53 Facts About Ludovico Sforza

1.

Ludovico Sforza's temperament has been described as nervous and indecisive.

2.

Under the tutelage of the humanist Francesco Filelfo, Ludovico studied painting, sculpture and letters along with methods of government and warfare.

3.

Under the tutelage of many preceptors, including the humanist Francesco Filelfo and the poet Giorgio Valagussa, Ludovico Sforza received lessons in Greek, Latin, theology, painting, sculpture, as well as being instructed in matters of government and administration of the state.

4.

Ludovico Sforza was conferred the courtesy title of Count of Mortara.

5.

Ludovico Sforza continued to deal with diplomatic missives, remaining in Cremona until the following year, when he went to Genoa to welcome his sister Ippolita, wife of Alfonso of Aragon, receiving that same year the title of Count of Mortara.

6.

Ludovico Sforza was again ambassador then to the King of France and then to Bologna.

7.

Ludovico Sforza was succeeded by his son Gian Galeazzo Maria, then only seven years old.

8.

Together with two other brothers, Ascanio and Ottaviano, as well as the condottieri Roberto Sanseverino, Donato del Conte and Ibletto Fieschi, Sforza and Ludovico tried to oppose the regency of Bona, since the duchy was in fact in the hands of the ducal councilor Cicco Simonetta.

9.

Ludovico Sforza then went up to Sale, Castelnuovo Scrivia, Bassignana and Valenza.

10.

The Milanese Ghibelline nobility, which had Pietro Pusterlaas as a reference, took advantage of Ludovico's presence in Milan to try to convince him to get rid of Simonetta, reminding him of all the sufferings that he and his brothers had had to suffer because of Cicco: exile, war, the death of Octavian and Donato del Conte and finally the poisoning of Sforza Maria, to which Ludovico had been very attached.

11.

Ludovico Sforza, fearing a popular uprising, was forced to imprison Cicco and his brother Giovanni, who were transferred on a cart to the prisons of the castle of Pavia, while the other family members were released.

12.

Meanwhile, the Ghibelline nobility, who had helped him in his rise to power, had become unpopular with Ludovico and had found in Ascanio Sforza the defender of his interests.

13.

Ludovico Sforza then devised the expedient of secretly leading his nephews Gian Galeazzo and Ermes in the rocca of the castle, under the pretext of protecting them from the ambition of the Tassino, and there he convened the council.

14.

Bona went into such fury at his departure that, forgetting all her honour and dignity, she too decided to leave and pass over the mountains, and this bad resolution could never be revoked; but forgetting every filial love of her, in the hands of Lodovico Ludovico Sforza she renounced the protection of her children and of the state.

15.

Ludovico Sforza initially planned to become Duke of Milan by marrying his sister-in-law Bona, but the latter, in love with the Tassino, thought of getting rid of him by giving him a wife.

16.

Ludovico Sforza, consulted by his sister-in-law only in negotiations already underway, could only be happy.

17.

The Venetians, knowing that Ludovico Sforza had incurred excessive expenses in favour of his father-in-law, offered him peace in exchange for a certain amount of money, provided that the Polesine remained in their hands.

18.

Ludovico Sforza was accompanied by her mother and her other relatives.

19.

Ludovico Sforza had wanted the wedding to be celebrated in Pavia and not in Milan precisely so as not to give the impression of wanting to bully Gian Galeazzo, legitimate Duke of Milan, who had married Isabella of Aragon in the Duomo a few months earlier.

20.

The marriage was declared immediately consummated and already the next morning Ludovico Sforza left for Milan to finish the preparations for the wedding party, in truth it remained secretly blank for over a month, as the spouses had had the opportunity to know each other only the day before and Ludovico Sforza, who at the time was thirty-eight years old, had respect for the youth and innocence of his bride, then fifteen, and did not want to force her to consume in a hurry.

21.

Ludovico Sforza was seen dedicating continuous kisses and caresses to his wife, he stood beside her "over the bed" for most of the day when she was sick and in a letter he wrote of her: "she is dearer to me than the light of the sun".

22.

Ludovico Sforza helped to make Sforza Castle a centre of sumptuous festivals and balls and she loved entertaining philosophers, poets, diplomats and soldiers.

23.

Ludovico Sforza would become the mother of Maximilian Sforza and Francesco II Sforza, future Dukes of Milan.

24.

The correspondence preserves moments of great tenderness, like a letter written to his mother-in-law a few months after the birth of the first-born Ercole Massimiliano, in which Ludovico Sforza tells her about the baby's approval and how "my wife and I so naked and naked we let him carry him sometimes and we keep him between the two of us".

25.

Ludovico Sforza had counted on the fact that the lords of Italy, and especially Florence, would not let Charles pass, which instead happened, as Piero il Fatuo, who until then had been the strongest ally of the king of Naples, frightened ended up throwing himself at the feet of the king of France, granting him not only free passage to Tuscany but even Pisa and Livorno, plus the sum of 120,000 florins.

26.

Ludovico Sforza hastened to close himself with his wife and children in the Rocca del Castello in Milan but, not feeling equally safe, he combined with the Spanish ambassador to leave the duchy to take refuge in Spain.

27.

Meanwhile, in 1496 Beatrice was expecting a third child and it was in this period that Ludovico Sforza met Lucrezia Crivelli, lady-in-waiting to his wife, who became his mistress.

