the 15th-century Castello Sforzesco in Milan.

Figure 3. Exterior view of the 15th-century Castello Sforzesco in Milan.

Figure 4. Portrait of Francesco Sforza (1401-1466), Duke of Milan, by Bonifacio Bembo (c. 1420-1482).

Figure 5. Portrait of Bianca Maria Visconti (1425-1468), Duchess of Milan, by Bonifacio Bembo (c. 1420-1482).

Figure 6. Bust of a woman, thought to be Ippolita Maria Sforza, plaster cast, ca. 1473, after Francesco Laurana (1430-1502).

Figure 7. Portrait of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, 1471, by Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1431/1432-1498).

Figure 8. Woodcut depicting the assassination of Galeazzo Maria Sforza; from the Lamento del Duca Galeazo Maria, Duca di Milano, Quando fu morto nella Chiesa di Santo Stefano da Giovan’Andrea da Lampognano.

Figure 9. Aragonese Naples as seen from the sea in the Tavola Strozzi, 1472-3, attributed to Francesco Rosselli. The Castel Capuano where Ippolita Sforza lived is at the far right of the image (indicated by the arrow); the grey structure in the middle left is the Castelnuovo where King Ferrante lived.

Figure 10. Bust of King Ferrante.

Figure 11. Medal of Alfonso as Duke of Calabria.

Figure 12. Bust of Lorenzo de’ Medici, terra cotta sculpture, 1478, probably after Andrea del Verrocchio and Orsino Benintendi.

Letters (1453–1486)

Table: Source Texts of Translated Letters

Letter Number

Source Text

1

Castaldo

1

2

Castaldo

2

3

Castaldo

3

4

Castaldo

4

5

Castaldo

5

6

Castaldo

6

7

Castaldo

7

8

Castaldo

8

9

Castaldo

9

10

Castaldo

10

11

Castaldo

11

12

Castaldo

12

13

Castaldo

13

14

Castaldo

14

15

Castaldo

15

16

Castaldo

16

17

Castaldo

17

18

Castaldo

18

19

Castaldo

19

20

Castaldo

20

21

Castaldo

21

22

Castaldo

22

23

Castaldo

23

24

Castaldo

24

25

Castaldo

25

26

Castaldo

26

27

Castaldo

27

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Letter Number in Source Text

.

.

.

.

.

Source Texts of Translated Letters (cont’d) Letter Number

Source Text

28

Castaldo

28

29

Castaldo

29

30

Castaldo

30

31

Castaldo

31

32

Castaldo

32

33

Castaldo

33

34

Castaldo

34

35

Castaldo

35

36

Castaldo

36

37

Castaldo

37

38

Castaldo

38

39

Castaldo

39

40

Castaldo

40

41

Castaldo

41

42

Castaldo

42

43

Castaldo

43

44

Castaldo

44

45

Castaldo

45

46

Castaldo

46

47

Castaldo

47

48

Castaldo

48

49

Castaldo

49

50

Castaldo

50

51

Castaldo

51

52

Castaldo

52

53

Castaldo

53

54

Castaldo

54

55

Castaldo

55

56

Castaldo

56

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Letter Number in Source Text

.

.

.

.

.

Source Texts of Translated Letters (cont’d) Letter Number

Source Text

57

Castaldo

57

58

Castaldo

58

59

Castaldo

59

60

Castaldo

60

61

Castaldo

61

62

Castaldo

62

63

Castaldo

63

64

Castaldo

64

65

Castaldo

65

66

Castaldo

66

67

Castaldo

67

68

Castaldo

68

69

Castaldo

69

70

Castaldo

70

71

Castaldo

71

72

Figliuolo

19

73

Castaldo

72

74

Castaldo

73

75

Castaldo

74

76

Figliuolo

33

77

Castaldo

75

78

Castaldo

76

79

Figliuolo

35

80

Castaldo

77

81

Castaldo

78

82

Castaldo

79

83

Figliuolo

51

84

Castaldo

80

85

Castaldo

81

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Letter Number in Source Text

.

.

.

.

.

Source Texts of Translated Letters (cont’d) Letter Number

Source Text

Letter Number in Source Text

86

Figliuolo

55

87

Figliuolo

59

88

Figliuolo

63

89

Figliuolo

66

90

Castaldo

82

91

Castaldo

83

92

Figliuolo

75

93

Castaldo

84

94

Castaldo

85

95

Castaldo

86

96

Castaldo

87

97

Castaldo

88

98

Castaldo

89

99

Castaldo

90

100

Castaldo

91

Travels in Lombardy (1453–1465) 61

Letters (1453–1486) This edition includes one hundred letters written by Ippolita Maria Sforza, ordered chronologically. Together, these letters represent approximately one-third of Sforza’s 312 extant letters.1 Ninety-one of them appear in M. Serena Castaldo’s Italian edition of Ippolita’s letters: Lettere (Turin: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004). The additional nine letters are from Bruno Figliuolo’s edition of Giovanni Giovano Pontano’s letters: Corrispondenza di Giovanni Pontano segretario dei dinasti aragonesi di Napoli, 2 novembre 1474–20 gennaio 1495 (Battipaglia [Salerno]: Laveglia & Carlone, 2012). Pontano, Ippolita’s secretary for many years, cosigned many of her letters. The preceding table shows the source text for each of the hundred letters we include, upon which we based our translation and transcription. See Glossary of Names for full identification of principal figures named in this correspondence. It is impossible to identify several figures in the letters who are sometimes mentioned only by first name.

1. Travels in Lombardy: Letters 1–22 (1453–1465) Letter 1: 13 July 1453 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan This is the earliest extant letter of Ippolita Sforza, written in her own hand at the age of eight. Sent from the Visconti castle in Pavia to her father Francesco Sforza, Ippolita’s letter of 13 July 1453 came at a turning point in Italian history. On 29 May of that year, the Ottoman Turks seized Constantinople, the last cosmopolitan center of European culture in the eastern Mediterranean. In mid-July, three years after the end of the civil war in Milan and the investiture of her father as the city’s lord and duke, the duchy remained embroiled in a war with Venice over the control of the territories of Brescia, Bergamo, and Crema. War would continue to inflame all of northern Italy until the signing of the Peace of Lodi by the four great powers. Venice, Milan and Florence ratified the Peace on 9 April 1454; Alfonso I, king of Naples, became a signatory on 26 January 1455. Ippolita’s first letter, like the twenty-one letters that follow it, betrays no sign of insecurity in spite of the constant threat of invasion that plagued Milan and its surrounding towns and farmlands. Instead, these early letters portray a young girl motivated by her love of bird hunting and her expeditions to the neighboring towns and countryside. In the years 1458 to 1465, she appears to be constantly on the move between the family castles in Pavia and Cremona. The Lombard 1. Castaldo, “Introduzione,” xiv.

62 IPPOLITA MARIA SFORZA

towns of Melegnano, Castiglione, Saronno, Bolate, and Tradate are favorite places between Milan and Cremona and Milan and Varese where she will stop to visit neighbors for a night or two. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord,2 my Lord and most honorable f­ ather, Since I have returned to Pavia, having extra time during these long days, I have learned how to write a little, which I do with the greatest pleasure so that I can speak with your most illustrious Lordship in my frequent letters and receive pleasing letters from you in return. And because I am not able to be there with you as I wish, I will make up for my absence with letters. The most illustrious lady my mother is here at Pavia. She is in excellent health, radiant and in good spirits, in spite of the fact that the illustrious count Galeazzo, my most honorable brother, is sick with the tertian ague,3 but I hope to God that he will soon be well. Her most illustrious ladyship and all the rest of us commend ourselves as always to your Excellency. Pavia. 13 July 1453. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis4 Your daughter and servant, Ippolita Maria Visconti, etc., in her own hand.5

Letters 2–8 In letters 2–5, written during a three-week stay at the family hunting lodge at Castelleone, a day’s journey from Pavia, Ippolita, now thirteen, boasts to her father about her skill at catching partridges and quails with the hawk and hounds she has trained. These letters make clear the important role hawking, falconry, and hunting with dogs played in the lives of the Sforza. Ippolita’s brother Galeazzo would even furnish a trophy room in the Sforza castle in Milan, draping it with 2. Honorific titles such as “Illustrissime princeps et Excellentissime domine” are usually abbreviated in the original letters; the honorific adjectives “illustrious” and “excellent” are usually capitalized. For the readability of our English translation, we have lowercased all adjectives preceding titles. Titles are capitalized when referring to the letter’s addressee; otherwise they are in lowercase. 3. Terzana or tertian fever (malaria). 4. “Of your same illustrious dominion.” In almost every letter to her Sforza relatives, Ippolita uses this formula, which underlines both her family’s power and her blood tie to its members. We have left the phrase in Latin throughout to emphasize its formulaic nature. 5. Ippolita signs her letter Hyppolytamaria vicecomes. We translate names given in Latin into their modern Italian equivalent.

Travels in Lombardy (1453–1465) 63 green velvet embossed with the ducal insignia, to house his numerous hawks, falcons, and other hunting animals.6 A second group of letters, 6–8, written in December 1458, describes the family’s two-week sojourn at the castle in Cremona of her mother the duchess Bianca Maria Visconti. The Sforza entourage at Cremona headed by Bianca Maria includes Ippolita, her full brothers Galeazzo and Filippo, and her half-sister Drusiana. There the duchess was visited by her neighbor Barbara of Brandenburg, the marchesa of Mantua, and the marchesa’s daughter Dorotea. Francesco Sforza and Ludovico Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua, had formally betrothed Dorotea and Galeazzo in 1456 when Galeazzo was twelve; Dorotea’s betrothal to Galeazzo ended when she died in 1467. *** Letter 2: 6 October 1458 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan In her first letter to her father about her bird hunting, Ippolita tells him she has both good and bad news. The good news is that just outside of Lodi en route to Castelleone, she caught three quails with her own hand. But the bad news is that she lost the hunting dog her father gave her. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most honorable f­ ather, After the departure of your most illustrious Lordship, we arrived at Melegnano7 to dine and from there to supper and sleep at Lodi, during which journey I caught three quails with my own hand. From there after having breakfast we went to the country house of Zoane [Giovanni]8 Francesco da Muzano to have lunch. Then, having passed the Adda to Vinzasca, we arrived at Castelleone9 in hearty and hale spirits, and were welcomed so graciously that it’s impossible to describe. They say there are few quail here but plenty of partridges. I don’t know how my hawk will react to these, but if I can make a good catch it will be all your Lordship’s. I must also inform you, to my great unhappiness, that at Melegnano I 6. On Galeazzo’s hunting animals, see above, Introduction, note 55. 7. Melegnano, which Ippolita spells both Maregnano and Meregnano, was often a stop en route to another Sforza hunting lodge across the Adda at Castelleone. From there the family party was within easy reach of the duchess’s castle at Cremona. 8. We give names in Italian as they appear in the original letters. 9. Travelling east from Lodi, after crossing the Adda river, Ippolita’s hungry party arrived at the site of a Sforza hunting lodge.

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lost the dog that was given me. Therefore, if you would deign to do so, I beg your Excellency to see if she has by chance come back to Milan and to have her sent back to me. In sum, my Lord, no pleasure would be lacking here save the presence of your magnanimous Lordship, whom, since his absence has been somewhat longer than usual, I truly have the greatest desire to see. In the meantime, I humbly commend myself to your Lordship. From Castelleone. 6 October 1458. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 3: 8 October 1458 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita sends her father a second letter from the family hunting lodge at Castelleone. Her letter makes clear her preference for outdoor activities over indoor pursuits, her passion for hunting, and her pride in her own skill. She bagged sixteen quails herself. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most revered ­father, To obey the most gracious letters of your most illustrious Lordship, as befits me your most faithful daughter, I have given and will continually give your greetings to the illustrious lady my mother, which are more pleasing to her than anything else.10 As to your Excellency’s proposals for what I preferred to do today, which was Sunday, either to dance or go bird hunting, I chose to go outdoors and make a catch for your most illustrious Lordship and so I am sending sixteen of them to you. I commend myself as always to your Lordship. From Castelleone. 8 October 1458. The quails mentioned above have my name tied to their feet so that they can be distinguished from the others. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. ***

10. Castaldo notes at 3n1 that during this time her father asks Ippolita to send greetings to his wife several times a day to ease marital tensions.

Travels in Lombardy (1453–1465) 65 Letter 4: 12 October 1458 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan Here Ippolita thanks her father for the gift of some beautiful hounds he has sent her to replace the dog she lost. She notes, however, that she and her friends have not been able to catch the hares they have seen running through the forest. She is happy to report, though, that one of her attendants has found the dog they thought was lost. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most revered ­­father, I have received your most delightful letters together with the hounds,11 which are very beautiful. I can’t write anything about your generous gift since I have not yet tried them, even if I know they will be excellent, since what belongs to your illustrious Lordship could not be otherwise. I thank you from the bottom of my heart as deeply as it is possible for me to do and I will take good care of them as your Excellency recommends. I wish to let your Lordship know that Zoanne [Giovanni] Christiano found my little dog and sent her to me in the care of Michele Trombetta. On Wednesday I did not go out but I sent your Lordship the catch I had made on Tuesday. I found few quails in fact but we did find three hares [levore], which I saw very clearly as they ran, and if our female dogs had been good, we would have caught them. Donato says that it’s indeed necessary to have good hounds [livereri], to catch them in this country—they run so quickly and if he had a good hound perhaps he might be able to catch one of the hares for your Lordship. The most illustrious lady my mother and the most illustrious lady my grandmother, together with my glorious brothers, are quite well and we commend ourselves always to your Lordship. From Castelleone. 12 October 1458. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand *** Letter 5: 30 October 1458 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan In another letter she sent from the Sforza hunting lodge, Ippolita confesses to her father the hurt and sorrow she felt when she read the letter he had sent her mother in which he joked dismissively about Ippolita’s and her friends’ bird hunting. 11. Bracca, bracchi in plural: foxhound, beagle.

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..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most revered ­­father, The most illustrious lady my mother has shown me a letter from your Lordship in which you speak mockingly of many of our group, teasing and criticizing them quite sharply for their bird hunting. The fact that your Lordship mentions me in particular would have made me anxious had I not remembered that I am a very young girl and I am new at this business. And given that I was a beginner, I made quite good catches—in which your Lordship also benefited. And therefore I do believe that you joke about my sister and me in order to protect others and not because we deserve it, since, all things considered, we have done our duty quite adequately for this year. And so that we can be better prepared in the year to come, I am sending your Excellency the hawk you gave me and another which that good soul Alovisino gave me, together with a hound called Belina. Because these are such fine animals, I’m asking your illustrious Lordship to give them to a person who understands them and who will care for them for me until the time of the hunt. I’m also sending a pair of hounds, one called Pezolo and the other Scarsella, which your Lordship will dispose of as he pleases, since they say they are not good. The illustrious lady my mother, the entire company here and I, all happy and in good spirits, commend ourselves always to your most felicitous Lordship, desiring most of all to see you. From Castelleone. 30 October 1458. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand *** Letter 6: 15 December [15 November] 145812 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan Despite the hurt she felt at her father’s last letter, and despite having her mother’s large and demonstrably loving family and their friends around her at her mother’s castle in Cremona, Ippolita writes her father that she misses him terribly and longs only to see him. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most revered ­­father, Neither in the days past nor at present has anything worthy of writing your Excellency occurred to me—only that I have a very great desire to visit your Lordship again, since you are all my happiness and my hope, and you above all 12. At 6n1, Castaldo argues that Letter 6 is misdated and should be 15 November 1458.

Travels in Lombardy (1453–1465) 67 I continually desire to see again. I believe, however, that in the next few days the very illustrious lady marchesa13 will be here; and after her departure, I believe that her excellency the lady my mother will leave. This will seem like a very long time to me, considering the very great desire I have to see your Lordship again. The very illustrious lady my mother, the very illustrious lady my grandmother, the very illustrious count Galeazzo and Filippo and the lady Drusiana my sister and I, together with all our ladies and gentlemen, who ourselves are all in good health and good spirits, continually commend ourselves to your Lordship. Cremona. 15 December 1458. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand *** Letter 7: 2 December 1458 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan Now that the festivities are over and Barbara of Brandenburg, marchesa of Mantua, and her daughter Dorotea, will soon leave Cremona, Ippolita tells her father how eagerly she looks forward to rejoining him at last at his castle in Milan with her mother and her siblings. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most honorable f­ ather, My illustrious Lordship, the illustrious lady marchesa and the great lady my sister,14 the glorious countess, have already been here for a few days, having been welcomed with all the good cheer and kindness in the world by the illustrious lady my mother, who arranged all those honors and festivities as her ladyship knows how to do. To be brief, it seemed to me that the festivities were so great that not only Cremona but the whole world was rejoicing. It now appears that the aforementioned lady marchesa must leave on Monday. This is why I take consolation and hope with the greatest desire and all due respect to visit you and to see your magnanimous Lordship again. And because her ladyship [the marchesa] has reproached me for not having done a small and easy thing which she had assigned to me, I’m very happy her ladyship can speak as she pleases, but I let her know that I have followed her directions every day, nor will I ever fail to do so unless it is impossible to do so, 13. At 7n1, Castaldo identifies the “madonna marchegiana” as Barbara of Brandenburg. 14. Ippolita refers to Dorotea as “mia sorella.”

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which will soon be the case since her ladyship will be going to Cassalmaggiore without me. The llustrious lady my mother, and the illustrious lady my grandmother, the count Galeazzo, Filippo, Lady Drusiana and I all together, in good health and good spirits, commend ourselves as always to your Excellency. Cremona. 2 December 1458. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 8: 9 December 1458 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita here has been delegated by her ­father, she reports, to notify him of his family’s departure from Cremona and their projected arrival date in Milan. She prays for good weather for the journey and tells him that “each hour will seem like a thousand years” until they arrive home. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most revered ­­father, Above all the other letters, my Lord, I recently received one with the most beautiful writing and the most pleasing sentiments, in which your most ardent wish to see all of us again, and especially the very illustrious lady my mother, was truly apparent. I read your letter to her and it gave her ladyship and all who were present the greatest pleasure. And since the letter mentioned that your illustrious Lordship would consider it a special favor if I wrote about our return to Milan as well as the journey to Cassalmaggiore, I asked her to please let me know when she planned to leave here, so that I might be among the first to announce this very pleasing news to your illustrious Lordship. She told me that we will leave here next Thursday and that we should be in Milan on Saturday. And so I pray that God will provide good weather and a good journey, so that our travels15 will be as pleasant at the end as they were in the beginning and the middle. All of us, being happy and in good health, commend ourselves to your magnanimous Lordship, though one hour will seem like a thousand years to us until the longed-for Saturday. Cremona. 9 December 1458. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. 15. “La nostra cavalcada” suggests a procession or train of carriages.

Travels in Lombardy (1453–1465) 69 ***

Letters 9–10 Ippolita’s next two letters to her father from Pavia were written in September 1459. Read together, the two letters form a travel diptych. Letter 9 describes the sightseeing excursion Ippolita enjoyed with her two grandmothers, Bianca Maria’s mother Agnese del Maino and Francesco Sforza’s mother Lucia Terzani da Marsciano.16 The excursion featured tours of the Visconti castle at Pavia and the Certosa monastery of Pavia, which Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti had founded as a family mausoleum in 1396. Letter 10 suggests the magnificent meeting that Ippolita imagines took place in the papal chambers of the Vatican when her father was in Rome. During his visit there, Francesco Sforza met with not only the newly-elected Pope Pius II and his cardinals but also the Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga and Marchesa Barbara of Brandenburg, who were accompanied by their daughter Dorotea. Neither letter mentions the international Congress of Mantua (1459–1460) the pope had convened to mount a crusade against the Ottoman Turks. Ippolita herself, then fourteen, delivered a Latin oration there stating her father’s commitment to the crusade to liberate Constantinople provided the other Italian princes also joined.17 *** Letter 9: 3 September 1459 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most revered ­­father, Although, my Lordship, I am very certain that you have been advised of the well-being of the very illustrious ladies my grandmothers, and the very illustrious lady my mother, and the renowned count Galeazzo, nonetheless to fulfill your Lordship’s wishes and my duty, I send you the news that by the grace of God all of them are in excellent health. Nor could I, my Lordship, express the great pleasure and delight the illustrious lady my grandmother derived from seeing the whole castle, the relics, Saint Augustine, the other monasteries, and the city of Pavia with its park. She viewed these places partly on foot and partly from her carriage—and she did so with more robust energy and eagerness than anyone among us youngsters. Now that we have seen the Certosa, we think again of seeing your Lordship, to whom we continually commend ourselves. Pavia. 3 September 1459. 16. Lucia Torciani da Masciano in Castaldo. Lucia was the longtime mistress of Francesco’s f­ather, Giacomuzzo (Muzio) Attendolo Sforza, count of Cotignola. 17. Ippolita’s Oration for Pope Pius II (1459) is given below.

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Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand *** Letter 10: 20 September 1459 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most revered ­­father, My Lord, although my heart seized with the tenderest love at your departure, as is fitting for a most devoted and faithful daughter, nonetheless every moment I rejoice more in thinking of your Lordship’s great pleasure in visiting the holy father [Pope Pius II] and in seeing those reverend monsignors the cardinals, together with the most illustrious lord marchese [Ludovico Gonzaga] and the lady marchesa [Barbara of Brandenburg] with their distinguished children, and in particular, the lady contessa, my most beloved sister [Dorotea]. Though I do not know how to describe them all with words, I imagine in my mind the great festivities and honors they will offer your Lordship. The most illustrious lady my mother, the renowned count Galeazzo and I commend ourselves to you at every moment and we await your return with the greatest longing and devotion. Cremona. 20 September 1459. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand ***

Letters 11–19 In a suite of seven letters she sends to her parents in early May 1462, Ippolita, now seventeen, describes the pleasures, sights, and hospitality she experiences on a week-long pilgrimage to Varese. Ippolita and her party travel northwest from Milan to Cassin Musocco, Bollate, Caronno, Saronno, Cislago, Tradate, and finally Varese. On their return to Milan they stop at Castiglione Olana.18 After riding or walking for hours each day, Ippolita and her party are often entertained with lavish 18. We assume Ippolita meant by “Caron” the modern Caronno north of Milan and south of Saronno. After Caron, she stops at “Terdate” (the modern Tradate, a town also on her route north to Varesio (the modern Varese), and Castiglione Olana, another stop-over on her itinerary to Varese. Castiglione Olana, a town Galeazzo frequented for its bear hunting, is not to be confused with Castelleone, where Ippolita spends at least two days with her family in 1458. We give all place names in their modern Italian versions.

Travels in Lombardy (1453–1465) 71 meals when they reach their destination and are sometimes fêted with music and dancing. The purpose of her itinerary is not only to express devotion and to enjoy nature and bird hunting but also to visit historic country houses and their gardens and to strengthen the bonds of sociability and kinship in the duchy. Though not mentioned in these letters, Ippolita’s father has for some time been suffering from a wasting disease. In January 1462, rumors were circulating throughout Italy that the duke was near death, but by February he had rallied.19 These letters bear no hint of the growing turmoil regarding the succession to the ducal throne that Ippolita must have witnessed herself in Milan. No longer addressed to her father alone, her letters during this period are directed to both parents or solely to the duchess.20 *** Letter 11: 5 May 1462 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Day 1 of the trip to Varese: Bollate Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, Today about a mile away from Cassin Musocco,21 signora Antonia, her son Francesco, and my Rosana together with many other women approached me and seeing me here they cheerfully welcomed me. Then they similarly welcomed my entire company with as much good will and honor as you could imagine. The charming signora Zoanna [Giovanna] arrived when I entered. She dined with the group and then she left. A little later, signor Ruberto and signora Zoanna returned. And at about 20 hours, after I left Cassin Musocco and thanked signora Antonia again, signor Ruberto and signora Zoanna, though against my wishes, accompanied me a long way. After having taken my leave of them, I arrived at Bollate22 at around 22 hours, undisturbed by either heat or fatigue. I hope to make a similar journey in the future and to finish my pilgrimage with the greatest pleasure. After having napped a little back at Cassin Musocco, I saw my very illustrious lord father’s horses, which he had recently purchased, and I found them quite pleasing. I commend myself to your most illustrious Ladyship and similarly to the excellence of the very illustrious lord my father. Bollate. 5 May 1462. 19. Menniti Ippolito, “Sforza, Francesco,” 11. 20. The Latin address is “Ill.ma princeps…” but on the back of the letter the address reads: “[Ill.me prin]cipi et Ex.me domine d. et matri honorandissim[a]e domin[a]e [ducisse] Mediolani, etc.” 21. Cassin Musocco lay right outside Milan on the route to Varese. Antonia, Francesco, Rosana, and the others mentioned in this suite of letters are unknown to us. 22. Ippolita writes “Bolà.” The modern town of Bollate is six miles northwest of Milan.

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Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most faithful servant and most devoted daughter, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 12: 6 May 1462 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Day 2 of the trip to Varese: Caronno to Saronno Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, This morning I left Bollate almost at sunrise and from there madonna Zoanna and her daughter Ludovica traveled with me and at 12 hours we reached Caronno,23 where after having gone to mass, I hoped they would dine with me. But they said they wanted to stay together with the group and to spend their own money because of a certain vow, and so I was content to do as they wished. This evening I will go to Saronno24 quite happily and truly with almost no fatigue. And so I ask your Ladyship if you would look kindly on my affairs, since I hope to finish this journey with great pleasure and devotion. Today I am writing to the very illustrious lord my father in my own hand. Yesterday, however, I did not write because my servants had me believe that I was exhausted, though it did not seem so. I commend myself to your very illustrious Ladyship and to his excellency my lord father. From Caronno. 6 May 1462. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 13: 7 May 1462 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Day 3 of the trip to Varese: Saronno to Cislago Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, This past night I stayed at Saronno in your illustrious Ladyship’s lodge [stantia],25 which was highly pleasing to my magnificent uncle26 and all these 23. Now known as Caronno Pertusella; it is located northwest of Milan. 24. Written Seron and Saron. 25. The ducal family had a number of hunting lodges they visited regularly. 26. The uncle Ippolita names could be either of Bianca Maria’s uncles, Andreotto and Lancillotto del Maino, or Francesco Sforza’s half-brother Bosio Sforza, Count of Cotignola. All three of those men

Travels in Lombardy (1453–1465) 73 gentlemen, and deservedly so since from the chambers, the halls, and the other buildings to the beautiful garden and the good air, nothing is lacking to make it a perfectly delightful place. And so we were sorely disappointed that the table had been laid at Caronno and that we didn’t arrive there [to Saronno] to dine, since otherwise we would have been able to enjoy the lodge and the garden for the whole day. Therefore, my magnificent uncle has decided he would prefer to stay there on the return trip rather than at Caronno, where one cannot stay so comfortably. This morning I arrived at Cislago before the 11th hour and messer Guido and madonna Lionora came to meet me and welcomed me warmly. So far I have not found anything on this journey that would in my opinion please your most illustrious Ladyship or I would happily have sent it to you. Therefore, I beg you to excuse me if I do not send you anything. At Saronno I was gladly met by those men and they gave me four sacks of fodder. I commend myself always to my most illustrious lord ­father, his excellency. From Cislago. On the 7 May 1462. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 14: 7 May 1462 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Day 3 of the trip to Varese: Cislago to Tradate Most illustrious Princess, most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, This morning I reached Cislago, as I wrote, and the wonderful messer Guido and madonna Lionora received me with such good will and warmth and honored me with such festivities and affection at their table with the greatest abundance and variety of food that it appeared that they were welcoming not me but a god into their abode. And then, against my wishes, both of them accompanied me all the way to Carbonate,27 which makes me very unhappy since they suffered such heat and made such an effort for me, though they needn’t have done so. But their entreaties were so great that I couldn’t refuse them. Then when I reached Abbiate Guazzone,28 the brothers of the honorable messer Pietro da Posterla came to welcome me with a great crowd of men and women dancing continually to the sound of fifes. And, having reached the castle at 22 hours, I went to dinner after a while, where the multitude and variety of the dishes exhausted me and whom both Ippolita and Galeazzo considered their uncles remained close to the Sforza court as long as they lived. The uncle in question seems to have been traveling with Ippolita. 27. Written “Carbonara.” 28. Written “Abià Guazone.”

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the whole company, nor do I believe that the honor that was done me could be heightened by any greater variety or kind of thing. Then they gave me a present, which I am sending to your Ladyship, who, I wish, because of your favor as well as your affection, could share in these very great pleasures. I want to advise your Ladyship also of the kindness of messer Bartolomeo Caino at Carbonate, for he prepared for me a lunch there, and with heartfelt cheer he absolutely insisted on welcoming the entire company. When I am with your Ladyship, I shall tell you all these things in greater detail, to repay in part the generosity of these gentlemen as well as to satisfy my own heart. I commend myself always to your Excellency and to my illustrious father. From Tradate. 7 May 1462. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 15: 8 May 1462 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Day 4 of the trip to Varese: arrival. Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother. This morning I left Tradate29 around 9 hours accompanied against my wishes by the brothers of the honorable Pietro da Posterla for a long mile, to a place where they had prepared a meal, although none of the gentlemen wanted to have it at this hour. Finally, having taken leave of them and having thanked them again as I thought best, I reached the bridge at Vedano30 in good time, from where, after we heard mass and dined at the suggestion of my magnificent uncle and the others, we moved slowly on so that we would arrive at Varese before the heat rose. And here I was cheerfully accompanied by Francesco and many men and women who had come to meet me, first to the church of San Vittore, since today was the day of their festival, and then to my lodging. And here I was given generous presents indeed by many, namely Monsignore da Como, Francesco da Varese, the podestà, and by many other men, of whom I will speak later in detail to your most illustrious Ladyship, in part to repay their generosity and good will toward me. Then we met the betrothed daughter of the illustrious madonna Beatrice. But in order to share my presents with your Excellency, I am sending you a chamois, some baby goats, and some asparagus. If I had better things, I would gladly send them. I pray that your Ladyship will appreciate the spirit of my gift more than the gift itself. Tomorrow morning with the grace of Our Lady I will proceed on my 29. She writes here “Terdà.” 30. Probably the bridge that crosses the Olona river at the town of Vedano Olona.

Travels in Lombardy (1453–1465) 75 journey. I commend myself to your Ladyship and to the illustrious lord my father. From Varese. 8 May 1462. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 16: 9 May 1462 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Day 5 of the trip to Varese: end of the pilgrimage. Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most honorable mother, Today at around 9 hours, following the advice of my uncle, I went to the church of Our Lady and in accordance with my vows I heard first the mass sung and then I listened as attentively as I could to a second mass spoken, in order to fulfill my vows and my devotion. And then the archpriest from Melegnano31 allowed neither me nor my company to want for anything at all and he did so with such excellent will to serve and such enormous generosity as befit a most loyal servant. Therefore I thanked him most graciously to the best of my small ability, but I beg your most illustrious Ladyship to make up for any failing as you see fit. After returning to Varese on foot as an act of devotion, although many people wanted me to travel by horse, I received presents from the abbot of Lardirago and the magnificent count Franchino. And I am sending to your most illustrious Ladyship a portion of these presents: namely, three calves, five baby goats, and some cheeses. Likewise I am giving two baby goats to my distinguished brothers and two little rabbits to madonna Isabeta and to Ascanio, my sweetest brother.32 I certainly could not imagine how I could have been more graciously received by these communities. And also following my desire, I have fulfilled my devotional duties in part. So I thank Our Lady and now desire nothing but to see your illustrious Ladyship again, to whom I commend myself insofar as I know how to and am capable. From Varese. 9 May 1462. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** 31. Written “Mareglian.” Melegnano is southeast of Milan. She refers to the place as “Melegnano” in Letter 19. 32. Ascanio Sforza, then seven years old.

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Letter 17: 11 May 1462 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Day 7: The return trip to Milan: stopping en route at Castiglione Olona Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, In my uncle’s judgment, no one could do me greater honor than Francesco da Varese has done. And after those gentlemen of Castiglione33 had come to meet us around 12 hours, we arrived there and were indeed welcomed most generously and willingly, whereupon a response was delivered to me from your most illustrious Ladyship, in which you strengthened the great desire I have to see your Excellency and the most illustrious lord my father and you acknowledged the receipt of my present. And yet, although I am close by, I feel I am far away. The period of a few days seems to me to be one of many years. Therefore at my uncle’s wish and following his opinion, I will come to you with my spurs honed, there not being anything I desire more than the presence of your most illustrious Ladyship, to whom I continually commend myself and likewise to the excellence of the most illustrious lord my father. Castiglione. 11 May 1462. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 18: 19 June 1462 To Barbara of Brandenburg, marchesa of Mantua Ippolita, now back at the Sforza castle in Milan, has received a beautiful gift from Barbara of Brandenburg, the marchesa of Mantua, and writes to thank her—addressing her as “mother,” a notable use of domestic discourse to underscore her own family’s close ties to the Gonzaga family. ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my most honorable mother, I have received the gracious letter and the beautiful basket your most excellent Ladyship sent me. Its shape is truly wonderful and its craftmanship is delicate, and if there had not been the letter from your Ladyship, in which you wrote explicitly that the basket was to be given to me, her excellency my lady mother would have wanted to keep it for herself, by any means—saying it was sent to her ladyship! But her plan did not work because of your prudence, for which I give you the greatest thanks. But if you do have some other work of art or 33. The modern town of Castiglione Olona located northwest of Milan on the road to Varese.

Travels in Lombardy (1453–1465) 77 craftsmanship, I beg your most illustrious Ladyship to deign by your generosity to share it with me since I have not only had enough of the craft used here—though I practice it it daily—but I am even annoyed by it at this point. I commend myself always to your Ladyship, praying that you will commend me to the very illustrious marchese and also to my dearest sister [Dorotea] and all your Ladyship’s sons and daughters. Milan. 19 June 1462. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis34 Your most devoted daughter, Ippolita Maria Visconti etc. *** Letter 19: 30 September 1463 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan Written more than a year after Letter 18, this letter from Ippolita boasts to her father that she, her brothers and sisters, and her mother are having a wonderful time at Melegnano. Despite her not having written until now or sent him any game, she and her siblings are enjoying the glorious weather, the hunting, and their lodgings at the ancient Visconti castle. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most revered ­father, Ever since we arrived a Melegnano I have not been able to send you, my Lord, any game I have caught, nor have I been able to write you about any of our great pleasures, despite the lovely air, the beauty of this castle and the good news, which must be attributed first to God and then solely to the divine prudence of your most illustrious Lordship. Such things have truly cheered us more than any other pleasure we could have had. But if time allows I will strive to share our pleasant pastimes with your Excellency, to whom we—above all, the most illustrious lady my mother, my illustrious brothers and sisters, and I—commend ourselves. From Melegnano. 30 September 1463. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. ***

34. Ippolita adopts the formula usually reserved for family members, again showing the close link between her family and the Gonzagas.

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Letters 20–22 February and March 1465 were months fraught with anxiety for the duke and duchess of Milan because their firstborn daughter was soon to leave them to spend the rest of her life in the largest and most turbulent city-state in Italy as the wife of Alfonso, duke of Calabria and son of King Ferrante of Naples. Between 1459 and 1464, there had been a series of baronial revolts against the crown in the kingdom of Naples. The Italian League itself was in shambles because Francesco Sforza himself, with his acquisition of Genoa, had broken its terms. Moreover, the death of Cosimo de’ Medici in 1464 threatened Sforza with the loss of financial support both for his own reign and his military operations in the duchy. The emotional bonds not only between Ippolita and her parents but also between her mother and father are palpable in these letters. In letters 20 and 21, we learn of her mother Bianca Maria’s sudden illness and Francesco’s extreme concern for his wife’s health and well-being. *** Letter 20: 10 February 1465 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most revered ­father, On Friday at 22 hours the illustrious lady my mother and all of the rest of us arrived here healthy and in good spirits, but the next morning, either from the cold or from getting up too early in the morning, she did feel a little constriction,35 which indeed worries her ladyship and the rest of us more for fear that the malady may grow worse than for the pain she has at present. But as the day has gone on she has felt better, so that at this hour she appears to me to feel fine. And as it was my duty, I wanted to report this to your Lordship, to whom I always commend myself. Cremona. 10 February 1465. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria Visconti, etc. ***

35. “Serramento”: a tightness, blockage. Did they worry that this was the harbinger of a heart attack? Or did serramento indicate abdominal pain or blockage, of which she would ultimately complain before she died?

Travels in Lombardy (1453–1465) 79 Letter 21: 12 February 1465 To Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan Having remained constantly at her mother’s side for the past three days, Ippolita writes her father that her mother seems at last to be responding well to medication and that her condition has improved. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my Lord and most revered ­father, God knows with how much sorrow your Lordship wrote his last letter, in which it seemed to me I saw with my own eyes the great pain it gave your Lordship, so clearly did I understand it from your letter. But this was appropriate given the fear and duty of your most faithful daughter. Now by the grace of God I will write better news. I report to your Lordship that this past night and all day long today her ladyship has felt so much better than she did in previous days. Tonight I believe she will take pills and I hope that she will be completely cured. I commend myself to your Lordship. Cremona. 12 February 1465. 6th hour. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 22: 6 March 1465 To Barbara of Brandenburg, marchesa of Mantua In this letter written shortly before Ippolita would leave for her wedding in Naples, Ippolita expresses her family’s close bond with the Gonzagas, rulers of Mantua and longtime Sforza allies. She speaks most affectionately to the marchesa, Barbara of Brandenburg, whose daughter her brother is expected to marry. ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, as honorable as a mother, While your Excellency was here, I was compelled by my own heart and my own will, beyond that of her ladyship, my mother, to open my heart and show you the affection and good will and the reverence and devotion I have for you. But the excellence of your Ladyship is such that it does not seem to me that I satisfied one-thousandth part of the pleasure and respect that I was obliged to show you. I can assure you, however, that after your departure I constantly wept over my desire for your sweet presence, my heart crying when my eyes rested. But your pleasing letter written to her excellency, the illustrious madonna my mother,

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somewhat consoled me since it reported to me that your whole company was devoted to mortification of the flesh, fasting and prayer. Understanding through your example that these worldly things are fleeting and transitory, I have decided to do the same. And if it seems best to your most illustrious Ladyship, since your gentlemen asked me for some things, so as not to disturb their holy purpose, I shall change those to a string of paternosters and some acts of penitence. But so as not to irritate these novices of yours too much, I shall await your Excellency’s advice and opinion. The most illustrious madonna my mother is well and desires to hear the same from your Ladyship, to whom I continually commend myself and I pray you will deign to commend me to all your distinguished sons and daughters and to the charming group from Cremona. Cremona. 6 March 1465. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis36 Your most devoted daughter, Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand ***

2. Marriage and Betrayal: Letters 23–28 (1465–1466) In June 1465, Ippolita left Milan for Naples with a great train of attendants to meet her future consort Alfonso, duke of Calabria and son of King Ferrante of Naples. But the journey was almost called off en route because of the suspicious death of her brother-in-law Jacopo Piccinino. After a three-week wait, Ippolita proceeded to Naples. On 10 October 1465, Ippolita’s wedding to Alfonso was celebrated in Naples, and on 27 December their marriage was consecrated in the Castel Nuovo in Naples, and Ippolita became the duchess of Calabria. Between 6 and 15 January 1466, she dispatched a series of letters to her mother and father in Milan describing the pleasures and entertainments but also the daily humiliations and hurt she experienced at the palace due to her new husband’s behavior. On 15 January, Ippolita received word that her maternal grandmother, Agnese del Maino, to whom she had been very close, had died. Funeral services for her grandmother’s death were held in the palace. ***

36. She uses here the Latin valediction she reserves for her family, indicating the close tie between the Gonzaga and the Sforza.

