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He was true to his promise, and that carnival he broke off the connection which gave Beatrice so much pain, and wrote to Giacomo Trotti from Vigevano on the 27th of March, informing him that he had decided not to see Madonna Cecilia again, and that after her child's birth she had agreed to become the wife of Count Lodovico Bergamini. This strange compact was duly carried out.

Relations between Lodovico and Beatrice Cecilia Gallerani Birth of her son Cesare Her marriage to Count Bergamini Beatrice at Villa Nova and Vigevano The Sforzesca and Pecorara Lodovico's system of irrigation in the Lomellina Leonardo at Vigevano Hunting-parties and country life Letters to Isabella d'Este.

The Venetian Signory had decided to send two special ambassadors to congratulate the emperor on his arrival in Italy, and on the 14th these envoys, Antonio Grimani and Marco Morosini, reached Milan, where they were received by Galeazzo Sforza, Count of Melzi, and lodged in the Palazzo del Verme, then inhabited by Madonna Cecilia Gallerani and her husband Count Lodovico Bergamini, and lately decorated with frescoes and marbles at the duke's expense.

On the 3rd of May, the duke's discarded mistress gave birth to a son, who received the name of Cesare; and in the following July, Cecilia Gallerani was married to Count Lodovico Bergamini of Cremona, one of the Moro's most loyal servants and subjects.

And among the exquisite miniatures of the little Maximilian Sforza's Libro del Gesù in the Trivulzian library, we find a picture of Lodovico and Beatrice's child sitting at dinner with his mother and a lady bearing the name of Cecilia, in whom tradition sees the duke's old mistress, Countess Bergamini.

This was Cecilia Gallerani, afterwards the wife of Count Lodovico Bergamini, a young Milanese lady of noble birth, as distinguished for her learning as for her beauty. She spoke and wrote Latin fluently, composed sonnets in Italian, and delivered Latin orations to the theologians and philosophers who met at her house.

On the 26th of April, 1498, a year after Beatrice d'Este's death, her sister the Marchioness Isabella herself wrote to the Countess Bergamini from Mantua, begging her for the loan of the portrait which Leonardo had painted of her and which she had formerly seen in Milan.