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Girolamo Tuttavilla replied in verses of the same light and airy strain, alluding to the fierce contest over Dante that waged between Dottore Bramante and his foes, and laughing at friend Bellincioni's furious rages, but saying that he at least is wiser, and will take the viâ media and steer warily between the two contending parties.
In the volume of Bellincioni's Sonnets, published soon after his death by the priest Francesco Tanzio, the name Magistro Leonardo da Vinci appears in a marginal note, and in another sonnet inscribed to "Four illustrious men who have grown up under the shadow of the Moro," the editor gives the respective names of these famous individuals as "the painter Maestro Leonardo Florentino, the goldsmith Caradosso, the learned Greek scholar Giorgio Merula, called the sun of Alessandria, and Maestro Giannino, the Ferrarese gun-founder."
Testagrossa is said to have sung in the Spanish style, which was much in vogue at Milan, where a Spaniard named Pedro Maria was director of the palace concerts, and is frequently mentioned in Bellincioni's poems. The priest Franchino Gaffuri, as already stated, occupied the first chair of music ever founded in Italy.
Bellincioni's suspicious and quarrelsome nature is revealed in his letters to his patron, in which he is always complaining of the envious detractors whose wicked tongues are employed in backbiting him day and night.
"We know, O most illustrious Prince!" wrote Tanzio in his preface to Bellincioni's Sonnets "we know that you, the Chief of the Insubrians, are no less a lover of your country than of your glorious father, in whose honour you have reared that mighty and immortal work, the great Colossus, which, like himself, remains without a rival.
The priest Tanzio, writing after Bellincioni's death in 1492, remarks that this influence had already borne fruit, and that the sonnet, which was practically unknown in Milan before Bellincioni's coming, was now diligently cultivated there. But, not unnaturally, a bitter rivalry sprung up between the Lombard and the Tuscan poets, and a fierce poetic warfare was exchanged between them.
Bellincioni's bitterest foe was a certain Bergamasque poet, Guidotto Prestinari, who wrote many odes and songs in honour of Beatrice, and represented the old Lombard school.
His well-known patronage of artists and love of letters, as well as his intimate connection with the duke and duchess, all point in the same direction; and if any further proof were needed, the mention of his brother Gaspare, and the allusion to Galeazzo by name in one of Bellincioni's sonnets on the subject, and the fact that one of the letters is dated from his own villa of Castelnuovo, near Tortona, would be sufficient to settle the question.
The glimpses that we catch of Leonardo's private life from the writings of contemporaries, whether in Bandello's novelle, or in Bellincioni's rime, all give the same pleasant impression, and show the ease and liberty which he enjoyed at the court of Milan.
C. Magenta, I Visconti e Sforza nel Castello di Pavia, i. Beatrice Duchess of Bari Her popularity at the court of Milan Giangaleazzo and Isabella of Aragon Lodovico's first impressions His growing affection for his wife His letters to Isabella d'Este Hunting and fishing parties Cuzzago and Vigevano Controversy on Orlando and Rinaldo Bellincioni's sonnets.
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