Ludovico Sforza

Ludovico Sforza
Ludovico's portrait in the Pala Sforzesca, 1494–1495 (Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan)[a]
Duke of Milan
Reign	21 October 1494 – 6 September 1499
Predecessor	Gian Galeazzo Sforza
Successor	Louis XII of France
Regent of Milan
Regency	7 October 1480 – 21 October 1494
Monarch	Gian Galeazzo Sforza
Born	27 July 1452 Vigevano, Duchy of Milan (modern-day Lombardy, Italy)
Died	27 May 1508 (aged 55) Château de Loches (died as a prisoner of the French)
Spouse	Beatrice d'Este
Issue Detail	Massimiliano Sforza Francesco II Sforza Giovanni Paolo I Sforza (illegitimate) Bianca Sforza (illegitimate)
House	Sforza
Father	Francesco I Sforza
Mother	Bianca Maria Visconti

Ludovico Maria Sforza (Italian: [ludoˈviːko maˈriːa ˈsfɔrtsa]; 27 July 1452 – 27 May 1508), also known as Ludovico il Moro (Italian: [il ˈmɔːro]; "the Moor"),^[b] was an Italian Renaissance nobleman who ruled as Duke of Milan from 1494, following the death of his nephew Gian Galeazzo Sforza, until 1499. A member of the Sforza family, he was the fourth son of Francesco I Sforza. He was famed as a patron of Leonardo da Vinci and other artists, and presided over the final and most productive stage of the Milanese Renaissance. He is probably best known as the man who commissioned The Last Supper, as well as for his role in precipitating the Italian Wars.

Early life[]

Ludovico Sforza was born on 27 July 1452 at Vigevano, in what is now Lombardy. He was the fourth son of Francesco I Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti^[3] and, as such, was not expected to become ruler of Milan. Nevertheless, his mother, Bianca, prudently saw to it that his education was not restricted to the classical languages. Under the tutelage of the humanist Francesco Filelfo, Ludovico received instruction in the beauties of painting, sculpture, and letters, but he was also taught the methods of government and warfare.

Regent of Milan[]

Ludovico Sforza by Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis.

When their father Francesco died in 1466, the family titles devolved upon the dissolute Galeazzo Maria, the elder brother, whilst Ludovico was conferred the courtesy title of Count of Mortara.^[4]

Galeazzo Maria ruled until his assassination in 1476, leaving his titles to his seven-year-old son, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Ludovico's nephew. A bitter struggle for the regency with the boy's mother, Bona of Savoy, ensued; Ludovico emerged as victor in 1481 and seized control of the government of Milan, despite attempts to keep him out of power. For the following 13 years he ruled Milan as its Regent, having previously been created Duke of Bari in 1479.^[5]

Marriage and private life[]

In January 1491, he married Beatrice d'Este (1475-1497) the youngest daughter of Ercole d'Este Duke of Ferrara,^[5] in a double Sforza-Este marriage, while Beatrice's brother, Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, married Anna Sforza, Ludovico's niece. Leonardo da Vinci orchestrated the wedding celebration.

The 15-year-old princess quickly charmed the Milanese court with her joy in life, her laughter, and even her extravagance. She helped to make Sforza Castle a center of sumptuous festivals and balls and she loved entertaining philosophers, poets, diplomats and soldiers. Beatrice had good taste, and it is said that under her prompting her husband's patronage of artists became more selective and the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Donato Bramante were employed at the court.^[5] She would become the mother of Maximilian Sforza and Francesco II Sforza, future Dukes of Milan.

Prior to and throughout the duration of his 6-year marriage, Ludovico is known to have had mistresses, although it is thought that he kept only one mistress at a time. Bernardina de Corradis was an early mistress who bore him a daughter, Bianca Giovanna (1483–1496), supposedly the sitter for the disputed work La Bella Principessa. The child was legitimized and later married to Galeazzo da Sanseverino in 1496. Cecilia Gallerani, believed to be a favourite, gave birth to a son named Cesare on 3 May 1491, in the same year in which Ludovico married Beatrice d'Este. Gallerani is identified as the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine – the ermine was the heraldic animal of Ludovico il Moro. Another mistress was Lucrezia Crivelli, who bore him another illegitimate son, Giovanni Paolo, born in the year of Beatrice's death. He was a condottiero. Ludovico also fathered a third illegitimate son, called Sforza, who was born around 1484 and died suddenly in 1487; the boy's mother is unknown.^[6]