28.

However, there was no way to distract her husband and throughout 1496 Ludovico Sforza continued to attend more or less secretly to Lucrezia, in a regime of substantial bigamy, so much so that he ended up impregnating both his wife and lover within a couple of months.

29.

Ludovico Sforza, who had betrayed her so brazenly, went mad with grief, never recovered from the death of his wife, who had until then been his strength and support in the government of the state.

30.

Ludovico Sforza had always been convinced that he would die before her and in his abilities he had placed all his hopes for the maintenance of the state during the minority of the children.

31.

Ludovico Sforza told the Ferrarese ambassador that "he never thought he could ever tolerate such a bitter plague", and that he had had him summoned to report to Duke Ercole that if what had ever offended her, as he knew he had done, he asks forgiveness from your ex.

32.

Ludovico Sforza begged his brother-in-law Francis not to send anyone to condolersi with him, "not to renew the pain"; likewise, he refused, with a few exceptions, to receive condolences from anyone.

33.

Ludovico Sforza became convinced that God was punishing him for his sins and, if on the one hand his religiosity increased, on the other he began to take an interest in necromancy.

34.

Such exasperated manifestations of mourning struck all contemporaries, although they were later interpreted by some historians as a farce conducted artfully, due to the fact that although it seems that at first Ludovico Sforza had interrupted the relationship with Lucrezia Crivelli, however in 1500 the woman found herself pregnant again.

35.

Ludovico Sforza then decided to take revenge for the humiliation suffered by undertaking a second expedition against the Duchy of Milan.

36.

Since the Pisans preferred the protection of Venice, Ludovico Sforza withdrew his troops from Pisa, having lost all hope of being able to take charge of the Tuscan city.

37.

Ludovico Sforza then reversed the alliance with Venice, militarily helping Florence for the reconquest of Pisa, hoping that the Florentine Republic would help him at least with diplomacy against the arrival of King Louis XII.

38.

Ludovico Sforza was first detained at the castle of Pierre-Scize, then at Lys-Saint-Georges near Bourges.

39.

The memory of Ludovico Sforza was clouded for centuries by Machiavelli's accusation that he 'invited' Charles VIII to invade Italy, paving the way for subsequent foreign domination.

40.

Excellent duke in times of peace, very bad in times of war, Ludovico Sforza was never brought neither for weapons nor for the exercises of the body, he was indeed a man with a mild, conciliatory character, he detested all forms of violence and cruelty, and in fact, the more he could keep away from the battlefields, he held himself, and the more he could refrain from inflicting harsh punishments on the guilty, he abstained.

41.

Ludovico Sforza was therefore not used to wearing the tight-attillated farsetti typical of young men and condottieri, but rather clothes that reached him just above the knee.

42.

Certainly, Ludovico Sforza was prodigal with his friends, very liberal, condescending, thoughtful and human he turned out to be a very little energetic man, if not spurred on, and with the hereafter he became increasingly contradictory and unstable.

43.

Some historians, wandering, claimed that he beat his wife, but the confusion arises from a letter of 1492, in which it is written that the Duke of Milan had "beaten" his wife: Duke of Milan was then called Gian Galeazzo, who in accordance with his character was in fact used to mistreat his wife Isabella, nor therefore Ludovico Sforza ever allowed himself to make such a gesture towards that woman who "loved more than himself".

44.

The great passion of Ludovico Sforza, more than women, more than food and more than the government, was indeed agriculture: Ludovico Sforza liked to remember that his grandfather, Muzio Attendolo, before becoming a leader was born a farmer, and he himself was an expert grower of vines and mulberries, the famous moron, with whom they fed the silkworms that made the Milanese industry famous.

45.

Ludovico Sforza gave life to his own farm near Vigevano, the so-called Sforzesca, with adjacent the Pecorara where various species of cattle, sheep and other animals were bred, which Ludovico loved very much and where he often visited with his wife Beatrice, like him a lover of nature.

46.

Ludovico Sforza invested in horse and cattle breeding, and the metal industry.

47.

Ludovico Sforza sponsored extensive work in civil and military engineering, such as canals and fortifications, continued work on the Cathedral of Milan and the Certosa of Pavia and had the streets of Milan enlarged and adorned with gardens.

48.

Ludovico Sforza was a cultured man, he knew Latin and French and whenever he could he stopped to listen to the daily reading and commentary of the Divine Comedy that the humanist Antonio Grifo kept at the behest of Duchess Beatrice, who was very passionate about it.

49.

Endowed, in the best years, with great charm and charisma, Ludovico Sforza acquired fame as a seducer.

50.

Ludovico Sforza even boasted, in 1498, that it was out of jealousy of his wife that the Marquis Francesco Gonzaga played the double game between him and the Lordship of Venice, insinuating his relationship with his sister-in-law Isabella d'Este.

51.

Only hypotheses can be made about the beautiful Ippolita Fioramonte, a young lady of Beatrice, who boasted, after the death of the duchess, a protection difficult to explain by Ludovico Sforza, who gave her a princely dowry.

52.

Ludovico Sforza earned the nickname "Moro" as a child: this is how the crowd acclaimed him when he paraded in procession in the cities of the Duchy.

53.

Duke Ludovico Sforza visited the tomb of his wife in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Alessandro Reati, between 1850 and 1873.