Word: sforza
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...late 15th and early 16th centuries, the Borgia family brought the papacy to its nadir. After the death of the notorious Alexander VI in 1503, Cardinal Sforza succeeded in frustrating Borgia ambitions by having decrepit Cardinal Piccolomini elected Pius III. Rapacious Vatican bureaucrats, accustomed to plundering the apartments of every new Pope on the assumption that the Holy Father would need no further worldly goods, so stripped Pius' cell that he even had to buy back the bed in which he died of gout just 25 days later...
...frustratingly hermetic as ever. But in terms of his work, the notes are priceless. They shed little new light on his painting, but this is made up for by the richness of detail in Codex Madrid II on his great sculptural project, the equestrian bronze of Francesco Sforza- Il Cavallo, as Leonardo called it, the full-size clay model for which was shot to rubble by French crossbowmen after the conquest of Milan in 1500. It would have been the largest bronze group in recorded history, 23 ft. high, cast upside down in one continuous pour...