Rule as regent[]

Ludovico invested in agriculture, horse and cattle breeding, and the metal industry. Some 20,000 workers were employed in the silk industry. He sponsored extensive work in civil and military engineering, such as canals and fortifications, continued work on the Cathedral of Milan and had the streets of Milan enlarged and adorned with gardens. The university of Pavia flourished under him. There were some protests at the heavy taxation necessary to support these ventures, and a few riots resulted.^{[citation needed]}

Ascension as Duke of Milan and the Italian Wars[]

In 1494, the new king of Naples, Alfonso II, allied himself with Pope Alexander VI, posing a threat to Milan. Ludovico decided to fend him off using France, then ruled by Charles VIII, as his ally. He permitted the French troops to pass through Milan so they might attack Naples. However, Charles's ambition was not satisfied with Naples, and he subsequently laid claim to Milan itself. Bitterly regretting his decision, Ludovico then entered an alliance with Emperor Maximilian I, by offering him in marriage his niece Bianca Sforza and receiving, in return, imperial investiture of the duchy and joining the league against France.

Silver reproduction (1989) of the testone that Ludovico had minted in 1497 with his own effigy on the one hand and of his wife Beatrice on the other, immediately after her death.

One of the first examples of coinage of this type, testimony of great love and admiration towards his wife.

Gian Galeazzo, his nephew,^[7] died under suspicious conditions in 1494, and the throne of Milan fell to Ludovico, who hastened to assume the ducal title and received the ducal crown from the Milanese nobles on 22 October. But by then, his luck seemed to have run out. Ludovico had also hoped by involving the French, and Maximilian I, in Italian politics, he could manipulate the two and reap the rewards himself, and was thus responsible for starting the Italian Wars. At first, Ludovico defeated the French at the Battle of Fornovo in 1495 (making weapons from 80 tons of bronze originally intended for the colossal equestrian statue commissioned by the duke from Leonardo da Vinci in honour of Francesco I Sforza).

Meanwhile, in 1496 Beatrice was expecting a third child and it was in this period that the Moor met Lucrezia Crivelli, lady-in-waiting to his wife, who became his mistress. Beatrice until that moment had not shown herself too jealous of the frequent betrayals of her husband, considering them fleeting distractions and of little importance, but when she realized that Ludovico had this time seriously fallen in love with Crivelli, she tried to oppose the relationship with all her strength. However, there was no way to distract her husband and throughout 1496 Ludovico continued to attend more or less secretly the Crivelli, in a regime of substantial bigamy, so much so that he ended up impregnating both his wife and lover within a couple of months. Beatrice, who was also sincerely in love with her husband, reacted by refusing him her ownand the relationship between the couple reached a breaking point. Finally, deeply humiliated, disappointed, embittered, especially saddened by the premature and tragic death of the very young , her dearest friend, Beatrice died in childbirth in the night between 2 and 3 January 1497.

Cristoforo Solari, cenotaph of Ludovico il Moro and Beatrice d'Este, 1497, Certosa di Pavia

Ludovico, who had betrayed her so brazenly, went mad with grief, never recovered from the death of his wife, who had until then been his strength and support in the government of the state. For two weeks he was locked in the dark in his apartments, after which he shaved his head and allowed his beard to grow, wearing from then on only black clothes with a cloak torn up by a beggar. His only concern became the embellishment of the family mausoleum and the neglected state fell into disrepair.

With these few words on that same night he announced the departure of his wife to the Marquis of Mantua Francesco Gonzaga, husband of his sister-in-law Isabella:[46]

«Our illustrious bride, since labor pains came to her this night at two hours, gave birth to a dead male child at five hours, and at half past six she gave back the spirit to God, whose bitter and immature mourning we find ourselves in so much bitterness and grief. how much it is possible to feel, and so much so that the more grateful we would have been to die first and not see us lack what was the dearest thing we had in this world»

— Mediolani, 3 Januarii 1497 hora undecima. Ludovicus M. Sfortia Anglus Dux Mediolani