Marriage and Betrayal (1465–1466) 81 Letter 23: 3 October 1465 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Ippolita’s first letter to her mother from Naples, posted two weeks after her arrival in the city from her new home at the Castel Capuano, expresses both her sense of sadness at the departure of the members of her immediate family but also her continuing sense of responsibility for the well-being of the family servants she has left behind. ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother,37 Tomorrow morning at an early hour my illustrious brothers will depart, which seems as strange to me and as painful to my senses, given our fraternal love and our sweet custom of being together, as your most illustrious Ladyship can surely imagine. Now I pray to God that he will bring them back safe and happy and preserve us all for a long and happy life. I commend to your Excellency Fiore de Beccaria, who was the fowler of the illustrious lord my grand­father,38 begging that it may please you, for the eternal memory of your father and for my love, to relieve him of his state of great want so that he may have the means to support to some degree his poor old age, whereby you would do me such a great favor. In addition, I beg your Ladyship, may it please you to place full trust in what the chancellor Bonifacio will report to you from me. On behalf of Aloise da Terzago, I have presented an important petition to his majesty the king, who has told me that he does wish to release Aloyse, but not at the present time because, as he has explained, he still needs him. I commend myself to your most illustrious Ladyship and to the illustrious madonna my grandmother, my brothers and my very sweet sister. From Castel Capuano in Naples. 3 October 1465. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria of Aragon Duchess of Calabria, etc. Baldo M.39 *** 37. Ippolita in this letter addresses only her mother Bianca Maria and makes no mention or her father throughout, even at the close of this letter where she commends herself only to her mother, grandmother, brothers and sisters. Her father is also not listed on the envelope as is usually the case. 38. Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan until his death in 1447. 39. This letter and subsequent ones are cosigned by Ippolita’s secretary Baldo Martorelli, who came with her to Naples.

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Letter 24: 6 January 1466 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Four months after her arrival in Naples, Ippolita reports that she has had a study [studio] made for herself where she can read and write in privacy. She asks her mother to send her paintings of her parents and siblings for the pleasure of seeing them. During the day she enjoys hunting and playing ball with her husband. At night, she is locked in her chambers by her own lady’s maid, which supposedly ensures the duchess’s safety but also prevents her from spying on her husband. At the letter’s end she thanks her mother’s lady-in-waiting for a fragrant unguent extracted from a civet40 that her mother used. ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, To reassure your most illustrious Ladyship, I can report that his most serene majesty, the lord king, is in excellent health, as he continually tells me in his delightful letters. The same can be said for my very illustrious consort, who has returned from Puglia for the celebration of the holidays here. He has made me so happy and continues to do so with hunting with falcons, with kites and playing ball, and also his reading and explaining to me one of his Spanish books on the governing of the state and many other moral issues.41 Similarly the most illustrious madonna Lionora42 and my other brothers and sisters here are very well, and we all commend ourselves to your excellency. Since I have had a study of my own made where I may read and write sometimes, I beg your most illustrious Ladyship, as I have written you at other times, to do me the favor of having paintings made for me in natural poses of his excellency, my lord ­father, and your Ladyship, and all my illustrious brothers and sisters, since, in addition to adorning my study, seeing them will provide me with constant comfort and pleasure. His holy majesty the lord king, on the day of the Epiphany, had arranged to give me a piece of cloth of crimson velvet silk, saying that as on that day the Magi gave such gifts, so did his majesty do so. And

40. “Zebitto,” by which Castaldo suggests Ippolita meant “zibetto,” or civet. The extract of civet was coveted for perfume. 41. This was Alfonso’s attempt to establish an intellectual connection with Ippolita, already renowned for her scholarly accomplishments, by showing off his knowledge of humanist texts instructing future rulers. Ippolita would probably already have read similar treatises in Latin or vernacular translations. 42. King Ferrante’s daughter Eleonora d’Aragona.

Marriage and Betrayal (1465–1466) 83 I responded to him that in his kindness he had compared me, his servant, to too great a personage43 and I thanked him an infinite number of times. My madonna Pietra has shown me a letter from your most illustrious Ladyship in which, among much exceedingly prudent and holy advice, you also recommend that she sleep with me. Regarding this, I am reporting to your Ladyship that as soon as the duke began to sleep with me, he had her put up in a room across from my rooms and he arranged to give her keys to guard and lock the doors. And so in the duke’s absence she always locks and bolts my door. But for a very good reason I do not allow her to sleep with me. I have forwarded the letter regarding madonna Emilia’s affair, adding a letter of my own with as much urgency as I could muster nor will I fail her in as far as I am able. I asked madonna Antonia da Melia for a little bit of your Ladyship’s civet ointment, but she never responded to me. I received small dabs of it and her grandaughter sent me a letter. And since the letter did not contain anything else,44 I thank them and your Ladyship for this. Tomorrow my illustrious consort will take me to Pozzuoli to hunt and to see those baths and the antiquities together with Solfatara, which they call “the mouth of the Inferno.”45 I am sure we will enjoy ourselves a lot. I commend most highly to your Excellency the wife of Donato Pistone, and Francesco di Baiacchi and Catalina di Visconte, his wife, who are the parents of my servant Galeazo Baiacca. I also commend to you the doctor of jurisprudence from Cremona, messer Zoanne Baptista, and all his brothers, who are also brothers of Gilio, my head cook. I also commend to your illustrious Ladyship madonna Margarita de Sanson’s young son who as the highest favor desires to work with the most illustrious lord my father as his mounted servant. Here all are very well and all again commend themselves to your Highness and likewise to the magnificent madonna my grandmother, and I pray your Ladyship will do me the favor of telling her how messer Lupuo Spagnolo never tires of speaking of her ladyship and of praising her to the skies. We also commend ourselves again to all my illustrious brothers and my sister. Castel Capuano. 6 January 1466. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti, etc. Baldo M. 43. Since the king, in describing his Epiphany gift to her, casts himself in the role of the Magi, he puts Ippolita in the role of Jesus Christ. 44. Ippolita seems to have received less of the ointment than she hoped for. 45. Solfatara is the shallow crater of a dormant volcano in Pozzuoli that emits sulfurous vapors considered curative.

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*** Letter 25: 13 Janury 1466 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Ippolita writes a letter of consolation to her mother Duchess Bianca Maria, whose mother Agnese del Maino has recently died. King Ferrante ordered the commemoration of her death with funeral rites in Naples. Ippolita covered her head in mourning as the custom in Naples dictated. ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, The proverb is indeed true that in human affairs every joy ends in tears. I had just arrived from Pozzuoli where I had enjoyed many pleasures and amusements with my illustrious consort when the sad news arrived of the death of the illustrious and excellent madonna my grandmother [Agnese del Maino], at which, sighing and weeping, I was overcome by the greatest sorrow as I recalled her great kindness and love toward me and all her grandchildren. But much more I remembered the extraordinary generosity and affection she lavished upon your most illustrious Ladyship as well as the very great love and respect that your Ladyship had for her: I believe that never could any daughter love or respect her mother more. Because of this memory I understood the boundless sorrow of your Excellency, which pierced my heart. But truly my illustrious consort gave me great comfort and consolation, for he grieved equally with me and comforted me with such wisdom, adding that her excellency had reached an advanced age and had both seen and left all her family members in the greatest happiness and that it was better to have died in this most blessed state. So it comforted me to put an end to weeping and to turn to the funeral oration, the offices and the prayers, and to do her the rightful honor of the funeral rites that she deserved. And thus we have ordered that this be done. And although his lordship had decided to go to Caiaza for my pleasure and diversion, he stayed here for this reason alone. I believe we will go there in the next several days. I commend to your most illustrious Ladyship a kinsman of messer Francesco Riccio of Naples, who, though he is a bodyguard of the most illustrious lord my ­father, has been removed, for what reason I do not know. Please pray his lordship that for love of me he may restore him. His holy majesty the lord king has written me that I should wear black and cover my head with strips of cloth under my veil, a style known as “Romanesque,” after the dress of Neapolitan women in mourning. And I have done so. I

Marriage and Betrayal (1465–1466) 85 commend myself always to your illustrious Ladyship. From Castel Capuano. 13 January 1466. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti Baldo M. *** Letter 26: 13 Janury 1466 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Soon after her arrival in Naples, Ippolita already assumes a political role: she writes to her mother to request financial support for her father’s principal general and her kinsman Roberto Sanseverino and his company of soldiers who want to return to Lombardy. She expects her father-in-law King Ferrante will also support Sanseverino. ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, The magnificent signor Roberto [Sanseverino] has spoken with me about his chancellor whom he sent to Lombardy. He told me about the report he had from him about what he had done. He is very disheartened about this report, almost in desperation, saying that in Lombardy he has pawned everything he owned except his life and that here he has no longer has a way to make a living. Because he always has been as great a servant to the most illustrious lord my father and your Excellency as he now is, and because he knows that your Excellencies can rely on him with as great a trust as you do on any other servant your Excellencies have, it seems proper for me to ask your Excellency, if the arrangement with the Florentines falls through and also the one with messer Tiberto, that at least you would let him enjoy this other arrangement which he has agreed to, that is, to have him come to Lombardy with his soldiers. The taxes and pay that the above-mentioned lord my father would give to him would amount to many thousands of ducats. And if his excellency allotted him six thousand ducats as a provision every year, which amounts to less than his taxes and pay, and if he arranged that his holy majesty the lord king would give him another six thousand, which he would gladly do, since when the magnificent signor Roberto spoke with his holy majesty, he told him several times that between the two of them, his holy

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majesty and the above-mentioned lord my ­father, they will support him in such a way that he will be able to sustain his company properly.46 I am most certain that if his excellency sent a man to the king and made him understand that Roberto is equally loyal to both of them, it would seem to the king that Roberto has made such provisions that his majesty the king would enter into this quite willingly, as I have said. And in this way he could live, and maintain his company properly, either here or in Lombardy or wherever seemed preferable to them. And so I beg your Excellency because of your love for me that, since the other arrangements he has sought have fallen through, you will deign to ensure with the illustrious lord my father that this one takes effect. In my view, because of the very great love he has always shown me, and also because of the good and constant company I have received from him, and now still more because here I have no other kinsman than him, I will strive to accomplish as much as I can with his majesty the lord king so that it will truly take the effect that I ardently desire in every respect. I commend myself always to your most illustrious Ladyship. From Castel Capuano. 13 January 1466. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 27: 15 Janury 1466 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Ippolita describes to her parents an earthquake in Naples that did not damage the houses there but terrified the inhabitants. She was alone when the quake struck. ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, On the 14th of the present month, which was Tuesday, at the hour of eight and three-quarters of the following night, there was in Naples and Capua and all the surrounding places an earthquake. Lasting for the space of a prayer for mercy, the quake damaged neither houses nor harmed persons, but it imbued all the people with the greatest fear because of the destruction wrought last time. And your Ladyship should know that I was not unaffected. 46. This run-on sentence expresses the complexity of Ippolita’s task as she tries with her mother’s mediation to arrange a high-stakes agreement between her father and father-in-law.

Marriage and Betrayal (1465–1466) 87 I can report that my most illustrious consort had gone to Nola to try out certain of his falcons, and he had already arranged with me that he would not return that night. Therefore I found myself sleeping alone and waking at the time of the earthquake, and so God—may he be blessed and thanked for everything— knows the fear I had. I can report the same thing for the rest of my household. Having sent for messer Francesco Carazolo, I came down from my rooms into the courtyard and there I stayed until it was time for the mass. And I sent immediately to Nola to see what had happened to my most illustrious consort, and likewise he sent someone to see about me. And then, starting with Baldo [Martorelli], I inquired about everyone in my household and I learned that, by the grace of God, there was no damage in any place. Then, when it became light, the Archbishop arrived in the city with a very grand and holy procession. And at 21 hours, when my consort returned, we went to stay in a little house in the garden where we will be entirely safe, although I hope to God the earthquake will not return again. I even wrote a letter in my own hand to his majesty the king to see how he was, and to learn whether a similar fright had occurred in those parts of Puglia. I would not have troubled your Ladyship with this except that I was afraid someone else might report it to you in another way, and I have written you the unvarnished truth, though I can tell you too that even during this time of this panic there were a thousand laughs. I commend myself always to your most illustrious Ladyship. From Castel Capuano. 15 January 1466. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti, etc. Baldo M. [Postscript]. My most illustrious consort has received permission from his holy majesty the king to take me to Caiazzo, where the magnificent signor Roberto [Sanseverino] will receive us. And so on Saturday we will go to Capua, which is thirteen miles from here, and then to Caiazzo, which is eight more miles. Perhaps we will await his majesty the king outside of Caiazzo in the surrounding countryside and then we will return to Naples with him. *** Letter 28: 3 February 1466 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan In this letter to her parents, Ippolita describes her visit with Alfonso to Robert Sanseverino in his beautiful house at Caiazzo. She and her husband also visit one of King Ferrante’s powerful advisers at his home in Pontelatone. They spend four days at Sanseverino’s house, though the hunting was a disappointment. The

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following day Ippolita paid court to King Ferrante at Castel Nuovo in Naples. Ferrante’s daughter Eleonora in turn paid a formal visit to Ippolita at Castel Capuano. In a postscript she adds that two royal delegations had arrived in Naples, one from Bavaria and the other from Hungary—importantly since Ferrante’s other most eligible daughter Beatrice would marry Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, in 1474.47 ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, These past days my most illustrious consort and I were in Caiazzo, which is the beautiful town of the magnificent lord Roberto [Sanseverino], and at Pontelatrone, the estate of the magnificent messer Diomedes [Diomede Carafa].48 But at Caiazzo we stayed four days and were well received and honored by all. It is true that although we went on three great hunts in those mountains we caught almost nothing, but turning our poor success in hunting into pleasure and fun, we laughed to ourselves about it. And so, having returned to Naples we were awaiting with the greatest anticipation his majesty the king, who returned last Wednesday. And he issued a command to me through messer Diomedes [Diomede Carafa] that I not go to meet him. And thus, since it was necessary for me to obey his command against my wishes, I awaited him at Castel Capuano, where his majesty indeed came to stay and visit and honor me with so many pleasantries that I myself was embarrassed in the presence of so many lords and ladies and all the people. I am reporting to your Ladyship that the resistance I show in no way helps me since I still must obey. The following day I went to visit him at Castel Novo. On the 3rd [of February], the most illustrious madonna Lionora [Eleonora d’Aragona] came first to Castel Capuano and then his majesty came, and thus with varied conversations and pleasures we live very pleasantly and with good will. His majesty and his most illustrious sons and daughters are most well and commend themselves to your Ladyship. [The next four paragraphs were added as postscripts to this letter.]: [1] I have received the present of your Ladyship in good condition, and although everything pleased me greatly, the most pleasing of all were the fat cheeses, which seemed to me to be the best I have ever eaten. I therefore thank your Excellency a million times, while I pray when a messenger comes that it may please you to send me a few more. And those men who bring them would do us 47. Pàsztor, “Beatrice d’Aragona.” 48. Carafa was one of the king’s most influential advisers.

Between Milan and Naples (1466–1467) 89 a great service if they set them out sometimes in the lodgings so they don’t taste moldy. [2] I have made a present of some of the cheeses to his holy majesty with a number of mushrooms I made with my own hands from marzipan and he was very pleased with these. [3] I commend myself always to your most illustrious Ladyship and to his lordship and to all my illustrious brothers and sister. And I beg you to have the latter write telling me how madonna Antonia da Perosia and my Iacomaccio are faring, as I have never had any news of them since I’ve been in Naples. From Castel Capuano. 3 February 1466. [4] Two new embassies have joined us here, one from Bavaria and the other from Hungary. But the one from Hungary comes with few horses, although his majesty the king sent a most honorable delegation to meet them. February 3, 1466. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti, etc. Baldo M. ***

3. Between Milan and Naples: Letters 29–36 (1466–1467) Letter 29: 29 [??] 1466 [or 1471?]49 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Francesco Sforza died on 8 March 1466. Delegated by her father-in-law King Ferrante to act as intermediary, Ippolita here attempts to bolster the relationship between the king and her brother Galeazzo, now duke of Milan, and to assure him that the king’s rapprochement with the Venetians was not an alliance against him. Ferrante, she assures Galeazzo, “loves him like a son.” She begs her brother not to give the king any grounds to change his mind. .....

49. Castaldo notes at 33n1 that the letter is missing the lower left corner and therefore lacks the indication of month and year. She notes also that the archivists have inserted the letter among those from the year 1466, in the papers from January, with the indication of “29 …”. We follow Castaldo in including this among the 1466 correspondence. Castaldo proposes, however, that the letter is from 1471, noting that while alliances between the Italian powers shifted frequently during the second half of the fifteenth century, on 1 January 1471 an unusual alliance was announced between Venice and Naples that excluded Milan.

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Most illustrious and most excellent Lord, my most loving brother, Although I have spoken with your Lordship’s ambassador many times about the love that his majesty the king carries in his heart for you, and I know that he has seen to it that your Lordship knows this, I nevertheless want you to be made aware of what has happened at present. His majesty the king in his kindness deigned to come to see me and he indulged me as he is wont to do; and then he began to discuss your Lordship with so much love that even our lord father (happy be his memory) could not have outdone him, and he said that one the greatest pleasures he could have would be for your Lordship to understand the greatness of his love for you and also that, on his honor, he would act with as pure a heart for the benefit of your Lordship as he would for my lord, the duke [Alfonso]. But I understand that his majesty regrets that your Lordship seems to him to be a bit unhappy about the matter with the Venetians. And he said that no one can know better than your Lordship if what had been done was as it seemed to his majesty, if things would remain as they stood, and he said that your Lordship had doubts about the alliance that his majesty had made with the Venetians. The king says that was never his intention to do anything that was against your Lordship and of that you can be most certain. But it seems to him better to keep them [the Venetians] as friends because being friends with his Majesty means that they of course should be friends with your Lordship since his heart tells him that you and he are one and the same and he considers your Lordship’s good as his own. Moreover, it appears to me that his Majesty expresses this perfectly and I do not believe that he utters these words with his mouth; rather he said them in such a way that one clearly understood that they came from his heart. And so, my dear brother, do conduct yourself in such a way that he knows that your Lordship considers it absolutely clear that his Majesty loves you more than if you were his own son. And do not give him grounds to change his mind from so good an opinion and do take care to live happily and give the rest of us, and especially me, reason to do the same since all the world’s pleasures are as nothing to me when I hear that your Lordship is in a disagreement with his lord the king. And please—since his majesty the king is spending the winter outside Naples and without him pleasures are of no account and since this summer we are thinking of staying here—your Lordship should act accordingly by staying with his majesty, so that you can spend time with with good cheer and festivities, since his majesty has promised this to us and your Lordship’s presence will be the reason he keeps his word. And so his duty will be a pleasure for others, since when the news is good from your Lordship, the pleasures [are] doubly good, and when it is not those pleasures are poisoned for me. Do not marvel, your Lordship, that I

Between Milan and Naples (1466–1467) 91 am writing such a long letter since the love I bring to you […]50 is surely no better for your Lordship than having the love that comes from those who understand one another. And also I wish to live without worry but instead pleasantly as I am sure my dearest sister does.51 I desire most urgently to see both of you, and I commend myself to each of you in turn. Sent from Naples on the 29th…1466 [or 1471?]. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most loving sister, Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand52 *** Letter 30: 13 January 1467 To Bianca Maria Visconti, dowager duchess of Milan Early in 1467, Ippolita’s own complaints about her husband’s infidelities had caused her mother and her brother to dispatch the Milanese nobleman Pietro da Landriano to Naples to warn her against conduct that could harm the alliance between the two states. In this letter, though also addressed to her mother, Ippolita strains to clear up any remaining misunderstandings between her and her brother Galeazzo, now duke of Milan, on whose material as well as moral support she depends. She also seeks to reassure her brother of Alfonso’s commitment to her despite her past sorrow over what she refers to as “the duke’s nature.” ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, I very much regret that I caused your Ladyship concern with my letters, and yet I wrote in order not to hide the things that have happened. I was mistaken when I said that the lord duke did not love me. I wanted to send you news as was right to do, but certainly great pain caused me to do it. About your Ladyship’s writing that I should not wish to put any of my servants in jeopardy, I will see to that. And at present it is not necessary to send other people to learn about these things because I hope that I will find someone here to understand the duke’s 50. The ellipsis here indicates damage in the document. Other passages are reconstructed around lacunae. 51. This could be an ironic reference to Drusiana, the widow of the murdered condottiere Jacopo Piccinino. Drusiana’s life has been anything but anxiety-free since his death. If this letter dates to 1471, Sforza may refer to her sister-in-law Bona of Savoy—by then married to Galeazzo—whom Sforza called “sister” in other letters. 52. This hand looks very different from her other autographs.

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nature. Your Ladyship will be told by Pietro [da Landriano]53 how I comport myself with his lord the duke and I have spoken thus to his lord the king. I believe that with time everything will be settled. The arrival of Pietro was most gratifying to me since I heard that your Ladyship is well and since I was able to speak about this situation, which he was able to address in the most appropriate way possible with my lord the duke; and he wants to speak about it with his lord the king. But how is it possible that I would not be saddened as your Ladyship commands and compels me with recourse to the love I have for your Ladyship, since things stand as I wrote to your Ladyship and likewise the situation with Donato, which I will never forget.54 And then I was struck not only by a wound in my heart but I believe that if your Ladyship understood by half how much pain I suffered and will suffer, you would no longer be able to recognize Ippolita as the person she was, is, and will be for as long as she lives and suffers. I know at least some if not all of the things they have reported because I am receiving similar dispatches from your Ladyship, as Pietro told me in person. Even at this time his lord the king has not released Pietro because he is still waiting to receive money. I do hope that he will release him with favorable terms. I commend myself to your Ladyship and give thanks to God that I am having a good pregnancy and that I am healthy. From Castel Capuano. 13 January 1467. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria *** Letter 31: 12 February 1467 To Bianca Maria Visconti, dowager duchess of Milan Ippolita, now a married woman of twenty-two and a duchess in her own right, still seeks approval from her mother, not only on the conduct of her marriage but also in the custom of wearing mourning dress. Should she still be wearing black,

53. Pietro da Landriano acted as a go-between to smooth relations between Ippolita and Alfonso. Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 129. 54. Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 128: letters from Antonio da Trezzo to Bianca Maria Visconti indicate that Ippolita had commissioned faithful servant Donato (whom she brought with her from Milan) to spy on her husband—thus creating even more trouble—and Alfonso eventually had him beaten, to great diplomatic embarrassment. Castaldo, 34n1, notes that Antonio da Trezzo cautioned Bianca Maria in his letter: “Your Excellency has been jealous too, but I don’t think it ever gnawed at you like it does your daughter” (La Ex. V. ha facto prova de la gelosia, ma credo non gli fossivo mai tanto dentro quanto gli è vostra figliola). 22 December 1466, ASM, Potenze Estere-Napoli, 216.

Between Milan and Naples (1466–1467) 93 she asks Bianca Maria, now that eleven months have elapsed since her father’s death? ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, Since Pietro [da Landriano] is writing a complete message to your Ladyship, I won’t write a long letter myself except that I beg your Ladyship advise me as to when it seems proper to wear another color besides black. I don’t want to make the change without permission from your Ladyship, to whom I always commend myself and to whom I can report that I am in the best of health. From Castel Capuano. 12 February 1467. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria *** Letter 32: 21 March 1467 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan While the war between Ippolita and her husband Alfonso over his affairs continued two years into the marriage, the Sforza’s unofficial ambassador to the couple, Pietro da Landriano, was neither able to bring about a truce between the two sides nor to be otherwise compensated. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my most loving brother, I am reporting to your Lordship that I am most well and I look forward to hearing the same from your Lordship. Indeed I regret that Pietro [da Landriano] has not returned with the terms of release that your Lordship and I both desired. I vouch to your Lordship that the aforementioned Pietro left no reason not to be released quickly and with favorable terms and I fear that he has taken an oath never to return to Naples again, given how much grief he took from this affair. I commend myself to your Lordship always. From the Castel Capuano. 21 March 1467. Eiusdem Vestre Regie55 Your most loving sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. 55. “Of your same realm.” Ippolita here varies on Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis, the formula she almost always uses in her valediction to family members.

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*** Letter 33: 19 May 1467 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan In dispatching Milan’s bona fide ambassador, Giovanni Andrea Cagnola, to visit Ippolita, Galeazzo upped the ante. Cagnola was not simply a family friend like Pietro da Landriano, but an official representative of the Milanese state. A chastened Ippolita here wonders whether Galeazzo has forgiven her for her role in the Donato affair. ..... Most illustrious and most excellent Lord, my most beloved brother, I cannot begin to express the great pleasure I have received from the official visit and embassy that your ambassador messer Giovanni Andrea [Cagnola] made to me on behalf of your Lordship. And yet he told me that your Lordship said you had no reason to treat me in this way. I am certain that you said this to make me a little suspicious. Therefore I pray you, my Lord and dear brother, not to say this again, since there could be nothing that makes me sadder because your Lordship once said that everything had been forgotten. Yet if you want me to beg your pardon to a greater extent than I have up to now, then I seek a hundred thousand pardons from you, for I am your beloved sister and God knows how dear you are to me. So as not to bore your Lordship I will say no more except that I commend myself to your Lordship and my dear sister, the lady duchess. Ever ready for the commands of your Lordship and Ladyship, I pray that this letter won’t remain unanswered as the others have. Sent from Castel Capuano. 19 May 1467. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your littlest sister, Ippolita Maria etc., in her own hand *** Letter 34: 11 June 1467 [1469?] To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita congratulates her brother and his wife, Bona of Savoy, on the safe birth of their first son. The dating of this letter must be incorrect since Galeazzo and Bona did not marry until May 1468, and their first son and heir to the Milanese throne was not born until 1469.56 56. We have ordered the letters according to their archival dating; see also Letter 29 above.

Between Milan and Naples (1466–1467) 95 ..... Most illustrious Lord and most loving brother of mine, God knows how much happiness and pleasure I have taken in your beautiful little son and in hearing that my dear sister is safe and sound after giving birth. I pray God may keep you all healthy and well. Because of the haste of the horseman I will write no more except that I commend myself always to your Lordship and to my most illustrious sister. Messer Cavalchino [Guidoboni]57 commends himself to your Lordship and he is indeed a good servant to your Lordship. Sent from Castel Capuano on 11 June 1467 [1469?]. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria etc. *** Letter 35: 22 June 1467 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan This is a typical recommendation letter of the period. Ippolita here attests to the duke of Melfi’s loyalty as he sues for a place in Galeazzo Maria’s entourage of condottieri and courtiers. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my most loving brother, It has already been many days since your Lordship wrote to enlist the services of the duke of Melfi58 on your behalf; nor has the duke appeared to his lord the king. For the present his majesty is writing to the Florentine lords to make arrangements for the said duke. Since all his hopes were vested in being able to serve your Lordship, and since he has been unable to do so, he feels that by serving the Florentines he serves your Lordship. And in time perhaps he will have permission to stay with your Lordship since he desires that more than anything else he could have in this world and many times he has said to me that he would give a thousand lives to do that. Therefore, I pray your Lordship that out of love for me you will to see to it that the said Florentines receive him. And this favor the duke will know he received from your Lordship and not from anyone else. 57. Cavalchino Guidoboni was the longtime royal secretary to King Ferrante. However, he served as a double-agent, regularly passing confidential information to Duke Galeazzo Sforza in Milan and to Ferrante in Naples by turns. 58. The duke of Melfi, who held vast lands in the kingdom of Naples, had been a vassal of King Alfonso’s before Ferrante became king.

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I commend myself to your Lordship as always and I pray you may sometimes remember your dear sister. From Castel Capuano. 22 June 1467. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most loving sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 36: 6 July 1467 To Bianca Maria Visconti, duchess of Milan Again in this letter, Ippolita employs her considerable clout to recommend to her mother (and implicitly her brother) the Milanese courtier Estore Oldoyno, her secretary’s brother, for the position of steward at her mother’s dower castle in Cremona. ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my most revered mother,59 From the dispatch of my chancellor Iacobo Oldoyno I have learned that his brother Estore Oldoyno has requested permission from your most illustrious Ladyship to oversee the salt account at Cremona in the name of the ducal council, and Oldoyno says that your Ladyship has answered that she does not wish to delegate that office to anyone for this year.60 Yet since I have a great desire that the above-mentioned Estore should have that office since he is a person very well-suited to similar and greater undertakings, and in as much as I know how to and am capable, I beseech your Excellency, and I ask you as a special kindness for the sake of my love, that you unconditionally assign for the next year the above-mentioned office, occupied for twelve years by Besegino, to the abovenamed Estore Oldoyno. It seems to me to be a permissible and honorable thing that those who have left and abandoned their fathers, mothers and their own estates to serve your Ladyship’s pleasure should be the first to possess and enjoy those offices that belong to you, as opposed to the others who go to no effort for your Ladyship. And it is to your Ladyship that I always devotedly commend myself, and in order that your Ladyship know that the present request comes from

59. Since the letter is addressed to illustrissima princeps et Excellima domina mater (using the feminine adjectives), it can be assumed that Ippolita is addressed her mother alone as “most illustrious princess and most excellent mother” in this letter as the head of household since the death of her husband, Duke Francesco Sforza, the previous year. 60. It should be noted that duchess Bianca Maria’s husband has only been dead for fifteen months.

Galeazzo’s Marriage and Bianca Maria Visconti’s Death (1467–1468) 97 my heart, I have signed it myself with my own hand.61 From Castel Capuano. Naples 6 July 1467. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria

4. Galeazzo’s Marriage and Bianca Maria Visconti’s Death: Letters 37–45 (1467–1468) Letter 37: 7 August 1467 To Bianca Maria Visconti, dowager duchess of Milan Ippolita revels in her mother’s joy at her daughter’s delivery of a healthy baby boy, her first child. She poses the question to her mother: Whose love is greater? Mothers’ for their children or children’s for their mother? Ippolita ventures the opinion that it is the children who have greater love for their mothers rather than the other way around. She reports that King Ferrante and all his children are well and that she is keeping abreast of the news that the allied armies of Milan, Naples, and Florence have recently emerged victorious in a battle against the Venetians. ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my most revered mother, From your Ladyship’s letters, I learned of the great consolation and joy you felt for my healthy delivery, and I am sure that such consolation is even greater than what you have written me. I give many thanks for the teachings and reminders you have sent me in these your letters. And responding to that part of the letter that I must answer, now that I have become a mother, as to which is the greater love: that which mothers have for their children, or that which children have for their mothers? I say that if it were certain that when my son Ferrante learns to reason he bore me that love which I have for your Excellency, I would say that despite the fact that the love mothers have for their children is infinite, still, the love children have for their mothers is greater than that which mothers have for their children. And therefore I will offer this opinion when this son of mine learns to reason. Nor should your illustrious Ladyship think my delight in my newborn son would cause me to forget to give you the news in my letters, since before I gave birth I had determined not only to report this news to you in my letters, but also to send you a special messenger since you more than anyone else in creation wanted to hear this and Messer Antonio da Trezzo accepted the

61. Castaldo, notes at 41n1 that this letter, apart from the signature, is not written in Ippolita’s hand.

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responsibility of immediately sending word to your Ladyship by way of the cavalry post. I will also tell you that his majesty the lord king is very well, as I know from his letters. Likewise, all of his majesty’s distinguished children are well and especially the illustrious madonna Leonora [Eleonora d’Aragona]; and I and my son, who grows to be more beautiful every day, are also well. Of the most illustrious lord the duke, my consort, I say nothing except that it greatly saddens and pains me that your Ladyship has to see him without me. It has been a very great comfort to me that your Ladyship and the most illustrious lord duke my brother and my other illustrious brothers and sister are all well. I am informing your Ladyship that through copies of letters that his majesty the lord king has sent me, I remain informed in detail of all of the military actions that have been carried out in the field against Bartolomeo [Colleoni] da Bergamo,62 which was news very dear to my heart to hear. I have also received the gold brocade, as believe your Excellency will have already heard through my other letters. I commend myself to you as always. From Castel Capuano Naples. 7 August 1467. Eiusdem Illustrissime et Excellentissime Dominationis Vestre63 Your most devoted daughter and servant, Ippolita Maria, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Iacobo Old[oyno] *** Letter 38: 15 August 1467 To Bianca Maria Visconti, dowager duchess of Milan In this unusual response to a letter from her mother, Ippolita quotes scripture extensively, as if to demonstrate that she is capable of consoling herself during her ongoing battles with Alfonso over his mistresses. She is clearly depressed but her sympathy goes to her mother who suffers from severe pain in her feet. ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my most revered mother,

62. Castaldo, 42, notes that Ippolita refers to Bartolomeo Colleoni, the famous condottiere of the Venetians, and the battle of Riccardina on 25 July 1467. The army of Colleoni (backed secretly by the Venetian Senate) clashed with the allied armies of Milan, Florence and Naples, who had formed a league. The conflict was resolved in favor of the allies. 63. “Of your same illustrious and excellent dominion.” Another slight variation on her formulaic valediction.

Galeazzo’s Marriage and Bianca Maria Visconti’s Death (1467–1468) 99 I have received a letter from your Ladyship responding to my letters, which Stefano, the servant of Pietro da Landriano, brought me. No response is necessary except to thank you again a thousand times for the teachings and reminders that are contained in that letter, which in truth are excellent, and without searching for a more ancient example, I can follow your Excellency’s. How many graces the everlasting God has given you for having always feared him! And for this reason, he has given you the promises contained in the psalm: happy are those who fear the Lord,64 in the verse that states your children will be like olive shoots around your table,65 and in another place, may you see your children’s children, [for] thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.66 May your Ladyship be assured that I shall not forget these things. I wish also to tell you how wonderfully well my little son is prospering through God’s grace and each day he becomes more beautiful. About myself I don’t know what I should write—if I am well or ill. The reason for this is that at times I have certain pains in my body, small ones to be sure, and therefore I don’t yet cease to pursue pleasure and enjoyment when I wish. And I report this to your Excellency so that if you were told otherwise you would be certain of the truth and not be troubled, as you were with the wet nurse, who never had any fever at all. Of the foot pain from which your illustrious Ladyship suffers, it hurts and saddens me as much as if I had the same pain. A friar Zoanne [Giovanni] has said to me on behalf of your Ladyship that I am very negligent about writing often to your Excellency. I am very surprised at this since neither a messenger nor the cavalry post ever goes to Milan without carrying my letters, so long as I know of their departure. I commend myself always devotedly to your Excellency. From Castel Capuano Naples. 15 August 1467. Eiusdem Illustrissime et Excellentissime Dominationis Vestre Your most devoted daughter and most faithful servant, Ippolita Maria, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Iacobo Old[oyno] *** Letter 39: 6 January 1468 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan This is the first of the letters Ippolita wrote her brother Galeazzo after her arrival in Milan in January 1468. He was in Pavia when she arrived. Nonetheless she 64. Ps. 111.1 [Vulgate]; Ps 112.1 [New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)]. Scripture translations are from the latter. 65. Ps. 127.3 [Vulgate]; Ps. 128:3 [NRSV]. 66. From Ps. 127:6, 4 [Vulgate]; Ps. 128:6, 4 [NRSV].

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writes in hyperbolic terms of her desire to see him: she will travel, she writes, to see him wherever he is, “fearing neither water nor wind.” ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, I have seen a letter that your Lordship wrote to the illustrious Lady our mother. And since your Lordship writes her that because of foul weather you do not think that you will go and that the lord duke [Alfonso, duke of Calabria] can go Saturday, I beg your Lordship not imagine me as so delicate, since I fear neither water nor wind as long as I can see your Lordship and am in the company of the lord duke; and if I had thought I would not be where your Lordship is, I would not have left Naples. I have nothing else to say about this except that I pray your Lordship that you will let me come where you are because I seem to myself to be half dead without your Lordship, and to you I continually commend myself. Milan. 6 January 1468. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 40: 16 May 1468 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Written four days after the celebration in absentia of Galeazzo’s marriage to Bona of Savoy at Amboise, this letter contains a request from Ippolita to her brother to allow a lady’s maid employed in his household to accompany her on her return voyage to Naples. It is striking that she needs Galeazzo’s intervention in order to obtain a serving woman to accompany her back to Naples. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, Because tomorrow morning her illustrious Ladyship our mother wishes to leave and I have asked Cabriello [also Gabriello, Gabriele] to kindly allow Margaritta to travel in my company, yet I can’t do anything at all to make him agree (he even said she will regret it if she goes!), so I beg your Lordship, if I can ever hope for a favor from you, that you agree either to write Gabriello a letter and send it to me so I can give it to him, or to write telling me that you want her to accompany me in any case. And about this, my dear brother, I want you to indulge me, although I am certain your Lordship will certainly also indulge me not only

Galeazzo’s Marriage and Bianca Maria Visconti’s Death (1467–1468) 101 in this one request but also in other more important things. I commend myself to your Lordship and I await your response with the greatest pleasure. Milan. 16 May 1468. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand *** Letter 41: 1 August 1468 To Bianca Maria Visconti, dowager duchess of Milan Ippolita writes to her mother en route to Genoa where she will board a ship back to Naples. She describes the welcome she and her royal party received when they stopped at the town of Busalla,67 sixteen miles north of Genoa, where they were greeted with a great procession and a feast. She requests a “letter of permission” to visit the Monastery of Certosa on their way out of Lombardy.68 ..... Most illustrious Princess and most excellent Lady, my most venerated Lady mother, I have now received the letter from your Ladyship and have read it with the greatest pleasure because in reading it I seemed to be talking things over with your Excellency, whom I am beseeching to devote herself, above all, to living a happy and healthy life. Today I wrote a letter to your Ladyship in my own hand and I would have written similarly at present, but the hour is late and I must go to sleep in order to awake in time to go on my voyage. I’m reporting to your Excellency that these ladies at Busalla welcomed me with a very great procession and a feast. Moreover, I would beseech your Ladyship to send me that letter of mine that grants me permission to enter the Monastery of the Certosa, because it was left with your Excellency, to whom I always devotedly commend myself. Sent from Busalla. 1 August at the hour of three in the night 1468. Eiusdem Illustrissime Dominationis Vestre Your most devoted daughter and servant, Ippolita Maria, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Iacobo Old[oyno] 67. “Buzalle” in the original. 68. It is possible that Ippolita refers not to the Certosa near Pavia but to the thirteenth-century monastery near Genoa.

