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Updated: May 8, 2025
"At Vigevano," writes the contemporary Milanese chronicler Cagnola, "a place very dear to the house of Sforza, Lodovico made a fair and large piazza, and adorned it with many noble buildings and a fine park, which he filled with beasts of prey for the pleasure of the ducal family.
On the 19th of August, 1451, a year and a half after the great captain had boldly entered Milan and been proclaimed Duke, Duchess Bianca gave birth at her summer palace of Vigevano to a fine boy.
He had begun to rebuild the palace of Vigevano on a splendid scale, and had set on foot a vast system of irrigation for the improvement of the ducal estates. Besides encouraging the rising school of native artists, he had invited the best foreign architects and painters, sculptors and poets, to his court.
A letter which he addressed to the students from Vigevano in August, 1488, only a few weeks before the dangerous illness which almost ended his life, deserves to be quoted, if only as an example of the attention which he gave to every detail of administration.
And remorse for the pain which he had caused Beatrice gave the sharpest sting to Lodovico's own despair, on that sad day when he wept for his young wife's early death. That autumn a fresh and unexpected blow fell upon the ducal family, in the death of Lodovico's beloved daughter Bianca, the young wife of Galeazzo di Sanseverino, who died very suddenly at Vigevano, on the 22nd of November.
It was at Vigevano that winter, on the 28th of January, that Lodovico drew up the deed of gift by which he endowed his wife with his palace lands of Cussago, as well as the Sforzesca and other lands in the district of Novara and Pavia.
In like manner, some little altar-pieces that he has executed at Vigevano are worthy of considerable praise for their excellence. Finally, after he had betaken himself to Parma to work in the Madonna della Steccata, the great niche and the arch that were left incomplete through the death of Michelagnolo of Siena were finished by the hands of Soiaro.
Early in March the Duke and Duchess of Bari left Milan to take up their abode at Vigevano, and held a series of brilliant fêtes and hunting parties in this newly-finished palace. The works upon which Bramante and his companions had been employed for years past were finished, the great hall with its richly-wrought marble capitals, the noble tower and imposing porticoes, were all complete.
And so entirely did he improve and alter the whole place that, instead of Vigevano, it might well be called Citta nova." At the same time Lodovico rebuilt on a magnificent scale the old castle which crowns the heights above the valley of the Ticino, and employed Bramante to design the lofty tower and the arcaded courts with delicate traceries and terra-cotta mouldings in the finest Lombard style.
"His Most Christian Majesty," remarked Lodovico, drily, "had better begin by reforming himself." And when the Venetian ambassador Sebastian Badoer and Benedetto Trevisano arrived at Vigevano to take counsel with the duke in this perilous state of affairs, he spoke very contemptuously of the king's person and character.
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