Detail of the cenotaph with the effigy of Ludovico and Beatrice

Charles VIII died in 1498. His successor Louis XII of France, being a nephew of Valentina Visconti (daughter of Giangaleazzo Visconti, the first Duke of Milan),was therefore a pretender to the Duchy of Milan and in fact set out to prepare an expedition against the Moor. The latter had already tried once to conquer Milan in the summer of 1495, at the time of the expedition of Charles VIII, but he had not been successful, as he had clashed with the fierce opposition of Beatrice d'Este, who had taken the situation in hand after her husband, perhaps because of the strong fright, had been struck, it seems, by a stroke. This time, however, now deprived of the valuable help of his wife, Louis did not prove to be able to face the enemy. Moreover, over the years he had managed to antagonist the two best leaders of the peninsula: Roberto Sanseverino and Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. When Robert died, Trivulzio remained to meditate on revenge, and it was to the latter that Louis XII entrusted the leadership of the army for the conquest of Milan.

Hence in 1498, he descended upon Milan. As none of the other Italian states would help the ruler who had invited the French into Italy four years earlier, Louis was successful in driving out Ludovico from Milan. Ludovico managed to escape the French armies and, in 1499, sought help from Maximilian.

Downfall and aftermath[]

Ludovico returned with an army of mercenaries and re-entered Milan in February 1500. Two months later, Louis XII laid siege to the city of Novara, where Ludovico was based. The armies of both sides included Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss did not want to fight each other and chose to leave Novara. Ludovico was handed over to the French in April 1500 in the so-called Treason of Novara (Verrat von Novara). This incident took place in 1500 in the context of the involvement of the Old Swiss Confederacy in the Italian Wars, and is mentioned briefly in Chapter 3 of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince. About 6,000 Swiss under the command of Sforza defended the city, while about 10,000 Swiss under the command of Louis laid siege to it. The Swiss diet called for negotiations between the two sides in an attempt to prevent the worst case of the Swiss on both sides being forced to slaughter one another, "brothers against brothers and fathers against sons". Louis agreed to a conditional surrender which would grant free passage to the Swiss abandoning the city, but only under the condition that Sforza would be surrendered. However, the Swiss on Sforza's side, under an oath of loyalty to their employer, decided to dress Sforza as a Swiss and smuggle him out of town.

Italy at the dawn of the descent of Charles VIII (1494)

On 10 April, the Swiss garrison was leaving Novara, passing a cordon formed by the Swiss on the French side. French officers were posted to oversee their exit. As the disguised Sforza passed the cordon, one mercenary Hans (or Rudi) Turmann of Uri made signs giving away Sforza's identity. The duke was apprehended by the French. Louis XII refused to see him and, despite the pleas of the Emperor Maximilian, would not release him. However, he did allow him to roam the grounds of the castle of Lys-Saint-Georges in Berry where he was held, to fish in the moat and to receive friends. When he fell ill, Louis sent him his own physician as well as one of Ludovico's dwarf entertainers to amuse him. In 1504 he was moved to the castle of Loches where he was given even more freedom. In 1508, Ludovico attempted to escape; he was thereafter deprived of amenities including his books and spent the rest of his life in the castle's dungeon, where he died on 27 May 1508.^[8] The French rewarded Turmann for his treason with 200 gold crowns (corresponding to five years' salary of a mercenary); he escaped to France, but after three years (or, according to some sources, after one year) he returned home to Uri. Turmann was immediately arrested for treason, and on the following day he was executed by decapitation.^[9]

The Swiss later restored the Duchy of Milan to Ludovico's son, Maximilian Sforza. His other son, Francesco II, also held the duchy for a short period. Francesco II died in 1535, sparking the Italian War of 1536–1538, as a result of which Milan passed to the Spanish Empire.