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*** Letter 42: 5 August 1468 To Bianca Maria Visconti, dowager duchess of Milan Writing to her mother aboard the ship on her return to Naples, Ippolita explains that she won’t write very much since she feels a bit seasick. She is grateful to have been accompanied to the port of Genoa by family servants Galiaz da Cocona and madonna Petra. ..... Most illustrious and most excellent Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, Because Galiaz [Galeazzo] da Cocona has come to accompany me as far as Porto Venere, I wanted to write this letter. Certainly I have been well up to this point but I would be better if your Ladyship were here. And because madonna Petra will soon visit your Ladyship, I beg that you might encourage her to return soon as she promised me. I will not write at greater length because I fear that it will make me ill. I commend myself to your Ladyship. Written shipboard. 5 August 1468. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your servant and daughter, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 43: 13 October 1468 To Bianca Maria Visconti, dowager duchess of Milan This long, complex letter represents a turning point in the role Ippolita would play in diplomatic relations between her father-in-law King Ferrante and her brother Galeazzo, and between Naples and Milan. Addressed to her mother only, her letter contains the substance of the crucial conversation Ippolita had with Ferrante when she returned from her seven-month sojourn in Milan. She had left Naples in January 1468 for the festivities around her brother Galeazzo’s July wedding to Bona of Savoy. Ippolita’s letter suggests that a perilous rift had opened up between Galeazzo and their mother. In this letter, Ippolita tells her mother the details of the long meeting she had with the king on her return to Naples. King Ferrante recalled for her benefit the long friendship he had enjoyed with her father the duke and with her mother the duchess, who had always been “like a mother” to him. Ferrante also made clear his disgust at Galeazzo’s clear violation of many aspects of the formal marriage agreement Ferrante and Francesco Sforza

Galeazzo’s Marriage and Bianca Maria Visconti’s Death (1467–1468) 103 had contracted between the duke’s son Sforza Maria Sforza and the king’s daughter Eleonora d’Aragona. At the end of their meeting, the king expressed concern that Galeazzo seemed to be preparing to edge the duchess out of her own home, her dower city and palace in Cremona. He advises Ippolita to counsel her mother to tighten her bonds with her other brothers, and to be wary of Galeazzo’s desire to take the property for himself. The king also informs Ippolita that he has instructed the Milanese ambassador Antonio da Trezzo not only to be on guard but also to inform the longtime Sforza allies Ludovico Gonzaga and his wife Barbara of Brandenburg of Galeazzo’s designs on Cremona. The king is characterized in Ippolita’s letter as expressing complete solidarity with Ippolita and her mother while at the same time fearing for their future. This would be Ippolita’s last letter to her mother. Bianca Maria Visconti would be dead by the end of October, at the young age of forty-three. ..... Most illustrious Lady, my Lady and most revered mother, Don’t be surprised, your Ladyship, that I haven’t responded until this time since I had no one of my household here, as they were aboard the ship which arrived four days ago today, and I preferred to wait rather than to send it by another route. I passed on the greetings from your Ladyship, both the messages and the gifts. His majesty says that he thanks your Ladyship for the greetings and he says that between his majesty and your Ladyship there is no need for gifts because everything that he has, even his own person and his children, belongs to your Ladyship, and likewise he considers as his you and everything you have. Likewise concerning the pleasure that your Ladyship has taken from my visit, he says he is very happy at having done something that pleased your Ladyship, and had he not already done it, he says he would do it all over again. He adds that your Ladyship did so following the advice of his majesty and he contemplates doing it in the same way. He swears on his honor that he has always advised your Ladyship with as much love as he would if you were his mother69 and he intends to act in this manner as long as he lives, because when he thinks about the happy memory of the most illustrious lord my f­ather, it seems to him that he would make the worst mistake in the world if he did not cherish what belonged to him and most of all your Ladyship. And when that Lord [Galeazzo] did so many crazy things,70 which I recounted one by one to his majesty, he always considered your 69. King Ferrante (b. 1424) and dowager duchess Bianca Maria Visconti (b. 1425) are only a year apart in age, Bianca being the younger of the two. 70. Castaldo writes at 49n1: “The many acts of madness [tante pazzie] of Galeazzo (here named as “el S[ignore]” and “lo S[ignor]”—“that lord”) are actions perpetrated against Galeazzo’s mother, de-

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Ladyship wise, but all the more in that matter in which you have governed yourself so prudently. And the king knows how highly your Ladyship is esteemed for this, and regarding madonna Lionora [Eleonora d’Aragona] he said he would do nothing more than what he was obligated to do and that in this matter that man [Galeazzo] would do nothing except what that lady wanted concerning the promise of the city and other things.71 And he wrote to messer Turco [Cicinello]72 to tell him to communicate everything to your Ladyship and to do as he thought best. Then he told him how much my news about Cremona pleased him. But in order to better arrange the matter, I asked his Majesty not to show that he knows anything about the duke of Bari [Sforza Maria Sforza] coming to the kingdom.73 He didn’t answer, but in my view until this matter is settled, I don’t believe he will want him to come. He responded to my other brothers that he would be pleased if your Ladyship did not show that she wanted to send them to some other place but if she instead had them informed of this in an indirect manner; and that regarding madonna Isabetta,74 the king had only one marriageable daughter and he was finding so many eligible bachelors, so since he was arranging the marriage of that lady, he would do likewise for madonna Isabetta as if she were his own daughter. The king then spoke to him about the baths your Ladyship wanted to take at Melegnano. He was not especially pleased because, he says, he never is pleased unless your Ladyship is at Cremona or on her own lands,75 and that from this came two advantages: the one, that your Ladyship was in a secure place; and the signed to exclude her from the management of the duchy and to take for himself the city of Cremona, of which she Bianca is the sole regent. The king advises Bianca via Ippolita to return from Milan to Cremona “so as to be in a secure place.” Among other pazzie was Galeazzo’s handling of his brother’s marriage pact with Eleonora d’Aragona, discussed below. 71. Castaldo explains at 49n2 that according to the dowry pact Francesco Sforza had promised a city in the duchy of Milan to his son Sforza Maria Sforza, Duke of Bari, on his marriage to Ferrante’s daughter Eleonora. But after the death of Francesco Sforza, Galeazzo assigned to Sforza Maria the small town of Tortona, which Ferrante did not consider a worthy match for Eleonora’s dowry. Ferrante was furious at this turn of events and the marriage pact was eventually cancelled. 72. Turco Cicinello is Ferrante’s longtime ambassador to Milan; Cicinello is in Milan or Cremona at the time of this writing. 73. Castaldo explains at n49n2 that because Galeazzo changed the terms of his marriage contract, Sforza Maria would have had to go to Naples to speak with the king. 74. Elisabetta Sforza, a “natural” daughter of Francesco Sforza who will be betrothed to the marchese of Montferrat in 1469. 75. As Castaldo points out at 49n2, the issue involves Galeazzo’s attempt to take control of Bianca Maria Visconti’s lands and Bianca Maria’s happiness whenever she was in residence on her own lands and the palace at Cremona, which had been bequeathed to her by her father Duke Filippo Maria Visconti.

Galeazzo’s Marriage and Bianca Maria Visconti’s Death (1467–1468) 105 other that that lord [Galeazzo] would take more note of your Ladyship, and therefore you would be able to remain at your house as long as you wish, so you will do better staying there than in another place; and also, because your Ladyship is there and knows from day to day how the situation is going, you can manage it better. And concerning the taxes he says that your Ladyship can delay a bit to see how things go; he will think more about this issue by the end of the month and then he will advise your Ladyship. And he says he is doing this so that some other crazy thing won’t happen; and therefore when you go to Cremona, he says that you should not show that you love any one of my brothers better than any other but instead you should show each of them in turn that you are going to see them, and let them go about at their pleasure. I did not write your Ladyship in my other letter that you should go to Cremona because those letters traveled by a mounted courier, but the king also joked that he believed that your Ladyship was not in the gardens of Cremona, though your Ladyship would do well to go and stay there, as he says. Concerning messer Antonio [da Trezzo], he says depending on whether things go one way or the other, he will do what your Ladyship wants. Concerning count Broccardo76 and Alvise,77 the king said that he will do what is best. I responded that your Ladyship wants nothing but that which pleases his majesty. About the marchese of Mantua,78 the king says that on his honor he will send that man [Antonio da Trezzo] to tell him about the matter, and that the king forgot when he left that ambassador to commission him to tell the marchese about it, but that certainly he will send him to tell the marchese about the matter.79 It appears to me that I have done everything your Ladyship requested. But if it seems to you that I have been remiss in any way, I beg your Ladyship to pardon me and advise me if I should do one thing rather than another, and I will do 76. Broccardo had been the treasurer and chief of staff of Ferrante’s generals Jacopo and Francesco Piccinino. 77. Another high official in Ferrante’s court. 78. Castaldo notes at 50n2 that Bianca Maria had asked the king to ask Ludovico Gonzaga to intercede to protect and defend her in case Galeazzo tried to take Cremona by force. 79. At 50n2, Castaldo quotes Bianca Maria’s own letter to Antonio da Trezzo seeking assistance from the Gonzaga should Cremona come under attack by Galaeazzo’s men: “Would you then advise his Majesty on our behalf, beseeching him if he deems it worthy to contribute some good thoughts concerning our situation, deliberate about it, and consult with the marchese of Mantua, since we are in need, as to what favor and assistance we can have from him in this problem concerning Cremona as we have said to him by mouth. Now that we will be in Cremona we shall see the conduct of Galeazzo Maria [Sforza]’s men and we shall govern well with him until we have a response from his Majesty. But we have advised him that if there had not been the respect for Ippolita that he finds here, we would not have supported the things we have supported. I hope to have an immediate response about the aforementioned assistance of the marchese of Mantua” (translation ours).

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so most willingly. I talked to him again about the money. He says that he thanks your Ladyship and says he is certain that you would do everything for him. I commend myself to your Ladyship and beg you not to be surprised if I fail to send you the balas ruby since I am still waiting for the arrival of one of them. As soon as I have it I will send it immediately to your Ladyship. Everyone here is in the best of health. I pray God that I may hear similar news from your Ladyship. Would that God were willing that you could see Ferrante, since I am certain you would take pleasure in it; he commends himself to your Ladyship’s prayers. Sent from Castel Capuano.13 October 1468. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your servant Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 44: 6 November 1468 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan In this letter to her brother Galeazzo, Ippolita expresses her unbearable grief at the news of death of their mother Bianca Maria Visconti on 23 October 1468. The news of her mother’s sudden death is all the more painful since it comes on the heels of her long and profoundly moving visit with her mother during her seven-month stay in Milan earlier that year on the occasion of her brother’s marriage to Bona of Savoy. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, my most honorable brother, How shocking and horrible the bitter news of the passing of the most illustrious madonna our mother has been and is for me—which I just learned of today from your most illustrious Lordship’s letter and which will always be the cause of sorrow and weeping—I cannot express in this letter because of my extreme sadness, but I leave it to you to judge. But since this was the will of the eternal Lord, I have no choice but to be forever griefstricken and to shed tears for our so worthy mother, together with your Excellency, who I devotedly pray will accept me in good graces along with our other brothers and sister. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 6 November 1468. Eiusdem Illustrissime Dominationis Vestre Your sister, Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Iacobo Old[oyno] ***

Galeazzo’s Marriage and Bianca Maria Visconti’s Death (1467–1468) 107 Letter 45: 19 November 1468 To Andreotto del Maino Ippolita thanks Andreotto del Maino, her mother’s maternal uncle, for his letter of condolence, which she says gave her comfort. She tells him that her father-inlaw King Ferrante arranged a beautiful funeral mass for Bianca Maria Visconti in Naples, which the king himself attended. Ippolita commends the wife and children of her secretary Baldo Martorelli to her great-uncle; she asks him to provide for them since Martorelli cannot. ..... Our magnificent, generous and most beloved uncle, Your letter alone, in so unexpected, bitter, and horrible an event, has given us some solace, for through it we have learned that the illustrious madonna our mother died with such prudence and sanctity that we believe that she has certainly returned to the realm and glory of the blessed ones whence she previously descended.80 Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones,81 and In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died.82 Therefore, we pray that the great and merciful God will grant to us the forbearance and grace to imitate her divine and most holy virtues, which will endure forever because of her merit and everlasting memory. Our most illustrious consort returned from the field yesterday, and after so much time and amid such sorrow it was a great consolation to us. His holy majesty the lord king ordered that the most worthy funeral rites be performed and he was in attendance along with his entire court. Lorenzino de Caneva Nova says the most illustrious lady our mother, now deceased, promised him that she would arrange the marriage of one of his daughters for him. If he takes on the task of marrying off some of them, we ask that our Barba make sure that she is part of that group and we ask you to keep us informed. In addition, I commend the abandoned wife of Baldo [Martorelli], our secretary, to you. Just as with your consent at other times, he was hired as our servant and teacher,83 now through your work and prudence may his wife and children also be provided for, until such time as he is able to make other provisions for 80. This letter is the first in which Ippolita refers to herself with the royal “we.” In subsequent correspondence she will refer to herself alternately with “we” or “I”, depending on her relationship with the recipient and the issue she is addressing. 81. Ps. 115.15 [Vulgate]; Ps. 116.15 [NRSV]. 82. Wisdom 3:2 [NRSV]. 83. Andreotto helped to place Martorelli with the Sforza children: see Bernato, “Martorelli, Baldo.”

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them.84 Please console all your people on our behalf and above all, please commend us to our most illustrious lord brother. From Castel Capuano. 19 November 1468. Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Baldo M.

5. The Ambassadors: Letters 46–67 (1469–1475) Letter 46: 1 April 1469 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Without the support of her family and friends in Naples, Ippolita feels stranded and alone. She complains to her brother Galeazzo that she has sent him letter after letter without ever receiving a single note from him in return. At the same time she reports her own dire cirumstances: the king and her husband Alfonso have ordered all the members of her household to return to Milan. Only her secretary, her tailor, and her women will be allowed to remain.85 The exact motive for the expulsion of Ippolita’s courtiers is not known but certainly her polarizing of her court at the Castel Capuano over her husband’s refusal to give up his mistresses played a role. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, God knows the sorrow that I have because of not having ever had a response to the many letters I have sent to your Lordship; and certainly now of all times I should be worthy of pardon even if you believe that I had erred.86 And if the pardons requested in the past have been ignored, I beg your Lordship at present to pardon me by showing with heart and hand that you consider me as 84. Though Martorelli relocated to Naples with Ippolita in 1465, his family stayed behind in Milan. He saw them briefly in March 1471. His long attempt to reunite with them—documented also in his letters to Bianca Maria and to Galeazzo—only came to fruition in 1472: Bernato, “Martorelli, Baldo.” 85. Castaldo notes at 54n1 that a list of the members of Ippolita’s household who were sent back to Milan by the king is preserved in the Archivio di Stato in Milan but the motive for their sudden deportation is unknown. Castaldo hypothesizes that king Ferrante restricted the funds allocated for Ippolita’s support at this time. 86. Castaldo explains at 54n1: Galeazzo admits in a letter to Ippolita of 7 May 1469 that he had been enraged by a letter she had sent. However, he wrote, their bond of kinship was still strong and he would be her defender if any wrong were done to her; in a subsequent letter to Pietro Gallarate of 1 June 1469, he accused Ippolita of trying to create a rift between his mother and himself and also between him and king Ferrante.

The Ambassadors (1469–1475) 109 the same true sister that I have always been to you in the past. My Lord, dear brother, although I am certain that others will have told your Lordship, in order to do my duty, I will tell you what is happening at present. My lord the king, and thus also my lord the duke, want our Lombard people to leave the house, with the exception of my secretary, the chaplain, my tailor and my women. And in order to obey their lordships, as I always have done, I have begun to send them away, as you will be informed by the present bearer who has seen them depart. I commend myself as always to your Lordship and thus to my dearest sister, my lady the duchess [Bona of Savoy]. Castel Capuano. 1 April 1469. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most loving sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 47: 13 May 1469 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan In the next several letters, amicable communication between Ippolita and her brother Galeazzo appears to have been restored. The recent fever and ill health she refers to here were communicated to Galeazzo by her secretary Baldo [Martorelli]. He attributed her loss of weight and ill health to her jealousy and melancholy concerning her husband’s extramarital sexual adventures.87 ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, So that this courier doesn’t come to you without my letters it seemed best to me to let your Lordship know that my fever is gone and I’m in good health. I commend myself to your Lordship and to madonna my sister [Bona of Savoy]. From Castel Capuano. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. ***

87. The text of Baldo Martorelli’s letter to Galeazzo about Ippolita’s health and jealousy is in Castaldo, 56n1; his letter is preserved in ASM, Potenze Estere Napoli, 218, 16 maggio 1469; see also Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza”, 128–30.

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Letter 48: 27 June 1469 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Galeazzo has sent a courtier of his, Pietro da Gallarate, to Naples, and Ippolita reports that she feels cheered and restored by his visit. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, At this very moment, Pietro [da Gallarate] has arrived. He has revived me, bringing me back from death to life, by giving me your Lordship’s greetings, since I can have no other pleasure than knowing I am loved by your Lordship, to whom I commend myself. Naples. 27 June 1469. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 49: 1 July 1469 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita writes again to her brother to tell him how happy she has been made by Gallarate’s presence. He will report everything to Galeazzo when he returns to Milan. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, The visit Pietro [da Gallarate] has paid me has given me as much comfort as as anything in this world could have, both because of the comfort and the good words of your Lordship, and because of the warnings given me on behalf of your Lordship, which I shall do my best to act upon. I told him some things which I do not want to put in writing, but on Pietro’s arrival your Lordship will hear them. I commend myself to you and likewise to my dear sister, lady Bona the duchess. From Castel Capuano. 1 July 1469. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. ***

The Ambassadors (1469–1475) 111 Letter 50: 4 August 1469 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita writes to her brother again of the pleasure she takes in Gallarate’s visit. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, Since Pietro [da Gallarate] is going back I won’t bother to write an extensive letter to your Lordship, since he is well informed about everything and he has certainly always understood that he was a slave to your Lordship, but at the present more than ever. I sent some things to your Lordship and to madonna my dear sister, about which I am certain your Lordship will make jokes, but such as they are you should receive them as tokens of my love. I commend myself to your Lordship. From Pietro, your Lordship will hear how useful his visit was to us because of the love of the one who sent him to me. I commend myself to your Lordship and likewise to lady Bona the duchess. Please also kiss your little one on my behalf. Naples. 4 August 1469. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 51: 17 August 1470 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita tells her brother that she is pregnant [grossa] and begs him to excuse her not writing often. She asks him to write King Ferrante commending her since “it will be helpful to me,” she writes. She reports that Galeazzo’s ambassador to Naples Giovanni Andrea Cagnola is well liked at court. She also adds that Otto Niccolini, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s ambassador, sings Galeazzo’s praises. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, Because I am pregnant and writing is burdensome to me, I beg your Lordship to pardon me if I do not write you as often as is my duty. My dear Lord and brother, one favor I would like to ask of your Lordship: that you write a couple of words in your own hand to his majesty the king, making no mention of anything except to commend me with some good words to his majesty, because I am certain this will be helpful to me. And if it were possible that these ambassadors who are supposed to come to Naples would carry the letter, I would be very happy. I

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don’t want to pass over in silence and therefore not report to your Lordship how well our messer Giovanni Andrea [Cagnola] has conducted and conducts himself and your Lordship’s affairs in such a useful manner that he is very fondly regarded by all of us who love your Lordship. Messer Otto [Niccolini], the ambassador of the Florentines, shows himself to be quite a fan of your Lordship and says that if he did nothing, he did so for a good result, as happened; and he asked me to commend him to your Lordship. My child and I do the same to you and also to madonna my sister [Bona of Savoy]. From Naples. 17 August 1470. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria, in her own hand *** Letter 52: 27 August 1470 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita informs Galeazzo that King Ferrante’s ambassadors, Turco and Antonio Cicinello,88 will soon arrive to deliver to him a confidential report of developments from Naples—news that would be unwise to commit to paper. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, Although it was not necessary to write since when messer Turco [Cicinello] comes he will know better how to say what I am not able to write, I am reporting that by the grace of God we are all well. Regarding the above-mentioned messer Turco, he is such a great servant of your Lordship that, together with our messer Antonio Cicinello, your Lordship must esteem them highly. And I beg your Lordship’s pardon if this letter is short and poorly written, since I am in such a state that everything is difficult for me because I am so pregnant.89 I commend myself to your Lordship and my dear sister. From Naples. 27 August 1470. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria ***

88. The brothers Antonio and Turco Cicinello are now King Ferrante’s lead ambassadors to Milan. 89. Ippolita’s daughter Isabella d’Aragona would be born a little over a month later, on 2 October 1470.

The Ambassadors (1469–1475) 113 Letter 53: 6 February 1471 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita here expresses her pleasure at her brother’s upcoming trip to Florence. On 1 January 1471, Ferrante and Venice signed a fifteen-year mutual defense treaty against the Ottoman regime but the treaty also provided for an alliance between the two states in the case of aggression on the part of other Italian states.90 In this letter, Galeazzo appears to have already spoken with Ippolita about the need to strengthen the duchy’s alliance with Florence as a bulwark against Venetian aggression. The Sforzas’ relationship with Florence was also crucial to Ippolita. From 1469 on, she herself had become dependent on substantial loans from the Medici bank.91 ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, I have heard that your Lordship wishes to go to Florence. I take great pleasure in this in many respects, one of which is that you will seem to be nearer to me here. Were God willing that things stood as we discussed with your most illustrious Lordship’s distinguished ambassador, I would be the happiest woman in the world. Your Lordship should consider the fact that we have already had you come here to speak with his majesty the king—and a thousand other good things, may God be my witness—and then I worried myself sick about this for a year. The children and I commend ourselves to your Lordship, to whom I report that we are all well. From Naples. 6 February 1471. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 54: 19 December 1471 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan By the years 1471–1474, Milan’s ambassadorial mission to Naples had become a revolving door. Within the space of four years, Galeazzo hired and fired three consecutive ambassadors to Ferrante’s court, each a seasoned dipomat: Antonio da Trezzo, Milan’s chief emissary to that court during Francesco Sforza’s rule; Giovanni Andrea Cagnola, the scholarly canon lawyer envoy whom Galeazzo pronounced “too gentle” for the Neapolitan court;92 and Francesco Maletta, 90. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 106. 91. See Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 130–33, on Ippolita’s increasing dependence on these loans. 92. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 108.

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whose dispatches on Alfonso’s bisexual adventures and other current gossip made him a favorite of Galeazzo’s.93 This letter marks a change in Ippolita’s voice. At twenty-six, she shows herself a knowledgable commentator on the politics of the court. Putting aside her sense of betrayal by both her husband and her brother, she boldly advises Galeazzo as to how he should conduct himself at court and whom he should trust. ..... Most illustrious and most excellent Lord and my most loving brother, Although I have already discussed matters completely with messer Giovanni Andrea [Cagnola] and Francesco Maletta, nonetheless it seemed best to me to say a couple of words to your Lordship. And before you say otherwise, I want to have the freedom of the mad to say what I wish to your Lordship, since I would not want you to consider me presumptuous because I dared to offer advice to your Lordship, who is more knowledgeable when he is sleeping than I am awake. I say that your Lordship will do well to permit Cavalchino [Guidoboni] to return home because he can serve your Lordship no further by staying here since he has already been dismissed and scandal would more likely result from his presence here than any utility. But do not be concerned, since you now have a person [Maletta] who is more useful to you than perhaps many others in your service. And I want your Lordship to thank me not so much for having brought him to our side, since he has long been a member of our household, but rather for having confirmed his position in accord with your own wish, and then you will say that I must not be your dear sister, since I swear to you that this man will be more valuable to you than you think; and you should not desire him to be there because if he were, you would be obliged to pay him in order for him to be here. But above all, keep this secret and you should not even trust yourself if possible because you understand what a danger it would be—and these days one cannot trust anyone. Francesco [Maletta], my lord, has passed along many pieces of information from your Lordship, for which I have thanked him an infinite number of times; then he told me the current state of things, and that you want to remain closely allied with his majesty the king, as is proper. Do follow this path, I say, because you will change your reputation: whereas before you were considered mad, now you will be thought most wise; whereas before you were thought mean-spirited, now you will be thought magnanimous; whereas once you were mocked and disdained, now you will be feared and revered. Your Lordship knows what I mean. Francesco appears to me to be on a good path, and I hope that your Lordship will be content with him, since certainly it appears to the men here that he is worthy, 93. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 112; see also Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 201–2.

The Ambassadors (1469–1475) 115 since he appears to be a man who helps rather than harms, and, since he has observed life at court for a long time, he will know how to respond well, so that they will not notice him. Up to this point, this arrangement is working well. From him you will learn about everything in greater detail. I commend myself to your Lordship and to the most illustrious lady, my sister [Bona of Savoy]. Please burn this as soon as you’ve read it. From Naples. 19 December 1471. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 55: 4 January 1472 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita addresses to her brother this letter of recommendation for Ferrante’s royal secretary Cavalchino Guidoboni, whom King Ferrante dismissed for having used the Milanese cipher to communicate with Milan.94 At the same time she proffers good words for the new Milanese envoy to Naples, Francesco Maletta, though his days at the royal palace would also be numbered. Showing her brother that she has now become an insider, Ippolita alludes in code to one member of Ferrante’s court, while she dismisses the Venetian ambassador for having paid court to her “with intolerable hauteur” [con bestiale superbia]. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, These past days our Cavalchino [Guidoboni] has communicated with me and [xx]95 concerning the position of our messer Francesco Maletta: specifically so that your lordship would see to it that he could remain here more honorably in accord with his station and rank since he currently conducts himself quite honorably, as is his custom. He has commissioned him to write to your Excellency with the opinion of [xx] and he has done precisely this. The Venetian ambassador then came to visit me with such ostentation that it made me regret that I had seen him since he seems to me to do this with intolerable hauteur. And I do detest them when I see them more than your Lordship does—if I find them, it seems to us the said [xx].96 And thus I beseech your 94. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 109. 95. This name was written in code. Castaldo notes at 65n* that the secret code books were the exclusive property of the ambassadors; they were changed for each ambassador and often for each mission. 96. The meaning of this coded statement is unclear in the original.

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Lordship to see to it that your ambassador is able to present himself and to advance with the others as your Lordship deserves and as your reputation dictates and deservedly so, according to what Cavalchino has written at our request. I commend myself to your Lordship and to my most illustrious sister. From Naples. 4 January 1472. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your littlest sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 56: 1 April 1472 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita, now twenty-seven, has been married seven years. She announces that she has just the day before given birth to a healthy baby boy.97 Taking this opportunity to tell Galeazzo again how much she loathes the Venetian ambassador, she at the same time reassures her brother of the unwavering good will of King Ferrante and her husband Alfonso towards him. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, most honorable brother, I most urgently hoped to write in my own hand to your Lordship. But as you have already heard from your magnificent ambassadors, yesterday I gave birth to a baby boy at around at 13 hours and a half. And by the grace of God, both I and the baby are well. I have no doubt that your Excellency, given the singular good will you have for me, will receive as much joy from this event as I do myself. However, I cannot write you in my own hand in spite of my very great desire to do so. After I responded to the letter of attestation from your Lordship, the count of Maddaloni [Diomede Carafa] and the king’s secretary delivered the message from his majesty that your Lordship’s magnificent new ambassadors98 had given him, as did my duke; this piece of news was certainly for me one of the happiest and most joyous of my life since I believe that this is the only way to reach and to achieve true accord and peace and the greatest glory for both our states. And because of this, in order to satisfy not just your Lordship’s, I say, but all of our shared demands and desires, since they are truly shared, I added in my conversation with them all the good thoughts and prayers that I could so that it would 97. Her third child, Pietro d’Aragona, was born March 31, 1472; he died in 1491. On Pietro, see Silvano Borsari, DBI 3 (1961):703–4 . 98. Francesco Maletta headed the delegation.

The Ambassadors (1469–1475) 117 come into effect. And by this point I had already gained the firmest hope from the gracious responses from his majesty the lord king that it would be thus. Now the aforesaid magnificent ambassadors of your Lordship tell me they have a new commission, in which, because your Lordship wishes to speed the process, you show—in their opinion and mine—that you are a little distrustful. And since it has seemed to all of us that your Excellency was standing by the original commission, I beseech your Lordship, since you see the good will of his majesty the king and the lord duke [Alfonso, duke of Calabria] and since it has never been otherwise—and knowing also, your Lordship, that I am here and personally affected by this affair—may it please you to realize that no one would be more sorry than I if something occurred that was not pleasing to your Lordship in accord with your desires, which are mine as well. My Lord brother, I beg you, since this thing is pleasing to your Lordship and also to his majesty the lord king and the lord my duke, may your Lordship not belabor every point. I commend myself always to your Lordship and to the most illustrious lady my sister [Bona of Savoy].99 From Castel Capuano, Naples. 1 April 1472. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most affectionate sister, Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Baldo M. *** Letter 57: 14 May 1472 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita sends her brother Galeazzo a letter of recommendation for “our Brusco,” who was long a retainer not only of Ippolita but of their parents Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, The present letter is not to advise your Lordship about anything, nor is it to ask that you put your trust in our Brusco, since he is a man who will know how to explain everything himself and also he is so much your Lordship’s slave that it is not possible to describe a greater one. And yet at present he has served us so well that our lord the king wanted to keep him regardless, and yet he did not want that on any terms because he says that he would never be able to be happy if he 99. This final paragraph is in Ippolita’s own hand indicating that the rest of the letter was dictated to her secretary.

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did not die as your Lordship’s slave. Both because of this and because you know how much our most illustrious father and mother loved him, it seemed to me that first of all your Lordship, as lord of our whole household, and then all of us other brothers and sisters, are obligated to love him and treat him well—not only as you would treat a servant but as you would love a brother. And so, considering all this, I beseech your Lordship, act on his behalf and also on ours, because we ourselves would be not be able to do so without you. I commend myself to your Lordship and to my dear sister, both of whose commands it will be my singular pleasure to receive. From Naples. 14 May 1472. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your sister, Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand *** Letter 58: 16 June 1472 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan In the summer of 1472, Milan and Naples came perilously close to war with one another. In this letter to Galeazzo, Ippolita describes the role she played in brokering a deal that kept the peace between the two leviathan states. The agreement the ambassadors of both states signed on 14 July 1472 mandated that Galeazzo would not continue to arm the rebels in Barcelona against Ferrante and the king in turn agreed not aid Venice if attacked by Milan. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, From the letters of my friend messer Francesco [Maletta], your Lordship will learn of the sound accord to which his majesty the lord king has deigned to agree in order to settle these differences of opinion of yours. And if your Lordship were here and had heard our Francesco’s explanations and negotiations in this matter with his majesty the king and my duke [Alfonso, duke of Calabria], you would have known their good will. And since I believe your Lordship will put his trust in me because I do not love my own self as much as your Lordship, I have made certain to write you this letter to beseech your Lordship, if it seems best to you, to concur with their agreement, so that they will be as one with your Lordship, so a new chapter can begin and our sleepless nights can be forgotten. I want to say one thing: that it was a good thing for your Lordship when you sent the ambassador messer Francesco [Maletta], who most self-assuredly refused to let himself be deceived, and your Lordship is indeed obligated to treat him well. Therefore I beseech your Lordship, if these agreements do please you, to send the

The Ambassadors (1469–1475) 119 necessary instructions to him so that, since he had all of the worry, he will now have some of the honor. I commend myself to your Lordship and to my dear sister the duchess [Bona of Savoy]. From Naples. 16 June 1472. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your littlest sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 59: 26 September 1472 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita is still anxious to hear from Galeazzo that he will honor the pact he signed in July 1472 not to allow Jean d’Anjou’s ships to attack Ferrante’s navy in Barcelona. Ferrante by the same agreement was sworn not to aid Venice with more than 4,000 horse or 2,000 foot soldiers if Milan attacked her.100 At the close of the letter, Ippolita relays a hundred kisses that her soon-to-be two-year-old daughter Isabella sends to her future consort and first cousin, Galeazzo’s threeyear-old son and heir to the Milanese throne, Gian Galeazzo Sforza.101 ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, At this time, with the grace of God, and now that all these good and sacred works have been agreed upon, may God ensure that they come to be. Likewise, his majesty the king has spoken to the ambassadors and to me; your Lordship will hear his words and the response made to us by their ambassador. Regarding the events at Barcelona I can only say that it is not only necessary that your Lordship not allow Jean d’Anjou’s ships to leave [Genoa], since if they go the majesty the lord king would damage what you have done. But it is also necessary, in order to obligate this lord king to you, to demonstrate that your Lordship is the cause of the king’s recovering Barcelona, since his majesty says that your Lordship has been the cause of losing it. My dear brother, do this as it will lead to great glory, since on account of everything it will be clear how much we have followed our noble forbears in deepening our family’s alliances. And your Lordship can imagine how proud I will be of this. I don’t know what to say I am so happy, except that I esteem no one more, neither your Lordship nor any other one of us, than our dear son, the count of Pavia, [Gian Galeazzo Sforza] to whom our sweet 100. Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 114. 101. Lubkin, 319n191: Galeazzo announced the betrothal on 23 July 1472 to the princes of Monferrat, Savoy, and France. Milanese envoys delivered the news to heads of state in Genoa, Ferrara, Bologna, Forli, and Pesaro.

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Isabella sends a thousand greetings and asks your Lordship to kiss him a hundred times for her sake. I commend myself to your Lordship and to my dear sister madama the duchess [Bona of Savoy]. From Naples. 26 September 1472. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your littlest sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 60: 1 October 1472 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita sent her brother this letter of recommendation for an associate of Antonio da Trezzo, Galeazzo’s former ambassador to Naples. She hopes Galeazzo will find a place for him at court. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, It will not take me too much effort to convince you that messer Antonio [da Trezzo] is more your Lordship’s man and mine than he is his own person, and every day I understand this more clearly, above all because I see how eagerly he comes to see your Lordship. I therefore beg you to make sure that he knows he is one of your chosen men; and he will also say some things on my behalf: namely, that it is necessary that your Lordship consider me as a daughter since no father is as loved and respected by a child as your Lordship is by me and in you I have placed all my hope. I am sending with messer Antonio a son of Gioan de Costanz [….],102 who is being raised in my house and I certainly love him very much. From Antonio you will hear why I am sending him to you. I believe your Lordship will be well served by him and I beg you to accept him and treat him in such a way that I will be able to tell everyone that your Lordship loves not only me but my servants as well. Welcome him gladly both for my sake and because he is messer Antonio’s nephew. From this ambassador, you will know my mind better than I do myself. I’ll write no more, but I commend myself to your Lordship and to my sister [Bona of Savoy] and even more to your little son. From Naples. 1 October 1472. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your littlest sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** 102. The ending of this name is illegible in the manuscript.

The Ambassadors (1469–1475) 121 Letter 61: 22 November 1472 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan As this letter to her brother Galeazzo makes clear, Ippolita now presents herself as a member of the in-group around King Ferrante. Adept also at the flattery necessary to the courtier, she plays to Galeazzo’s ego, and while she schools him in the dramatis personae principales at court, she foregrounds the diplomatic skills of her brother’s lead ambassador, Francesco Maletta. Her only directive to her brother in this letters is to be more generous with his friends at Ferrante’s court. ..... Most illustrious and most excellent Lord and my most loving brother, I don’t think I will ever tire of reminding your Lordship of my opinion. Your Lordship should know how powerful the count de Maddaloni [Diomede Carafa] and the secretary Antonello Petrucci are at this court and certainly they demonstrate that they are your Lordship’s advocates. I can inform your Lordship that your Francesco has not left anything for them to do and that he continually to takes care to keep them well-informed. However, your Lordship, who is extremely generous, should utilize part of it with these men. It will be nothing for your Lordship and it will attain a good return and especially because the Venetians give presents very generously and messer Ugulotto says his lord wants to do the same. And so my Lord, don’t be content to let these men to be thought more generous than yourself, for I would be the least happy lady in the world about this and it would also remove the ambassador’s courage to speak. I have spoken to him and your Lordship will be more thoroughly informed by him. I commend myself to your Lordship and to the most illustrious lady my sister [Bona of Savoy]. Kiss my little boy and give him my love. Were God willing that we could switch their places for eight days so that my count [Gian Galeazzo Sforza, count of Pavia] would be here and Isabella with your Lordship, since I know we would be most comforted. From Naples. 22 November 1472. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your littlest sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. *** Letter 62: 28 February 1474 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan A favorite of Ippolita’s, Galeazzo’s scholarly ambassador Giovanni Cagnola had arrived at the Neapolitan court in April 1470 but by November 1471, the duke had recalled him to Milan, judging him not tough enough to deal with the

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personalities around Ferrante. In this letter, Ippolita asks her brother to give Cagnola’s son a position of honor in Milan as “a favor for me.” ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most revered brother, I have written your Lordship several times concerning the son of my Gioanne [Giovanni Cagnola] and by your Lordship’s grace you have neither had a response sent to me nor nor have you shown by what you’ve done that my letters have borne fruit. I am a little disappointed that you do not value him more out of love for me, since any favor you do for the son I consider a favor for me, since his father is very dear to me and he has always had more pleasure when he stands in good stead with your Lordship than if any one else esteems him. And so, out of love for me please do give him some position of honor and a salary, since, given what his position has been so far and given that there are those other Neapolitans there, he would need to resign for his own honor, and this would be the greatest disappointment in the world for him. I am that dear sister of yours, though I never know if you believe that, but I swear to you that I have never loved you more than at the present time and likewise my dear most illustrious lady [Bona of Savoy]. I and my children commend ourselves continually to both of you and to your little children. From Naples. 28 February 1474. Your most illustrious Lordship’s littlest sister,103 Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand *** Letter 63: 2 October 1474 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita sends her brother a brief letter of recommendation for the courier who delivers it. ..... Most illustrious Lord, my brother, My faithful servant carries this letter. I think highly of him because he merits it. I commend him to your Lordship as well as to the most illustrious lady my sister [Bona of Savoy]. Your Lordship will be more amply informed by Luise as to why he comes. You will put your trust in him as you do in me. I commend 103. Ippolita omits her usual Latin valediction Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis and signs instead in Italian, “De Vostra Illustrissima Signoria.”

