The Book of the Courtier
Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan and Pope Alexander VI. Although the
expedition was undertaken without adequate preparation and conducted
with incredible foolhardiness,—continuous good fortune together with the
mutual jealousies of Italian princes and the decadence of Italian
military power enabled Charles to enter Milan, Florence and Rome without
hindrance, to seize Naples almost unopposed, and (when threatened by a
powerful league formed against him) to retire northwards, to defeat the
Italians at Fornovo, and finally to reach France in safety, October
1495. His garrisons were driven from Naples in the following year, but
his foray had the immediate result of expelling the Medici from
Florence, and the far more important consequence of revealing to the
rest of Europe the wealth and helplessness of Italy,—thus paving the way
for the subsequent invasions with which the peninsula was scourged
during the 16th Century. The remainder of Charles’s life was given up to
inglorious ease and pleasure. A son of the painter Mantegna thus
describes him: “A very ill-favoured face, with great goggle eyes, an
aquiline nose offensively large, and a head disfigured by a few sparse
hairs;” while Duke Ludovico Sforza said of him: “The man is young, and
his conduct meagre, nor has he any form or method of council.” His own
ambassador, Commines, wrote: “He was little in stature and of small
sense, very timid in speech, owing to the way in which he had been
treated as a child, and as feeble in mind as he was in body, but the
kindest and gentlest creature alive.”
Note 389 page 202. MARGARITA OF AUSTRIA, (born 1480; died 1530), was the
daughter of the Emperor Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy, and a native
of Brussels. Having been betrothed to the Dauphin Charles (VIII) and
then rejected by that prince in favour of Anne of Brittany, she married
(1497) the Infant Juan of Castile, but soon lost both husband and child.
In 1501 she married Duke Filiberto of Savoy, and after four years of
happiness again became a widow. In 1507 she was entrusted by her father
with the government of the Low Countries and the care of her nephew
Charles (see note 462). She did much to further the progress of
agriculture and commerce in her dominions, and besides showing a lofty
spirit and no little political sagacity, she was a patroness of art and
letters, and composed a great number of poems in French, most of which
are said to be lost. Her correspondence with her father has been
published.
Note 390 page 202. MAXIMILIAN I, Emperor of Germany, (born 1459; died
1519), was the son of the Emperor Frederick III of Hapsburg and Eleanora
of Portugal. In 1477 he married Charles the Bold’s daughter and heiress,
Mary of Burgundy, who bore him five children and died in 1482. On the
death of his father in 1493, he was elected Emperor, and soon afterwards
married Bianca Maria, niece of Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan. He was a
member of the league that forced Charles VIII to retire from Italy
(1495), of the League of Cambray against Venice (1508), and of the Holy
League (1511) for the expulsion of Louis XII from Italy. Although
deriving little profit or honour from these and other foreign
enterprises, he contrived by prudent marriages to add Bohemia and
Hungary to his empire and to make Spain a possession of his family. He
also effected many reforms in his government, and even founded several
important institutions, such as a postal service and a permanent
militia. From his youth he showed a taste for study, became a patron of
scholars, poets and artists, and enriched the Universities of Vienna and
Ingolstadt. Besides being an accomplished if not very successful
soldier, he was the author of works on gardening, hunting and
agriculture, as well as on military science.
Note 391 page 202. ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC, (born 1451; died 1504), was
the daughter and heiress of Juan II of Castile. Having been trained in
retirement to habits of religious devotion, she married (1469) Ferdinand
of Aragon, with whom she succeeded jointly to her father’s crown in
1474, but was able to gain complete possession of her dominions only in
1479, the same year in which her husband succeeded his father as King of
Aragon. Under her rule the Inquisition was established in Castile
(1480), but she recoiled before its horrors and was reconciled to its
continuance only by the direct assurance of Pope Sixtus IV. In 1481
began the long war, which (largely owing to her energy and perseverance)
resulted in the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and in which she is
said to have organized the earliest military hospitals. The story of her
noble patronage of Columbus is familiar. Her later years were clouded by
the loss of two of her three children, including her only son, and by
the unhappy conjugal life and mental disorder of her daughter, Juana,
the mother of Charles V. Castiglione’s praise of Isabella’s lofty
qualities is not a little justified by the facts of her life. In
personal appearance, she is said to have been agreeable rather than
handsome; her features were regular, her green eyes vivacious, her
complexion olive, her hair reddish blond, and her stature above the
medium.
From a negative, specially made by the brothers Moreau with the kind
permission of M. Gustave Dreyfus, of an anonymous bust in his
collection at Paris.
Note 392 page 202. FERDINAND THE CATHOLIC, (born 1452; died 1516), was
the son of Juan II of Navarre and Aragon, and is justly regarded as the
founder of the Spanish monarchy. The means employed by him in building
up his power were perfidy towards other rulers and ruthless oppression
of his own people. Besides the other events of his reign, noted above,
mention should be made of his cruel expulsion of the Jews from Spain in
1492. These and his other persecutions, supposed at the time to be
actuated by zeal for pure religion, were in fact chiefly a source of
revenue, and the policy thus inaugurated,—of stifling the commerce, the
industry, the free thought and the energy of the nation at the beginning
of its greatness,—is now seen to have been one of the important causes
of its decline.