Sforza is handed over to the French. Illustration from the Lucerne Chronicle (1513)

The memory of Ludovico was clouded for centuries by Machiavelli's accusation that he 'invited' Charles VIII to invade Italy, paving the way for subsequent foreign domination. The charge was perpetuated by later historians who espoused the ideal of national independence. More recent historians, however, placing the figure of Ludovico in its Renaissance setting, have reevaluated his merits as a ruler and given a more equitable assessment of his achievement.^[10]

Appearance and personality[]

Very excellent duke in times of peace, very bad in times of war, Ludovico was never brought neither for weapons nor for the exercises of the body, he was indeed a man with a mild, conciliatory character, he detested all forms of violence and cruelty, and in fact the more he could keep away from the battlefields, he held himself, and the more he could refrain from inflicting harsh punishments on the guilty, he abstained. He therefore does not deserve the fame of "tyrant" that is sometimes attributed to him, which if anything belonged to his brother Galeazzo Maria Sforza,duke before him, who used to torment his subjects and even his friends with unspeakable torture and cruelty (of which Bernardino Corio has handed down a summary list), and subtract for his own pleasure the women of others, to such an extent that this was the cause of his killing at the hands of noble conspirators in 1476.^[11]

Perhaps just taking the fraternal example as a warning, Ludovico always refrained from any excess. It can be said that he was even unable to bring hatred, if in the last years of his life, now imprisoned in the prison of Loches by King Louis XII who had deprived him of the state, the title, the wealth and even his own children, Ludovico found nothing better to do than write a memorial "of the things of Italy" for Louis XII himself, in which he explained to the sovereign what was the best way to govern Lombardy.

Ludovico il Moro. Round from the Renaissance frieze torn from the Visconti castle of Invorio Inferiore. Landscape Museum in Verbania-Pallanza.

Physically he was quite tall for the times, about between eighty meters and eighty and ninety meters in height, but he was not as well disposed physically,in fact he greatly appreciated good food and above all he was greedy for certain headaches in oil that his father-in-law Ercole sometimes sent him. Over the years, without the necessary physical training, he gained more and more weight, then losing weight only after the death of his wife (due to the continuous fasting) and the capture, and then returned to being "fatter than ever", as described by ambassador Domenico Trevisan, after having become accustomed to imprisonment. He was therefore not used to wearing the tight-attillated farsetti typical of young men and condottieri, but rather clothes that reached him just above the knee. However, he had broad shoulders and highlighted them with solid gold chains, as can be seen in the so-called Since birth, as confirmed by his mother, he had eyes, hair and dark complexion, which therefore derived his nickname, and he could boast a thick hair that he always kept cut according to the fashion of the time, although following the death of his wife he began, as it seems, to lose his hair, as well as to suffer from various diseases, such as gout and asthma.

In the best years, however, he was endowed with great charm and charisma, in fact he used to boast of never having had to force any woman to indulge in himself, and indeed of having loved them all. The fame of seducer came to such an extent that there was even talk of his relationship (probably invented) with his niece Isabella of Aragon,whose relationship would have been the reason why Gian Galeazzo had his wife indignant and refused to consummate the marriage. The Este ambassador then attributed to the "too much coith" with Cecilia Gallerani the cause of a certain malaise that struck Ludovico in 1489. Moreover, Ludovico himself, after the death of Beatrice, came to boast of having also had an affair with Isabella d'Este,her sister, during the period in which his wife was still alive, thus insinuating that it was out of jealousy that the Marquis of Mantua Francesco Gonzaga,husband of Isabella, continued to play the double game between him and the Lordship of Venice. Isabella undoubtedly always had a soft spot for Ludovico, and in fact envied her sister from the beginning for the lucky marriage that had touched her, for the riches and for the children, but it is not proven that she had actually been his lover, and in any case her father-in-law Ercole d'Este immediately hastened to deny the rumor.^[12]

Ludovico Duke of Bari, early 90s. Marble bas-relief by Benedetto Briosco.

Certainly Ludovico was prodigal with his friends, very liberal, condescending, thoughtful and human, however he turned out to be a very little energetic man, if not spurred on, and with the hereafter (perhaps as a result of the aforementioned stroke) he became increasingly contradictory and unstable. In his wife, a woman of strong character and thus able to make up for her husband's failings, he found his most faithful and valid collaborator, so much so that her death marked her downfall. Beatrice trusted blindly, granted her great freedom and entrusted her with important tasks, making her always a participant in the councils and negotiations of war. As a husband he was therefore, at least at the beginning, almost impeccable, and if it had not been for the continuous betrayals nothing could have been reproached in this regard. Some historians, wandering, claimed that he beat his wife,but the confusion arises from a letter of 1492, in which it is written that the Duke of Milan had "beaten" his wife: Duke of Milan was then called Gian Galeazzo, who in accordance with his character was in fact used to mistreat his wife Isabella,nor therefore Ludovico ever allowed himself to make such a gesture towards that woman who "loved more than himself".^[13]

Galeazzo Sanseverino, son-in-law of Ludovico il Moro.