The Ambassadors (1469–1475) 123 myself to your Lordship in whom all my hopes reside. From Naples. 2 October 1474. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your littlest sister, Ippolita Maria, etc., in her own hand *** Letter 64: 12 May 1475 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan When Baldo Martorelli died in 1475, Ferrante appointed the acclaimed poet Giovanni Pontano as Ippolita’s secretary. Pontano was now positioned to be not only Ippolita’s agent but the king’s as well. This letter of recommendation for two Catalan merchants is the first of Ippolita’s letters signed by Pontano. It bears the formal heading: Exemplum litterarum domine Hippolyte ducisse Calabriae ad Ill. um dominum ducem mediolani (A sample of the letters of Lady Ippolita, duchess of Calabria, to the lord duke of Milan). ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, most honorable brother, The Catalan merchants Francino de Andrea Vitale and Bernardo del Col are good and faithful servants of mine. For my every need, I have availed myself of them and their goods as I would my own; and because of this, I am just as concerned about their wellbeing and comfort as I am about my own servants. Therefore, since these men desire to be the servants of your most illustrious Lordship and to conduct their business and to stay in your dominion, I beg your Excellency as urgently as I can to be willing for my sake to grant them a good and generous safe passage agreement, broadly defined—leaving them free to act at will, so that they will be able to live, trade, and conduct their business and their trade in any of your lands or places in your dominion, and particularly in Genoa and its environs, providing protection to them as to their persons, family, agents, things, and goods whatever their nature and condition, and also to any type of merchandise which is shipped and directed to them, regardless of the place it comes from and the native land of the person who sends it. Surely your Highness will oblige me with this special favor, and you will acquire for yourself these two servants of noble mind and true lovers of their lords. I ask you again and again to fulfill my wish to oblige these servants of mine in accord both with the affection they have for me and their desire to serve your most illustrious Lordship. And henceforth, should you desire to revoke their residency permit, please only do so a year after

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you have notified them of your intentions. We commend ouselves always to your Lordship. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 12 May 1475. Giovanni Pontano *** Letter 65: 2 June 1475 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita seeks her brother Galeazzo’s help in building a marriage alliance between the duke of Venosa and a daughter of the longtime Sforza ally and neighbor, Ludovico Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua. Venosa is a powerful supporter of Ippolita’s husband Alfonso and a vassal of King Ferrante. In proposing a marriage between the king’s vassal and a Gonzaga daughter, Ippolita yet again works to strengthen the Naples–Milan alliance. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, most honorable brother, It is my duty to communicate my every thought, first and foremost, to your most illustrious Lordship, and also to let you know when an issue of importance is reported and presented before me by others. And if I did otherwise, it would seem to me that I was committing the gravest error and relinquishing the duty of a sister and indeed a most loving and obedient sister. Your highness knows the bond that the duke of Andri and his son, the duke of Venosa, have with the lord duke my husband, and because of this bond I am not only well loved by them but in truth they communicate to me their every thought and need with such loyalty that I think it would be impossible to do so to a greater extent and it seems to me that every plan of theirs concerning their sons and grandsons relates to the desire and opinion of my consort. Whereupon they communicate and reveal their thoughts to me with such great loyalty, and it happens quite often that they communicate their current needs and request my opinion before they have even broached them either with the lord duke my consort or with his majesty the king, just as they have done during these days regarding one of their plans, of which I am informing your Highness by means of the present letter. Since the duke of Venosa has only one son, who is the successor to both his state and that of his grandfather the duke of Andri, and who is already of an age to marry, both the father and grandfather have come together to speak with me about their desire to give him a wife. And after they had spoken at length, asking my opinion about this, they told me they would very much like to be related by marriage to the house of the Gonzaga and to have one of the daughters of the

The Ambassadors (1469–1475) 125 most illustrious marchese. And having considered from the points of view of both companies the conditions which to my mind must be considered and what must be for both sides worthy and honorable concerns, I responded to their lordships that I judged the betrothal proposal to be a worthy idea, and as far as I could I approved their plan as a most honorable and highly prudent one. Then their lordships asked me, as one in whom they knew most certainly that they could confide, if I wanted, before the matter was discussed in another way with his majesty the king, to attempt to propose this match to the most illustrious marchesa [Barbara of Brandenburg] in a letter of my own, to be able to understand through my channels if this was something that should be put forward and pursued. Having thanked their lordships, I responded that I was most ready. Having heard their proposal, I immediately communicated everything to your Excellency’s ambassador messer Francesco [Maletta]. Although your Excellency will be apprised by him as well, I will nevertheless say in my letter what I need to say regarding this proposal. The duke of Andri and the duke of Venosa, my most illustrious Lord, are the closest kinsmen whom the duke my consort has in his kingdom. They descend from a great lineage and they have such a great estate that the above-mentioned young man—to whom his father and grandfather want to provide a wife—will be the most powerful baron in the kingdom, in terms of land holdings and revenue, since he will have his father’s living as well as his grandfather’s and that of their other descendants, which will amount to around 3,000 ducats a year, for which reason the above-mentioned daughter of the illustrious marchese will be placed in a very honorable position. And to tell you my interest in this project, your Excellency can imagine without my writing that this matrimony will be much to my advantage, in terms of the things that can happen—given that she would be the wife of such a powerful baron with so many citadels and castles in the best and most important parts of the realm, and given the position that the ladies here have with their husbands and the support of their vassals, and given that she could hope to have for herself and her entourage what she can and must hope to have from me and my household, and especially from your Excellency and your most illustrious sons and heirs. And so, your Highness, given that you have now heard these my opinions and thoughts and given the concern that you have for me and my affairs and also for your affairs and your children’s, considering the implication certain events can have, I beg and even supplicate you most urgently, please consider this kindly; and if the marriage proposal is pleasing to you, and in my opinion it should be pleasing to you because of the things mentioned above, please send the letter about this matter which I wrote, which is attached to this one, to the very illustrious marchesa; and please also write or send a message as you see fit, and please remind, assure, and urge them to pursue this proposal. With this, your

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most illustrious Lordship, you will do me an everlasting kindness. Nonetheless, if your Highness has perhaps another thought on this matter or wishes to act according to other considerations, please respond to me in full with your every opinion and wish. I constantly commend myself to your Lordship. From Castel Capuano. 2 June 1475. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most affectionate sister, Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary *** Letter 66: 1 August 1475 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita here comments to her brother on the recall to Milan of Francesco Maletta, the duke’s ambassador to Naples since 1472, an act that signaled the rupture in relations between Milan and Naples. Already in 1474, the long alliance between Galeazzo and the king had begun to fray over their competing claims to the kingdom of Cyprus. But the king broke completely with Galeazzo when he discovered that the duke and Lorenzo de’ Medici had entered into secret negotiations with Venice to form a triple alliance.104 The recall of an ambassador always signaled a serious breach in relations between states. ..... Most illustrious Lord father and brother, Your Lordship’s ambassador [Francesco Maletta] here in Naples has secretly informed me that as soon as his majesty the king, who at present is away from Naples, arrives, the ambassador must take his leave and come to your Lordship after his majesty has given permission. It appears to me that you are doing the right thing to call him back in order to preserve your own dignity. I commend to your Lordship the said ambassador, who has conducted himself so well here in the interest of your Lordship’s honor and status that only rarely, in my judgment, could anyone conduct himself better. Without saying so, he seems to me to be dispatching his duty before God and the world. I commend myself always to your Lordship. Naples. 1 August 1475. Eiusdem Vestre Dominationis Soror105 Ippolita Maria, etc. 104. On the Milan–Naples rupture in 1474–1475, see Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 116–19. 105. “Sister of your same dominion.” Another variation on Ippolita’s standard valediction.

Cholera (1475–1476) 127 Duchess of Calabria *** Letter 67: 10 August 1475 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita’s letter of August 10 made clear her sympathy for her departing countryman, the ambassador Francesco Maletta. Given Galeazzo’s abrupt break with Ferrante, Ippolita clearly had some insider information of her own to share with her brother regarding the politics of the Neapolitan court. ..... Most illustrious Lord father and brother, Since messer Francesco Maletta is leaving here to return to your Lordship, I didn’t think he should go without letters from me, and so as not to spend too long writing, I have entrusted to messer Francesco the task of telling your Lordship some things from my point of view. And I beseech your Lordship to put your trust in him as fully as you would in my own person, and I continually commend myself to your Lordship. Castel Capuano, Naples. 10 August 1475. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most affectionate sister, Ippolita Maria Duchess of Calabria, etc.

6. Cholera: Letters 68–75 (1475–1476) Letter 68: 12 November 1475 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita writes her brother in her own hand to inform him that both her consort Duke Alfonso and King Ferrante have come down with cholera. The king seems to have a worse case of the disease. This letter is unusual both in Ippolita’s desperate prayers to God to save the king and Alfonso and her frantic pleas to her brother not to abandon her. The barons of the realm had repeatedly threatened Ferrante’s throne rule from 1459 to 1464. In the event of the king’s death, the succession would by no means be secure from another revolt by the barons. As she attempts to secure her brother’s help in a moment of extreme peril, Ippolita emphasizes the numerous blood and marital ties that would favor Galeazzo’s intervention. She appeals to him both as a brother-in-law to Duke Alfonso, as her brother, and in his role as paterfamilias, as her father.

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..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, Your Lordship will be advised through the secretary’s letter about the sickness of the my lord the duke; indeed I am sure that his lordship, with the help of our Lord God and of our advocate the Virgin Mary, will recover and will no longer be in danger of dying. Amen and may it be so. But my lord, the king’s illness has come as a surprise here. The king finds himself in a place called Carinola106 and from what I hear he is worse off than my most illustrious lord the duke. So just imagine, your Lordship, how I feel, and if it were not for the great faith and hope I have in you, my Lord, who are like a father to me, I would be half mad with worry. And considering that sometimes the lord king and your Lordship have not seen eye to eye as I would have liked, I pray that, if the worst befalls the lord king, may God prevent it, your Lordship will be willing to demonstrate to my lord the duke, who will certainly be completely well because he is already recovering, that you are a good brother, that you love me and likewise my children, and that you will show him what your Lordship has in mind since you consider me a most obedient daughter. My dear Lord, do not abandon me since my lord duke harbors the greatest love for you—were God willing that he could talk to you, since I know what his thinking is and I know the hope he has vested in your Lordship, to whom I continually commend myself. I am so overcome that I do not know what to write except that I console myself wholly both by thinking that I have such a great lord and brother as your Lordship and above all that my lord is on the way to recovery. From Castel Capuano. 12 November at the 7th hour of the night, 1475. Your most illustrious Lordship’s107 obedient daughter, Ippolita Maria *** Letter 69: 14 November 1475 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita’s husband Alfonso and her father-in-law King Ferrante continue to battle cholera. She sends hourly bulletins to her brother Galeazzo in Milan on the progress of their disease. Should both father and son die, it is clear to the duchess that if they remained in Naples, neither she not her children would survive the baron’s rebellion that was brewing even now. ..... 106. Called Carinole by Ippolita, Carinola is about thirty miles northwest of Naples. 107. The valediction here and in the next three letters is in Italian: “De Vostra Illustrissima Signoria.”

Cholera (1475–1476) 129 Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, In an earlier letter I informed your most illustrious Lordship of the illness of my most illustrious lord duke and of the indisposition of his majesty the lord king. With the present letter I am informing you that his majesty was gravely ill but that through the grace of God, since he took certain medicines and remedies, he is feeling much better, though he still has a slight fever. And my lord the duke is also much better thanks to the grace of God, to such a degree that I am certain he will be fine. And because we do not know the will of our Lord God regarding his majesty, I have decided to send to Rome my most trusted gentleman Carlo Stendardo,108 so that he can secretly give hourly dispatches by means of mounted messengers on the progress of the lord king and of my lord duke as well, who can now be considered healthy. I beg your Lordship, in whom I entrust all my faith and hope as a daughter in a ­father, that you will advise me on everything you think I should do—whatever ensues. I commend myself to your Lordship. Naples 14 November 1475. Your most illustrious Lordship’s littlest sister, Ippolita Maria, in her own hand, etc. *** Letter 70: 16 November 1475 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Two days later Ippolita reports that her husband Duke Alfonso has now fully recovered. Meanwhile, her father-in-law King Ferrante has become so much sicker that he now is now predicted to die. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most loving brother, I have continually kept you informed, my most illustrious Lord, of the sickness of his majesty the lord and king and of the illustrious lord my duke. And you wrote asking that I tell you what has ensued. At present I am writing to report to your Lordship that his majesty has become so much sicker that his death is predicted, though we are not entirely without hope that he will live. If he dies, my faith and my hope for anything I might need are in your hands, my Lordship, as my father and lord. The very illustrious duke my lord is much better, thanks be to God, such that I consider him recovered and completely healthy. I commend myself to your Lordship. From Naples. 16 November 1475. Your most illustrious Lordship’s littlest sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. 108. Stendardo was a courtier of King Ferrante.

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In her own hand *** Letter 71: 16 November 1475 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan This letter is close to a verbatim copy of Letter 70. Only one sentence has been altered. ..... Most illustrious Lord and my most beloved brother, I have continually kept you informed, my most illustrious Lord, of the sickness of his majesty the lord king and the illustrious lord my duke. And you wrote asking that I tell you what has ensued. At present I am writing to report to your Lordship that his majesty has become so much sicker that his death is predicted, though we are not entirely without hope that he will live. If he dies, my faith and my hope for anything I might need reside in your Lordship, as my father and lord. The most illustrious duke my lord is much better, thanks be to God, such that I consider him recovered and completely healthy. I commend myself to your Lordship. From Naples. 16 November 1475. Your most illustrious Lordship’s littlest sister, Ippolita Maria, etc. In her own hand *** Letter 72: 28 November 1475 To Carlo Stendardo In a letter to Carlo Stendardo, a courtier of King Ferrante, Ippolita expresses her gratitude that her brother Galeazzo had shown himself ready to intervene militarily to defend her and her husband’s interests in the kingdom in the event the king did not survive. ..... Carlo, My lord duke and I have received the letters of the most illustrious duke my brother, which without exception fulfilled the hopes and expectations that both Alfonso and I had of his excellency. Moreover, it would be impossible to express not only the pleasure and joy that each of us felt at those letters but also at the

Cholera (1475–1476) 131 congratulations and comfort the barons and gentlemen gave to us when we shared these letters with them. And even for the copy of the letter that was sent to us by the reverend monsignor of Piacenza, just think, a public congratulation was offered us. And rest assured that we, because we saw our brother express explicit backing for the lord duke our consort’s domain and rule and our own, especially given that we saw some people here were halfhearted about our expectations, were all the more elated and our ideas, hopes and expectations grew. They say the same is true of the lord duke our consort. And even though, since no harm befell his majesty the lord king, the offers, provisions and plans of the illustrious lord our brother will not, by God’s grace, be necessary, nonetheless you have to know how much consolation it was to both of us and to all our friends and servants to hear of all the provisions that were made in Romagna regarding the troops and also of those made for the ships in Genoa, and to see and hear that his excellency had decided to wager his resources and state alongside those of the lord duke my consort, his brother-in-law, and finally, to hear that he was prepared to put his own person in harm’s way. Such measures, in case of need, would have been carried out more in actions than in words, since if our lord father of happy memory did as much as he did for the state of the lord king before we arrived here, and in times of so much suffering, what should we think our lord brother would do if necessary for us, his sister, for his brother-in-law, whom he dearly loves, and for his nephew and niece, especially since his highness is most powerful in terms of money, troops, friends and every other resource; and in a time in which he is not involved in other enterprises or wars, and, what is more, in a time in which things in this kingdom are such that one could hope for nothing but obedience from everyone. And nonetheless, even if I were in another circumstance, his excellency would have been all the more zealous and would have come with even sharper spurs to fulfill our needs and exploit our opportunities. Therefore, all of these things taken together give me reason to be happier than any woman in the world, since we have such a great brother and since we saw that so many plans had been made for our consort, whatever the circumstances and whatever his need. Our Lord God must be thanked for this before all else. And as regards the most excellent lord our brother, neither the lord duke my consort nor we are able to give other thanks than those that are due to such an excellent brother-in-law, brother and father. The lord duke and I have sent to his majesty the king the above-mentioned letters and copies. When those are answered, we will write in detail. Written from the Castel Capuano, Naples. 28 November 1475. Giovanni Pontano, secretary ***

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Letter 73: 29 November 1475 To Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita continues to chronicle for her brother’s benefit the gradual improvement of the health of her father-in-law King Ferrante and her husband Duke Alfonso. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent and affectionate brother, Yesterday at the nineteenth hour his majesty the lord king had another benefit from nature, such that about three ounces of blood came out from his nose, and, according to the news that we had, from the third hour of the night up until that time, he had not yet had his usual paroxysm. If his majesty remains free of this paroxysm, he would be free of the two tertian fevers since he was already freed of the other paroxysm several days ago, as I already wrote in my earlier letter. And so his majesty would only have this simple constant fever. I will keep your Highness informed of everything. The most illustrious duke my lord took a walk this morning for about an hour and he ate sitting at the table dressed and with his shoes on, as when he was well. It is true that these two past nights he suffered some perturbances because of an upset stomach and the new moon; they are waiting to remove that blockage which he still has. I commend myself to your Highness. Sent from Castel Capuano, Naples. 29 November 1475. Eiusdem Vestre Illustrissime Dominationis Your most affectionate sister, Ippolita Maria Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano *** Letter 74: 25 March 1476 To Sacramoro da Rimini, bishop and Milanese ambassador This is the first of the many letters Ippolita writes to the monsignor Sacramoro da Rimini, Galeazzo’s ambassador to the papal court and bishop of Parma. Sacramoro would serve as Ippolita’s principal confidant, adviser, and father figure after the death of her brother Galeazzo. .....

Cholera (1475–1476) 133 My most reverend Monsignor,109 I have communicated everything to your Lordship in the count’s letter. I am not writing too much with my own hand because I have had to set the terms of release for Ludovico who is returning to his home and so you will forgive me if I do not write too much. I say only that if it were up to my lord the duke things would be going better. I wanted to inform you that if the response of messer Anello [Arcamone]110 is positive, it is because the lord duke made him do it; and he told me the lord count of Matalone [Maddaloni; Diomede Carafa] was successful. I commend myself to you and likewise to my lord brother, to whom I will always be an obedient daughter. Sent from Naples. 25 March 1476. Yours,111 Ippolita Maria *** Letter 75: 14 December 1476 To Sacramoro da Rimini, bishop and Milanese ambassador This is the last of Ippolita’s letters written before the assassination of her brother Galeazzo, duke of Milan. Again the addressee is her confidant, the bishop Sacramoro da Rimini. ..... Reverend Father in Christ, our Lord and dearest friend, On the seventh of this month we received your letter in which your reverend Lordship informed us of the return of the duchess of Savoy to her realm,112 news we are happy to have and we thank your reverend Lordship for the information. As for the situation of lord Don Ioanne [Gianni or Giovanni], we are happier than words can express about the work done for the most illustrious lord duke and 109. On Sacramoro da Rimini see Ilardi, “Towards the Tragedia,” 120; Monica Azzolini, The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 275n86. 110. Ippolita probably makes reference to Anello Arcamone, Neapolitan ambassador in Rome from 1473–1486. On Arcamone, see Catherine Fletcher, Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome: The Rise of the Resident Ambassador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 83. 111. “La vostra.” Her only use of this valediction in these letters. 112. Ippolita refers here to Galeazzo’s ally Yolande of Valois, duchess regent of Savoy, who returned to rule after having been imprisoned for six months. The move against her had posed a threat to Galeazzo on the Piemontese border. She returned to rule on December 5, 1476. See François Charles Uginet, “Iolanda di Francia, duchessa di Savoia,” DBI 62 (2004):549–53 .

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the task that was given to you. Certainly the aforesaid illustrious lord has done and does works worthy of himself. We have informed the aforesaid don Ioanne and our consort the lord duke of the above-mentioned matters. They were happier than words can express. We encourage your reverend Lordship, now that messer Anello [Arcamone] is there, to proceed. In the past days we responded to one of your letters concerning the sickness and so forth. And we had received another letter before it. There is no need to reply further. We thank you for the bulls. The lord duke greets and supports you and he considers you among his good and true friends. Attached to your letter written on the 28 of November (mentioned above) there was another letter attached, of which I give you notice. The prince of Capua [Ferrandino], our son, was ill with a fever for around seventeen days; now thank God he is well. The lord duke returned from Puglia in poor health, and now similarly he is in good health again. We pledge ourselves as always to your reverend Lordship. Sent from Castel Capuano, Naples. 14 December 1476. Duchess of Calabria, etc.

7. Assassination and the Struggle for Succession: Letters 76–83 (1477–1479) Letter 76: 4 January 1477 To Ludovico Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua In an act of violence that rocked all Europe, Ippolita’s brother Galeazzo, duke of Milan, was assassinated on 26 December 1476, in the church of Santo Stefano in Milan where he had gone to celebrate mass. As he approached the altar, the duke was stabbed to death by a crowd of his own men, among them the ducal chancellor Carlo Visconti, two of his own court gentlemen and a number of their servants.113 A week after the assassination, Ippolita sought support to help protect the duchy, whose security was in jeopardy now that it was in the hands of Galeazzo’s widow, Bona of Savoy. Ippolita addresses this letter to Ludovico Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua, one of her family’s long-standing allies. She expresses her sorrow at her brother’s death and asks for Ludovico’s help to defend the Sforza domain. ..... Most illustrious and most excellent Lord, as dear as a ­father, The affection we have for your most illustrious Lordship, and the memory of the brotherly love that your most illustrious Lordship shared with my ­father, 113. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 239–40; Bortolo Belotti, Il dramma di Gerolamo Olgiati.

Assassination and the Struggle for Succession (1477–1479) 135 lord duke Francesco [Sforza] of happy memory, and also with my most illustrious brother who has passed from this life, requires that we must, to keep faith, share with your most illustrious Lordship our grief about this most tragic event. In so doing, we feel we can in some measure ease the bitterness of the pain inside us and relieve the terrible suffering in our hearts, since we know with utter certainty that, as we express our grief to your most illustrious Lordship, you share our grief and affliction, and that your illustrious Lordship, just as we ourselves, feel you have lost a most loving brother of your own, and that to bring him back to life you would give your own blood. And because we know this for certain, we will not hesitate to ask your illustrious Lordship, and also to pray you from our hearts, that, as you keep in mind these friendships I have mentioned, you will be willing embrace and protect the state of the most illustrious new duke and his most illustrious mother [Bona of Savoy].114 Many things would encourage your most illustrious Lordship to do so: first and foremost the firm hope that is had in you, and additionally, your knowledge that, what you do for that state, you do for your own, and that such help will bring you singular recognition and fame and will stabilize your dominion and your sons’. If we went on further in this regard, we would fear we would give you reason to distrust us. And so we will only add this: that, along with other considerations, may your most illustrious Lordship keep in mind ours as well. We pray you to do so, as does our most illustrious consort [Alfonso], the duke of Calabria, who considers the new duke as his own son. As regards his majesty the lord king, we can affirm with complete confidence that for all the help that your most illustrious Lordship provides to the above-mentioned state, you will receive and earn his majesty’s singular obligation, since we know that he will consider such help to be provided personally to him, since, for the conservation of that state, he has resolved to risk even his own life, were it necessary. We have written these things trustingly to your most illustrious Lordship, and have shared our grief with you as if you were our father. We have had the courage to urge and exhort your most illustrious Lordship as we have believed we could since we pray you will consider our letter as if it were from one of your own daughters. We commend ourselves always to your most illustrious Lordship. Written from the Castel Capuano, Naples. 3 January 1477. Illustrissime Dominationis Vestre Tamquam Filia115 114. Ludovico in fact helped broker the compromise between Bona and her brothers-in-law in February 1477; see Daniel M. Bueno de Mesquita, “Bona di Savoia, duchessa di Milano,” DBI 11 (1969):428– 30 ; that, however, had unraveled by May. 115. Another variation on the standard valediction formula, she signs the letter “Of your illustrious dominion, as a daughter.” It is notable here, as in earlier letters to Ludovico’s consort Barbara

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Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti, duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary *** Letter 77: 19 February 1477 To Bona of Savoy, dowager duchess of Milan Seven weeks after Galeazzo’s murder, Ippolita posted this letter to Galeazzo’s widow Bona of Savoy, begging her to treat Galeazzo’s four surviving brothers with mercy and understanding. Since the heir apparent, Bona’s son Gian Galeazzo, was only seven years old at the time of his father’s murder, the Sforza brothers conspired to seize control of the duchy for themselves. Bona moved quickly to reach an accord with them, giving each of the surviving brothers—Sforza Maria, Ascanio, Ludovico, and Ottaviano—an annual pension of 12,500 gold ducats and a palace in Milan in return for their pledge of loyalty.116 But when Bona discovered that they had mounted a new conspiracy to take the duchy for themselves later that year, on 1 June 1477, she stripped her brothers-in-law Sforza Maria, Ascanio and Ludovico (Ottaviano had died in the meantime) of their properties in Milan and their pension, and banished them from the realm, each to a different city: respectively to Bari, Siena or Perugia, and Pisa or Florence.117 ..... Most illustrious and most excellent Lady and most honorable sister, I know it is not necessary that I commend to your illustrious Ladyship those brothers of mine, since I am convinced that you consider them and will continue to consider them as your own brothers. Whatever the case may be, your Ladyship, please have patience if my love for them carries me to their harbor. And because I am assured that their behavior will be better every day, I will recommend them with all the more confidence. And therefore I beg your most illustrious Ladyship to be so kind as to continue to act with good love towards them and to treat them as good brothers, as I am certain you will do in your kindness, fulfilling both the role and the duties of a mother. Please promote good love and harmony among them and bind yourself more to them every day. It would be excessive for me to go on any further, trusting that your Ladyship will respond to my prayers with action and good works, so that I will no longer have reason to make such of Brandenburg (see Letters 18 and 22), that Ippolita adopts the formula usually reserved for family members. See above, Introduction, note 34. 116. Santoro, Gli Sforza, 182–91. 117. Bognetti, Calderini, and Cognasso, L’età sforzesca, in Storia di Milano 7:315–19; Santoro, Gli Sforza, 182–91.

Assassination and the Struggle for Succession (1477–1479) 137 entreaties, but only to thank you, and with this faith I commend my brothers and myself to your illustrious Ladyship, and likewise Isabella—as much your daughter as mine—commends herself to you. From Castel Capuano. February 19, 1477. Dominationis Vestre Illustrissima Signoria118 Your littlest sister, Ippolita Maria In her own hand, etc. *** Letter 78: 10 March 1477 To Sacramoro da Rimini, bishop and Milanese ambassador Ippolita writes again to the Milanese ambassador to the papal court, Sacramoro da Rimini, calculating that he will have some influence on her sister-in-law Bona of Savoy. She points out that she has arranged to have King Ferrante send his war galleons at the bidding of the duchess. In turn, Ippolita hopes that the monsignor will influence Bona “to see [the Sforza brothers] in a more favorable light” and “to treat them more like brothers.” ..... Reverend Monsignor, On the 7th of this month we received one of your letters from the 3rd, and on the 9th we got another from you from the 5th, and after we shared them with my consort the duke [Alfonso], we immediately sent them to the lord king, who was at Sarno. And concerning the situation with messer Obiecto [Obietto or Ibleto Fieschi],119 his majesty has provided three galleons which have been fitted out to sail from here, and if the weather were not adverse to winds from the south they would already have set sail. The aforesaid galleons will travel to carry out whatever the illustrious lady [Bona of Savoy] orders, and for this purpose his majesty has written to messer Antonio Cicinello to tell that lady to send one of her men to La Spezia to board the aforesaid galleons, and on the basis of his judgment they will know exactly what will have to be done. So much for the business of the galleons. The harmony among our brothers could not have given us greater consolation. I am hoping their behavior will be such that every day they will give more reason to the most illustrious lady to see them in a more favorable light and to 118. “Of your dominion, most illustrious Ladyship.” 119. Obietto (Ibleto) Fieschi, leader of a Genoese rebellion against the Sforza. See Giovanni Nuti, “Fieschi, Ibleto,” DBI 47 (1997):482–86 .

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treat them more like brothers. May our lord God show us his grace so that we may hear more hopeful news every day. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 10 March 1477. Duchess of Calabria etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary *** Letter 79: 10 March 1477 To Bona of Savoy, dowager duchess, and Gian Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan On the same day that she wrote to Sacramoro, Ippolita also addressed a letter to Gian Galeazzo and Bona of Savoy—whom she calls along with Bona’s other children “most loving sister and sons”120—to thank them for the accord she heard they had reached with her brothers. ..... Most illustrious and excellent Princess and Lord, most loving sister and sons, We are infinitely grateful to your Highnesses for your letter in which you explained to us the good agreement and understanding reached between you and your excellent brothers-in-law and uncles, my brothers. We wish first to thank divine providence for this, and then to praise as much as is humanly possible the wisdom of your excellent Lordship and Ladyship who, with such mature consideration, prudence and love, succeeded in diffusing the conflicts and resolving them, without any other difficulties occurring, in such an excellent arrangement, giving these brothers of ours the clearest reasons to be ever more devoted and quicker to serve you, and giving other servants and friends firm basis to continue their long-standing service in the hopes that they will be properly appreciated and treated by your Highnesses. From what your most illustrious Lordship and Ladyship write, we—as the one who, after you, has the greatest stake of any living person— found and find from this fraternal agreement the greatest consolation that any living person has received or receives from your Highnesses, for reasons that could be neither more numerous nor more significant. Nevertheless, may your most illustrious Lordship and Ladyship rest assured that his majesty the lord king and our most illustrious consort took no less pleasure in this that we ourselves did. It seems unnecessary to us to urge your Ladyship and Lordship to consider as commended to you your brothers-in-law and uncles, our brothers, and to give them every reason to be ever more desirous to serve you, since your love and goodwill toward them have been tangibly seen and hopefully day after day this disposition will be further strengthened by their actions, since your illustrious 120. The envelope is addressed to Bona and Giangaleazzo.

Assassination and the Struggle for Succession (1477–1479) 139 Lordship and Ladyship have established such foundations and given such firm bases that one can confidently build upon these in order to pursue a most praiseworthy goal. May our Lord God shed His grace upon us so that we may receive ever better news about the serenity, safety and wellbeing of your Highnesses, to whom we commend and consecrate our self. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 10 March 1477. Illustrissime Dominationis Vestre soror, cognata, mater amantissima121 Ippolita Maria, duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary *** Letter 80: 2 April 1477 To Sacramoro da Rimini, bishop and Milanese ambassador Ippolita remains in close touch with the Milan’s ambassador to the Vatican, Sacramoro da Rimini. This letter indicates that she is still acting as an intercessor between Naples, Florence, and Milan, in this case involving the retaking of Genoa from rebels.122 A second concern in this letter to Sacramoro was the upcoming nominations to the cardinalate of two of Ippolita’s kinsmen, her younger brother Ascanio and her brother-in-law Giovanni d’Aragona.123 ..... Reverend Monsignor, Yesterday around midday we received your letters with the copies from Florence and Milan containing the preparations for the assistance at Genoa. We immediately sent them to the lord king [Ferrante], and they have not been returned yet. We shall explain them to the lord duke [Alfonso] and also the count of Matalone [Maddaloni, Diomede Carafa]. We hope that those who head the effort meet our expectations; they will do something very important, and we feel as though we can already see it before our eyes.124 121. “Of your most illustrious domain, most loving sister, sister-in-law, and mother.” 122. Sforza troops would retake Genoa on 11 April 1477; see Nuti, “Fieschi, Ibleto.” 123. Full brother of Ippolita’s consort Alfonso, duke of Calabria, Giovanni d’Aragona would rise to the cardinalate as cardinal priest in 1480; see Edith Pàsztor, “Aragona, Giovanni d’,” DBI 3 (1961):697–98 . 124. Milanese troops were headed by Roberto Sanseverino, while Prospero Adorno, the former doge of Genoa, led troops into Genoa on 11 April and proclaimed himself governor on behalf of the Sforza; see Nuti, “Fieschi, Ibleto”; Giuseppe Oreste, “Adorno, Prospero,” DBI 1 (1960):303–4 .

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We were awaiting the promotion of our two kinsmen, our brother-in-law and our brother, with great eagerness; it seems to us that several days must pass before the offices are vacant.125 The messenger has done his duty in accordance with your Lordship’s instructions: he left on the 29th and arrived here yesterday, which was the first of April. We will respond more specifically in another letter because the aforementioned letters have not yet come back and the messenger does not want to wait. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 2 April 1477. Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano *** Letter 81: 18 July 1477 To Sacramoro da Rimini, bishop and Milanese ambassador With Galeazzo gone, Sacramoro continues to serve as a father figure for Ippolita. To him she confides her hopes and fears. After Galeazzo’s assassination, she alone was able to marshal her allies in Naples to help put down the Fieschi rebellion against Milanese rule in Genoa. Meanwhile Roberto Sanseverino, who had served both Galeazzo and Francesco Sforza as their leading general, now supported her brothers in their coup against Bona of Savoy and her young son. Ippolita is of two minds. She is saddened by Sanseverino’s alliance with the Sforza brothers against Bona and her son Gian Galeazzo, who is the rightful heir to the Milanese throne. Yet she is appalled at the “extreme measures” Bona has undertaken in exiling her brothers from Milan. ..... Reverend Father in Christ and our dearest friend, Yesterday we received your letter of the 11th. As far as it regards relying on Fabritio [da San Ginesio],126 we spoke with him yesterday and before he leaves we will talk about it further in detail together. We communicated to him the contents of your letters and even if your Lordship had never written to us to do so, we still would have shared them with him, in order to perform our duty to the men of that illustrious lady and lord and because these were so restrained. Concerning the matter of the Swiss, we take much comfort in what you wrote and it appears to us that the most excellent lady [Bona of Savoy] is using the methods in this matter that are warranted against such a people; and since 125. Castaldo notes at 89n1 that in March 1477 the proposal for the elevation to the cardinalate of Ascanio Sforza and Giovanni d’Aragona was held in the consistory but the nominations were not heard due to the opposition of the College of Cardinals. 126. Fabrizio da San Ginesio, Sforza ambassador in Naples; see Figliuolo 37n3.

Assassination and the Struggle for Succession (1477–1479) 141 just and rational methods are not adequate, surely it is nothing but laudable to show one’s teeth and to make the provisions that befit a prince who is manly127 and knows how to exercise his strength.128 Regarding affairs at Genoa, that is, those fortresses of Ioanloisi [Gian Luigi Fieschi],129 we greatly wish to be updated daily on what is happening, hoping that the situation will go from good to better. The arrival of [Milanese ambassadors] messer Agostino [Rossi]130 and messer Ioanne Andrea [Giovanni Andrea Cagnola] is very much appreciated by us, and such a choice is deservedly praiseworthy. Regarding the affair of signor Roberto Sanseverino, we cannot write anything except that we will always be saddened by his actions. And had God been willing that all those letters we wrote to him had influenced him, he wouldn’t be in these straits now, nor would the most excellent lady have been drawn into taking such measures.131 In recent days we have had and are still having such hot blood [ebullitione de sangue], however without fever, and this has brought on a tightness in our chest. We are trying to remedy this and these flashes of heat have now been diffused throughout our entire body, and of this we are most relieved. We offer ourselves as always to your reverend Lordship. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 18 July 1477. Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary *** Letter 82: 15 January 1478 To Sacramoro da Rimini, bishop and Milanese ambassador Ippolita has had a serious misunderstanding with her mentor Sacramoro da Rimini, the Milanese ambassador to Pope Sixtus IV. The pope had proved himself inimical to both the Sforza and the Medici in his support of his nephew Girolamo Riario, whose hatred of Ippolita’s longtime friend Lorenzo de’ Medici would 127. Bona’s son Gian Galeazzo Maria Sforza was only eight years old at this time. 128. At the beginning of June 1477 there was a conflict with the Swiss which ended with a treaty of alliance; negotiations had begun during the rule of Francesco Sforza but had never concluded; see Castaldo, 90n1. 129. After Obietto Fieschi was imprisoned in Milan as the leader of the Genoese rebellion against Milan following the assassination of Galeazzo, Gian Luigi [Ioanloisi] Fieschi, his brother, led Genoa in a continuing rebellion against the Sforza. 130. Agostino Rossi, a mounted servant (famiglio cavalcante); see Figliuolo 38n4. 131. After the Sforza brothers attempted a coup with Sanseverino’s assistance, Bona of Savoy exiled the brothers.

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culminate the Riario’s role in the Pazzi conspiracy in Florence in April 1478 and his attempt to murder Lorenzo at that time. Sacramoro fears that Ippolita thinks him a traitor to her and her friends because of opinions he espoused in his letters. Ippolita expresses her confidence that he in fact never said such things. Always the vigilant diplomat herself, Ippolita returns excerpts from his own letters to Sacramoro to prove to him that his fealty to the Sforza is, and has always been, demonstrable. She further defends her own honor, saying that she would never divulge the confidential information he entrusted to her. In closing, she reassures Sacramoro that nothing indiscreet has been said about him nor has he written anything that could tarnish his honor. ..... Most reverend Monsignor, Today I received your two letters, one from the first of this month and the other from the 9th. Regarding the first, we have been as unhappy and discontented and sorry as it is possible to be, indeed quite a bit more than the importance of the matter would require, even if it is unfortunate in its implications. Your reverend Lordship speaks in one paragraph about how there were people who spoke and wrote that, regarding the matters at Faenza, you excused yourself with us saying that you acted against your will. These are the formal words; it was also added that the one saying this could show letters of yours that were written in this vein. To respond, we will say that this matter is very disturbing to us, both because what is being said about your reverend Lordship is absolutely and completely false since your reverend Lordship never wrote us either this or any such words that could either presume to hint at this or that come within a thousand miles of expressing such a thought, and also because we see our honor besmirched by this—as if we sold and bartered letters. First, this is not our practice, and moreover, how could we display something that you never wrote? And no one could write or say such a thing except a man who has little interest in the truth or his own honor. The more we ponder this business, the angrier we remain that they have the nerve to mix us up in such lies and malice. And so that your Lordship knows what you wrote us about the matter of Faenza, even if you didn’t keep careful copies of those letters, and so you know precisely what you told us about Faenza, we are sending you in two parts what you told us about this in two of your letters. Otherwise we do not wish in any other way to exonerate ourselves for something about which we are entirely ignorant. And, blessed be the Lord, how could we have wanted to share with others that which was not sent to us? Not only have we not shared these two attached parts with others, but the most illustrious

Assassination and the Struggle for Succession (1477–1479) 143 lord my consort himself has not seen them. We recognize that there is malice on the part of the persons who are trying to harm your honor, something that grieves us all the more since they are making this attempt regarding letters that were written to us. But, reverend Monsignor, the truth will always be found in its rightful place, and your virtue and integrity will remain unsullied. This tactic, however, is very evil and poisonous, and one must conduct oneself and stand guard as one would against an enemy. Your reverend Lorship in your prudence will know how to act. We would like to know if there is some way that we could clear this false calumny, and if some way occurs to your Lordship, please advise us, because we will pursue it most eagerly and with the utmost promptness. It seems to us there is no need to speak further about this matter, both because your Lordship never wrote us such a thing and because if such a thing had been written to us, which is not the case, we would have closely guarded the letter. Finally, “nothing false survives for long,” and without looking for it your Lordship has found calumny and recognizes where it comes from and how. Neither in response to the aforementioned letter nor to the other one we received with it is it necessary to say more, except regarding that letter of messer Cecco [Cicco Simonetta], etc., about which we will say that we have taken steps to find out at Gaeta if the said letter ended up in the hands of Antonio de Laudato,132 the owner of that purse in which that student’s letter was carried. We already wrote to your Lordship about this in a separate letter. And we have acted likewise at Perosa, writing to the student so that the letter will be recovered. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 15 January 1478. Because we did not want to resend the letter with the cavalrymen, we resorted to this inconvenient method, believing it would be more secure. Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano Postscript: Together with this letter we are sending you the response obtained from the Genoese ambassadors to whom we immediately sent your letters. *** Letter 83: 24 September 1479 To Gian Galeazo Sforza, duke, and Bona of Savoy, dowager duchess of Milan Ippolita writes to her nephew Gian Galeazzo and her sister-in-law Bona of Savoy to thank them for allowing her brother Ludovico Sforza to reenter Milan. She reports that King Ferrante is overjoyed at the news. ..... 132. We know nothing more about this figure.

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Most illustrious Prince and Princess, most excellent Lord and Lady, dearest and most honorable sister-in-law, sister and sons,133 Your Excellencies have informed me in your letters that you summoned lord Ludovico [Sforza], duke of Bari, and that he has come.134 Your Excellencies must imagine how thoroughly this has consoled me since it would be impossible for me to express such consolation in words, and so I will say nothing more and leave it to you to judge. I will not, however, keep silent on this: that the principal reason for my happiness is having seen that your Excellency, most illustrious Lady, whom I love as much as and even more than if you were my own sister, has committed such an act, filled with such benevolence, prudence and wisdom, that you have earned eternal fame, and you have not only ensured the well-being and peaceful existence of your own people, but remedied the difficulties of all of Italy. If the benevolence and humaneness you exercised in this were immense, your prudence was no less great. Therefore, the principal reason for my consolation most rightly has been and is the glory of your most illustrious Ladyship. Also adding to my happiness is that I have seen, and even yesterday saw, that his majesty the lord king seemed as overjoyed at this as he has ever been seen to be at any felicitous event that has happened to him. And beyond this joy, I grasped and felt that his heart, in your Excellencies’ regard, is burning with love and concern; and that he is as supportive of the preservation, indeed expansion, of your state as he is of his own, since his majesty told me that by means of this most noble and wise act the state of Milan and his realm have been made one. My heart is so gladdened at this since the only thing I know with utter certainty is that your Exellencies, with your infinite wisdom, will earn his majesty’s greater grace each and every day and will for certain draw and obligate him toward you. I can say nothing else to your Excellencies, since you understand and will continue to understand much better than I could express that the punishment of those evil and most polluted men was not only useful but necessary, and you will understand the evils committed and what is best for the people. All of this adds to the most prudent provisions your Excellencies made. The sacking of their houses bears true witness to their tyrannical nature and to the popular will that detests their actions and commends the provisions made by your most illustrious Lordship and Ladyship. Your Excellencies, by means of your immense prudence and those the men you have newly assigned to the government and council, will be ever more secure, both in public and in private.

