Word: sforza
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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...
...capacity of women to love scoundrels," writes Orville Prescott, "is one of the abiding marvels of the world." Prescott may be right. In this compendium of scoundrels, he offers much evidence to prove his point. Galeazzo Sforza, for instance, was so cruel that he once had a courtier, fallen from favor, nailed up in a chest. Then, the story goes, he gleefully listened to the dying man's moans. Still, when assassins cut Sforza down at the door of a church, his wife, the Duchess Bona of Milan, mournfully wrote to Pope Sixtus IV, declaring that "after...
...unjustly slandered as a poisoner and profligate, seems much to be pitied -a woman who may have had a lover or two but who gave her third husband at least seven children before her death at 39. Only a few women railed at their fate. Beatrice d'Este Sforza, pregnant and angered at her husband's open infidelity with one of her own ladies-in-waiting, reacted drastically. She gave a party one afternoon and danced recklessly. That night, as if she had intended it, she miscarried and, shortly later, died...
...proud city-states of Italy, none was more arrogant or belligerent than Milan, the rich capital of Lombardy. The names of its militant warlords, the Visconti and the Sforza, sent chills down the spine of Italy. But in art, Milan has always been looked down upon as a poor cousin by such sophisticated citadels as Venice and Florence. Even today most tourists take a look at the towered Duomo (second largest cathedral in Italy), seek out the faded mural remains of The Last Supper (painted by an imported Florentine, Leonardo da Vinci) at Santa Maria delle Grazie, and hurry...