Even as a father he was attentive, loving and present, great was the love he nu nuded above all towards his own daughter, ,and unbearable the pain he showed for his untimely unexpected death. He was also particularly attached to Galeazzo Sanseverino, who was also the son of Roberto,and for this reason he married his favorite daughter, covered him with honors and allowed him to keep in the castle almost a court of his own. Galeazzo for his part served him faithfully and, although he was not as skilled in war as his brother , it was he who held the role of captain general of the Sforza army. Precisely this abuse yielded to Ludovico the hatred that later proved fatal of Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, who had seen himself suddenly deprived of the title.

The great passion of Ludovico, more than women, more than food and more than the government, was indeed agriculture: Ludovico liked to remember that his grandfather, Muzio Attendolo,before becoming a leader was born a farmer, and he himself was an expert grower of vines and mulberries, the famous moròn, with whom they fed the silkworms that made the Milanese industry famous. He gave life to his own farm near Vigevano,the so-called , with adjacent the Pecorara where various species of cattle, sheep and other animals were bred, which Ludovico loved very much and where he often visited with his wife Beatrice, like him a lover of nature. It was no coincidence that he employed Leonardo da Vinci almost more as an engineer than as an artist, using his knowledge to build a series of aqueducts useful for irrigating those lands that are naturally arid. In the end he decided, by official act of January 28, 1494, to donate the Sforzesca, along with many other lands, to his beloved Beatrice, and this seems even more significant if we consider that from that company alone Ludovico received annually very rich incomes.^[14]

Perhaps precisely because of his own insecurities, he was obsessed with astrology,so much so that the courtiers of Ferrara noticed that in Milan nothing was done without , astrologer and personal doctor of Ludovico, had first consulted the stars. Contrary to what some historians claim, Ludovico was a cultured man, he knew Latin and French and whenever he could he stopped to listen to the daily reading and commentary of the Divine Comedy that the humanist kept at the behest of Duchess Beatrice, who was very passionate about it. After her death and her capture, Ludovico asked as his last wish to be able to keep with him a book of Dante's work which he read continuously during his captivity, whose triplets he delighted in writing, translated into French, on the walls of his cell, along with some of his other nostalgic thoughts imbued with wisdom.^[15]

Lineage[]

Legitimate children

By his wife Beatrice d'Este, daughter of Ercole I d'Este, he had the following children:

• Ercole Massimiliano, (1493 - 1530), count of Pavia, duke of Milan 1513 - 1515;
• Sforza Francesco, (1495 - 1535), Prince of Rossano and Count of Borrello 1497 - 1498, Count of Pavia and Duke of Milan 1521 - 1524 married in 1533 to Christina of Denmark (1522 - 1590), daughter of King Christian II of Denmark.
• The third son, also a male, was born dead and, not having been baptized, could not be placed with his mother in the tomb. Ludovico, heartbroken, therefore had him buried above the door of the cloister of Santa Maria delle Grazie with this Latin epitaph: "O unhappy childbirth! I lost my life before I was born, and more unhappy, by dying I took the life of my mother and the father deprived his wife. In so much adverse fate, this alone can be of comfort to me, that divine parents bore me, Ludovico and Beatrice dukes of Milan. 1497, January 2".^[16]

Natural children

Il Moro also had a series of natural children, all legitimized, which over the years greatly enlarged the ducal family and allowed Sforza himself to cement some alliances:

From his mistress Bernardina de Corradis he had:

• (1482 - Milan, November 23, 1496), married Galeazzo Sanseverino, lord of Bobbio.

By his lover Cecilia Gallerani he had one son:

• Cesare, (Milan, 1491 - 1514), abbot of the basilica of San Nazaro in Brolo in Milan from 1498, canon from 1503.