133. The envelope addresses Bona and Giangaleazzo, but in the interior address Ippolita speaks of “sons,” including therefore Bona and Galeazzo’s other son, Ermes. “Fili” could also include her daughters Bianca Maria (b. 1472) and Anna (b. 1473). 134. Once pardoned, the rebel entered into Milan on 7 September 1479; Figliuolo, 47n1.

Pazzi Conspiracy and the Ottoman Invasion of Otranto (1479–1482) 145 It would be my duty to commend to your Excellencies the duke of Bari and my other brothers135 and lord Roberto Sanseverino; but given the actions you have taken and the great benevolence you have demonstrated, my commendations would be no less blameworthy than they would be unnecessary. I need only commend myself and lady Isabella, who is, your most illustrious Ladyship, no less your daughter than mine, and who is, most illustrious Prince, your consort. To your Excellencies I consecrate myself in perpetuity. Sent from the Castle of Nocera. 24 September 1479. Illustrissimimarum et Excellentissimimarum Dominationum Vestrarum soror, cognata et mater136 Ippolita Maria Visconti of Aragon, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary

8. Pazzi Conspiracy and the Ottoman Invasion of Otranto: Letters 84–93 (1479–1482) Letter 84: 4 November 1479 To Gian Galeazo Sforza, duke, and Bona of Savoy, dowager duchess of Milan Though explicitly addressing only her sister-in-law Bona of Savoy and nephew Gian Galeazzo, Ippolita in fact seems also to addresss her younger brothers,137 saluting the family members collectively as the rulers of Milan. Every sentence in this letter underlines her goal to cement the bond between Naples and Milan for their mutual defense. In April 1478, both Pope Sixtus IV and the king of Naples had supported the bloody conspiracy that had driven the Medici from power in Florence. One month after Ippolita’s letter arrived in Milan, Lorenzo de’ Medici, backed now by the Sforza, traveled to Naples to win Ferrante’s support for his return to power in Florence. .....

135. Figliuolo notes at 48n2 that after Sforza Maria’s death, the only rebel among the Sforza brothers was Ascanio, the future cardinal. 136. “Sister, sister-in-law and mother of your most illustrious and excellent Lordships and Ladyship.” 137. She implicitly addresses, that is, her brothers Filippo, Ascanio, and Ludovico as “illustrious princes and excellent lords” (lIl.mi principes et Ex.mi domini); she addresses the dowager duchess Bona of Savoy as “sister-in-law [and] sister” (cognata soror) and Bona’s two sons Gian Galeazzo and Ermes Maria as “dearest and most honorable sons” (fili carissimi et honorandissimi). Sforza Maria died in July 1479.

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Most illustrious Prince and Princess and most excellent Lord and Lady, dearest and most honorable sister-in-law, sister and sons,138 I again want to thank your Excellencies, since in your letters, which were carried by master Alexandro [Alessandro d’Ancona],139 and in reports delivered orally by master Alexandro himself, you have requested my assistance with due trust. Every request from your Excellencies affords me the highest and most extraordinary pleasure, and whatever I do, I do with a twofold sense of obligation: first, because of the close ties I have with your illustrious Lordship and Ladyship; and second, because I know I am doing something very pleasing to his majesty the king, who desires nothing more than union of these two states, Milan and Naples, so that the two may become one, as all reason dictates and commands. Having received your letter and having heard brother Alexandro, I immediately sent your letter to his majesty the king and informed him how urgent the matter was. His majesty, seeing the nature of this letter and how fitting it was to the present circumstances, immediately sent to his ambassador in Rome to share it with his holiness of Our Lord and also to Count Ieronimo [Geronimo]. Master Alexandro spent the morning with his majesty; we were with him in the evening. It seemed best to his majesty that we should all return to Naples the following morning in order to be able to discuss matters more clearly with the magnificent ambassadors of your Excellency; and so it was done. What was discussed, what advantage can be hoped for, and what the opinion of his majesty the lord king is, your Excellencies will understand in great detail from the letters of the aforesaid ambassadors and from master Alexandro, on whom we rely. I only will say to your illustrious Lordship and Ladyship that his majesty the lord king finds himself, and he will continue to do so, as interested in promoting the status, dignity, and amplification of your honor and your lands as he is in promoting his own position, honor, and lands, and all the more because (as it appears to me) every day your Excellencies will give him ever more reason to do so. Out of a sense of duty, I will never cease to encourage you in this, since I think that from this point onward an inestimable good will result for both of our two states, as your Excellencies understand much better than I do. You will always find my work and my persistence, both bidden and unbidden, completely at your disposal; and if I were negligent regarding your affairs, I would also be negligent about my own affairs and those of my daughter and son. Were I to do otherwise, I believe, I would not only be negligent regarding my own honor and duty, but worse, I would bring singular displeasure to his majesty the 138. See note 137. 139. Alessandro d’Ancona, emissary of the dukes of Milan to Ferrante’s court. As Castaldo notes at 94n1, Ippolita here responds to a letter in which they request her intervention to support the peace initiative in the anti-Medicean war. They want Ippolita to act as their representative and to support Alessandro d’Ancona, whom they have sent to Ferrante’s court to speak as their ambassador.

Pazzi Conspiracy and the Ottoman Invasion of Otranto (1479–1482) 147 lord king, as he has told me repeatedly. And since, if not intentionally but because my understanding is incomplete, I may neglect some opportunity advantageous to your states, will your Excellencies kindly inform me as to what is needed, so that my desire to help will be accompanied by accurate information and knowledge about the state’s needs and the wishes of your most illustrious Lordship and Ladyship, to whom I commend myself, and just as I commend myself to you, I commend myself again to my most affectionate brother [Ludovico Sforza], the duke of Bari,140 for even though your Excellencies have shown him such kindness and favored him so greatly that you make clear to everyone and especially to me that my above-mentioned brother has no need for someone on the outside to commend him, yet still you make it clear that the love which your Excellencies have for him surpasses without limit all the affection that everyone else has for him. Sent from Castel Capuano, Naples. 4 November 1479. Illustrissimarum dominationum vestrarum cognata soror et mater amantissima141 Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano *** Letter 85: 28 December 1480 [1479]142 To Gian Galeazo Sforza, duke, and Bona of Savoy, dowager duchess of Milan Arriving in Naples on 7 December 1479, Lorenzo de’ Medici had persuaded King Ferrante to withdraw his support for Pope Sixtus IV’s offensive against Florence. Three months later, on 13 March 1480, he concluded a peace with the king and Pope Sixtus IV to end the war against Florence with the full support of the dowager duchess Bona of Savoy and the Sforza brothers. Ippolita played a key role in the formation both of this new pro-Medici alliance and in further binding Ferrante to his Milanese in-laws. .....

140. The next passage on mio cordialissimo fratello, which does not mention her brother by name, appears to be deeply ironic: Ippolita’s younger brother Ludovico Sforza had strongarmed his way into the duchy and in less than a year would make himself the acting duke of Milan, pushing to the side the rightful heir to the throne, the late duke’s son Gian Galeazzo Sforza. Ludovico will exile his mother Bona, the dowager duchess of Milan, to Abbiategrasso, which was about ten miles or a six-hour journey by carriage from Milan. 141. “Your most illustrious Lordships’ and Ladyship’s sister-in-law, sister and most loving mother.” Another variation on her formulaic valediction, used also in the following letter. 142. Castaldo notes at 97n* that while the letter is dated 1480 it is really only December 1479. The date was in stile della natività, where the new year began at Christmas.

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Most illustrious Prince and Princess, most excellent Lord and Lady, dearest and most honorable sister-in-law, sister and sons, Simon, my chancellor,143 told me, first, how graciously your Excellencies received and heard him; and secondly, he informed me to my great pleasure of the perfect health and wellbeing of your Excellencies. Concerning the first point, you have my supreme gratitude for the kindness and gentility you have shown my chancellor, which, however, I never would have doubted even without Simon’s report; nor would I expect anything else given your Highnesses’ great kindness and the many ties that bind us together. Concerning the second point, we thank the Lord God who has let us know that your Excellencies are healthy and well, as we greatly desire you to be, and thus we supplicate God’s great bounty that he may always inform us in this way, since this is one of the principal graces that we await from His mercy. In one of your letters, your Excellencies commend the counsel pursued by Lorenzo [de’ Medici] il Magnifico [“the Magnificent”] since it is deservedly commendable, and you urge me to support both Lorenzo’s cause and the cause of peace, and you encourage me to make every possible effort to this end. In this matter, your Excellencies give me singular pleasure by taking me into your confidence, which you rightfully can and should do, in order to command me to do something which is extremely pleasing to me for two reasons: first, because it conveys your respect for Lorenzo, who, seeing that he is pleasing to your Highnesses could not be anything but pleasing to me and whom I love, moreover, due to my longtime respect for his family and for the friendship he has sustained with me for so long a time; and second, because I see the state of your Excellencies reunited with that of his majesty the king. I desire this as a very great benefit for both these two states, and it will create a bond to, and an alliance with, the Florentine Republic whose loyalty will bring us the greatest advantage in every circumstance. Therefore I will do everything possible both to obey the wishes of your Excellencies and since it is my duty to do so because of the circumstances I mentioned above and many other honorable and worthy considerations. And although there are many difficulties, as these magnificent ambassadors know, still his majesty the king is a very wise man, the consideration of your Excellencies is very great and very important, and the most honorable arrival and noble presence of Lorenzo in Naples cannot be left without a worthy and appropriate acknowledgment. I myself will make every effort to this purpose, above all in order to please your Excellencies, to whom I commend myself. Sent from Castel Capuano, Naples. 28 December 1480 [1479]. 143. This figure should not be confused with the long-time Sforza chancellor Cicco Simonetta who ran the Milanese government after Galeazzo’s assassination and would be executed by Lodovico Sforza in 1480. Ippolita instead refers to one of her representatives from Naples, who is visiting Milan.

Pazzi Conspiracy and the Ottoman Invasion of Otranto (1479–1482) 149 Illustrissimarum Dominationum Vestrarum soror cognata et mater144 Ippolita Maria Visconti of Aragon, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary *** Letter 86: 2 February 1480 To Eleonora d’Aragona, duchess of Ferrara This letter is to Eleonora d’Aragona, daughter of King Ferrante, whose engagement to Ippolita’s brother Sforza Maria had been cancelled because of disagreement between the king and Galeazzo Sforza over the marriage contract. In 1473, she married Ercole I d’Este, duke of Ferrara. Underlining their tie of kinship, Ippolita asks Eleonora to intercede with her husband so that he return the possessions of an old friend of the Sforzas. ..... Most illustrious Duchess, dearest sister and sister-in-law, Sigismondo de Sagrato, citizen of Ferrara, subject of your most illustrious Ladyship and my old and devoted friend from the days of the most illustrious lord my ­father, of happy memory, couldn’t be more dear to me if he were directly in my service, and therefore I hope to do him every courtesy and favor, and at every opportunity I have I try always to do him every courtesy and favor. And therefore I pray your excellency as fervently as I can to be pleased to intercede on his behalf and to advocate for him with your most illustrious consort, commending to his lordship kindly to return this gentleman’s possessions. This act will bring great acclaim and glory to his most illustrious lordship, since it will give a true measure of his mercy and kindness. I will be obliged to him for this no less than I would be had he done a similar favor for one of my own, and will be similarly obliged to your Excellency, to whom I commend myself. Sent from Castel Capuano, Naples. 2 February 1480. Illustrissime dominationis vestre soror et cognata amantissima145 Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti, Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano 144. “Your most illustrious Lordships’ and Ladyship’s sister, sister-in-law, and mother,” alternative form of valediction as in Letter 85. 145. “Of your illustrious dominion, your most loving sister and sister-in-law.” Ippolita uses with Eleonora a variation on the valediction she used with family members.

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*** Letter 87: 3 July 1480 To Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florentine statesman This is the first of seven letters in the collection that Ippolita Sforza wrote in the 1480s to her longtime confidant, financial supporter, and political ally, Lorenzo de’ Medici, whose friendship with her went back to 1465 when he represented the Medici family at her wedding. In 1480, he appointed her the procurator for his affairs in the kingdom of Naples. She in turn depended on him and the Medici bank for the regular loans she needed to cover her expenses for clothing, jewels, and her patronage of the arts.146 In this letter, Ippolita addresses Lorenzo in a strikingly intimate tone as she recollects the time they spent together in Naples. ..... Magnificent Lord and most special friend [amice specialissime], If Ioacchino had come without any letter from me, it would have given your magnificence too clear a reason to complain about me. I decided to write in order to deny you such a motive, and also to satisfy his majesty the lord king, who quite frequently asks me how my friend [colligato] is, that is, you. This letter, however, does not regard the duties of friendship [colligatione] nor those of state, but is merely intended to let your magnificence know that we think of you all the time. We don’t know, however, if you think very frequently about our walk in the garden, which is beautiful and in full flower. But it is true that when new leaves are budding one should not visit it too often. However that may be, we think again and again of the garden walk and your magnificence. And since Ioacchino is the bearer of this letter, and he is very close to us, we commend him to your magnificence not only for general things, but also for those things that regard his honor and reputation. We pray you that in this regard, out of love for us, you give him the best treatment, which we will consider a special favor. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 3 July 1480. Ippolita Maria of Aragon Visconti Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary ***

146. Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 131–35.

Pazzi Conspiracy and the Ottoman Invasion of Otranto (1479–1482) 151 Letter 88: 17 September 1480 To Gian Galeazzo, duke, and Bona of Savoy, dowager duchess of Milan In August 1480, an Ottoman force captured the Neapolitan port city of Otranto, less than a day’s journey from Naples. They would occupy the city from that time until September 1481, an entire year. In the following letter, Ippolita thanks her nephew Gian Galeazzo Sforza and her sister-in-law, Bona of Savoy, the dowager duchess of Milan, for agreeing to provide the assistance that her husband Alfonso had sought in the bid to reconquer Otranto ..... Most illustrious and most excellent Lord and Lady, most honorable sister-in-law, sister and sons, Messer Marco [Trotto],147 your Excellencies’ ambassador, has explained to me how you have fulfilled, with such generosity and a display of sincere and true love toward my most illustrious consort, all the requests and requirements that his most illustrious lordship presented. For this, I am—as I wish to tell you in order to repay my debt in this regard—infinitely grateful to your most excellent Lordship and Ladyship. Although my most illustrious consort and I must and can expect these and even greater things, given the many ties and common considerations that we share, nevertheless such considerable and numerous displays are and will remain worthy of a place of singular recognition in his most illustrious lordship’s heart and in my own, with the gratitude and appreciation that these acts most deservedly merit. And so for my part I consecrate myself and pledge my most illustrious consort to you, and I vow that I am always most eager to fulfill your Excellencies’ every request. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 17 September 1480. Illustrissimarum dominationum vestrarum cognata et soror ac mater148 Ippolita Maria, duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary *** Letter 89: 26 December 1481 [1480]149 To Branda Castiglioni, Antonio Trivulzio, and Leonardo Botta, Milanese ambassadors Continuing her efforts to further King Ferrante’s bid to reconquer Otranto, Ippolita writes to Branda Castiglioni, Antonio Trivulzio, and Leonardo Botta, 147. Marco Trotto di Alessandria, for whom see Figliuolo, 58n1. 148. “Of your illustrious dominion, your sister-in-law, sister and mother.” 149. This date is in stile della natività, so actually refers to 26 December 1480.

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Milanese ambassadors to the papal court.150 She thanks them for information about military preparations in Rome. She also asks them to investigate the reasons behind the establishment of certain military posts. ..... Reverend Fathers in Christ and most magnificent Lord, my dearest friends, By means of your reverend Lordships’ letters from the 19th, we received word about the most reverend cardinals assigned to give the fleet orders. We thank you for this news. Regarding the military posts set up in the countryside, we first learned about them in a letter from the magnificent messer Aniello [Arcamone],151 who wrote that the motivation for them was to alleviate the burden on the Marca territory, etc. And this seems likely and is believed. Nonetheless, some people whom we do not trust give these military posts a different interpretation. And these are people who are not from here, who insist on making a display of weakness in their writing. As we have said, we do not trust them. Nevertheless, may your most illustrious Lordships be pleased to investigate this matter a little bit more closely, and cautiously, given its nature; and then to give us your shrewd appraisal of the matter. Your letter, magnificent Messer Branda [Castiglioni], was most pleasing to us, since we consider you to be among our special friends. And so we consecrate ourselves to you for your every need and desire. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 26 December 1481 [1480]. Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary *** Letter 90: 6 March 1481 To Antonio Trivulzio, Milanese ambassador In the dispatch that follows, Ippolita addresses Antonio Trivulzio, the Milanese ambassador to the court of Pope Sixtus IV, relaying the latest news she has received from Brindisi on the naval war with the Ottoman Turks. ..... A copy of this letter was sent to the reverend Protonotary [Antonio] Trivulzio of Milan. 150. Figliuolo, 60. 151. Neapolitan ambassador in Rome; see Figliuolo, 60n1.

Pazzi Conspiracy and the Ottoman Invasion of Otranto (1479–1482) 153 The captain of the Royal Fleet has returned to Brindisi victorious. They burned thirteen palanders152 and some other small galleons. Since I still have no other precise details to report I won’t write at greater length at the present time. I will tell you that on the palanders and the galleons, where there were one hundred or one hundred and fifty persons on board, only three have survived. Indeed, of the great number of men who sailed with the Turkish fleet there are barely three hundred survivors. May our Lord God be thanked. Since they had no suitable wind, their ships were unable to reach our fleet of galleons. There were nineteen of these, three smaller boats, and eight ships. We pledge ourselves to your reverend Lordship. Please share this with your colleagues, et cetera. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 6 March 1481. Duchess of Calabria Giovanni Pontano *** Letter 91: 16 May 1481 To Branda Castiglioni, Antonio Trivulzio, and Leonardo Botta, Milanese ambassadors to the papal court Nine months into the Ottoman occupation of Otranto, Ippolita sent this dispatch to the Milanese ambassadors to the papal court relaying the latest news from this besieged city. ..... A copy of the dispatch was sent to Milanese ambassadors Reverend and magnificent Lords, our dearest friends, There is nothing else new to report after the blow given the Turks on the eighth of the present month, except that there are some fugitives from Otranto who say that those who remain inside the city are completely demoralized. A good part of the artillery with the Alfonsine catapult153 had arrived on the battlefield; the rest of the artillery was lined up and ready to be deployed. Regarding the French orators, we don’t need to say anything else. The prince of Salerno has departed with those of his galleons that remained here and with God’s blessing. Certain ships have departed on the way to Segna154 in order

152. On this type of boat, see above, Introduction, note 108. 153. For this weapon developed by Alfonso I, king of Naples, see above, Introduction, note 109. 154. Segna (Senj), written “Signa” in this letter, was a town on the Adriatic that sheltered refugees in the Ottoman wars.

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to overtake the Hungarian king’s men.155 Sent from Castel Capuano, Naples. 16 May 1481. Ippolita Maria of Aragon, Duchess of Calabria Giovanni Pontano *** Letter 92: 21 November 1481 To Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florentine statesman In this second letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Ippolita speaks jokingly of the luxury perfumed goods that she sends him at his agent’s request. She describes them in military terms, as a “garrison” coming to his aid. She warns however that she does not condone these “arms” being used against his wife, making perhaps an indirect reference to the love affair she has alludes to in Letter 96 and 100. ..... Magnificent Lord and friend, as precious to me as a brother [Magnifice domine, amice et tamquam frater carissime], Francisco Nacci [Nasi]156 has informed me that you have run out of the fragrances and perfumes brought from here. And therefore, not wanting you to be without, we are coming to your aid with a garrison of three flasks of scented water, fifty little soaps, one hundred little containers and one hundred little carafes, which we have entrusted to Francisco. However, we declare that we do not agree with these arms being used against your wife. If we hear this, we don’t want to know anything else. We commend ourselves and offer ourselves always to your magnificence. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 21 November 1481. Duchess of Calabria, etc. Giovanni Pontano, secretary *** Letter 93: 23 January 1482 To Gian Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita sent this dispatch to Gian Galeazzo Sforza, her thirteen-year-old nephew and future son-in-law, who had been officially installed as duke of Milan on 24 155. Hungarian troops helped in the Christian bid to reconquer Otranto; the Hungarian king is Matthias Corvinus. 156. Francesco Nacci [Nasi] was the director of the Neapolitan branch of the Medici bank; see ­Figliuolo, 67n1.

Pazzi Conspiracy and the Ottoman Invasion of Otranto (1479–1482) 155 April 1478. Despite the fact that Ippolita addresses him as “prince” [princeps] and “your illustrious Lordship” throughout the letter, it was Ippolita’s brother Ludovico Sforza who would act as the virtual “prince” of Milan for the next twenty years, while Gian Galeazzo would remain his uncle’s virtual ward. Although Ippolita’s letter appears to address her nephew, every line of it is directed to her brother Ludovico. In this timely letter, Ippolita attempts to bolster the Milan–Naples alliance by stressing her natal and marital ties to the ruling houses of both city-states. During the summer of 1482, the Venetians, led by former Sforza general Roberto Sanseverino, would occupy a number of towns under Ferrarese protection. And by November, the Venetians would lay siege to Ferrara, long the ally of Milan and Naples. ..... Most illustrious Prince and most excellent Lord, most affectionate son, son-inlaw and nephew, Your most illustrious Lordship will recognize in the letters of your magnificent ambassadors157 the extraordinary love and fatherly concern that his majesty the king has for your Excellency’s needs as well as for the preservation of your state, concerning which the king has no motive and purpose other than that which he has for his own state. And so we, who are in the middle between that state there and this state here, can and do bear witness in such a way that, to anyone with sound judgment and especially to your most illustrious Lordship, it should be unquestioned because of the many ties and common interests which so clearly bind us together. We shall therefore rely upon the writings of the above-mentioned ambassadors. Nonetheless, we are informing your illustrious Lordship that from this side, as a daughter, a wife, and a mother, and from the other side as a mother, aunt, sister, and descendant of the family, we are completely prepared to undergo any trouble, effort and danger. And even if we had undergone all the troubles in the world, it would seem to us that we had not done anything with respect to the obligation and affection that we have and feel we have, and that we declare to your Excellency and the whole world that we have. We will therefore continue to make every effort to satisfy our common interests and needs with all our effort and ability, first to obey and then to think through and carry out all those things which are for our common good, with the help of divine providence and the extraordinary insight of your illustrious Lordship and of the many men of good counsel who surround you. 157. Oratori in the original. When Ippolita uses the term oratori, she sometime intends the whole ambassadorial mission.

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In order to fulfill our duty, beyond the reports of your magnificent ambassadors, I wanted to send this particular message by means of my own letter to your illustrious Lordship, to whom I continually commend myself. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 23 January 1482. Celsitudinis vestre mater amantissima158 Ippolita Maria, Duchess of Calabria Giovanni Pontano

9. Ippolita and Lorenzo: Letters 94–100 (1482–1486) Ippolita’s last seven letters address men whom she saw as extended family. She sent five of these letters to Lorenzo de’ Medici, with whom she had been intimately linked in 1479 when he had sought refuge at King Ferrante’s court in Naples in the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy in Florence.159 The other two letters, written in 1484–1485, were letters of friendship and support to two new rulers, closely allied both to her Neapolitan and Milanese kin: her nephew, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, the newly titled duke of Milan, and Francesco Gonzaga, the young marchese of Mantua. Her letters to Lorenzo vary broadly in theme and subject matter, from a pro forma letter of recommendation for a courtier to a pair of letters soliciting his political support for family members. Her last two missives to Lorenzo—from April 1483 and December 1486—stand out as patently sexual. While we maintain the letters’ chronological numbering, we have place these two letters (96 and 100) at the end of this final chapter so that they can be read together. Letter 94: 1 April 1482 To Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florentine statesman In this third letter to Lorenzo, the most political of her missives to the Florentine ruler, Ippolita, now thirty-seven, speaks frankly of her younger brother Ascanio Sforza (now bishop of Pavia; soon to be made cardinal), the “monsignor.” Venice is the bone of contention in this letter: Pier Maria Rossi and Roberto Sanseverino, longtime allies and condottieri of the Sforza, are now in the service of the Venetians, and they have mounted an attack on Milan. While she fears Ascanio, too, will defect to Venice, she counts on Lorenzo and his ambassador Filippo Pandolfino to bring him back to Lombardy. The tone of these letters to Lorenzo is worth noting. Although these are letters shared by intimate friends, they are also exchanges between heads of families, each empowered to turn the tide in the Italian wars of the 1480s.

158. “Your Highness’s most loving mother.” The only appearance of this valediction. 159. Welch, “Ippolita Maria Sforza,” 135. See also letter 87.

Ippolita and Lorenzo (1482–1486) 157 ..... Magnificent Lorenzo, my dear brother [Magnifico Lorenzo mio caro fratello], Several days ago messer Philippo Pandolfino,160 the ambassador of that most excellent [….],161 told me of the work that your Magnificence has been doing for the return home of the monsignor and that you hoped in short that his affairs would soon take a good turn.162 And because of this, I had planned to write to thank you for this work, but since I was waiting first to receive better news than that which first arrived, I refrained from writing until this time, but I realize that this matter is now more urgent to me than it was before. Because of what is needed, I decided to write you this letter in my own hand to thank you for the work you have done and to encourage you to act firsthand in order to pursue a good means to an even better end. And because you might say that the love I bear the monsignor has moved me to write, I therefore shall speak with your Magnificence in my role as the duchess of Calabria and not as the sister of the monsignor. You see how the state of things is in Italy and what promises to follow, which is worse. If the monsignor were recruited by some group against that state and if he joined them because he considered himself to have been ousted from his house, do you not see the extent to which their plan would be to destroy the state of Milan, which is, as you see, already in a total state of rebellion? I do not say this only in regard to the actions of Petromaria [Pier Maria Rossi],163 but I say them also in regard to those things that will come to pass any day if no other provision is made. You see that it would be necessary that either he or signor Ludovico would have to pursue his pleasure elsewhere because they are incompatible together since each has acted out of similar motives. And this would concern me greatly since I don’t want either of them to be as unhappy as I see the monsignor to be, since he could bring about the ruin of Milan, then Florence, and subsequently our own here in Naples. These things would not follow, if the monsignor’s affairs were put in order. Given that the interests of this whole league are at issue, you must believe that I am not acting for the monsignor’s particular interests alone (which in this particular case I consider to be the least important), but instead for the well-being 160. Filippo Pandolfino is the Florentine ambassador and commissioner-general in Milan in 1484; see Butters, “The Politics of Protection,” 140. 161. Ellipsis denotes an illegible word in the manuscript. 162. Pandolfino seems to have been instrumental in assisting in Ascanio Sforza’s return to Lombardy from exile in Perugia where he had been confined after Ludovico came to power in November 1480 and exiled Bona of Savoy to Abbiategrasso. Pandolfino seems here also to be credited with Ascanio’s rehabilitation in Ludovico Sforza’s court. 163. Ippolita refers here to Pier Maria Rossi, the count of Noceto and a longtime condottiere of Galeazzo Sforza, who joined with Sanseverino to attempt to overthrow Ludovico Sforza, then the acting duke of Milan.

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and benefit of both of them since if anything bad were to happen to either of them, because I love them equally, it would sadden me to the very depths of my soul, as it would the whole family. Knowing then that this concerns the security of the whole league, I encourage and exhort you, out of the love you have for me, to do everything possible so that the affairs of the monsignor may be put in good order and quickly, since there is no time for delay because we know that good and evil hang in the balance for him and one can’t speak well of him because he doesn’t deserve it and because in the past he has merely followed his own whim. Many other reasons could be offered regarding this matter, but since I know you are a prudent man, and since writing is difficult for me, I will refrain from doing so. I commend myself to you as always and likewise to your wife, and kiss your children for me. Luisina164 also commends herself to you and will confess tomorrow morning, so she cannot warn you about anything—and also, that person is in Calabria, you know who I mean. From Naples. 1 April 1482. Your dear friend and ally [La vostra cara coligata],165 Ippolita Maria, in her own hand *** Letter 95: 7 April 1483 To Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florentine statesman Playing her role as a sibling, Ippolita addresses herself to her “brother” Lorenzo de’ Medici and greets his wife and children. She turns to Lorenzo again this time to recommend a man whom she portrays as having occupied a trusted position in her household. ..... Magnificent brother and dearest friend and ally [Magnifico fratello e colega carissimo],166 By virtue of Francisco Scorna’s being so great a servant of mine, and even without my letters, by virtue of the love your Lordship bears for me, I am certain you will treat him with favor in everything he needs. Nevertheless, it seemed fitting to me that I recommend him to your Lordship with the present letter written in my own hand and I beg you by your love for me to receive him with kindness. I 164. Luisina, an older woman who was perhaps Ippolita’s attendant or servant, is also mentioned in Letters 96 and 97. 165. Ippolita uses the term coligata to describe her relationship to Lorenzo. The word bespeaks a very deep bond of friendship and shared interests. 166. Colega is similar in sense to coligata; see preceding note.

Ippolita and Lorenzo (1482–1486) 159 do not come to your Lordship with offerings since these would seem superfluous to me because for a long time now we have shared all we have in common. I commend myself to your Lordship, to madama your wife, and to your children. All of us here are well and we hope that the same is true for all of you. I don’t write you anything about the most illustrious lord my duke, my Lordship, since you are better informed about him than I am. Nevertheless I have news, thanks to God and to our advocate the Virgin Mary and all the souls in Paradise, that his lordship is well. 7 April 1483. Your sister, friend and ally [La vostra sore e colega],167 Ippolita Maria *** Letter 96 (18 April 1483), the next in chronological sequence, is found after Letter 99 (6 September 1485), so that it can be read together with the related Letter 100 (11 December 1486). *** Letter 97: 29 August 1484 To Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florentine statesman A year later, Ippolita’s sixth letter to Lorenzo reports the arrival in Naples on 29 August 1484 of Lorenzo’s principal ambassador Filippo Pandolfino. In June 1482, the pro-Neapolitan Noveschi government in Siena was expelled from the city by the party of the Popolo (“people”). King Ferrante and Ippolita’s husband Alfonso welcomed the Sienese Noveschi in Naples, supporting them with honors, hospitality and every sort of patronage except arms.168 Lorenzo’s wife’s family, the Orsini of Naples, were also Noveschi supporters. But when the Noveschi exiles appealed to Lorenzo (and the Florentines) to help them to reenter Siena in January 1483, Lorenzo’s ambassador told them that the Florentines refused.169 The subtext of Ippolita’s letter is suggested at the end of this letter: she has spoken to Pandolfino about something “very close to my heart” [io gli parlato de certa cosa che molto me sta al core]. Is Ippolita here referring to the plight of the exiled Sienese nobles whom she and Alfonso had not only welcomed into their city but had also given sanctuary in their own home?170 Or is the something “very close to [her] heart” a reference to the plight of the mysterious Lavinia mentioned in letters 96 and 100? 167. See above, note 165. 168. Butters, “The Politics of Protection,” 142–43. 169. Butters, “The Politics of Protection,” 144. 170. Butters, “The Politics of Protection,” 138–39.

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..... Magnificent Lord brother and my dearest friend and ally [Magnifico signor fratello et colega mio carissimo], When your lord ambassador [Filippo Pandolfino] arrived here, he had a letter from your Lordship that says that you loved the said ambassador and that I could trust him in the same way I do your Lordship and so I have done this and will continue to do so in the future. I have always known that your Lordship has good judgment and you have demonstrated it well in this case because surely he is a man who merits it. We would like to inform your Lordship that his majesty the king and all of the rest of us love him very much. I have spoken to him of a certain thing that is very close to my heart; I beg your Lordship to act in this as merits the love I have for you and likewise the longstanding friendship between your forbears and mine. I commend myself to your Lordship and all your family. My prince, from whom I have news that he is well, and the duchess of Milan and Don Pietro and Luisina commend themselves to your Lordship. From Castel Capuano. 29 August 1484. Your sister, friend and ally [La vostra sorella e colega], Ippolita Maria *** Letter 98: 20 September 1484 To Francesco Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua Ippolita’s letters 98 and 99, dispatched when she no doubt saw herself at thirtynine as a mature stateswoman, address two young, newly crowned heads of state, respectively Francesco Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua, and her nephew Gian Galeazzo Sforza. In these two epistles, composed four years before her death, Ippolita attempts now to shore up the longtime bonds of fealty between the Sforza and Gonzaga. ..... Illustrious Lord, as cherished as a son, Your ambassador messer Zorgio [Giorgio Brugnolo]171 is leaving here to return to you, having won as much favor with his majesty the king and the entire court as is merited by his worthy and loyal demeanor, which has been of such a nature that we all consider him more ours than yours. I am well aware that it 171. Mantuan orator to the court of Naples, much esteemed by the king and his courtiers. As Ippolita herself testifies, Brugnolo was so trusted by the king that he was given free access to the royal chancellery.

Ippolita and Lorenzo (1482–1486) 161 is unnecessary to commend our people to you, especially those who wear their virtues so proudly. Nonetheless, since I am as fond of the aforesaid messer Zorgio as I am of anyone who has served our family, I cannot fail to commend him to you from the depths of my heart. And for the sake of the heartfelt and profound love I have always had and still have for the worthy memory of your lord f­ ather, which I am similarly resolved to retain with you, I beseech you, based on Zorgio’s merits and out of respect for me, to make a suitable demonstration to him of your recognition of his loyal service, since I know that when your lord father was alive this would have seemed to him both useful and a great honor. I trust also that, since you have come from a family which, in contrast to other families in Lombardy, has always been generous and kind to its servants, you will surely follow the above-mentioned course of action. Nonetheless, for the sake of my own greater satisfaction, I wanted to write the present letter to you with my own hand. As for our other news, the above-mentioned Zorgio will supply it face to face, and so I pray you will be willing to put full trust in him as you would in me myself. Commending myself to you, I pledge myself always to you. From Naples. 20 September 1484. Your own Ippolita Maria has signed in her own hand. *** Letter 99: 6 September 1485 To Gian Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan Ippolita here informs her sixteen-year-old nephew Gian Galeazzo Sforza, now duke of Milan, that her eighteen-year-old daughter Isabella, to whom the duke is betrothed, has recovered and is well again after a bout of cholera. The political scene in Naples is, however, turbulent, the duchess reports. The barons are threatening to rebel against the crown and Ferrante may need assistance. ..... Most illustrious and most excellent Duke and Lord, dearest nephew, son-in-law and son, On the fourth of September we received your letter of the 27th of the past month of August and we could never adequately express in words or in writing how great our satisfaction and pleasure is at as many kind, generous and most efficacious offers as your Excellency has given and gives to his majesty the king and the most illustrious duke our consort so as not to fail the pressing needs of the aforementioned majesty’s state due to this rebellion and the mistrust which has recently arisen among the barons of this realm. Moreover, your Excellency has

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also given and gives the aforesaid majesty certain hope, which he can and should have, that your Lordship will not fail to pursue anything that will contribute to the conservation and benefit of the royal state and realm. And this increases our contentment all the more and gives us the highest consolation and comfort not only because of the glory, honor, and renown that will accrue to your Lordship and your famous state due to this, but also because we see that your Excellency acts out of respect for us, since by our means we created such a great lineage and blood ties, so many mutual services and alliances that the dangers to and security of our two states are shared mutually and held in common. Nonetheless, we are justly bound and obligated to thank your Excellency and all those who are with you, since were that very worthy duke our father [quello dignissimo duca nostro padre ]172 now living, neither would he have been able to offer nor even recall all those parts and provisions which your Lordship has mentioned and has remembered nor would he have been able to show his paternal love to us more openly. Nor should your Lordship believe, however, that what you wrote and offered to accomplish differed in any way from our expectations because we have always had and continue to have this unwavering conviction and hope that the circumstances of these two states of ours are so necessary to one another and are so linked that even if there were no other consideration, they could not be separated because of their common interests and advantages. And since we wished to execute what your Lordship has commanded we have been with the aforesaid majesty and the lady queen and the lord duke and we introduced [at court] your orator, the magnificent messer Branda [Castiglioni], who has very diligently done what he was ordered to do by your Excellency and what he was reminded and advised to do by us. The aforementioned lords and lady have taken incredible pleasure and comfort from this, of this your Excellency can be assured. And the letters of the said orator will testify to it, and we will rely on those since by means of them you will understand all the thoughts of the aforementioned majesty and what appears necessary to do for the sake of this enterprise [per beneficio de questa impresa]. In response to my letters, your Excellency expresses delight at the fortunate recovery of the illustrious lady duchess your consort. To this I can only say that the said duchess has at all events improved so much that she seems never to have been sick at all! We and she both desire so fervently that your Excellency no longer be infected by your illness, and we wish, were it possible, that we and the said duchess could take the ague on ourselves so that you could be entirely cured of it. Therefore, we hope to God that considering your age, the malaria may not stay on to bother your Lordship but rather that you will chase it away. And thus 172. Ippolita alludes not only to her deceased father Francesco Sforza but also to Giangaleazzo’s father and her brother, Galeazzo Sforza, who had been assassinated almost nine years before.

Ippolita and Lorenzo (1482–1486) 163 we pray God that he may continually grant you his grace. From Castel Capuano, Naples. 6 September 1485. Your aunt, mother-in-law, and mother, Ippolita Maria Duchess of Calabria A. Gaczo, secretary173 ***

Letters 96 and 100 This collection of selected letters of Ippolita Sforza ends with the powerful and provocative letters 96 and 100, the last two of the six she addressed to the Florentine statesman Lorenzo de’ Medici. Letter 96: 18 April 1483 To Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florentine statesman The fifth missive from Ippolita to Lorenzo de’ Medici is the most mysterious of all the letters they exchanged. The duchess is clearly speaking in a kind of code here. On the face of it, she seems simply to castigate Lorenzo for having abandoned a certain “Lavinia” to take up with a less worthy “girl.” Striking because it is so uncharacteristic of her other correspondence, this autograph letter is charged with emotion. Ippolita vents her disappointment, disbelief, and anger at what she sees as Lorenzo’s treachery. “Lavinia,” she tells Lorenzo, is the most beloved person in his life. If he leaves her for another girl “who will ever trust you?” she asks. At this point in the letter, an almost Plautian character by the name of Luisina enters the drama.174 Luisina, a wiser woman who is perhaps Ippolita’s attendant or servant, is surprised that Ippolita never realized that Lorenzo was “no more constant than other men.” Ippolita ends her rebuke by telling Lorenzo that she would be happy if he were leaving “Lavinia” for his wife’s sake, but for another girl to be the cause would sadden her terribly. So who is this “Lavinia,” no trace of whom can be found in Lorenzo’s published correspondence or his protocols?175 Is this the woman Ippolita teases him about in Letter 94 of 1 April 1482 as the one “in Calabria, you know who I mean”? 173. Antonio Gaczo was the secretary of King Ferrante’s Supreme Council. 174. Luisina resembles the older female friend or servant in classical and subsequent Renaissance comedy: Alessandro Piccolomini’s Raffaella, for example. Ippolita’s model could have been Alcmena’s all-knowing servant Bromia in Plautus’s Amphitryon, the play Ippolita quoted at length in her 1455 Wedding Oration for Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este, given below. 175. The Lettere of Lorenzo de’ Medici make no mention of female persons with this name, and neither do the Milanese ambassadors in Florence.

