United States or French Guiana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Two years later, the next duke, who was already thirty-eight years of age, obtained the hand of Leonora of Aragon, daughter of Ferrante, King of Naples, and sent his brother Sigismondo at the head of a splendid retinue to bring home his royal bride.
While in the service of the League Sforza commanded three hundred foot soldiers and one hundred heavy horse. With these troops he set out for Naples in the spring of the following year, when the united forces lent the young King Ferrante II great assistance in the conflicts with the French troops under Montpensier.
If the failure of the league to cut off the French king's return to Fornovo had disappointed Lodovico, he found compensation in the news that reached Milan from Naples. Hardly had Charles VIII. started on his march northwards, than Ferrante once more set foot in his own realm and received a joyful welcome from his subjects.
Then, after he had been made keeper of the wardrobe to Don Ferrante, it happened that his master was removed from the government of Sicily and sent to that of Milan; whereupon Domenico went with him, and, working on the fortifications of that State, contrived, what with being industrious and with being something of a miser, to become very rich; and what is more, he came into such credit that he managed almost everything in that government.
It proved to be a summons from Ferrante Gonzaga to appear upon the morrow before the Imperial Court which would sit in the Communal Palace of Piacenza to deliver judgment upon an indictment laid against me by Cosimo d'Anguissola. I looked at the herald, hesitation in my mind and glance. He held out a second letter. "This, my lord, I was asked by favour to deliver to you also."
The Sienese announced, in 1477, the alliance between Ferrante and Sixtus IV, with which they themselves were associated, by driving a chariot round the city, with 'one clad as the goddess of peace standing on a hauberk and other arms. At the Venetian festivals the processions, not on land but on water, were marvelous in their fantastic splendor.
"Thus is Giovanni d'Anguissola at last avenged!" he said to me in a deep voice that thrilled me. "I would that he were here to know," I answered. And again Galeotto's eyes grew wistful as they looked at me. We won out of the town at last, and when we came to the high ground beyond the river, we saw in the plain below phalanx upon phalanx of a great army. It was Ferrante Gonzaga's Imperial force.
His first work, which was a collection principally of love-poems, celebrating his passion for the beautiful Genevra Malatesta, who belonged to the same family as the ill-fated Parasina of Byron, attracted the attention of the reigning Prince of Salerno, Ferrante Sanseverino, one of the chief patrons of literature in Italy, who thereupon engaged him as his private secretary.
De Vita Propria, ch. xl. p. 138. De Vita Propria, ch. xli. p. 153. Opera, tom. i. p. 671. He cites the names of former Governors of Milan and other patrons, many of them harsh men, and not one as kind and beneficent as the Duca di Sessa; to wit Antonio Leva, Cardinal Caracio, Alfonso d'Avalos, Ferrante Gonzaga, the Cardinal of Trent, and the Duca d'Alba.
His friend could only counsel patience, for, sympathize as he might with the banished prince, Lorenzo was closely allied with the rulers of Milan, and Lodovico soon saw that his only hope of seeing his native land again was to be found in the support of Ferrante, King of Naples, the sworn foe of the Medici.
Word Of The Day