By his lover Lucrezia Crivelli he had two children:

• Giovanni Paolo I Sforza or Giampaolo I Sforza, (Milan, 14 March 1497 – Naples, 13 December 1535), from whom the Sforza branch of Caravaggiodescends, married Violante Bentivoglio of the Counts of Campagna and lords of Bologna;
• Isabella (1500-1535), named so probably in gratitude to Isabella d'Este Marquise of Mantua, who had offered refuge and protection to her fugitive mother. Married Francesco Carminati Bergamini, Count of San Giovanni in Croce.^[17][18]

From his lover Romana he had:

• Leone (1476 - Milan 1496), between the end of 1495 and the beginning of 1496 married the young noblewoman Margherita Grassi,^[19] already widow of his uncle Giulio Sforza, to whom he had given a son.^[20] He died shortly after the wedding without having had offspring.^[21] He is often confused with his uncle of the same name, the latter abbot of San Vittore in Vigevano since 1495.

As dark lovers he had:

• Galeazzo, eldest son, born before 1476 and died a child,^[22],probably already before 1483, because in his first will, dating back to that year, Ludovico does not mention other children than Bianca and Leone.^[23]
• Sforza (1484/1485-1487).^[24]

Perhaps he also had another illegitimate son unknown to us if, as reported by Bernardino Corio,in 1496 three of his bastard sons died, namely Leo, Bianca, and a third who cannot be identified with any of the aforementioned.

Representations in popular culture[]

Literature[]

Ludovico is the protagonist of several novels, comics and tragedies:

• The death of Ludovico Sforza known as the Moor, tragedy of Pietro Ferrari (1791).
• Lodovico Sforza known as il Moro, tragedy by Giovanni Battista Niccolini (1833).
• Lodovico il Moro, by Giovanni Campiglio (1837).
• Lodovico il Moro, tragedy by Giuseppe Campagna (1842).
• La città ardente - novel by Lodovico il Moro, by Dino Bonardi (1933).
• Poisons, women and intrigues at the court of Ludovico il Moro, by Ezio Maria Seveso (1967)
• Ludovico il Moro - Signore di Milano, comic strip of 2010.
• Il Moro - Gli Sforza nella Milano di Leonardo, by Carlo Maria Lomartire (2019).

He also appears as a character in:

• Cicco Simonetta: drama, with historical preface, by Carlo Belgiojoso (1858).
• Leonardo - the Resurrection of the Gods, by Dmitry Mereskovsky (1901).
• The Duchess of Milan, by Michael Ennis (1992).
• L'invito di Ludovico il Moro, by Federico G. Martini (1998).
• The Swans of Leonardo, by Karen Essex (2006).
• The days of love and war, by Carla Maria Russo (2016).
• La misura dell'uomo, by Marco Malvaldi (2018).
• Leonardo da Vinci - The Renaissance of the Dead, by G. Albertini, G. Gualdoni and G. Staffa (2019).

Cinema[]

• In the 1971 RAI miniseries The Life of Leonardo da Vinci, Ludovico is played by Giampiero Albertini.
• In the 1974 film Young Lucrezia, he is played by Piero Lulli.
• In the 1981 miniseries The Borgias, he is portrayed by Robert Ashby.
• In the 2004 film Le grandi dame di casa d'Este by Diego Ronsisvalle, he is played by Paolo Catani.
• In the 2011 Canal+ series Borgia, he appears as a cameo, played by Florian Fitz.
• In the 2011 Showtime series The Borgias, Ludovico Sforza is portrayed by English actor Ivan Kaye.
• In the 2016 documentary film Leonardo da Vinci - Il genio a Milano, he is played by Vincenzo Amato.
• In the 2016-2019 Anglo-Italian television series I Medici, he is played by Daniele Pecci.
• In the 2019 film Io, Leonardo, he is played by Massimo de Lorenzo.
• In the 2019 film Essere Leonardo da Vinci, he is played by Paolo Terenzi, although it constitutes a simple appearance.
• In the 2021 series Leonardo Ludovico Sforza is portrayed by English actor James D'Arcy.

Ancestors[]

Notes[]

References[]

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sforza". Encyclopædia Britannica. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 756.

Further reading[]

• Godfrey, F. M. "The Eagle and the Viper: Lodovico Il Moro of Milan: A Renaissance Tyrant." History Today (Oct 1953) 3#10 pp 705-715.
• Lodovico Sforza, in: Thomas Gale, Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2005–2006.

External links[]

• Portrait and family tree
• Leonardo's Itinerary: Early maturity in Milan (1482–1499), by Valentina Cupiraggi, trans. Catherine Frost.