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The riddle of “Lavinia’s” identity, which reappears in Letter 100 sent to Lorenzo two and a half years later, on 11 December 1486, will be discussed below when Ippolita mentions her again. A photostat of this letter is included as Figure 13. ..... My magnificent friend and ally, as dear as a brother [Magnifico colega mio caro come fratello], Although you know better than I what one close friend [uno coligato] is obligated to do for another, nevertheless I have written this letter to show the love I have for my friends, and when one of the parties commits a wrong, one of the others who is in the right should help that party. And so I understand, your Lordship, that you have done a great wrong in abandoning Lavinia for a girl who is half the worth of our Neapolitan girl. It pains me that without the knowledge of your other friends you have set aside one girl and put another in her place. O magnificent Lorenzo, who will ever trust you if you forget about Lavinia, who must be the most beloved thing you possess? I believed you would do anything else but forget about this girl. But do you know what our Luisina says? She says she is surprised at me because I wanted to believe, though you are a man, that you should have been better, but you were no more constant than other men, and if she [Luisina] were where Lavinia is, she would comfort her and she would make her understand that she is not alone. And Luisina says this for the sake of that girl whom no one sees any more. Therefore we beg you kindly to tell us please how you made such a great error. If you had abandoned her because of your wife, we would be very happy—and indeed we beg you to do so.176 But for it to be for another girl would give us great sorrow since we are your close friend and ally [per essere coligata]. I commend myself to you and your wife and Luisina does likewise, and says if she can do anything for you, please ask. Naples. 18 April 1483. Your sister, friend and ally [La vostra sorella et colega], Ippolita Maria, in her own hand *** The Italian text of this autograph letter is provided here because of its extraordinarily uncharacteristic tone. Please also see adjacent photostat of this letter. Magnifico colega mio caro come fratello. Benché lo sapete meglio di me quello deve fare uno coligato per l’altro, pure per mostrare lo amore porto a mei coligati ho facto la presente et quando una dele parte manca, una de l’altre deve aiutare quella che ha rasone. Siché io intendo ch[e] V.S. con gran torto vostro 176. Ippolita expresses similar concern for Lorenzo’s wife in Letter 92.

Ippolita and Lorenzo (1482–1486) 165

Figure 13. Letter 96. Ippolita Sforza (autograph) to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 18 April 1483.

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havete lassato Lavinia per una ch’é meza nostra n[ea]politana. A me dole che senza saputa deli altri coligati havete levato una et posto una altra. O magnifico Lorenzo, chi ve haverà mai fede se ve scordate de Lavinia, che deve essere la più cara cosa che habbiate. Me credea devestivo fare ogni altra cosa salvo scordarve de essa. Ma sapete che dice Luisina nostra? Dice che se maraviglia de me, che volesse credere che siando homo devesti essere meglio né più costante de l’altri, et che se fusse dov’è Lavinia essa la confortaria et fariali intendere che non è sola, et questo dice per essa che già non vede nullo. Però ve pregamo ne vogliate avisare se ve piase come avete facto tanto erore. Se l’aveste lassata per vostra mugliere, nui seriamo contentissime et sì ve ne pregamo, ma per altra ne rincresseria per essere coligata. Me riccomando a voi et a vostra mugliere et figli et cusi fa Luisina, la quale dice se pò alcuna cosa per voi che commandate. Data a Napole a xviii de April 1483. La vostra sore et coligata Hippolytamaria manu propria *** Letter 100: 11 December 1486 To Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florentine statesman The cipher “Lavinia” appears again in Ippolita’s final letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici, an autograph, dated 11 December 1486, two years before her death. While the reading “Lavinia” in this brief letter has been contested, it is generally agreed that this particular letter concerns Lorenzo’s involvement with his last mistress.177 This letter is extraordinarily emotionally charged. In it, Ippolita expresses an intense desire to see and converse with Lorenzo again and “to please and obey him.” The letter portrays a bond that has grown, in the twenty years Ippolita and Lorenzo have known one another, into something more than a political alliance.178 The letter is in fact packed with shared secrets and cryptic references: to the beloved lady “Lavinia”;179 to Lorenzo’s wife’s potential anger were she to know of his 177. The most recent critical edition of Ippolita’s letters, Castaldo’s, reads the contested word in this letter as Lavinia, and having consulted the autograph itself, we agree. Judith Bryce has transcribed the word as l’anima: Bryce, “Between Friends? Two Letters of Ippolita Sforza to Lorenzo de’ Medici,” Renaissance Studies 21, no. 3 (2007), 357. F. W. Kent follows Bryce’s reading, translating the word as “soul”: Kent, Princely Citizen: Lorenzo de’ Medici and Renaissance Florence, edited by Carolyn James (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013), 45. Neither Bryce nor Kent seem to have seen Ippolita’s autograph letter of 18 April 1483 (Letter 96 in this collection) where the name “Lavinia” occurs three times. It is clear in Letter 96 that Ippolita is writing about a specific woman whose identity she conceals by using this code name. The reading “Lavinia” also makes better sense in the context of Letter 100. 178. Bryce, “Between Friends,” 362. 179. The name “Lavinia,” who is the hero’s destined bride in Virgil’s Aeneid, a classic every educated Italian knew by heart, would have served as an appropriate name for the woman whom Ippolita saw,

Ippolita and Lorenzo (1482–1486) 167 involvement with “Lavinia”; to his observance of “vigils not prescribed in the [religious] calendar” (vigilie non scritte in galendaro); and to Ippolita’s gift of gloves for his mistress, a sexually charged image in lyric poetry from Petrarch on.180 As Judith Bryce has noted, the language of this letter is suggestive of a three-way love affair, in which Ippolita is not merely Lorenzo’s confidante but his accomplice.181 Even if Ippolita’s involvement in the affair was only epistolary, she was playing with fire in the hothouse of the Neapolitan court by her participation in this erotic game. Ippolita, as her letter makes clear, is aware both of details of Lorenzo’s relationship with “Lavinia” and the danger its exposure would entail. The fact that Lorenzo’s wife is in the dark about the affair adds to the frisson of both Letters 96 and 100. But again: who is this lady alluded to as “Lavinia”? Bryce and F.W. Kent, biographer of Lorenzo de’ Medici, have found a key to her identity in historian Francesco Guicciardini’s description of il Magnifico’s final and all-consuming affair, with a married woman from a prominent family. It reads: [Lorenzo’s] final love affair, which lasted for many years, was with Bartolommea de’ Nasi, Donato Benci’s wife, with whom—though she was not beautiful, but refined and elegant—he was so caught up that one winter, when she was staying at her country villa, he would leave Florence at five or six in the evening in great haste with many companions to meet her, leaving again nonetheless at such an hour that he would be back in Florence before daybreak.182 Ippolita knew Bartolomea’s family since her uncle Piero di Lutozzo Nasi was Florentine ambassador to Naples from May 1480 until the summer of 1481, through the period of the Otranto crisis that Ippolita followed closely.183 Given the gossip-driven social world of the Neapolitan court and her own closeness to Lorenzo, Ippolita would certainly have been aware of Lorenzo’s affair with Bartolomea at the time of her prior “Lavinia” letter (Letter 96). These autograph “Lavinia” letters perhaps ruefully, as the long-awaited love of Lorenzo’s life. 180. Petrarch, Canzoniere, in Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Poems, ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 344–46, sonnets 199 to 201; Bryce, “Between Friends,” 361n71. 181. Bryce, “Between Friends,” especially 360–62. 182. Ultimo amore suo, e che durò molti anni, fu in Bartolommea de’ Nasi, moglie di Donato Benci; nella quale, benchè non fussi formosa, ma maniera e gentile, era in modo impaniato, che una vernata, che lei stette in villa, partiva di Firenze a cinque o sei ore di notte in sulle poste con più compagni e la andava a trovare, partendosene nondimeno a tale ora, che la mattina innanzi dì fusse in Firenze. Guicciardini’s Italian text appears in Kent, Princely Citizen, 43n8. The translation is ours. 183. Bryce “Between Friends,” 360–61. For Ippolita’s reports on the siege of Otranto, see Letters 88–91.

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constitute key documents of the remarkable, but also dangerous, intimacy between the two old friends, each of them at the pinnacle of their short lives. ..... Magnificent brother and my dearest friend and ally [Magnifico fratello et colega mio carissimo], I cannot possibly tell you what pleasure I had on seeing a letter from you in your own hand, and I had still more pleasure on seeing your nephew, who appears to me to have your demeanor and looks, and God knows the desire I have to see you in order to be able to thank you face to face for the many things you have done for all of us here, since certainly it is not possible to have a greater obligation to anyone than the one I have to your Lordship, although you have done these things for yourself, since you know that anything that is ours belongs to you. My dear magnificent Lorenzo, I do not know how it can be pleasing to your wife that you show such great concern for Lavinia, since you know that those who practice such devotion carry out vigils not prescribed in the calendar. Nevertheless, in order to obey you, yet not to take part in the wrongdoing, I am sending you gloves and some other trifles appropriate to your devotion.184 If you want anything else, tell me so that I can serve and please you as much as I do all my lord brothers. I send greetings to your Lordship and all your family. 11 December 1486.185 Your dear sister, friend and ally [La vostra cara sorella e colega], Ippolita Maria *** As with Letter 96, the Italian text of this autograph letter is provided here because of its strikingly uncharacteristic tone. Please also see the photostat of this letter provided as Figure 14. Magnifico fratello et colega mio carissimo. Non poria dire el piasere ho receputo a vedere lettera di vostra mano et più piasere ho auto a vedere vostro nepote, parendome che habbia de l’airo vostro, et sa Dio lo desiderio ho de vederve per potere de propria bocca ringratiarve de tante cose quante havete facto per tutti noi altri, che certo magiore ubligatione non poria havere a persona quanto ho a V.S. benché havete facto per voi stesso, che sapite le cose nostre son vostre. Magnifico Lorenzo mio, io non so come pia[sa] a vostra mugliere che abiate tanta 184. In Letter 92 that accompanies the profumes and soaps that Ippolita sent to Lorenzo is a warning that she does “not agree with these arms being used against [his] wife.” In this letter, she even more openly acknowledges her role as an accomplice. 185. This letter is unusual in not bearing the place of its composition.

Ippolita and Lorenzo (1482–1486) 169

Figure 14. Letter 100. Ippolita Sforza (autograph) to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 11 December 1486.

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cura de Lavinia,186 che sapite che chi se dà a tanta devotione fanno fare vigilie non scritte in galendaro. Pure per ubedirve, non già per participare del male, ve mando li guanti et alcune altre frasche appropriate a vostra devotione. Se altro volite, comandate, che tanto sto per fareve piacere quanto a tutti li S. mei fratelli. Me riccommando a V.S. et a tutti li vostri. Data a xi de desembre 1486. La vostra cara sorella e colega Hippolytamaria

186. Here Bryce reads Lavinia here as “l’anima,” or soul: “Between Friends,” 357.

Orations (1455-1465)

Wedding Oration for Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este (1455) As Anthony D’Elia has shown, the revival of the classical epithalamium, or wedding oration, was a phenomenon of the Renaissance Italian courts.1 Over three hundred epithalamia survive from fifteenth-century Italy alone, the vast majority of them in Latin. Wedding orations served numerous purposes. They were integral to the entertainments staged at celebrations of marriages between members of elite families.2 In addition to large-scale events such as hunts, jousts, and costume pageants, musicians, actors, dancers, and poets were hired to perform at the wedding feasts. Marriages between daughters and sons of the great fifteenth-century lineages were opportunities to showcase a family’s wealth, success, patronage of the arts, cultural distinction, and intellectual accomplishments. The fact that Ippolita Sforza, the daughter of the duke of Milan, was primed at the age of ten to perform a Latin oration of her own at the marriage of her half-brother Tristano Sforza to Beatrice d’Este in Ferrara suggests the extent to which the noble Quattrocento houses rivaled one another for cultural supremacy. The leading humanists of two such houses, Filelfo representing the Sforza duchy, and Guarino speaking for the Este princes, also presented their own epithalamia at Tristano and Beatrice’s wedding. But Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este were anything but the typical young noble couple. Beatrice, the natural daughter of Niccolò III d’Este, lord of Ferrara, and the widow of Niccolò da Correggio, was twenty-eight at the time of their marriage; her bridegroom Tristano, the natural son of Francesco Sforza and lord of Castell’Arquato, was then thirty-three. Neither was heir to a title. Ippolita’s wedding oration follows the format for the genre. The parents and noble families of both the bride and the bridegroom are praised. Ippolita compares the bridegroom Tristano to the great generals of Roman antiquity and delineates his noble qualities. Ippolita’s encomium for Beatrice enumerates the heroines of antiquity to whom she is superior and recites her virtues. The simple style of Ippolita’s wedding oration makes it credible that a precocious ten-year-old with four years of Latin grammar to her credit could have cobbled the work together with some help from her teacher Baldo Martorelli.3 1. Anthony F. D’Elia, The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 2. 2. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, 42–63, describes the pageantry and festivities staged for the marriage of Duke Galeazzo Sforza and Bona of Savoy in Milan. 3. Ferrari, Per non manchare in tuto. Ippolita and her brother Galeazzo were writing their first Latin orations and letters at ages eight and nine.

173

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Unlike the meticulously crafted periodic structure of her orations delivered four and ten years later, respectively, for Pope Pius II and her mother Bianca Maria Sforza, with their symmetrically placed clauses and balanced prepositional phrases, this youthful work is built around lists and catalogues. There are ten catalogues of this sort in this short oration: lists of the attributes of Tristano and Beatrice, their virtues, their physical characteristics, and the ancient heroes and heroines they resemble. Tristano exemplifies fides, facilitas, ingenium, humanitas, iustitia, prudentia, militia, and fortitudo. Beatrice is endowed with modestia, honestas, pulchritudo, nobilitas, fama, gloria, virtus, and opibus. The other mannerism that characterizes this early prose work in Latin is Ippolita’s sprinkling of familiar passages from Latin literature throughout the oration. The epithalamium includes two quotations from Virgil’s Aeneid, one extended passage from Juvenal’s sixth Satire, and several lines from Alcmena’s speech about her dowry in Plautus’s Amphitryon. The reader is invited to compare the simple Latin oratory of the pre-teenage Ippolita Sforza with her two other, stylistically complex Latin speeches: her oration for Pope Pius delivered in 1459 when she was fourteen; and her last extant and most remarkable Latin work, the oration she presented to her mother Bianca Maria Sforza in 1465. ***

Wedding Oration for Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este 175

Illustris dominae virginis adulescentulae Hippolitae Mariae Vicecomitis … congratulatio, 28 aprilis 14554 [1] Illustris dominae virginis adolescentulae Hippolitae Mariae Vicecomitis pro illustribus et magnificis domino Tristano Vicecomite et domina Beatrice Estensi congratulatio. Cum legerim aliquando et saepius audierim Antonium Crassum Ciceronem et permultos oratores, quorum studia fuere praestantia et ingenia pene divina, in principiis dicendi adeo commotos fuisse, ut non vultu solum expalleretur sed mente voce et tot corpore contremisceretur. Quid animi per deos immortales puellae mihi in dicendo esse arbitramini? [2] Nam principio illud quod est puella ingenua liberaliterque educata dignum non negabo me ad dicendum non tam mea sponte ductam quam officii necessitate quadam et affinitatis benivolentia pertractam fuisse: praesertim cum nihil sim dictura perfectum ingenuo, nihil elaboratum industria, nihil cuiquam novum aut dignum expectatione vestra.

4. Ferrara. Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea, I, 240, fols. 100r–102v.

A congratulatory oration by the illustrious young maiden countess Ippolita Maria for the most illustrious and most magnificent count lord Tristano and the lady Beatrice d’Este on their marriage, 28 April 1455 [1] Since I have sometimes read and rather often heard that Antony, Crassus, Cicero, and many other orators whose performances were outstanding, brilliant, and almost sublime, were so moved at the beginning of their speeches that not only did their faces grow pale but their entire bodies, voices and minds trembled, what kind of a mind do you think I have for speechmaking—I, a mere girl, by the immortal gods? [2] First, because she [Beatrice] is a noble girl and she has been liberally educated, I will not deny that it is appropriate that I [Ippolita] have been brought to the lectern [me pertractam fuisse]—not so much because of my own will as because of the necessity of my position and the benevolence of kinship, especially since I would say nothing perfected by natural talent, nothing wrought from hard work, nor anything new to anyone or worthy of your expectation.

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[3] Cum me in his haerentem angustiis et tanto dicendi munere pressam, multa tamen recreant et consolantur, meque ad dicendum invitant, et magnopere cohortantur. Primum quidem illustris et excellentis dominae marchionissae Mantuanae inaudita benignitas et in me amor singulis quam ut matrem colo. [4] Observo autem ut divinam: et ut usque parentis mei illustrissimi principis indulgentia et humanitas, deinde praestantissimorum virorum matronarum et caeterorum civium in audiendo facilitas et in indulgendo parata venia. Denique clarissimorum sponsi et sponsae gratissima omnibus et iucunda praesentia, quibus spero hanc meam gratulationem quaerunque futura sit fore gratissimam gaudeo. [5] Itaque vehementer et tibi gratulor inclyta Beatrix et felicissima sponsa, quam fortunatam [end of fol. 100r] felicemque et beatam existimo, cum tantum sis nacta socerum Franciscum Sphortiam illustrissimum Insubrium ducem, cuius nomen, decus et gratia iisdem occeani resonat finibus, quibus terrarum clauditur orbis. Sisque divinam Blancham Mariam non socrus loco, sed matris indulgentissimae habitura tot praeterea clarissimos principes affinitate tibi et benevolentia devinxeris.

[3] Although I was at a loss in these difficult circumstances and hard pressed by the great duty to give a speech, nonetheless many things did give me strength and encouraged me—and many things prompted me to speak and urged me on. First, the unheard-of kindness and singular love toward me of the illustrious and excellent lady marchesa of Mantua, whom I cherish as a mother. [4] Moreover, I worship her as a divine being and as I worship the gentility and kindness of my father, the most illustrious prince, and his ease in hearing the most excellent men and women and the rest of the citizens and his kindness when a pardon is obtained. And finally, the presence of the bride and bridegroom, so pleasing to everyone whom I hope this congratulatory oration of mine will delight. [5] Therefore I rejoice greatly and I congratulate you, illustrious Beatrice, most blessed bride, whom I find truly happy and fortunate [end of fol. 100r] since you now possess so great a fatherin-law, Francesco Sforza, the very illustrious leader of the Insubrians,5 whose name, honor, and grace resounds to the very borders that enclose the earth, and since you will have the divine Bianca Maria, not in the role of a mother-inlaw but in that of the kindest mother. In addition, you will join yourself to so many very most famous princes in kinship and good will toward you, 5. The term Insubrians, which originally referred to the Gaulic Insubres people who settled in the times of classical antiquity in the area of presentday Lombardy, here refers to the subjects of the duchy of Milan.

Wedding Oration for Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este 177 [6] Quibus cum tuum ­omnem spatium vitae hylaris et iucunda summo cum honore et dignitate bene beateque vivere possis maxime hac in orbis gravissima sanctissima sanctissimaque urbe quae non modo et prudentissimis doctissimisque viris et pudicissimis optimisque mulieribus et incredibili quadam populi frequentia. Cum bonis moribus omiumque virtutum et optimarum artium studio caeteris civitatibus excellentior est et multo praestantior. [7] Sed iam de illustrissimis socero socruique et caeteris affinibus clarissimis deque hac florentissima et populosissima urbe pro loco et tempore satis audisti. Nunc cuius moribus sponsum consecuta sis brevi perquiramus. Ego non has res optimum gratissimumque sponsum efficere arbitror virtutem aetatem formam genus facultates: quae quamoptime in hoc uno omnia constituta sint considerate. [8] Is nam a teneris unguiculis (ut aiunt Graeci) optimos mores et bonarum artium disciplinam amavit. Didicit excoluit et spem omnium virtute superavit. Nam ineunte adolescentia iustitiam prudentiam modestiam fortitudinemque militiamque et caeteras virtutes omnes summa cum laude et gloria exercuit. Quod re ipsa magisquam oratione mea perspicue cognoscere possumus.

[6] because of which ties you will be able to live all the years of your happy life, delightfully, happily, blessedly, and pleasantly in the highest honor and dignity in this most important and holiest state in the world, which is populated not only with the most prudent and best men, the best and most prudent of women, and an incredible mass of ordinary people, but also with good customs and enthusiasm for all the virtues and the best arts. And therefore it is far more excellent than all other states. [7] But concerning your very illustrious father and mother-in-law and the rest of your brilliant family members, and concerning this most flourishing and populous state, your have now heard enough for the time and place. Now let us speak briefly of the bridegroom, whose customs you have followed. I do not think that the following things make the best and most pleasing bridegroom: virtue, age, beauty, and lineage. Consider instead the abilities that are thought to be the best of all possible qualities in one man. [8] For he loved from earliest childhood on the best habits and his training, as the Greeks say, in the liberal arts. He studied, cultivated, and surpassed the hopes of all in virtue. For when he became a young man, he practiced justice, prudence, modesty, fortitude, military arts, and all the rest of the virtues with the highest praise and glory, which we can clearly see with our own eyes rather than from my oration.

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[9] Hic enim puer strenuus miles validiore grate multorum militum prudentissimius ductor exstit et [end of fol. 100v] imperator probatissimus. Itaque optime callet castris locum capere exercitum instruere. Obsidere et expugnare urbes aciem hostium profligare, caloris vim et frigorum excipere et famem sitimque perferre ut belli victoriam et triumphum consequatur. Quas ego virtutes in eo adeo magnas perfectasque existimo ut imperatoris illis quattuor virtutibus scientia rei militaris virtute auctoritate felicitate Mario Scipioni Pompeio Syllae comparetur. [10] Quantum praeterea innocentia, quantum fide, quantum facilitate, quantum ingenio, quantum humanitate valeat experientia magis intelligis omnes quam mea oratione explicare possim. Equidem hoc in uno tanta haec esse existimo quanta in multis vix invenire queamus.

[9] For this youth easily became a vigorous soldier and, thanks to his even stronger will, he also became the most prudent leader of many soldiers and the most just generals [end of fol. 100v]. Thus he knows from experience how to choose the location for his camp, how to train an army, to attack and lay siege to cities, how to destroy the enemy’s battle line, how to deal with the violence of heat and cold, and how to endure hunger and thirst so that he may win victory and triumph in war. These are the virtues which I think are so great and so perfect among the four great virtues in military science that a general must have, so that he can be compared in virtue, authority and luck to Marius, Scipio, Pompey, and Sulla. [10] In addition, how capable he is because of his innocence, his faith, his kindly temperament, and his natural ability, all of you know more from your own experience than I can possibly explain in my oration. Therefore I know this: there are so many great qualities in this one man that we could scarcely find as many in a great number of men.

Wedding Oration for Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este 179 [11] Aetatem autem quam secundo loco messe sponso oportere censueram. Cum potiorem eius partem atque adeo florem possidere intelligamus, silentio facile praeteriemus. Omittemus etiam formam quam uris inspicere oculis mirari et laudare atque illud Virgilianum de eo referre merito possumus: Nam clara in luce refulget os humerosque deo similis atque ipsa decoram Caesariem nato genetrix lumenque iuventae purpuream et laetos oculis afflarat honores. [12] Genus nostrum ne longius repetamus est ab hoc illustrissimo et excellentissimo principe parente meo Francisco Sphortia, cuius magnificas clarissimasque res bello et pace viribus et consilio gestas explicare non diurno non annuo sermone non hominis aetate et patavina eloquentia possem qui etsi Philippi soceri et Sphortiae patris caeterorumque maiorum origine magnus sit atque praeclarus: tamen virtute sua et rerum gestarum gloria tantus est: ut omnis antiquitatis memoriae [end of fol. 101r] digne praeferatur: incertumque sit an ipse ex maioribus nostris an illi ex hoc generosiores effici videantur.

[11] For a bridegroom, however, I had thought that youth is necessary as a favorable place is needed for a crop. Since we know that his portion is quite fruitful and that it possesses such bloom, we will pass over this subject in silence. We will also omit discussion of the physical beauty which you long to see, to admire, and to praise and we can deservedly apply those Virgilian lines to him: “For he shines in a brilliant light: his face and shoulders are like a god’s; and his mother had breathed beauty into her son’s hair, she shone a rosy light upon the youth, and she gave a joyful glory to his eyes.”6 [12] Let us not speak further about his lineage; he is the son of the most illustrious and excellent prince, my father Francesco Sforza, whose magnificent and most famous deeds in war and peace conducted with both strength and wisdom I could hymn with neither daily nor yearly speeches, not in the time of man and with Paduan eloquence, about a man who even if he is the son-in-law of duke Filippo [Maria Visconti] and the son of [Muzio Attendolo] Sforza his father, and the rest of his ancestors. He was nonetheless a man of such distinction due to his own virtue and the deeds he accomplished that he is worthily celebrated in the memory of all antiquity; and it is uncertain whether he himself will be appear to be more celebrated by our forebears or whether they will seem to be made more glorious by his fame. 6. Virgil, Aen. 1.588–91.

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[13] Sed quod erat extremum quis negabit hunc ditissimum et opulentissimum esse: qui sit tanti principis filius. Tot virtutibus ornatus et tanto praesit exercitui: quibus rebus non modo opes maximas sed imperia sit consecuturus. Gaudeo igitur merito iureque tibi congratulor felicissima beatissimaque Beatrix, quem virum virtute virentem aetate florentem forma praestantem genere magnum opibus potentem et omni laude cumulatum perpetua vitae consuetudine sacratissimo tibi matrimonio coniunxeris. [14] Tu autem inclyte frater quam fortunatus faustusque sis et quam nos laetos et iucundos efficias hac tua? Clarissima sponsa quaeso benigne et attente audias. Poeta quidam satyrus si recte memini multas res esse oportere in optima sponsa his versubus enarrat. Sit formosa decens dives fecunda, vetustos porticibus disponat avos, intactior omni crinibus effusis bellum dirimente Sabina.

[13] But the final point is this: who will deny that this man’s son will be a very wealthy and powerful man? He will be endowed with a great many virtues and he will preside over a very great army, and with these advantages he will not only acquire enormous wealth but also political power [imperia]. Therefore I deservedly rejoice and I justly congratulate you, most fortunate and blessed Beatrice, for you have united to yourself in sacred matrimony a husband extraordinary in his virtue, glorious in his youth, exceeding in beauty, notable in his lineage, powerful in his wealth, and a recipient of every praise in the perpetual constancy of his habit of life. [14] You, however, my brilliant brother, how fortunate and blessed are you and how happy and pleased do you make us in this bride of yours? Most brilliant bride, listen kindly and attentively, please. If I remember rightly, a certain satirical poet tells us in his verses that the best bride should have many attributes: “she should be beautiful, honorable, rich, and fruitful, and she should display her revered ancestors in her halls; yet she should be more chaste than all the Sabine women who, with their hair disheveled, put an end to war.”7 7. Juvenal, Sat. 6.162–64. This detailed description of the ideal bride from Juvenal’s viciously misogynistic sixth satire introduces a note of irony into an otherwise straightforward epithalamium. The wedding guests who got the reference would have snickered; but young Ippolita was probably given the tag to use in her oration without knowing its original context.

Wedding Oration for Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este 181 [15] Cum Plautus poeta prudentissimus Alchumenam Amphitrioni respondentem eadem de re hoc pacto introduxit: Non ego illam mihi dotem duco esse: quae dos dicitur: sed pudicitiam et pudorem et sedatum cupidinem, deum metum parentum amorem et cognatum concordiam: ut tibi morigera atque munifica sim bonis, prosim probis. [16] Quae hac in nostra sponsa quam cumulata sint omnia paucis et breviter perstringam. Est enim tanta modestia honestate pulchritudine nobilitate fama gloria opibus et virtute predita: ut ad cumulum verae et solidae laudis parum aut certe nihil addi possit. Primum eius modestiam hone- [end of fol. 101v] statemque ex fronte oculis vultu incessu et reliquo corporis habitu prospicere optime potestis: quae sunt mulierum prudentibus praesertim certissima signa. Prudentiam humanitatem benignitatem in omnes admirari potius quam satis laudare possumus.

[15] When the most excellent poet Plautus brought Alcmena on stage and had her respond to Amphitryon in the marriage pact in the same way: “I do not feel that my dowry is that which people call a dowry, but rather it is purity, honor, and self-control, fear of the gods, love of my parents, and harmony with my family, so that I would be dutiful to you and generous with the things I own and so that I could help you with righteous action.”8 [16] I will now briefly touch upon all the things that are embodied in our bride. For she is so endowed with such modesty, sincerity, beauty, nobility, glory, virtue, and wealth that certainly little or nothing can be added to this mountain of true and unassailable praise. First come her modesty and honesty which you can see from her brow, her eyes, and her face, in her walk and her stature. For these are the surest signs of prudence in women. We are more able to marvel at their humanity and kindness than we are to praise them adequately.

8. Plautus, Amph. 839–42.

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[17] De castitate autem et amore in maritum singulari deque reliquis virtutibus veteribus illis et clarissimis matronis Lucretiae, Corneliae, Arthemisiae, et Zenobiae non comparandam moribus sed praeponendam censuerim. Quid dicam de eis forma et puchritudine? Quid de oris venustate et oculorum v­ eneranda acie? Quid de omnium membrorum congruenti optimaque compagine? Immensa profecto etiam oratio. [18] Sed formae laudis cum Virgilio modum imponam: Nanque haud tibi vultus mortalis, nec vox hominem sonat, O dea certe. Sed enim eius venustatem pulchritudinemque egregiam ut divinam quandam spetiem et de caelo lapsam contemplemur. Genus nostrum nobilissimum et opes potentissimas quis ignorat?

[17] However, concerning chastity and a wife’s incomparable love for her husband and all the rest of the virtues which are exemplified in the most famous wives of antiquity—Lucretia, Cornelia, Artemisia, and Zenobia—I believe that Beatrice cannot be compared to them; for she is superior to them morally. But what shall I say of their looks and their beauty? What must be commemorated about the loveliness of their faces, about brightness of their glance? What could I say about the fitting harmony of all the elements in their persons? This would be an immense oration. [18] I shall impose a limit on the encomium of beauty with Virgil as my model: “For you by no means possess a mortal’s face, nor is yours a human voice, but certainly that of a goddess.”9 For we contemplate her charm and extraordinary and unusual beauty as though a certain divine being alighted from heaven. Who does not know her very noble lineage and most powerful wealth?

9. Virgil, Aen. 1.327–28.

Wedding Oration for Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este 183 [19] Nam Estensium familia principum fama virtute et gloria totum est vulgata per orbem: quae innumeros principes magnanimosque duces belli et pacis artibus praeditos edidit in lucem, et caelo laudibus aequavit: praesertim illustrissimum Nicolaum Estensem nostrae sponsae parentem et Leonellum fratrem clarissimum principem: qui post multas res gestas immensas infinitasque laudes vitam cum morte commutarunt. [20] At in presentia Borsius frater magnanimus, Ferrariae princeps et Mutinae dux paternis fraternisque virtutibus nulla parte inferior tanta humanitate clementia iustitia liberalitate prudentia [end of fol. 102r] imperium omne gubernat regit et moderatur: ut illum homines omnes—summi, medii, infimi, cives, peregrini, viri, mulieres, liberi, servi—diligant, ament, observent et venerentur.

[19] For the lineage of Este princes and the fame of their virtue and glory is known throughout the entire world. For this lineage has brought forth innumerable princes and noble leaders famous in the arts of peace and war and it has made them equal to high heaven with their with praise: most especially the illustrious Niccolò III d’Este,10 the father of our bride, and Leonello,11 her brother and most famous prince who after many illustrious deeds and infinite paeans of praise, gave his life up to death. [20] But at present, Borso,12 her magnanimous brother, who is the prince of Ferrara and duke of Modena, governs and rules and tempers his entire realm with his father’s and brother’s virtues in no part inferior to theirs, with such kindness, clemency, justice, liberality, and prudence that all men— from the highest, middle, and lowest citizens, foreign men, women, free men, and slaves—esteem, love, honor, and venerate him.

10. Niccolò III d’Este, marquis of Ferrara, and father of Leonello, Borso, and Beatrice, all illegitimates. 11. Leonello d’Este, marquis of Ferrara, son and successor of Niccolò, brother of Borso, brother or half-brother of Beatrice. 12. Borso d’Este, duke of Ferrara and Modena, son of Niccolò, brother and successor of Leonello, brother (or half-brother) of Beatrice.

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[21] Quapropter inclyte frater tibi merito gratulor: et te qui talem uxorem consecutus sis fortunatum faustum et felicem appello: quem omnes animi et corporis exterrarumque rerum dotes miro singularique ordine omni adeo ex parte continet, ut non solum inter patrios fines sed per finitimas quasque provincias suum nomen celebri predicatione fama vulgarit [22] Quod reliquum est post hanc meam gratulationem nos laeti iucundique omnes optimum maximumque deum precamur supplices atque obtestamur ut vos pulchra faciat prole parentes et felices beatosque longenos in annos servet ac tueatur. Dixi. Telos. 28 aprilis 1455. [fol. 102v: end of oration]

[21] Therefore, O famous brother, I rightly congratulate you; and since you have such a wife I call you fortunate, happy, and blessed! For she so thoroughly possesses all the gifts13 of mind and body together with those external things of such a wonderful and great sort that her fame has spread her name abroad by frequent proclamations not only throughout her own family’s provinces but all across each of the neighboring states as well. [22] What remains after my congratulatory oration is for all of us, happy and pleased, to pray to and entreat the best and greatest God that he will make you the parents of a beautiful child and that he will protect and watch over you, happy and blessed in the long years to come. I have spoken. 28 April 1455. The End.

13. Ippolita here uses the word dotes: literally “dowry gifts,” in the sense of Alcmene’s speech to Amphitryon, in which she brings him purity and honor as her dowry rather than material riches.

Oration for Pope Pius II (1459) The most famous of all Ippolita Sforza’s works is the Latin oration she delivered in Mantua in June 1459, in honor of Pope Pius II.1 The newly inaugurated pope had summoned the world leaders to attend a Congress in that city with the objective of mounting a crusade against the Ottoman Turks, who in May 1453 had sacked and then occupied Constantinople—the last important outpost in the eastern Mediterranean region not only of Christendom but of classical civilization. Since Francesco Sforza, the duke of Milan, was unable to attend the conference, Duchess Bianca Maria Visconti delegated her fourteen-year-old daughter Ippolita and her friend and counselor Francesco Filelfo, Milan’s leading humanist at the time, to speak for the duchy of Milan. Standing before the assembled prelates and heads of state, they were an odd couple: Ippolita, the ducal daughter and pawn for alliance-building, who had delivered her first public oration in Latin at the age of ten at the wedding in Ferrara of Beatrice d’Este and Tristano Sforza; and Filelfo, a public intellectual and insider in Milanese court circles, who had significant ties to the courts of Mantua, Ferrara, and Naples.2 In comparing this artful speech to the mature oration that Ippolita would deliver in honor of her mother in 1465, we see in her oration for Pope Pius neither the sophisticated macrostructure nor the Ciceronian periods she later would flaunt. Instead, the power and color in Ippolita’s youthful oration lies in her imitation of the canonical Latin authors she had studied with her tutor Baldo Martorelli.3 A few examples from Ippolita’s Oratio pro Papa Pio suffice to illustrate her style, even at this early stage of her development. The first is the artful displacement of adjectives from the nouns they modify: tum ob ingentem familiae nostrae spem, tum vel maximae ob publicam Christianae religionis utilitatem (not only because of the great hope of our family but because of the public importance of the mighty Christian religion). The second is the juxtaposition of incongruities to create a comic self-portrait, as in her self-deprecating suggestion that her laudes aureas et divinas (golden and divine praises) were actually luteas verbis incomtis (muddied by her sloppy writing): Sed quid ego laudes tuas actingere audeo? Ut scilicet aureas illas ac pene divinas, velut luteas verbis incomtis ac puellaribus redamus (Why do I dare speak your praises? Is it to render those golden and nearly divine qualities of yours muddied with rude and girlish words?). The third is the piling 1. This commentary on Ippolita’s 1459 Latin oration for Pope Pius II is based on the paper Diana Robin presented at the Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Miami, Florida on 22–24 March 2007. 2. Robin, Filelfo in Milan, 116–37. 3. Ferrari, Per non manchare in tuto.

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up of nouns to portray herself as young, female, and plagued by untamed emotions, as dramatized by her mention twice of her embarrassed blushing:4 Si aetas, sexus, imbeccilitasque ingenii pudorem pariterque verecundiam afferunt …, rubore suffusa, non modo meo rubore non alloqui …. audeam (If one’s youth, gender, and weakness of intellect bring on both shame and shyness equally, then having turned bright red, I would not dare to speak because of my red face ….). Given Ippolita’s youth and the superficial likeness of her speech to Filelfo’s, there had always suspicions that Filelfo had written not only his own oration but hers as well.5 Indeed, like Filelfo’s oration, Ippolita’s Latin address follows a fourpart formulary: the speaker’s fear in the face of so momentous an occasion6; the pope’s gentleness in the face of his orators’ anxiety; the speaker’s alignment of the Sforza family interests with those of the pope; and finally, the pledges of her family’s commitment to support the pope and honor of the Church. Although Ippolita may have scoured Filelfo’s oration for ideas before crafting her own speech, there is little resemblance between the elder statesman’s densely argued 2,300word address with its thicket of classical references and Ippolita’s relatively unadorned 340-word work. ***

4. Blushing seems to be a trope of female embarrassment in fifteenth–century oratory: see Nogarola’s orations Isotta Nogarolae veronensis opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Eugenius Abel, 2 vols. (Vienna: apud Gerold et socios, 1886), 2.143–56; 2.276–89; and Laura Cereta in Tomasini, Laurae Ceretae … epistolae, 227–30. 5. Dina Achille, “Isabella d’Aragona, duchessa di Milano e di Bari,” Archivio storico lombardo ser. 5, vol. 8, fasc. 3/4 (1921): 269. 6. Francisci Philelphi oratio ad Pium Secundum pontificem maximum: habita Mantuae … (Basel: Auerbach, 1498), fols. 92v–95. Even Filelfo said at the opening of his oration before the pope, “I could not fail to be frightened” [Non poteram equidem non subverereri].

Oration for Pope Pius II 187

Oratio inclite ducisse Calabrie filie illustrissimi Francisci Ducis Mediolani, facta coram S.D. Papa Pio in Concistorio Cardinalium, Mantue 1459, mense iunii7

Oration by the glorious Duchess of Calabria, daughter of the illustrious Francesco, duke of Milan. publicly presented to Pope Pius II in the Consistory of Cardinals at Mantua, June 1459

[1] Tantam esse huius sanctissimae Sedis autoritatem ac maiestatem beatissimae saepius8 audivi, ut nemo usquam, quantivis ingenii, eloquentiae, dignitatis, illam adoraturus adierit, quin trepidus orationis officio functus sit. [2] Nimirum igitur, si cui etas, sexus, imbeccillitasque ingenii pudorem pariterque, verecundiam afferunt, apud te presertim qui, gravissimorum omnium consensu, doctissimus atque sapientissimus iudicaris, rubore suffusa non modo meo rubore non alloqui, sed ne firma quidem oculorm acie tuam audeam subspicere sanctitatem. [3] Verum quod et accepi pariter te facilitate, summa humanitate, benignitate, clementia praeditum; et quod parentum exequi iuxa sanctissimum arbitror, et verecunde ac trepide iniunctum michi dicendi munus agrediar, adventus nostri causam primum habere devotionem, tandem desiderium vel brevissima oratione explicatura.