Note 393 page 204. Of these two remarkable queens, one was doubtless
Federico III’s widow, the Isabella del Balzo who is mentioned below (see
note 400). The other may possibly have been her predecessor Joanna, the
aunt and widow of Ferdinand II; or (more probably) Ippolita Maria, who
was a daughter of the first Sforza duke of Milan and wife of Ferdinand
II’s father and predecessor Alfonso II, and of whom Dennistoun says (ii,
122): “It was for this princess that Constantine Lascaris composed the
earliest Greek Grammar; and in the convent library of Sta. Croce at Rome
there is a transcript by her of Cicero’s _De Senectute_, followed by a
juvenile collection of Latin apothegms curiously indicative of her
character and studies.”
Note 394 page 204. BEATRICE OF ARAGON, (born 1457; died 1508), was the
daughter of Ferdinand I of Naples and Isabelle de Clermont. In 1476 she
married Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary. On his death in 1490, she
married Ladislas II of Bohemia, who for a time prevented the succession
of Matthias’s natural son John. However the youth attained the Hungarian
throne with the aid of the Emperor Maximilian; whereupon Beatrice was
repudiated by Ladislas and her marriage was annulled by Alexander VI. In
1501 she returned to Italy, resided at Ischia and died childless. Like
her elder sister, the Duchess Eleanora of Ferrara (see note 399), she
was a woman of cultivation and taste, and in spite of her political
intrigues, she is praised for having done much to strengthen the
intellectual bonds between Italy and Hungary, to which country she
invited Italian poets, scholars and artists.
Note 395 page 204. MATTHIAS CORVINUS, (born 1443; died 1490), was the
son of the famous Hungarian general János Hunyadi, and in 1458 was
proclaimed King of Hungary by the soldiers whom his father had so often
led to victory. His life was a nearly continuous series of great
enterprises, among the most noted of which were his campaigns against
the Turks and his siege and capture (1485) of Vienna, where he
thereafter resided chiefly and died. By no means the least part of his
fame was won by the ardour with which he advanced the cause of science,
art and letters in his country, and bestowed upon his people not only an
enlightened code of laws but also the benefits of Renaissance culture.
He introduced printing into Hungary, and was the founder of a
magnificent public library at Buda Pest, containing fifty thousand
volumes, for the most part MSS. which he caused to be copied in Italy
and the East.
Note 396 page 204. ISABELLA OF ARAGON, (born 1470; died 1524), was the
daughter of Alfonso II of Naples and Ippolita Maria, daughter of the
first Sforza duke of Milan. In 1489 she made a splendid entry into Milan
as the bride of her own cousin Giangaleazzo Sforza, whose rights as duke
were gradually usurped by his uncle Ludovico il Moro. This usurpation
has been regarded as partly due to the ambition of Ludovico’s young
wife, Beatrice d’Este (see note 398), who could not endure the
precedence rightfully belonging to Isabella. As has been seen, it was to
protect himself against the wrath of Isabella’s father and grandfather,
that Ludovico invited Charles VIII into Italy as his ally. When Charles
reached Pavia, he had to endure the pathetic spectacle of his forlorn
cousin Giangaleazzo (they were sisters’ sons) in prison, and to hear the
piteous pleadings of the beautiful Isabella, who fell at his feet and
besought him to have mercy on her husband. Her appeal was withstood, and
Ludovico of course had no scruple in setting aside the rights of her
infant children. Fresh trials awaited her in her native country, to
which she returned in 1500, and from which her family had been expelled.
Note 397 page 204. ISABELLA D’ESTE, (born 1474; died 1539), was the
oldest child of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara and Eleanora of Aragon. Having
had Mario Equicola as preceptor, she married the Marquess Gianfrancesco
Gonzaga (see note 446) in 1490, her early betrothal to whom prevented
her from becoming the wife of Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan, who
soon afterwards married her sister Beatrice. At Mantua she continued her
literary and artistic training, and her court became one of the
brightest and most active centres of Italian culture. The chief poets
and painters of the time laboured for her or were her friends. Being for
years in her husband’s service, Castiglione knew her closely, maintained
a frequent exchange of letters with her, and is only one of many who
praise her beauty, her intellect, and her moral qualities; she may be
regarded as the most splendid incarnation of the Renaissance ideal of
woman. Her long friendship with her sister-in-law, “My lady Duchess,”
has been already mentioned. Some interesting details have survived as to
her manner of ordering a picture. Having chosen a subject, she had it
set forth in writing by some humanist of her court. These specifications
were then given to the painter chosen for the purpose, and he was
furnished with minute directions as to the placing of the figures and
the distribution of light, and required to make a preliminary sketch. As
the painting was often intended for a specific space, she took great
care to secure the exact dimensions desired, by providing two pieces of
ribbon to show the precise height and breadth of the picture. Isabella’s
brilliant career, and especially her close relations with the chief men
of her day and her weighty influence upon contemporary politics, are the
subject of many scholarly volumes and interesting articles written