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Before their departure, however, Lodovico, anxious to do his guests honour and at the same time impress them with his wealth and the vast resources at his command, himself conducted them over the Treasury of the Castello, which was deservedly regarded as one of the principal sights of Milan.
Finding they were not supported by the pope, and that Lodovico Sforza, uncle to the countess, had sent forces to her assistance, the conspirators became terrified, and taking with them whatever property they could carry off, they fled to Citta di Castello. The countess recovered the state, and avenged the death of her husband with the utmost cruelty.
It is curious to reflect on the possible changes in the course of events in Italian history during the next thirty years, if Lodovico Sforza's proposals had reached Ferrara a few months earlier, and Isabella d'Este, instead of her sister Beatrice, had become his wife.
It came to pass that Giovan Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, being dead, and Lodovico Sforza raised to the same rank, in the year 1494, Leonardo was summoned to Milan in great repute to the Duke, who took much delight in the sound of the lyre, to the end that he might play it: and Leonardo took with him that instrument which he had made with his own hands, in great part of silver, in the form of a horse's skull a thing bizarre and new in order that the harmony might be of greater volume and more sonorous in tone; with which he surpassed all the musicians who had come together there to play.
The same uneasy sense of wrong inclined him to look with dread upon the friendship of the Medici for the ruling family of Naples. His mother Clarice and his wife Alfonsina were both of them Orsini. See Arch. Stor. vol. i. p. 347. The young Duke was aged twenty-four in 1493. Lodovico had taken measures for cloaking his usurpation with the show of legitimate right.
The poet's complaint that the painter's art can never reproduce one-half of the dead lady's charms is literally true in this instance, and those of Beatrice's portraits which we possess do but scant justice to the brightness and beauty which fascinated young and old among her contemporaries. Two of the letters addressed to Lodovico on this melancholy occasion are especially worthy of mention.
From a letter addressed to Lodovico under the date August 19, we learn that Buonarroto had just arrived in Rome, and informed his brother of certain pecuniary difficulties under which the family was labouring. Michelangelo gave advice, and promised to send all the money he could bring together.
Here and there a jealous or discontented Milanese nobleman might grumble, but the majority of the duke's subjects felt that in these troublous days a strong hand was needed at the helm, and knew that they had this strong man in the Moro. By degrees Lodovico removed those governors of cities and fortresses whose loyalty he had reason to suspect, and replaced them by confidential servants.
Lodovico is better, and I should have been willing to keep him another two months, but Lapo, in order to prevent blame falling on himself alone, worked upon the other so that both went away together.
After the flight of Piero de' Medici and the revolution which had taken place in Florence, Lodovico sent this well-known connoisseur to try and acquire some of the priceless marbles or gems from the Magnificent Lorenzo's collection.
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