[1] I have often heard that the power and majesty of this most holy and blessed see is so great that no one— no matter how great his intellect, eloquence, and gravity—will ever begin to address the subject unless he presents his oration with great fear. [2] Certainly, therefore, if someone’s age, sex, and the weakness of one’s intellect bring shame and diffidence in equal measure—especially in your presence since all the most eminent men agree in judging you a man of consummate learning and wisdom— then, blushing, not only would I not dare to speak because of my blushing, but I would not even dare to look upon your holiness with a firm gaze. [3] But because I have heard that you are equally endowed with an easy nature and the greatest kindness, gentility, and clemency, and because I believe it most holy to obey the commands of one’s parents, I shall embark in fear and trepidation upon the duty placed upon me of speaking, so that I may explain in this very brief oration that our purpose for coming here encompasses first devotion and finally desire.

7. The Latin text given here is based on the edition of C. Corvisieri, Notabilia temporum di Angelo de Tummulillis da Sant’Elia, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 7: 231–33 (Livorno: Tip. F. Vigo, 1890). 8. The Latin diphthong ae is represented in Corvisieri’s edition as e; we have spelled out the ligatures throughout.

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[4] Ubi enim accepimus beatitudinem tuam in hunc amplissimum solium sublimatam, tanta repente inclitos parentes meos universamque familiam voluntas invasit, ut nunquam posse nobis quicquam proprius ad felicitatem accedere arbitrarer, tum ob ingentem familiae nostrae spem, tum vel maximae ob publicam Christianae religionis utilitatem; quippe qui te velut sidus quoddam ad regendum periclitantem ac pene submersam Petri naviculam caelo dimissum esse arbitramur. [5] Te enim non favoribus aut gratia, sed9 virtute summa ac sanctimonia in tanto Christianae rei dixcrimine optimum gregi dominico pastorem datum esse non ab re iudicant. Sed quid ego laudes tuas actingere audeo? Ut scilicet aureas illas ac pene divinas, velut luteas verbis incomtis ac puellaribus redamus. [6] Cum igitur audivimus in hanc urbem proficissci tuam sanctitatem istituisse, istituerunt quoque ipsi parentes mei te coram venerari, colere, adorare, et ipsa quoque quod michi facultas data fuit hos beatissimos pedes obsculari, felicitatem michi non parvam esse vel amplissimam puto.

9. Corvisieri transcribes sed as “set.”

[4] For when we heard that your holiness had been elevated to this celestial throne, such a great desire suddenly came over my illustrious parents and my whole family that I believe that nothing could ever be more intimately connected to our happiness—not only because of the great hopes of our family, but also because of the importance of the very great Christian religion for our people. Surely, then, we thought you had been sent down from heaven like some star, to pilot Peter’s little ship that had almost sunk. [5] For they believe that you have been given to the Lord’s flock as their best shepherd of the Christian faith at this critical juncture—not because of gifts or influence but because of your sublime virtue and holiness. But why do I dare to commend your virtues? Is it so that I can render those golden and near-divine virtues of yours as though muddied with rude and girlish words? [6] When we heard that your holiness had decided to come to this city, my parents decided to do the same, in order to venerate, honor, and worship you in person; and because the opportunity was given to me to kiss your most blessed feet, I believe that this has been no small happiness to me but a great joy.

Oration for Pope Pius II 189 [7] Et quoniam Salvatoris nostri vicem geris in terris, multam tibi mortales in terris reverentiam debent multamque hobedientiam [sic] exhibent. Id tibi persuadeas oro, neminem propter tuam sanctaeque Romanae Ecclesiae dignitatem aut commodum vehementiori studio, ardentiori desiderio, obsequentiorem parentibus ipsis promptioremque fore. [8] Ego vero, cum fortunarum nichil habeam proprium, voluntatem quae libera est, tuae et devoveo et dedico sanctitati. Reliquum est ut illustrissimos genitores meos germanos me remque omnem nostram faciam his sanctissimis tuis pedibus commendatos. Finis.

[7] And since you play the part of our savior on earth, humans owe you much reverence and they show you much obedience. And I beg you to persuade yourself of this: that, owing to your dignity and utility and that of the Holy Roman Church, no one will be more possessed of more intense enthusiasm and ardent desire, nor will anyone be more obedient and more resolute than my parents themselves. [8] Though I, in truth, have no fortune of my own, I consecrate and dedicate my will, which is free, to your holiness. All that remains is that I commend my most illustrious parents, my brothers, and myself to you, and I place everything we have at your most holy feet. The End.

Oration for Bianca Maria Visconti (1465) This oration was presented by Ippolita in her mother’s honor in Milan in 1465. Celebrating her mother’s extraordinary gifts as a mother, a duchess and head of state, this work is not only persuasively argued but seems ahead of its time in its unapologetic encomium of a particular woman as a matrix for women rulers in general. Before we comment on Ippolita Sforza’s feminist argument, however, the complexity of her Latin prose as it had evolved by 1465 deserves analysis. Stylistically this very sophisticated work differs considerably from her two early Latin orations. The opening sentence to this Ciceronian oration1 [par. 1] sets the stage for the complex design that characterizes the speech and distinguishes it from her earlier oratory. The sentence, eighty-one words long, is the size of a paragraph. A model of Roman periodic style, it is comprised of five clauses: two independent clauses and three dependent clauses. Since the music of Ippolita’s Latin prose is produced by rhyming noun, adjective, and verb endings made possible by the inflected nature of the Latin language, it is impossible to simulate her prose style in an English translation. An analysis of the architecture of the opening sentence of her oration demonstrates Ippolita’s mastery of the Ciceronian period. As shown below, three subordinate clauses (A, B, C) surround and frame the main clause (M-1). A second and final main clause (M-2) follows the three subordinate clauses (A, B, C) and serves to wrap up the sentence: 1. Subordinate clause no. 1 (A): Cum habui summum desiderium …. [Since I had the greatest desire to say something …] 2. Subordinate clause no. 2 (B): Quod esset dignissimum summa pietate et observantia) et (tuo singulari amore) et (caritate erga me) …. [which would be worthy of the greatest respect and affection and of your extraordinary love and affection for me ….] 3. Main clause no. 1 (M-1): Constitui non opus esse mihi uti exordio ad tua captandam benivolentiam erga me … (I decided it was not necessary for me to undertake a long oration ….) 4. Subordinate clause no. 3 (C): Cum insitum sit a natura …. (since it is human nature for a parent ….) This subordinate clause is embellished by a series of rhyming phrases 1. “Ciceronian” in the sense of the Roman orator’s dazzling opening paragraphs in his famous courtroom speeches such as the Pro Archia. The orator’s plain style, typified by the unadorned, terse language of his letters to Atticus and his familiar letters, is very different from his oratory.

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which include: two pairs of infinitives (a and b) followed by a trio of prepositional phrases (c , d, and e) as below: a. Non modo videre et audire libenter suos liberos [not only to see and to listen to her children] b. Sed etiam eos nutrire et educare (but also to nurture and to educate them) c. Omni cura et diligentia (with all her attention and diligence). d. Summis laboribus (with the greatest effort). e. Ad memoriam sui et gloriam propagandam (for the furthering of her own fame and glory). 5. Main cause no. 2 (M-2) brings the sentence to its conclusion: Nihilque est in vita carius aut iocundius quam [propagare] prosperam valitudinem, virtutem ac felicitatem librorum (and there is nothing sweeter in life than [to further] the good health, virtue, and happiness of one’s children). In the third paragraph, as another illustration of her rhetorical management, Ippolita effectively employs Ciceronian-style anaphora, the repetition of the opening word in three rhetorical questions, each beginning with quae (who or what): c. Quae religiosissima princeps … . aut dignior aut sanctior.fuit? [What princess has ever been worthier of veneration?] d. Quae … amantior. [fuit]? [Who (what woman or princess) has been more loving of Christ’s poor?] e. Quae observantior … [fuit]? [Who (what woman or princess) has ever been more faithful.in prayers, fasting, and giving to the poor?] Note the use of orationibus, ieiuniis, elemosinis—a triplet within a triplet. In this speech, Ippolita elaborates on the qualities of her mother’s mind and spirit. She analyzes the parts of her animus as fourfold: her intellect [intellectus], which “gleams with things divine”; her beautiful mind or memory [memoria]; her will [voluntas], which is “fired by love of mankind and the desire to do good in the world”; yet ultimately, it is her mother’s soul [anima], “created in the image of God,” that “brings glory to her life.” While the syntax of Ippolita’s speech is deserving of analysis, the work’s distinction lies not in its grammar but in its philosophical and ethical conceptualization of mind [animus, mens]. This speech boldly portrays the concept of woman

Oration for Bianca Maria Visconti 193 as ruler, builder, benefactor, mother and daughter to the whole world.2 Thus through this encomium for her mother, Ippolita portrays the complex, evolved self that we see in her own later letters, particularly after the assassination of her brother. Both the later letters and this speech prescribe a moral vision of action in the world that transcends the gender stereotypes of her time: Finally, your generosity and magnanimity towards all mortal men is very great since you build temples and shrines to the immortal gods, you make wealthy both your own family and your neighbors, you honor friends and good men, and you support the poor with such kindness with your own wealth that you seem to have been born not a daughter (natam) to your own family but to the whole world. For when think about you, most magnanimous mother, none of your praises seems more illustrious or more excellent than that you willingly give assistance to so many and you generously bestow your gifts on the whole human race. For only with generosity do princes seem to me to come closest to divine power if they, when they are powerful and wealthy, lift up the downfallen, raise up those struck down by tragedy and enrich the indigent. Then those who are rich become wealthier through their own liberality and magnanimity. Theses are the men whom we look to as kings, whom we venerate as gods above mere men. ***

2. Toti orbi natam: the feminine singular past participle from the verb nascor (to be born), which can simply be translated “born”; but in the context of this sentence the feminine gender of the participle calls for a more specific rendering of the word.

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Oratio pro Bianca Maria Visconti, ducisse Mediolani, 14653 [1] Cum me, magnificentissima princeps, summum aliquid te alloquendi desiderium, quod et tuo singulari amore et caritate erga me, et item mea in te summa pietate et observantia dignissimum esset, explorare habui, longo uti exordio mihi opus non esse ad tuam captandam erga me benivolentiam, constitui, cum insitum sit a natura non modo videre et audire libenter suos liberos, sed etiam eos nutrire et educare omni cura et diligentia summis laboribus ad memoriam sui et gloriam propagandam, nihilque ipsis in vita carius aut iocundius est quam prosperam suorum liberorum valetudinem, virtutem ac felicitatem. [2] Dicam igitur aperte, illustrissima princeps et ingenua honoratissima mater mea, fateor quod sentio. Cum equidem ad eos annos pervenerim quibus aliquando institutio et morum ratio habenda sit, quanto magis mecum ipsa cogito incredibilem virtutem et pene divinam, tanto magis humeris meis onus Ethna gravius sustinere videor si, ut optimam filiam decet, tuas praeclarissimas virtutes imitari et effari voluero.

3. The Latin text is in G. G. Meersseman in “La raccolta dell’umanista fiammingo Giovanni de Veris ‘De arte epistolandi,’” Italia medioevale e umanistica 15 (1972): 250–51. A fragment is found in Anna Maria Cesari, “Un’orazione inedita di Ippolita Sforza e alcune lettere di Galeazzo Maria Sforza,” Archivio storico lombardo, ser. 9, vol. 4 (1964–1965): 50–65.

Oration in honor of Duchess Bianca Maria Visconti, mother of Ippolita Maria Sforza, 14654 [1] Since, most magnificent princess, I had the greatest desire to present an oration to you that would be worthy both of your extraordinary love and sweet affection for me and also of the great respect and esteem I have for you, I decided that it was not necessary for me to launch into a long peroration to earn your kindness to me since it is human nature that a parent not only delights in seeing and hearing her own children but also in nourishing and educating them with all her attention, diligence and with the greatest effort in order to further her own glory and fame. For nothing in life is sweeter or more pleasing than the good health, virtue, and happiness of one’s own children. [2] I shall speak openly, then, most illustrious princess and my noble and most honorable mother: I confess what I think. When I reached the age when an education in moral principles was obligatory, the more I came to know your incredible and almost divine virtue myself, the more I felt that I would be carrying on my shoulders a weight heavier than Etna, if I will ever wish, as befits the best daughter, to imitate and articulate your most excellent virtues.

4. An earlier translation of this oration appears in King and Rabil, Her Immaculate Hand, 44–46.

Oration for Bianca Maria Visconti 195 [3] Nam ut a rebus divinis incipiam: Quae unquam ulla in [a]etate religiosissima princeps aut quae veneratione dignior te aut sanctior fuit? Quae pauperum Cristi aut religiosissimorum hominum amantior, quae in orationibus, ieiuniis elemosinisque observantior, ut luce solis clarius appareat tuum illum immortalem animum et pulcerrimum pectus theologicis virtutibus ornatissimum esse? Nam fide divinarum rerum clarissimus splendet intellectus, saepe autem celestium . Florida viget memoria, caritate autem omnium mortalium et benefaciendi studio accenditur et inflammatur voluntas, unde illa pulcerrima anima ad similitudinem creatoris sui creata laudem et gloriam adipiscetur eternam. [4] Hinc est in orationibus tanta eterni Dei et futurae beatitudinis contemplatio. Hinc est in ieiuniis tanta cibus potusque abstinentia. Hinc est denique in mortales omnes tanta liberalitas et munificentia, qua tu immortalium deorum templa et sacella edificas, proprinquos et affines ditas, amicos et benivolos ornas, inopes vero tuis opibus benigna foves, ut te non tibi solum sed toti orbi natam esse videare. Nulla enim consideranti mihi, magnificentissima mater, ex tuis laudibus illustrior aut excellentior esse videtur quam quod plurimis libentissime prosis et beneficia tua in omne genus hominum liberalissime conferas. Sola enim liberalitate principes ad divinam potentiam quam proximi mihi videntur accedere, si, cum potentes et opulentes sint, iacentes extollant,

[3] Let me begin, then, with the divine: what very sacred princess has ever in any age been holier or more worthy of veneration? Who has been more loving of Christ’s poor or of the most pious men? Who has been more faithful in prayers, in fasting, and in giving to the poor, to the extent that it would seem more apparent than the sun’s light that this soul of yours is immortal and your heart most beautiful and plentifully adorned with divine virtues? For your brilliant intellect gleams with the faith in things divine; often, however, your mind grows strong with celestial goodness; yet your will is fired by the love of all mankind and inflamed by the desire to do good. It is from this that your very beautiful soul, created in the likeness of God, will obtain praise and glory. [4] For this reason the contemplation of immortal God and future happiness is so glorified in orations. For this reason abstinence from food and drink is so powerful. And finally, for this reason generosity and magnanimity towards all mortal men is so great a force, for this enables you to build temples and shrines to the immortal gods, to honor family members and prosperous kinsmen, to care kindly for the poor with your wealth, so that you seem to be a daughter born [natam] not only to your own people but to the whole world. For when I ponder to myself, most magnanimous mother, none of your praises seems more illustrious or more excellent than that you willingly give aid to so many and you so generously bestow your gifts upon the whole human race. For in generosity alone do princes seem

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calamitosos erigant, inopes ditent. Divites vero ditiores sua liberalitate et munificentia faciant. Hii sunt quos ut reges intuemur, quos etiam supra homines ut deos veneremur. [5] Sed quid dicam de tuis humanissimis moribus, de fortitudine animi, de pietate in matrem, bonitate in tuos, iustitia in omnes? Has enim virtutes colens, tamquam ad imperandum nata regem consiliis, urbes fundare legibus, emendare iudiciis, augere imperium et illustrare prudentia nosti. Quapropter, excellentissima mater, has ego tuas virtutes ammiror, has ego laudandas et pr[a]edicandas censeo, has ego cum diligentia et labore prosequi et imitari cupio, quibus me quoque possim tollere humo victrixque virum volitare per ora. ***

to me to come closest to divine power, if they, when they are powerful and wealthy, lift up the downfallen, raise up those struck down by tragedy, and enrich the indigent. Thus the wealthy become more wealthy through their own liberality and generosity. These are the men whom we look to as kings, whom we venerate as gods above mere men. [5] But what shall I say about your magnanimous character? About your fortitude of mind? Your loyalty and respect for your mother? Your goodness towards your family and your sense of justice towards all? For cultivating these virtues as if you were born [nata] to govern the king with your counsel, you know how to found cities with laws, to improve them with legal rulings, and to increase and make illustrious our empire with your prudence. Therefore, most excellent Mother, I admire these your virtues, I count these to be praised and exalted, while others among your virtues I wish to pursue and imitate with diligence and hard work, so that I may be able to raise myself up from the earth and “fly victorious on the lips of men.”5 The End.

5. Virgil, Georgics 3:9.

Glossary Of Names ALFONSO I, “The Magnanimous,” King of Naples, 1396–1458, r. 1442–1458. Father of King Ferrante I, grandfather of Alfonso, duke of Calabria, king Alfonso II. ALFONSO II, duke of Calabria, 1448–1495. King of Naples, 1494–1495. Son of King Ferrante and Isabella di Chiaramonte. Husband of Ippolita Maria Sforza. Taught by humanists Antonio Panormita and Giovanni Giovano Pontano. ARAGONA, BEATRICE D’, 1457–1508; queen consort of Matthias Corvinus, 1476–1490. Daughter of King Ferrante of Naples and Isabella di Chiaramonte. Ippolita Sforza’s sister-in-law, married to Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, days before the assassination of Galeazzo Sforza. ARAGONA, ELEONORA D’, duchess of Ferrara, 1450–1493. Daughter of King Ferrante of Naples and Isabella di Chiaromonte. Betrothed to Ippolita’s younger brother Sforza Maria Sforza. The betrothal is cancelled in 1472 by mutual default: Duke Galeazzo refuses to grant his brother Sforza Maria the promised lordship of Bari; King Ferrante in turn withdraws his daughter Eleonora from a marriage pact incommensurate with her rich dowry. Subsequently Eleonora marries Ercole I, duke of Ferrara, on July 3, 1473 in the most lavish ceremony of the period. ARAGONA, GIOVANNI D’, 1456–1485. Son of King Ferrante, made cardinal in 1480. ARAGONA, ISABELLA D’, 1470–1524. Daughter of Ippolita Maria Sforza. Betrothed to her first cousin Gian Galeazzo Sforza 23 July 1472; married by proxy in Naples on 21 December 1488 to Gian Galeazzo, and in Milan on 28 January 1489. BARBARA OF BRANDENBURG, marchesa of Mantua, 1422–1478. Married Ludovico Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua. Lifelong friend and mother figure for Ippolita Sforza, who calls her “Madonna Marchegiana.” BONA OF SAVOY, duchess of Milan, 1449–1503. Daughter of Louis, duke of Savoy and Anne de Lusignan of Cyprus. Bona marries Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1468. Bona’s sister Charlotte of Savoy marries Louis XI, king of France. Six months after Galeazzo’s assassination in 1476, Bona exiles her husband’s brothers after their attempted coup d’etat. In 1480, Bona herself is exiled to Abbiategrasso by her brother-in-law Ludovico Sforza. CAGNOLA, GIOVANNI ANDREA, 1432–1507. Attorney and Milanese ambassador to Naples, appointed by Duke Francesco Sforza in 1464. After

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Francesco’s death in 1466 he swears allegiance to Duke Galeazzo Sforza but is removed from his ambassadorship by the duke in 1472. CARAFA, DIOMEDE, count of Maddaloni, 1406–1487. Longtime resident of Barcelona. Key member of Ferrante’s court in Naples and a close friend of Ippolita Sforza’s. Carafa participates in the marriage celebrations of Eleonora d’Aragona and Ercole d’Este, duke of Ferrara in Naples in 1473 and of Beatrice d’Aragona and Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, in 1476. Carafa and Ippolita play major roles in the negotiations between King Ferrante and Lorenzo de’ Medici in Naples after the Pazzi revolt in Florence in 1478. CICINELLO, ANTONIO, c. 1430–1485. Born in Naples. In 1461 he is King Ferrante’s ambassador to Milan; he quits the post in 1470, fed up with Galeazzo’s volatility. Brother of Turco Cicinello. CICINELLO, TURCO, c. 1470. Ferrante’s longtime ambassador to Milan. Brother of Antonio Cicinello. COLLEONI, BARTOLOMEO, 1400–1476. Famous condottiere who serves Venetian republic for most of his career. Begins his military service under Francesco Sforza’s father Muzio Attendolo Sforza. CORVINUS, MATTHIAS, king of Hungary, 1443–1490, r. 1458–1490. In 1476, marries Beatrice d’Aragona, King Ferrante’s daughter and Ippolita Sforza’s sister-in-law. His forces support Naples during Ottoman invasion of 1480–1481. ESTE, BEATRICE D’, 1427–1497. Illegitimate daughter of Niccolò III d’Este, marchese of Ferrara; widow of Niccolò da Correggio. Marries Tristano Sforza in 1455. She is celebrated in Ippolita Sforza’s Wedding Oration for her marriage to Tristano. ESTE, BORSO D’, duke of Ferrara, 1413–1471, r. 1450–1471. Illegitimate son of Niccolò III, brother and successor of Leonello, brother of Beatrice d’Este. ESTE, ERCOLE D’, duke of Ferrara, 1431–1505, r. 1471–1505. Marries King Ferrante’s daughter Eleonora d’Aragona on 3 July 1473. His duchy is almost destroyed in the War of Ferrara (1482–1484). ESTE, LEONELLO D’, marchese of Ferrara, 1407–1450, r. 1441–1450. Illegitimate son and successor of Niccolò III, and brother of Beatrice d’Este. ESTE, NICCOLÒ III D’, marchese of Ferrara, 1383–1441, r. 1393–1441. Condottiere. Father of Beatrice d’Este, who marries Tristano Sforza in 1455. FERRANTE I, king of Naples, 1424–1494, r. 1458–1494. Natural son of King Alfonso I and his mistress Gueraldona Carlino. Father of Alfonso, duke of Calabria, who becomes King Alfonso II on Ferrante’s death. Ferrante is father-in-law of Ippolita Sforza.

Glossary of Names 199 FERRANTE II (FERRANDINO), duke of Capua, king of Naples, 1467–1496, r. 1495–1496. First-born son of Ippolita Sforza and Alfonso, duke of Calabria, and later king of Naples. FIESCHI, OBIETTO (IBLETO, OBIECTO). Born in Genoa, 1435–1497. Formerly allied with Francesco Sforza and Galeazzo Sforza, Fieschi participates in plot with Sforza brothers in 1477 to kill Bona of Savoy and Cicco Simonetta. When their plot fails, Fieschi flees to Asti. FILELFO, FRANCESCO, 1398–1481. Born of humble parents. Educated at Padua, Filelfo is among the first westerners to master ancient Greek in Constantinople in the1420s. Inaugurating Greek studies at universities in Florence, Bologna, Siena, and Pavia, Filelfo subsequently serves the Sforza dukes as court poet in Milan for 40 years, remaining close to Francesco Sforza, Bianca Maria, and their two eldest children, Galeazzo and Ippolita, for the rest of their lives. Called by Lorenzo de’ Medici to teach Greek at the university in Florence, he dies in that city at the age of eighty-three. GALLARATE, PIETRO DA, active 1465–1475. Pietro remains part of Galeazzo’s inner circle through the 1460s–1470s. He attends the duke’s engagement banquet on 7 February 1468, dressed in white livery; he joins the ducal party’s visit to Florence in 1471; and he dines with Galeazzo and Bona on Christmas Day in 1472. When Ippolita Sforza becomes homesick in Naples in 1467, Pietro is dispatched to cheer her. GONZAGA, DOROTEA, 1449–1467. Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga of Mantua and Duke Francesco Sforza of Milan, as the fathers of Dorotea Gonzaga and Galeazzo Maria Sforza, finalize their children’s marriage contract in 1450. But when Dorotea manifests signs of a hereditary spinal deformation, Francesco Sforza moves to dissolve the contract. Dorotea dies suddenly, probably of malaria, at age 18, before the betrothal is officially cancelled. GONZAGA, FRANCESCO II, marchese of Mantua, 1466–1519, r. 1484–1519. The first-born son of Marchese Federico I Gonzaga of Mantua, longtime friends of the Sforza. A correspondent of Ippolita Sforza, Francesco becomes the fourth marchese of Mantua in 1484. On 15 February 1490, he marries Isabella d’Este, daughter of Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara and Eleonora d’Aragona. GONZAGA, LUDOVICO III, marchese of Mantua, 1412–1478, r. 1444–1478. Married Barbara of Brandenburg. Ludovico and Barbara are close friends and neighbors of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. GUICCIARDINI, FRANCESCO, 1483–1540. Florentine statesman and historian whose writings about his own times made him the greatest historian of the Italian Renaissance. GUIDOBONI, CAVALCHINO, born c. 1440 in Milan. Longtime royal secretary to King Ferrante of Naples, Cavalchino regularly acts as a double-agent,

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passing state secrets on to Duke Galeazzo Sforza in Milan. Rebuked by Ferrante for relaying confidential information to Galeazzo, Guidoboni is rewarded by Galeazzo with three castles on his return to Lombardy in 1472. Guidoboni continues nonetheless to act as a lifelong double-agent, serving both Galeazzo in Milan and Ferrante in Naples as well. LANDRIANO, PIETRO DA, c. 1468–1476. Pietro serves Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza as a longtime counselor. He tutors the duke’s son Gian Galeazzo Sforza for many years. LASCARIS, CONSTANTINE, 1434–1501. Born in Constantinople, Lascaris arrives in Italy as a noted Greek scholar. He serves as Ippolita Sforza’s teacher of Greek in Milan. He follows her to Naples upon her marriage in 1465. He authors a Greek grammar, the Erotemeta. MALETTA, FRANCESCO, 1420–1479. Named Milanese ambassador to Naples in 1472, he replaces Giovanni Andrea Cagnola in that office. He enjoys “feeding the duke with court gossip” from Naples. In August 1475, suffering from a nervous disorder, Maletta is recalled to Milan. MAINO, AGNESE DEL (MAIANO, DEL MAIANO), 1425–1468. Daughter of the Milanese ducal quaestor, Ambrogio del Maino, she is Duke Filippo Maria Visconti’s mistress and the mother of Bianca Maria Visconti. MAINO, ANDREOTTO DEL, dates unknown. Ducal consigliere and brother of Agnese del Maino. Called by Bianca Maria Visconti and her children “our uncle.” MARTORELLI, BALDO, c. 1420–1475. Teacher of Latin and classical rhetoric to his pupils Ippolita and Galeazzo Sforza. Martorelli accompanies Ippolita to Naples and remains there as her secretary until his death. MEDICI, LORENZO DE’, “Il Magnifico,” 1449–1492. Grandson of Cosimo de’ Medici pater patriae; son of Piero de’ Medici. Unofficial ruler of Florence from age of twenty until his death. Lorenzo is ousted by the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478 after which he flees to Naples. He returns to power in Florence in 1479 with the assistance of King Ferrante and Pope Sixtus IV. OLDOYNO (OLDOYNI, OLDOINI), JACOPO, c. 1467. Secretary to Ippolita Sforza after Martorelli’s death. Brother of Estore Oldoyno, recommended to Bianca Maria Visconti. PAUL II, Pope, 1464–1471; Venetian Pietro Barbo, 1417–1471. An antiquarian collector of antiquities himself, Paul famously clashes with the humanist academy in Rome, which flourishes in the 1460s under the leadership of the charismatic classicist, Bartolomeo Sacchi (known as Platina). PICCININO, JACOPO, 1423–1465. Condottiere to both Francesco Sforza and King Ferrante of Naples, Piccinino marries Drusiana, the daughter of Francesco Sforza and Giovanna d’Acquapendente. He is found dead after a

Glossary of Names 201 ceremonial banquet in Ferrante’s castle shortly before Ippolita Sforza was to arrive in Naples for her wedding to the king’s son Alfonso. PIUS II, Pope, 1458–1464; Sienese Enea Silvio Piccolomini, 1405–1464. Born to one of Siena’s most distinguished families and an accomplished Latinist, Piccolomini distinguished himself as a novelist, a geographer, a historian, and a diarist. Ippolita Sforza delivers her first public oration at the age of fourteen in Mantua to an assembly of princes and prelates called to that city by Pius to launch a crusade to take back Constantinople from the Turks. PONTANO, GIOVANNI GIOVIANO, 1429–1503. Led the royal literary academy of Naples under King Ferrante, having succeeded the humanist Antonio Beccadelli in 1471. Secretary to Ippolita Sforza after the death of Baldo Martorelli, he serves Ferrante as his ambassador during the War of Ferrara. Widely celebrated as a humanist, his Latin writings circulate widely during his lifetime. He sings the Latin poem he composed for Ippolita at her burial service in 1488. RIARIO, GIROLAMO, lord of Imola and Forlì, 1443–1488. Pope Sixtus IV’s nephew, ruler of Forli and Imola. Betrothed by Galeazzo Sforza to the latter’s natural daughter Caterina Sforza in 1473, the year Girolamo Riario receives Imola from Pope Sixtus, from whom, in 1480, he also receives Forlì. Involved in the Pazzi conspiracy, he is assassinated in 1488, perhaps with Lorenzo de’ Medici’s involvement. SACRAMORO (SAGRAMORI) DA RIMINI, d. 1482. Bishop of Piacenza (1475– 1476) and Parma (1476–82). Milanese ambassador to Pope Sixtus IV. Confidant of Ippolita Sforza after the assassination of her brother Galeazzo Maria. SANSEVERINO, ROBERTO, count of Caiazzo, 1418–1487. Condottiere and member of the most powerful baronial families in Naples. Cousin of Ippolita and Galeazzo Sforza; Roberto’s mother was Francesco Sforza’s sister. Serves King Ferrante and later Galeazzo Sforza as condottiere. In 1482, Sanseverino defects to Venice during the War of Ferrara, during which he lays siege to Ferrara, long the ally of Milan and Naples. SFORZA, ASCANIO MARIA, Cardinal, 1455–1505. Son of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. Ascanio does not participate in the brothers’ failed coup to seize the ducal throne in 1477. Nonetheless he is exiled him along with his brothers by Duchess Bona of Savoy. He is made cardinal in 1484. SFORZA, CATERINA, 1463–1509. Galeazzo Maria Sforza is Caterina’s father by his mistress Lucrezia Landriani. Caterina was the wife of Girolamo Riario, lord of Imola and Forlì. In 1488, in a local uprising at Imola, her husband Riario is assassinated and Caterina and her six children are imprisoned. She escapes, but is deprived of her signory by Pope Alexander VI. Married to

202 Glossary of Names

Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici in 1496, she moves to Florence where she later died. SFORZA, DRUSIANA, 1437–1474. Half-sister of Ippolita and daughter of Francesco Sforza and his mistress Giovanna d’Acquapendente. Grows up with Ippolita and her brothers, and marries Jacopo Piccinino, the condottiere for both King Ferrante and Francesco Sforza, who is murdered at Ferrante’s castle in July 1465. Ippolita visits Drusiana in Siena in 1465 on her way to Naples to marry Alfonso, duke of Calabria. SFORZA, ELISABETTA MARIA, 1456–1472. A natural daughter of Francesco Sforza and a member of Ippolita’s entourage, Elisabetta marries Guglielmo Viti, marchese of Montferrat. SFORZA, ERMES MARIA, 1470–1503. Son of Duke Galeazzo Sforza and Bona of Savoy. SFORZA, FILIPPO MARIA,1448–1492. Son of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti, marries Costanza Sforza. Unlike his siblings, Filippo seems to have distinguished himself neither in war, diplomacy, or in patronage of the arts. SFORZA, FRANCESCO, duke of Milan, 1401–1466, r. 1450–1466. Descendant of a powerful line of condottieri, for over two decades Sforza leads the armies of his employer, Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan, whose daughter Bianca Maria he marries in 1443. In 1450, Sforza expels leaders of the “Ambrosian Republic” declared on Visconti’s death in 1447, and in 1451, becomes fourth duke of Milan. In 1454, concludes the Peace of Lodi, leading to an alliance of the five great Italian powers. Subsequently, with consort Bianca Maria, arranges a series of marriage alliances, most notably that between their daughter Ippolita Sforza and Alfonso, son of King Ferrante of Naples, in 1465. Sforza continues his military operations until his early death in 1466, of a wasting disease. SFORZA, GALEAZZO MARIA, duke of Milan, 1444–1476, r. 1466–1476. Brother of Ippolita Sforza and son of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. Galeazzo marries Bona of Savoy by proxy on 12 May 1468 in Amboise, France; the actual marriage takes place in Milan on 7 July 1468. Throughout his short life, Galeazzo is the principal recipient of Ippolita’s letters. Deeply unpopular at court and abroad, Galeazzo is stabbed to death by his own courtiers as he enters the church of Santo Stefano in Milan to attend mass on the morning of 26 December 1476. SFORZA, GIAN GALEAZZO MARIA, duke of Milan, 1469–1494, r. 1476–1494. Son of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Bona of Savoy. Marries his first cousin, Isabella d’Aragona, daughter of Ippolita Sforza, in 1489. SFORZA, IPPOLITA MARIA, duchess of Calabria, 1445–1488. Born at Pesaro, she receives a humanist education together with her brother Galeazzo and

Glossary of Names 203 her step-sister Drusiana, being taught Latin by Baldo Martorelli, and Greek by the émigré scholar Constantine Lascaris. In 1465, she marries Alfonso, duke of Calabria, son of King Ferrante. She bears three children: Ferrante d’Aragona (Ferrandino, 1469–1496); Isabella d’Aragona (1470–1524); and Pietro d’Aragona (1472–1491). She dies in Naples in 1488. SFORZA, LUDOVICO MARIA, “Il Moro,” duke of Bari, duke of Milan, 1452– 1508, r. 1494–1499. In 1491 marries Beatrice d’Este, daughter of Eleonora d’Aragona. In 1477, participates with his brothers in a failed coup to overthrow Galeazzo’s widow Duchess Bona of Savoy. Exiled by Bona, he returns to Milan in 1479, exiles Bona to Abbiategrasso, and makes himself guardian of the ten-year-old heir to the throne Gian Galeazzo Sforza. On Gian Galeazzo’s death in 1494, Ludovico is crowned duke of Milan. SFORZA, OTTAVIANO MARIA, 1458–1477. Youngest son of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. In 1477, Ottaviano drowns in the river Adda trying to swim across the border to Cremona, his mother’s dower city, when his and his brothers’ coup against their sister-in-law Bona is discovered. SFORZA, SECONDO, 1433–1492. Son of Francesco Sforza and Giovanna d’Acquapendente. SFORZA, SFORZA MARIA, duke of Bari, 1451–1479. Son of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. His 1465 betrothal to Eleonora d’Aragona is cancelled by mutual default in 1472. In 1477, Sforza Maria participates with brothers in failed coup against Dowager Duchess Bona of Savoy and her son Gian Galeazzo, and is exiled to Bari. SFORZA, TRISTANO, 1422–1477. Son of Giovanna d’Acquapendente and Francesco Sforza. Surrogate in Amboise for Galeazzo Sforza’s marriage with Bona of Savoy on 12 May 1468. He marries Beatrice d’Este in 1455; the bride and bridegroom are celebrated in a nuptial oration by ten-year-old Ippolita Sforza. SIMONETTA, FRANCESCO (CICCO, CECCO), 1410–1480. Born Caccuri, Calabria; privy chancellor under Duke Galeazzo Sforza, presiding over the Chancery and the Privy Council; most influential member of Galeazzo’s deeply unpopular administration. After Galeazzo’s assassination, the leaders of the new regime, led now by Ludovico Sforza and Bona of Savoy, have Cicco arrested on a false accusation of treason, for which alleged crime he is beheaded on 30 October 1480. SIXTUS IV, Pope, 1471–1484; Francesco della Rovere, 1414–1484. Known for his nepotism, Sixtus elevates his nephew Girolamo della Rovere to the cardinalate in 1471, and gives his nephew Girolamo Riario Imola in 1473, and Forlì in 1480. Having first supported the Pazzi revolt against the Medici in Florence in 1478, in 1479, he collaborates with King Ferrante in backing the restoration of Lorenzo de’ Medici as head of state in Florence.

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TREZZO, ANTONIO DA, c. 1430–1478. Longtime master diplomat; Milanese ambassador under Filippo Maria Visconti, Francesco Sforza, and Galeazzo Sforza. Removed by Galeazzo in 1470, Antonio retires to Ferrante’s court in Naples where he remains for the rest of his life. VISCONTI, BIANCA MARIA, duchess of Milan, 1425–1468. Daughter of Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan and his mistress, Agnese del Maino; later legitimized. Marries Francesco Sforza on 25 October 1441 at Cremona, the city given her by her father as part of her dowry. Dies at Melegnano on 23 October 1468. VISCONTI, FILIPPO MARIA, duke of Milan, 1392–1447, r. 1412–1447. Visconti rule prevailed in Lombardy from 1277 until 1447, when on Filippo’s death, it was interrupted by the brief rise and fall of the Ambrosian republic. After the fall of the republic in 1450, Francesco Sforza’s marriage to the Visconti’s only legitimate child, Bianca Maria Visconti, was used to justify Francesco’s claim to the duchy.

Chronology

1445

18 Apr.

Ippolita Maria Sforza born at Pesaro.

1447

13 Aug.

Death of Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, maternal grandfather of Ippolita

1450

20 Feb.

The condottiere Francesco Sforza, Ippolita’s father, enters Milan.

1450

26 Mar.

Francesco Sforza invested as duke of Milan.

1451

Plague in Milan; 30,000 die.

1453

29 May

Ottoman Turks conquer Constantinople.

1453

13 July

First extant letter of Ippolita Sforza, to her father Francesco.

1454

9 Apr.

Peace of Lodi signed by Milan, Venice, and Florence.

1455

26 Jan.

Alfonso I becomes signatory to Peace of Lodi.

1455

2 Mar.

Italian League proclaimed, with signatories Milan, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Papacy.

1455

28 Apr.

Ippolita Sforza delivers her Wedding Oration for Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este.

1455–1458

Pope Calixtus III.

1458

Papal recognition of Ferrante I as king of Naples.

1458–1464

Pope Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini).

1459–1460

May–Jan.

Pope Pius II enters Mantua on 27 May to open Congress of Mantua called to mount a crusade against the Ottoman Turks who had in 1453 taken Constantinople; meeting disbanded Jan. 1460.

1459

June

Ippolita Sforza delivers her Oration for Pope Pius II at Congress of Mantua.

1459–1464

Barons’ revolt in Naples against Ferrante I following death of King Alfonso I.

1464

Death of Cosimo de’ Medici, unofficial ruler of Florence. 205

206 Chronology

1464–1471

Pope Paul II (Pietro Barbo).

1465

Ippolita Sforza delivers her Oration for Bianca Maria Visconti.

1465

May 12

Marriage in Milan of Ippolita Sforza and Alfonso, son of King Ferrante.

1465

12 July

Death in Naples of Jacopo Piccinino, brotherin-law of Ippolita Sforza, probably murdered at order of King Ferrante.

1465

14 Sept.

Ippolita Sforza arrives in Naples.

1465

10 Oct.

Marriage in Naples of Ippolita Sforza and Alfonso, son of King Ferrante.

1465

27 Dec.

Ippolita Sforza officially receives title of duchess of Calabria.

1466

Jan.

Earthquake in Naples.

1466

8 Mar.

Death of Francesco Sforza.

1467

26 June

Birth of Ippolita Sforza’s first child, son Ferdinando (Ferrandino). He will later rule as Ferdinando II, king of Naples

1468

12 May

Marriage in Amboise of Galeazzo Sforza, Tristano Sforza serving as proxy, to Bona of Savoy.

1468

7 July

Wedding of Galeazzo Sfora and Bona of Savoy celebrated again in Milan before the cathedral. Ippolita Sforza travels to Milan for the wedding in Jan. and remains until Aug..

