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Updated: June 14, 2025
The careful examination of the various documents connected with Giangaleazzo's death has led recent historians to a different conclusion. "Nothing is further from the truth," writes Magenta, in his history of the "Castello di Pavia," "than that Giangaleazzo died of poison."
Her father, Galeazzo Sforza, was murdered in Milan Cathedral by a little band of patriots; her brother Giangaleazzo had died, of want or poison, in the Castle of Pavia, the victim of her ambitious uncle, Lodovico; her husband, Girolamo Riario, she had seen butchered and flung naked from a window of the very castle which she now defended; Giacomo Feo, whom she had secretly married in second nuptials, was done to death in Forli, under her very eyes, by a party of insurrectionaries.
And here on the 20th, a courier from Pavia arrived, bringing Lodovico word that his nephew was dying. He set out at once for Pavia, and met another messenger on the way who told him that the duke was already dead. Two days after Charles VIII.'s departure from Pavia, Giangaleazzo became suddenly worse.
A curious letter, addressed by the Duke of Milan to his uncle Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in Rome, gives a full and minute account of this tournament, which Giangaleazzo describes as one of the most important events of his reign, and which he begs may be fully reported to His Holiness Pope Innocent.
Giangaleazzo had totally forgotten his passing vexation, the clouds which darkened Isabella's sad life seemed to lift for the moment, and once more harmony reigned in the ducal family. The fêtes in honour of her son's christening, which had been postponed in the previous summer, were now celebrated with increased splendour.
But we are glad to find that she expressed sympathy with the unhappy widow of Giangaleazzo, and showed real concern for her cousin's melancholy condition. After her husband's death, Isabella's courage and fortitude broke down under the long strain, and for some days she shut herself up in a dark room, and refused to take food, or accept any comfort.
These are greatly influenced by the magnificent tomb of Giangaleazzo Visconti at the Certosa di Pavia, near Milan. Especially is this the case with the noble monument of Louis XII., which closely imitates the Italian work.
Now that poor Giangaleazzo was dead, and Louis of Orleans had once more crossed the Alps, there was no one to dispute Lodovico's title or to prevent his son from eventually succeeding him on the throne.
Even Giangaleazzo, the feeble duke who seldom took pleasure in anything but horses and dogs, and often treated his own wife in a brutal way, felt the charm of this bright young creature, and was stirred out of his usual apathy by the coming of Beatrice.
More than seven years afterwards, when poor Giangaleazzo was dead, and the Sforzas' throne was already tottering to its fall, Bianca Maria, then the wife of the Emperor Maximilian, wrote from Fribourg, begging her uncle to try and procure her a robe of the white velvet woven at Lyons, "like the vests worn by yourself and my brother, of blessed memory, on the day when he was invested with the Duchy of Genoa."
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