1468

23 Oct.

Death of Bianca Maria Visconti. Some contemporaries accuse Galeazzo of murdering her.

1469

Birth of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, son of Galeazzo Sforza and Bona of Savoy.

1470

Apr.

Antonio da Trezzo, longtime Milanese ambassador to Naples, is dismissed by Galeazzo and recalled to Milan.

1471

1 Jan.

Milan and Venice sign a mutual defense treaty; Naples and Venice ratified a mutual defense treaty on the same day.

Chronology 207 1471–1484

Pope Sixtus IV (Francesco della Rovere). Sixtus’s nephews Pietro Riario and Giuliano della Rovere are made cardinals.

1472

King Ferrante dismisses Cavalchino Guidoboni for having passed confidential information to Galeazzo Sforza through the Milanese ambassador Giovanni Andrea Cagnola.

1472

30 Mar.

Ippolita Sforza delivers another healthy baby boy.

1472

14 July

Naples and Milan sign an agreement, the terms of which Ippolita Sforza participated in negotiating, by which Galeazzo agreed not to assist rebels against Giovanni d’Aragona in Barcelona, and Ferrante agreed not to aid Venice if attacked by Milan.

1473

3 July

Eleonora d’Aragona, daughter of King Ferrante, marries Ercole I, duke of Ferrara.

1474

2 Nov.

Galeazzo Sforza ratified a treaty between Florence, Venice, and Milan.

1475

Jan.

Death of Isabella Sforza’s secretary Baldo Martorelli.

1475

Nov.

Outbreak of cholera in Naples.

1476

Dec.

Beatrice d’Aragona, daughter of King Ferrante of Naples, marries King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.

1476

26 Dec.

Assassination of Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan, in the church of Santo Stefano in Milan, by his own courtiers.

1477

Jan.–June

Following the assassination of Galeazzo Sforza, his brothers Ludovico, Sforza Maria, and Ottaviano conspire to seize power from Bona of Savoy, regent for Gian Galeazzo. She attempts to buy their loyalty, but exiles them in the end.

1477

11 Apr.

Sforza troops retake Geona from rebellion led by Ibleto Fieschi.

1478

24 Apr.

Official installation of Gian Galeazzo Sforza as duke of Milan.

208 Chronology

1478

26 Apr.

Pazzi conspiracy in Florence: anti-Medicean revolt of members of the Pazzi family allied with Girolamo Riario, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV. Lorenzo flees to Naples where he spends three months, from Dec. 1478 to Mar. 1479.

1479

7 Sept.

Ludovico Sforza arrives in Milan, having come from Bari where he lived in exile to achieve reconciliation with Bona of Savoy, regent for Gian Galeazzo Sforza.

1480

13 Mar.

Lorenzo de’ Medici concludes a peace treaty with King Ferrante, Ippolita Sforza participating as signatory.

1480

Aug.

Ottoman Turks invade Otranto setting all Italy and especially Ferrante in Naples on edge. Otranto occupied until Sept. 1481.

1480

7 Oct.

Bona of Savoy loses control of the duchy of Milan to Ludovico Sforza (il Moro).

1480

30 Oct.

Longtime Sforza administrator Cicco Simonetta is charged with treason and later beheaded.

1480

2 Nov.

Bona of Savoy is exiled to the Sforza castle at Abbiategrasso outside Milan, while Gian Galeazzo Sforza is imprisoned in the Rochetta in Milan, then exiled to the Castello Sforzesco in Pavia.

1482–1484 1482

Venice launches its War of Ferrara, opposed by Naples, Florence, Milan and the papacy. June

1484–1492

The pro-Neapolitan Noveschi regime in Siena is ousted from power by the popolo and seeks asylum in Naples. Pope Innocent VIII (Franceschetto Cibo).

1485

May

Noveschi exiles rebuffed by Florence in their attempt to re-enter Siena, return to Naples.

1488

20 Aug.

Ippolita Sforza dies unexpectedly at the age of forty-three, purportedly of a brain abscess.

1488

21 Dec.

Marriage by proxy of Gian Galeazzo Sforza to Isabella d’Aragona, daughter of Ippolita Sforza, in Naples.

Chronology 209 1489

28 Jan.

Wedding of Gian Galeazzo Sforza to Isabella d’Aragona, daughter of Ippolita Sforza, celebrated in Milan.

Bibliography

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Bilbliography 215 Bueno de Mesquita, Daniel M. “Bona di Savoia, duchessa di Milano.” DBI 11 (1969):428–30. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Translated by S. G. C. Middlemore. London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: Macmillan, 1928. Orig. German ed. 1860; orig. Middlemore trans. London: C. Kegan Paul, 1878; reprinted in multiple subsequent editions. Butters, Humphrey. “The Politics of Protection in Late Fifteenth-Century Italy: Florence and the Failed Sienese Exiles’ Plot of May 1485.” In Abulafia, The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 137–50. Canetta, Carlo. “La morte di Conte Jacomo Piccinino.” Archivio storico lombardo, ser. 1, vol. 9, fasc. 2 (1882): 252–88. _____. “Le sponsalie di casa Sforza con casa d’Aragona.” Archivio storico lombardo, ser. 1, vol.. 9, fasc. 1 (1882): 136–44. Cantù, Cesare. “Curiosità d’archivio: Nozze di Bona Sforza.” Archivio storico lombardo, ser. 1, vol. 2, fasc. 2 (1875): 179–93. Cardami, Lucio. “Diarii di Messer Lucio Cardami.” In G. B. Tafuri, Istoria degli scrittori nati nel Regno di Napoli, vol. 3, part 1, 469–527. Naples: nella stamperia di Felice-Carlo Mosca, 1760. Catalano, Franco. “L’ingresso vittorioso in Milano di Lodovico il Moro.” In Storia di Milano, vol. 7, L’età sforzesca dal 1450 al 1500, part 2, Il Ducato di Milano nella politica dell’equilibrio, by Franco Catalano. Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri, 1956. Chittolini, Giorgio. La formazione dello stato regionale e le istituzioni del contado: secoli XIVe XV. Turin: G. Einaudi, 1979. _____, ed. Gli Sforza, la chiesa lombarda, la corte di Roma: Strutture e pratiche beneficiarie nel ducato di Milano, 1450–1535. [Pisa]: GISEM; Naples: Liguori, 1989. Cingolani, Dario. Baldo Martorello da Serra de’ Conti: Un umanista al servizio degli Sforza: Biografia con edizione delle lettere e della grammatica latina dal ms. trivulziano 786. [Serra de’ Conti]: Biblioteca Comunale, 1983. Cognasso, Francesco. “La Repubblica di San Ambrogio.” In Storia di Milano, vol. 6, Il ducato visconteo e la repubblica ambrosiana, 1392–1450, 387–448. Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri, 1955. DBI. See Dizionario biografico degli italiani. De Marinis, Tammaro. La biblioteca napoletana dei re d’Aragona. 4 vols. Milan: U. Hoepli, 1947–1952. D’Elia, Anthony F. The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

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Bilbliography 217 Oreste, Giuseppe. “Adorno, Prospero.” DBI 1 (1960):303–4. Pal, Carol. Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Panebianco, Domenico. “Documentri sull’ultima malattia di Bianca Maria Sforza e sulla peste del 1468.” Archivio storico lombardo, ser. 9, vol. 8 (1969): 367–80. Pàsztor, Edith. “Aragona, Beatrice d’, regina d’Ungheria.” DBI 7 (1965):347–49.

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Index The index below is analytical rather than comprehensive. Individual persons not appearing here are to be found in the Glossary of Names; entries for people of central importance (e.g., King Ferrante, Francesco Sforza, Bianca Maria Visconti) note only select themes. Substantive references found in the Glossary of Names are included; the Chronology is indexed in full. Excluded in particular are references found in an exceptionally large number of letters (certain major cities, such as Florence, Naples, and Venice) and themes that are so pervasive as to be found on nearly every page (e.g., diplomacy, female erudition, power). Abbiategrasso. See castles Abbiate Guazzone, 73 academies: Accademia Pontaniana (Naples), 2, 13, 38, 201; in Rome, 200 adultery. See infidelity; Sforza, ­Ippolita: and infidelity advice: advisers, 4, 26–27, 87–88, 132; offering of, 1, 5–6, 9, 21, 25, 104n70, 114; requests for, 1, 80, 93, 105, 129, 143; taking of, 75, 83, 103 Alfonso I, 12, 23, 33n109, 38, 153n153; and the Peace of Lodi, 12, 61, 205; death of, 28n94, 205 Alfonso II, 1–39, 41, 53, 78, 80–101, 108, 114, 116–18, 124, 127–32, 135, 137, 139, 159, 206; cholera, 28–29, 127–34; portrait of, 41–42, 53. See also infidelity; Sforza, Ippolita: and infidelity alliances, 5, 89, 118–19, 126, 141n128, 202; against Bona of Savoy, 140; against Naples, 17; between Naples and Florence, 37, 166; between Naples and Milan, 12, 19, 21, 32, 91, 119, 124, 126, 145–56, 162; between

Naples and Venice, 89n49, 113; between Milan, Florence, and Venice, 126; between Sforza and Gonzaga, 37; marriage, 17, 28, 124–25; with Florence, 147–48 ambassadors, 1, 4–6, 9, 25–28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 37, 90, 104–39, 140n126, 141, 143, 146, 148, 151–52, 155–56, 163n175, 167, 197, 198, 200, 201, 204, 206–7; Botta, Leonardo, 151, 153; Botta, Leonardo, letters to, 153–54; Brugnolo, Giorgio, 37, 160; Cagnola, Giovanni Andrea, 26, 94, 111–14, 121–22, 141, 197, 200, 207; Castiglioni, Branda, 151–53, 162; Castiglioni, Branda, letters to, 151–52, 153–54; Cicinello, Antonio, 28, 104, 112, 137; Landriano, Pietro da, 19, 21, 91–94, 99, 200; Loredan, Antonio, 35–36; Maletta, Francesco, 26–27, 113–15, 116n98, 118, 121, 125–27; Niccolini, Otto, 111–12; Pandolfi, Filippo, 35, 37, 156–57, 159–60 (see also armies: generals); Rimini, Sacramoro da, 5, 29, 219

220 Index

31, 137–42; Rimini, Sacramoro da, letters to, 132–34, 137–38, 139–43; Trezzo, Antonio da, 19, 21, 24n76, 25–26, 92n54, 97, 103, 105, 113, 120, 206; Trivulzio, Antonio, 151–53; Trivulzio, Antonio, letters to, 152–54 Ambrosian Republic, 10, 202, 204 Ancona, Alessandro da, 32, 146 animals: bears, 70n18; birds, 16, 61–66, 71, 87; calves, 75; cats, 10; chamois, 74; civets, 82–83; dogs, 16, 29, 62–66; fodder for, 73; goats, 74–75; hares and rabbits, 65, 75; horses, 33n108, 71, 75, 89, 119. See also falconry; hunting Anjou, Jean d’, 17, 27, 119 antiquities, 83, 200 Apuleius, 3 Aragona, Beatrice d’, 33, 74, 88, 207 Aragona, Eleonora d’, 12, 24, 82, 88, 98, 103–4, 197, 203, 207; letters to, 149 Aragona, Giovanni d’, 27, 139, 140n125, 207 Aragona, Isabella d’, 112n89, 119–20, 209 Aragona, Pietro da, 116n97 Arcamone, Aniello, 133–34, 152 architects, 13 Arienti, Giovanni Sabadino degli, 2n6, 14–15 armies, 9, 19–20, 29, 35, 36, 98, 178, 180, 202, 208; cavalry, 33n108, 98–99, 143; generals, 9, 20, 24, 34, 35, 85, 140, 155, 157, 173, 178 (see also ambassadors: Pandolfi, Filippo; Colleoni, Bartolomeo; Sanseverino,

Roberto di); German, 8–9; Hungarian, 33, 154n155; Milanese, 29, 139n124; military arts, posts, and service, 21, 26, 78, 98, 152, 154, 157, 198, 202; of Milan, Naples, and Florence, 97, 98n62; soldiers, 8, 85, 119, 139, 178; Sforza, 13, 19–20, 139n122, 208. See also war and warfare; weapons assassination. See murder asylum, 208 attorneys. See justice Baiacchi, Francesco di, 83 banquets, 119, 201. See also betrothals; food and meals Baptista, Zoanne, 83 Barcelona, 4, 27, 118–19, 198, 207 Bari, 31, 136, 208 Baronial Revolts, 28, 78, 127–31, 161, 205. See also rebellion baths, 83, 104 Bavaria, 88–89 Beale, Mary, 7 Beccaria, Fiore da, 81 Bergamo, 15, 61 betrothals, 74, 104n74, 125; cancelled, 24n75, 63, 199n101, 197, 199, 203; of Alfonso II and Ippolita Sforza, 12, 202; of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Dorotea Gonzaga, 16, 63, 79, 199; of Gian Galeazzo Sforza and Isabella d’Aragona, 119, 161, 197; of Girolamo Riario and Caterina Sforza, 201; of Sforza Maria Sforza and Eleonora d’Aragona, 12, 24, 102–6, 149, 197, 203. See also banquets; marriage; weddings

Index 221 Betussi, Giuseppe, 14 biography, 14–15 boats and ships, 22, 27, 101-3, 119, 131, 188, 199; galleons, 31, 33, 137, 153 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 14 Bollate, 17, 62, 70–72; letters sent from, 71 Bologna, 101n119, 199. See also under universities books, 6, 7, 12, 82, 115n95 Brandenburg, Barbara of, 11, 16, 17, 63, 67, 69, 70, 76, 103, 125, 136n115; letters to, 76–77, 79–80 Brescia, 15, 61 Brindisi, 33, 152–53 Burgundy, John of, 29 Busalla: letters sent from, 101 Caiaza, 84 Caiazzo, 20, 87–88 Caino, Bartolomeo, 74 Calliano, 8 Capua, 86–87 Carafa, Diomede, 27, 88, 116, 121, 133, 139 Carbonate, 73–74 cardinals, 69, 70, 139, 152, 156, 187– 88, 207; Ascanio Maria Sforza as, 36–37, 140n125, 145n135, 201; Giovanni d’Aragona as, 27n87, 139n123, 140n125, 197; ­Giuliano della Rovere as, 207; Pietra ­Riario as, 207 Carone, 17 Caronno, 70–73; letters sent from, 72 carriages and coaches, 68n15, 69, 147n140 Cassalmaggiore, 68 Cassin Musocco, 70, 71 Castaldo, 69n16

Castiglione Olana, 17, 70; letters sent from, 76 Castelleone, 16, 62–66, 70n18; letters sent from, 63–66 castles, 69, 77; Abbiategrasso, 32, 147n140, 157n162, 197, 203, 208; Castel Capuano, 2, 13, 19, 20–21, 25–26, 51, 88; Castel Capuano, letters sent from, 81, 83, 85–88, 92–99, 106, 108–10, 117, 124, 126–28, 131, 132, 134– 35, 137, 138–41, 143, 147–54, 156, 160, 163; Castello Sforzesco, 22, 23, 32, 41, 43, 44, 208 (see also Pavia); Castelnuovo, 1, 13, 51, 80, 88; Porta Giovia, 22, 30; Rochetta, 208 (see also Milan) Cereta, Laura, 3, 4, 6, 7–9, 186n4 chancellors, 20, 24, 81, 85, 96, 134, 148, 203 Charles VIII, 35 children and childhood, 35, 97–98, 111, 119–20; daughters, 112n89, 144n133, 146; illegitimate, 198, 204; sons, 22, 26, 37, 94–95, 97–98, 116–17, 134, 144n133, 146. See also individual entries for Ippolita Sforza’s children cholera. See illnesses Christiano, Giovanni, 65 church. See religion and religious life Cicero, 3, 4n13, 7, 34, 175, 185, 191, 192 Cislago, 17, 70, 72–73; letters sent from, 73 cloth. See textiles clothing, 92–93, 150–51; veils, 84 Cocona, Galeazzo da, 102 Colleoni, Bartolomeo, 24, 98. See also armies: generals Colonna, Vittoria, 7, 9

222 Index

Como, Monsignore da, 74 condottieri, 9–10, 91n51, 95, 98n62, 156–57, 198, 200, 201, 202, 205 consiglieri, 200 convents and monasteries, 8, 17, 23, 69, 101 Corvinus, Matthias, 33, 88, 154n155, 207 coup. See rebellion court, 1, 13, 14, 25, 114–15, 120, 173; courtiers, 5, 6, 22, 25, 95, 96, 108–9, 110, 121, 129n108, 130, 160n171, 202, 207; gossip, 2, 21, 26, 114, 167, 200; ladies in waiting, 82, 108–9; Mantuan, 11, 13, 16; Milanese, 5, 8, 20, 34, 185; Neapolitan, 2, 5, 8, 12, 13, 18–19, 20, 21, 25–27, 33, 36, 88, 105n77, 111, 113–15, 121, 127, 146n139, 156, 160, 167, 185, 198, 204; papal 9, 17, 29, 69, 132, 137, 152, 153 Crema, 15, 61 Cremona, 16, 22–24, 31, 61–63, 66–67, 83, 96, 103–5; letters sent from, 67–68, 70, 78–80 dance and dancing, 17–18, 64, 71, 73, 173 dialogue, 3n10, 6–7 disease. See illnesses doge: of Genoa, 139n124 double agents, 95, 199, 200 dowries, 16, 24, 104n71, 174, 181, 184n13, 197, 204 earthquakes, 20, 86–87, 206 education. See humanism and humanists; teachers and tutors epigrams. See poets and poetry Este, Beatrice d’, 173–84

Este, duchy, 35 Este, Ercole I d’, 12, 149, 197–98, 207 exile: of Bona of Savoy, 147n140, 157n162, 197, 203, 208; of Ludovico Sforza, 208; of the Sforza brothers, 31, 37, 140–41, 157n162, 197, 201, 203, 207; Sienese, 35–36, 37, 159, 208 Faenza, 31, 142 falconry, 15–16, 62–63, 82, 87. See also animals; hunting Fedele, Cassandra, 3, 4, 6 feminism, 3–4, 7, 14n50, 191 Ferrante I, 1–39, 78, 80, 85, 97–98, 139, 144, 205, 207; affection for Bianca Maria Visconti, 23–24, 102–6; bid to reconquer Otranto, 145–56; cholera, 2, 4, 28–29, 127–34; cruelty, 1, 2, 12, 19; relationship with Galeazza Sforza, 89–97, 102–6, 108–27; relationship with Ippolita Sforza, 19, 23, 31–32, 85–86, 88, 89, 102–6, 108n85, 121; papal recognition as king of Naples, 205; peace treaty with Lorenzo de’ Medici, 147–49, 208; portrait of, 41, 52; Supreme Council, 163n173 Ferrante II (Ferrandino), 13, 22, 38, 134, 206 Ferrara, 3, 199n101, 155, 173, 185. See also under war and warfare festivals and festivities, 12, 24, 32, 67, 70, 73–74, 90, 102, 173n2 finances. See money and finances Fieschi, Gian Luigi, 141 Fieschi, Ibleto, 137, 139n122, 139n124, 208 Fieschi family, 31, 140–41. See also under rebellion

Index 223 Florence. See Italian League; ­Pazzi Conspiracy; Peace of Lodi; universities Fonte, Moderata, 7 food and meals, 20, 70–71, 73, 74, 101; asparagus, 74; breakfast, 63; celebratory, 18, 22; cheese, 18, 88–89; cooks, 83; dinner, 63, 72, 73; famine, 10; fasting, 80, 192, 195; flax, 5; game, 18; marzipan, 89. See also banquets; gifts Forli, 31, 199n101 Foscarini, Lodovico, 4 friars, 3, 99 funerals, 14, 80, 84, 201; elegies, 38– 39; mass, 38, 107; mausoleums, 17, 69; mourning, 84, 92–93 Gaczo, Antonio, 163 Gallarate, Pietro da, 25–26, 108n86, 110–11 games, 12; ball, 82; jousts, 22; kites, 82 gardens, 32, 36, 71, 73, 87, 105, 150 gemstones: balas ruby (spinel), 106. See also jewels and jewelry gender, 4, 6, 186, 193 Genoa, 5, 18, 22, 27, 31, 78, 101, 102, 119, 123, 131, 139–40, 141, 208 gifts, 74, 75–76, 82, 103, 121; asparagus, 74; baskets, 76–77; birds, 66; calves, 75; chamois, 74; cheese, 18, 88–89; game, 18; gloves, 167; goats, 74, 75; hounds, 65–66; marzipan, 89; perfumes, 154; rabbits, 75. See also food and meals Gonzaga, Cecilia, 3n10 Gonzaga, Dorotea, 16, 17, 63, 67 69, 70, 77

Gonzaga, Francesco, 37, 156; letters to, 160–61 Gonzaga, Ludovico, 11, 24, 28, 63, 69, 70, 103, 105n78, 124; letters to, 134–136 Gonzaga, Margherita, 28 Gonzaga family, 13, 16, 37, 76, 77n34, 79, 80n36, 105n78, 124, 160 goddesses, 39n123, 182 gods, 175, 181, 193, 195–96 governors, 4, 139n124 Greek, 3, 11–12, 199, 200, 203. See also humanism and humanists; teachers and tutors hawking. See falconry historians: Corio, Bernardino, 3, 24; Guiciardini, Francesco, 36, 167 hospitality, 1, 15, 17, 32, 63, 70–71, 88, 101, 159 humanism and humanists, 3, 4, 7, 82n41, 202; Barbaro, Francesco, 5; Borro, Gasparino, 3; Bruni, Leonardo, 5, 8n30; Feltre, Vittorino da, 3, 11; Filelfo, Francesco, 185–86; Guarini, Guarino, 3; Panormita, Antonio, 13, 197; Rizzoni, Martino, 3. See also Greek; Latin; learned women; Pontano, Giovanni Giovano; teachers and tutors Hungary, 88–89, 154n155 hunting, 13, 15–16, 18, 20, 23, 62–66, 70–71, 72n25, 77, 83, 87–88. See also animals; falconry illnesses: cerebral abscess, 2, 209; cholera, 2, 4, 28–29, 128–134, 161, 207; fever, 28, 29, 62n3, 99, 109, 129, 132, 134, 141; gout, 17;

224 Index

hydropsy, 17; malaria, 62n3, 162, 199; nervous disorders, 27, 200; plague, 10, 205; spinal deformation, 199; stomach pain, 18, 27, 78; wasting disease, 71, 202. See also medicine Imola, 31, 201 infidelity, 2, 12–13, 19–22, 25, 80–89, 91–93; mistresses, 13, 16n57, 98–99, 108, 198, 200, 201, 202, 204. See also Alfonso II; Sforza, Ippolita: and infidelity Italian League, 5, 12, 15, 78, 157–58, 205. See also Milan jewels and jewelry, 98, 150–51. See also gemstones jousts. See games justice, 177, 183, 196; lawyers, 83, 113, 197; petitions, 81, 149 Lando, Ortensio, 6 Latin: elegies, 14, 38; epithalamia, 173; in letters, 3, 11, 34, 62n4, 71n20, 80n36, 122n103; poetry, 13; scholars of, 11, 19, 200, 201, 203; treatises, 82. See also humanism and humanists; Sforza, Ippolita: names of individual orations law. See justice learned women, 1–8, 14, 62, 202. See also humanism and humanists; and individual names of learned women letters: as essential to diplomacy, 1–39; autographs, 11, 15, 34n112, 37, 61–62, 65–67, 69–70, 72, 79–80, 86–87, 89–91, 94, 96–97, 100–101, 112, 116–17, 118, 121–23, 127–30, 132–33,

136–37, 156–58, 160–61, 163–64; collections of, 6, 8, 37n119; dictation of, 2, 117n9; encryption, 21, 23, 26, 115, 163, 166n177; feminist tradition of, 3–4, 6–8; first extant letter of Ippolita Sforza, 16, 205; honorifics, 62n2; linguistic considerations, 3, 4, 11, 34; postscripts, 20, 22, 87, 88–89, 143; privacy of, 1, 6, 8; valedictions, 80n36, 93n55, 98n63, 122n103, 126n105, 128n107, 133n11, 135n115, 147n141, 149n144, 156n158 Lodi, 62–63. See also Peace of Lodi Lomellina, 22 Louis XI of France, 5, 17, 18, 21, 22, 24, 29, 197 Maino, Agnese del, 9, 16, 69, 80, 84 Maino, Andreotto del, 69, 72n26; letters to, 107–8 Maino, Lancillotto del, 72n26 malaria. See illnesses Mantua, 16; Congress of, 13, 17, 69, 205; entries into, 205; humanist school at, 3, 11; See also under court maps, 41, 43 Marinella, Lucrezia, 7 marriage: by proxy, 12, 23, 197, 202, 206, 209; essays on, 4, 7; pacts for, 197, 199, 202; surrogates for, 23, 203; See also betrothals; weddings; and under individual names Marsciano, Lucia Terziani, 16, 69 Medici, Cosimo de’, 18, 78, 206 Medici, Lorenzo de’, 32, 42, 54, 111, 126, 141, 145, 147–49, 165, 169, 198, 199; friendship with

Index 225 Ippolita Sforza, 2, 7, 12, 35–38, 150–70; letters to, 150, 154, 156–60, 163–70; portrait of, 42, 54 Medici, Piero de’, 18, 200 medicine, 7, 18, 129; ointments, 82–83. See also illnesses Melegnano, 18, 24, 41, 62–63, 75, 104, 204; letters sent from, 77 Melia, Antonia da, 83 Milan: duchy of, 9–10, 15, 18, 21, 31–32, 61, 71, 78, 104n71, 113, 134, 136, 147n140, 176n5, 185, 208; entries into, 10, 205; letters sent from, 77, 100–101; Santo Stefano (church), 29–30, 34, 50, 134, 202, 207. See also castles: Rochetta; Italian League; Peace of Lodi; and under individual rulers Modena, 35 money and finances: banking, 36n117, 113, 150, 154n156; debt and debt collection, 30; ducats, 16n55, 20, 30, 85, 125, 136; loans, 36n117, 113, 150; pensions, 30, 136; salaries, 20, 122; taxes, 10, 30, 85, 105 motherhood, mothers, and maternity, 7, 22, 97–98, 119–20; pregnancy, 92, 111–12. See also Sforza, Ippolita: relationship with Bianca Maria Visconti murder: accusations and suspicions of, 2–3, 24, 30206; of Galeazza Sforza, 2, 4, 5, 6, 29–31, 33–34, 37, 41, 50, 133–45, 148n143, 193, 197, 201, 202, 203, 207; of Jacopo Piccinino, 1, 2, 12, 19, 80, 91n51, 202, 206; poison, 19. See also Pazzi conspiracy

music and musical instruments, 17–18, 71, 73, 191 myth. See goddesses; gods Naples. See castles; court; earthquakes; Italian League; Sforza, Ippolita; universities; war and warfare; and under individual rulers Niccolini, Otto, 111–12 Nogarola, Isotta, 3–4, 186n4 Oldoyno, Estore, 22, 96 Oldoyno, Jacobo, 25, 96, 200; letters co-signed by, 97–99, 106 orations. See under Sforza, Ippolita orators, 34, 153, 160n171, 162, 175, 186 Orsini, Giulio, 35 Otranto, 2, 8, 31–35, 145–56, 167, 208 Ottomans: conquering of Constantinople, 13, 15, 17, 61, 69, 185, 205; invasion of 1480– 81, 2, 8, 31–35, 145–56, 198, 208. See also war and warfare Ovid, 11 Padua. See universities painting and potraits, 13, 20, 41, 82 patronage, 13, 35, 150–51, 159, 173, 202 Pavia: letters sent from, 61–62, 69. See also castles: Castello Sforzesco; convents and monasteries; universities Pazzi conspiracy, 2, 31–36, 142, 145–56, 198, 200, 201, 203, 208. See also rebellion Peace of Lodi, 5n18, 12, 15, 61, 202, 205. See also Lodi; Milan

226 Index

Perosia, Antonia da, 89 Perugia, 31, 136, 157n162 Pesaro, 9, 10, 119n101, 202, 205 Petrarch and Petrarchism, 4, 167. See also poets and poetry Piccinino, Jacopo. See under murder Pisa, 31, 32, 136 Pistone, Donato, 83 plague. See illnesses Plautus, 11, 163n174, 174, 181 podestà, 74 poets and poetry, 6, 9, 13, 24, 123, 173, 199; Juvenal, 174, 180; Virgil, 11, 166n179, 174, 179, 182, 196n5. See also Latin: poetry; Petrarch and Petrarchism; Pontano, Giovanni Giovano Pontano, Giovanni Giovano, 2, 13, 14, 28n91, 33, 34, 37, 38, 61, 123, 197, 201; letters signed by, 124, 126, 131, 132, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156. See also humanism and humanists Pontelatone, 87–88 Popes: Calixtus III, 205; Innocent VIII, 208; Paul II, 18, 206; Paul III, 9; Pius II, 13, 17, 18, 69, 70, 174, 185–89, 205; Sixtus IV, 29n95, 31–32, 35, 37, 141, 145, 147–49, 152, 200, 201, 207, 208 Porta Tosa, 30–31 Posterla, Pietro dal, 73, 74 Pozzuoli, 83–84 pregnancy. See motherhood, mothers, and maternity prison and prisoners, 1n2, 30, 31, 133n112, 141n129, 201, 208; arrests, 19, 203 protonotaries, 4, 152 Pulci, Luigi, 13

quaestors, 200 rebellion, 27, 118, 128, 157; Fieschi, 31, 140–41; Genoese, 137n119, 139, 140, 141n129, 208. See also Baronial Revolts; Pazzi Conspiracy; Sforza, Galeazzo: assassination of religion and religious life, 7, 185–89; archbishops, 87; chaplains, 109; Christ, 83n43, 192, 195; Epiphany, 82–83; Magi, 82–83; mass, 14, 18, 23, 29, 38, 72, 74–75, 87, 107, 135, 202; prayer, 11n39, 80, 84, 86, 106, 116, 127, 136, 192, 195; religious festivities, 18; scripture, 98–99, 107; Virgin Mary, 128, 159 republicanism, 10, 27, 148, 202, 204 Riario, Girolamo, 31, 141–42, 201, 208 Riccio, Francesco, 84 rivers: Adda, 31, 63, 203; Olona, 74n30 Romagna, 31, 131 Rome, 15, 17–18, 29, 69, 129, 133n110, 146, 152, 200 Rossi, Pier Maria, 35, 156–67 Rovereto, 8 Sacchi, Bartolomeo, 200 Sagrato, Sigismondo de, 149 Sallust, 3 Sanseverino, Roberto di, 20, 35, 85–86, 87–88, 139n124, 140, 141, 145, 155–57. See also armies: generals Sanson, Margarita de, 83 Saronno, 62, 70–73 Savoy, 18

Index 227 Savoy, Bona of, 208; children, 94–95, 206 (see also Sforza, Gian Galeazzo); exile, 32, 147n140, 197, 203, 208; following Galeazzo’s death, 5, 30–32, 37, 134–38, 207; letters to, 136–37, 138–39, 143–47, 151; loss of Milan to Ludovico Sforza, 208; marriage to Galeazzo Sforza, 22–24, 91n51, 94, 97–108, 206 Savoy, Yolanda of, 29 Schio, Ludovico da, 3 Schurman, Anna Maria van, 7–8 schooling. See teachers and tutors secretaries: Guidoboni, Cavalchino, 26, 95, 199, 207; Martorelli, Baldo, 2, 3, 10–13, 25, 87, 107, 108n84, 109, 123, 173, 185, 200, 203, 207; Martorelli, Baldo, letters cosigned by, 81–89, 107–8, 116–17; personal, 2, 201. See also Oldoyno, Jacobo; Pontano, Giovanni Giovano self-fashioning, 6 servants, 16, 19, 21, 25, 37, 72, 102, 108–9, 120, 134, 138, 163; concern for the well-being of, 22, 81, 83, 91, 107, 118, 123, 131, 158, 161; lady’s maids, 7, 19, 82, 100, 158n164 Sforza, Ascanio, 5, 9, 30–31, 36–37, 75, 136, 139, 140n125, 145n135, 145n137, 147–49, 156, 157n162, 201 Sforza, Bosio, 72n26 Sforza, Drusiana, 16, 19, 63–68, 91n51, 200 Sforza, duchy, 35, 173 Sforza, Elisabetta, 104n74 Sforza, Filippo Maria, 16, 63–68, 145n137

Sforza, Francesco I, 1, 9–10, 12, 17–19, 26, 78, 81n37, 90, 117–18, 162n172, 176, 205; death of, 5, 12, 17, 20–21, 89, 92–93, 96n59, 206; health and wellness, 71, 202; letters to, 15–16, 61–71, 77–79, 205; portrait of, 41, 46; relationship with Bianca Maria Visconti, 64n10, 78–79 Sforza, Galeazzo, 3, 5–6, 13, 16, 29, 63–68, 207; advisers, 27; as duke of Milan, 1, 5, 21–29, 89–97, 102–6; assassination of, 2, 4, 5, 6, 29–31, 33–34, 37, 41, 50, 133–145, 148n143, 193, 197, 201, 202, 203, 207 (see also rebellion); children, 94–95, 206; education, 10–12, 173n3; health and wellness, 62; hunting, 62–63, 70n18, 77; letters to, 89–91, 93–96, 99–101, 106, 108–30, 132; marriage to Bona of Savoy, 22–24, 91n51, 94, 97–108, 206; portrait of, 41, 49 Sforza, Gian Galeazzo, 5, 30, 119–20, 141, 208; as duke of Milan, 32, 34, 37, 208; birth of, 206; imprisonment of, 208; letters to, 143–49, 151, 154–56, 161–62; marriage, 209 Sforza, Ippolita; and infidelity, 2, 12–13, 19–22, 25, 80–89, 91–93, 98–99, 108–9 (see also Alfonso II; infidelity); arrival in Naples, 1, 12, 18–19, 206; as art collector, 13; as diplomat, 1–49, 85, 89–97, 102–6, 118–19, 127–28, 130–31, 134–35, 141–43, 145–56, 207, 208; as duchess of Calabria, 5, 12, 19, 37, 206; biography, 9–15; birth of, 9, 205; children, 22, 26,

228 Index

35, 37, 97–98, 111–12, 116–17, 119–20, 146, 199, 203, 207, 209 (see also individual names); death of, 2, 3, 14, 37, 209; dedications to, 11, 13; education, 2, 10–12, 19–20, 61, 173n3, 200, 202; estrangement from Alfonso II, 2, 19–22, 80–101; fatigue, 71, 72, 73–74; friendship with Lorenzo de’ Medici, 2, 7, 12, 32, 35–38, 150–70; funeral, 14, 201; grief, 84; health and wellness, 98–99, 102, 109–10; homesickness, 18, 76, 81, 99–100, 108–9, 199; hunting and falconry, 15–16, 18, 20, 62–66, 70–71, 77, 83, 88; hurt feelings, 65–66; marriage, 1, 5, 7, 12, 18 22, 79, 80–89, 91–92, 200–201, 203, 206; oration, 1–3, 11, 13, 17, 34, 201, 205; Oration for Bianca Maria Visconti, 191–96, 206 (see also orations); Oration for Pope Pius II, 13, 17, 69, 185–89, 205 (see also orations); poems composed for, 13, 201; portrait of, 41, 48; relationship with Bianca Maria Visconti, 7, 17–20, 22, 71–76, 81–89, 91–93, 96–99, 101–6 (see also motherhood, mothers, and maternity); relationship with Galeazzo Sforza, 5–6, 9, 21–22, 89–91, 93–96, 99–101, 106, 108–30, 132; relationship with Francesco I Sforza, 15–20, 61–71, 77–79, 90, 92–93, 205; scolding of, 67; secretaries, 2, 13, 25, 201, 207; studio, 13, 20, 82; travel in Lombardy, 61–80; Wedding Oration, 11n37,

173–84, 198, 203, 205 (see also orations) Sforza, Ludovico, 5, 22, 23, 30–32, 35, 37, 136, 143–44, 147–49, 155, 157, 207, 208 Sforza, Ottaviano, 30–31, 136, 147–49, 207 Sforza, Sforza Maria, 5, 12, 22n70, 23, 24, 30–31, 102–6, 136, 145n135, 149, 197, 207 Sforza, Tristano, 173–84 Siena, 19, 31, 136; Noveschi regime, 35–37, 159, 208. See also universities Simonetta, Cicco, 10n34, 24, 32, 143, 148n143, 199, 208 Spangolo, Lupuo, 83 Solfatara, 83 Stendardo, Carlo: letters to, 130–31 Strozzi, Alessandra Macinghi, 5 taxes. See money and finances teachers and tutors: Barzizza, Gasparino, 12; Barzizza, Guinforte, 12; Borro, Gasparino, 3; Feltre, Vittorino da, 3, 11; Guarini, Guarino, 3; Landriano, Pietro da, 19, 21, 91–94, 99, 200; Lascaris, Constantine, 3, 11–12, 200, 203; Martorelli, Baldo, 2, 3, 10–13, 25, 81n39, 87, 107, 108n84, 109, 123, 173, 185, 200, 203, 207; of Greek, 3, 11–12, 200; of Latin, 11, 200; of rhetoric, 3, 11–12, 200; Rizzoni, Martino, 3. See also Greek; humanism and humanists; Latin tears and weeping, 24, 79, 84, 106 Terzago, Aloise da, 81 textiles, 84; silk, 82; velvet, 16, 63, 82

Index 229 Tradate, 17, 70, 73–74; letters sent from, 73–74 treason, 203, 208 Trombetta, Michele, 65 Trotto, Marco, 151 universities: Bologna, 199; Florence, 199; Naples, 12; Padua, 4; Pavia, 12, 30, 199; Siena, 199 Valla, Lorenzo, 13 Varese, 17, 70–76; letters from, 74–75; San Vittore (church), 74 Varese, Francesco da, 74, 76 Vedano, 74 Venice. See Italian League; Peace of Lodi; war and warfare vernacular, 4, 11, 82n41 Verona, 4 viceroys, 19 Vigevano, 23 Visconte, Catalina di, 83 Visconti, Bianca Maria, 1, 9, 16, 19, 63–68, 96n60, 102–6, 117–18, 176; as diplomat, 17, 21; death of, 2–3, 5, 18n60, 22–24, 97–108, 206; health and wellness, 18, 22, 24, 62, 78–79, 98–99; letters to, 71–76, 81–89, 91–93, 96–99, 101–6; marital tensions with Francesco I Sforza, 64; oration for, 206; portrait of, 41, 47 Visconti, Filippo Maria, 9, 16, 26, 81n38, 104n75 Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, 69 war and warfare, 4, 7, 27, 118–19; battles, 12, 33, 97, 98n62, 153, 178; civil war, 31–32, 35n114; Salt War of 1541, 9; unrest in Milan, 4, 10, 15, 27, 61, 156–57;

War of Ferrara, 35, 198, 201, 208 (see also Ferrara); writings on, 8–9. See also armies; Ottomans; weapons weapons: arms, 15, 159; artillery, 33, 153; catapults, 33; knives and swords, 29, 30. See also armies; war and warfare weddings: of Alfonso II and Ippolita Sforza, 12, 19, 79, 80, 150, 201; of Ercole I d’Este and Eleonora d’Aragona, 149, 197; of Galeazzo Sforza and Bona of Savoy, 22–23, 102, 173n2, 206; of Gian Galeazzo Sforza and Isabella d’Aragona, 209; of Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este, 173– 85. See also betrothals; marriage; and under individual names wet nurses, 5, 99 widows, 91n51, 134, 136, 173, 198, 203 wine, 20 Zecchi, Pietro, 4